I’ve read Meyers’ biography of Hemingway and I did my master’s thesis on Sun Also Rises, and the depth of Hemingway and his stylistic foil Faulkner continue to make a mockery of much of their contemporaries.
And it all started with a woman named Duff Twysden.
He was a great writer. I have read and re-read his books and they are always rewarding. Faulkner? Not so much. Faulkner’s characters never *do* much, they are enmeshed in their imposed Freudian snares and one becomes impatient with them.
Hemingway was the last of the literary writers whose characters acted, did stuff, made things happen.
And it all started with a woman named Duff Twysden.I think there would have been a successful Hemingway without Duff Twysden. There was "In Our Time" (1925) before "The Sun Also Rises" (1926).
He was going to be a "great" (everyone forever will argue the use/merit/applicability of that word) named Ernest Hemingway with or without Duff Twysden.