I have a copy signed by Abraham Lincoln.
Posted on 05/20/2019 6:17:53 AM PDT by Twotone
Ernest Hemingway had just returned to London, after the D-Day invasion of Normandy, when he ran into Roald Dahl, then a British Royal Air Force officer. Hemingway told Dahl he’d witnessed a soldier escaping a burning tank on Omaha beach. Dahl responded that Hemingway should include the scene in his next piece for Collier’s, the New York magazine he wrote for at the time.
“You don’t think I’d give them that, do you?” replied Hemingway. “I’m keeping it for a book.”
Collier’s, a glossy weekly with a circulation of 2.8 million, was known as a forum for stellar writing. It was perhaps the most prestigious magazine in America, rivaled only by The Saturday Evening Post. It had commissioned Hemingway to cover what are now some of the most famous events in history, including the western Allies’ invasion of France and the collapse of the Third Reich.
We might have remembered that reportage alongside the best of his fiction. But we don’t—because Hemingway’s stint at Collier’s was a disaster.
His editors in New York were unimpressed with the six articles he filed. They were heroic portrayals, as requested, but of himself as much as of the protagonists in the epic events he was covering. Though he’d proven himself a capable war correspondent in Spain, China, and elsewhere, he had grown to dislike journalism. The relationship with Collier’s was cursed from the outset, and by the end of the war it had descended into a spat over an expense claim for about $13,000—or $187,000 in today’s money.
(Excerpt) Read more at cjr.org ...
I wasn’t attributing that to you. I was just asking.
You said “where’s the mystery”, which does imply that writing fiction and being a liar go hand in hand.
I’m not arguing that that’s true or not, all I said was “interesting”.
I do find it “intersting” that greats like Hemingway and Faulkner would feel compelled to lie about their role in war, as if their bread and butter depended on it, which it clearly didn’t.
I have a copy signed by Abraham Lincoln.
Self-delusion may be great for a fiction writer, but it is disaster for a plane pilot. 320kts 10,000 feet, I'm good, when you are augering in won't cut it.
Something you will NEVER say about Heinlein or Niven.
Maybe Azimov, to a point, but not the other two.
Not saying it's right.
That inclination to forget where truth ends and imagination begins is a particular problem for writers (and people) who drink too much. Like Hemingway and Faulkner.
I think people who drink too much (I used to do a little bit of that myself) live in a third reality. It isn't quite reality but it isn't quite fiction.
And then when your whole reason for being is "the story"...well, you can see how some slippage might occur.
I had a home in Oxford, MS (Faulkner’s old stomping ground) for many years and plan to retire there some day. Residents were ambivalent about old Bill during his lifetime, even when he became famous.
One woman I know (an Oxford native) remembers seeing Faulkner go to his neighbors’ homes in the 1950s (after he won the Nobel Prize for literature), asking if they had any whiskey he could have. Faulkner was often clad in his pajamas while trying to bum booze from his neighbors. Years earlier, he was given the job as postmaster at Ole Miss, to give him a steady income while he tried to establish himself as a writer. He quit after only two weeks, announcing he would “never be a slave to someone with a five-cent stamp.”
My favorite Faulkner story is from his Hollywood years. Contrary to popular belief, he was successful in Tinsel Town, with a number of successful collaborations with director Howard Hawks. But at one point, writer’s block set in, and he asked permission to “write at home.” Studio execs said sure, assuming that Faulkner was referring to his local residence in LA. No one heard from the writer for several weeks, so M-G-M dispatched someone to check on Faulkner.
When they couldn’t find him there, a minor panic ensued until someone had the idea of calling Oxford, to see if Faulkner was back in Mississippi. Sure enough, he was, and couldn’t see what the fuss was about. After all Faulkner told them he was “going home to write.” The alternate version of this story suggests Bill had to go back to Oxford to stop his wife from giving the money he sending home to his mother-in-law.
After Faulkner’s death, he truly became an icon (and a tourist draw) in Oxford. A lot of the old grudges were forgiven, since Bill brought people (and money) to town.
You must also be able to write.
I don’t think Fitzgerald was a liar but you may be on to something anyway. Hemingway may have come to believe his lies although when biographers came a-callin’ in his lifetime, he suddenly clammed up about his exploits.
And journalists often make good novelists. I think of Margaret Mitchell who whatever one may think about her point of view was a brilliant storyteller. They know what to include and what to cut out and what is the telling detail. Of course, that doesn’t apply at all to modern journalists who are total liars.
Big Two-Hearted River is exceptional. His Nick Adams stories are so powerful.
Good point about the drinking. Of course I know that Hemingway and Faulkner were both heavy drinkers and although I’ve never been that myself, I am aware of the third reality of which you speak. I have an ex-wife who lives almost exclusively in that reality. She lives in Las Vegas and one of the manifestations of that reality is she regularly reports her fantastic luck on slot machines, her latest “big win”. No mention of the size of the investment that went into that “win” of course, an aspect of that reality that her current husband is all too keenly aware of. But for her, the “wins” are all quite real.
The world (and reality) is a very different and much improved place now. As an old friend of mine is wont to say "I never realized how many hours were in the day until I stopped drinking. Each day seems to go on forever."
This explains why Trump is a billionaire. Not being a drinker, he had to figure out something to keep him busy while the rest of the world imbibed.
Building highrises in NYC is as good as anything...and lucrative too.;-)
Building highrises in NYC is as good as anything...and lucrative too.;-)
—
Mayor de Blahblahzio says it’s the greatest evil there is.
The second time you read it, the old man and the sea become good friends.
The Russians in general are object lessons in verbosity. Beautiful verbosity in some cases but verbosity nonetheless.
The only ones who outdo them are the Germans. Hesse, Koestler, Schopenhauer, even Goethe ... It’s a slog.
I chalk it up to the language and translations.
Arthur C Clarke also is overrated. His early works are OK-ish, but his last few books were nearly unreadable.
Russian translates HORRIBLY to English.
The primary reason is something called the Genitive Case.
This case allows a noun to modify another noun.
You can express, for example, a hatred of a current president by negating the name of that president with the case of the word “president”. This is known as an adversarial genitive case.
Such a thing is not possible to capture in English.
Besides 2001 and 2010, his stuff was awful.
Tell me about it. All Slavic languages are like that, been trying to learn Polish for years. But I saw a YouTube video from a Brit who travels thoughout Russian and speaks Russian, and he didn't know the language until a few years ago, and he said something that makes sense, just learn the vocabulary, and not the grammar, people know you're a foreigner and won't expect you to get the grammar right anyway, but if you just know the words, you'll do fine.
Pretty much. You see the same difficulty of Slavics to master our grammar. They have a stilted, odd way of speaking -- to our ears.
I was always impressed that the word IS kinda doesn't really exist. It's implied.
"John is tall."
"Джон высок"
My mother was born in Kiev, emigrated here w/ her parents to flee Stalin; she spoke Ukrainian exclusively at home. She could understand Russian and Polish, when it was spoken, but never used it to speak.
I regret that she never taught us the language; their thought was that we had to assimilate as soon as possible, into the New Home Country. It never occurred to them, that anyone should bend to their cultural idiosyncrasies.
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