Posted on 04/05/2021 12:01:41 PM PDT by Borges
The idea of a Ken Burns documentary on Ernest Hemingway seems both obvious and a bit absurd. Burns’ long project of celebrating the most dad-friendly pillars of American culture and history—the Civil War, baseball, jazz—makes Hemingway (after Mark Twain, covered by Burns in 2002) almost inevitable. Hemingway’s life was full of exciting adventures, and, not incidentally, he is surely the most photographed writer of the 20th century, so there’s lots of visual material to draw from. Yet after decades of dominating ideas about how a writer should live and work, Hemingway feels increasingly irrelevant today, his influence diminished to a vanishing point, his reputation corroded by a dated personal mythos. According to the Chicago Tribune, even in Hemingway’s hometown of Oak Park, Illinois, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby alone outsells all of Hemingway’s work combined, and the Hemingway Foundation had to launch a GoFundMe campaign to keep the museum at his birthplace open.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
For fans of parody, check out Harry’s Bar and American Grill best bad Hemingway. If you familiar with Hemingway’s style, you will get a chuckle.
The FBI hounded him for years. That certainly helped to pull the trigger. ‘The American Gestapo’ in action.
I HAVE READ EVERYTHING HEMINGWAY PUBLISHED, AND BELIEVE YOUR CONCLUSION IS ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. HE WAS GRIEVOUSLY WOUNDED IN ITALY DURING WWI AS AN AMBULANCE DRIVER, NOT A COMBATANT, AND THIS EVENT COLORED HIS ENTIRE LIFE. HE EVEN HAD ONE OF HIS PROTAGONISTS SURVEY THE PRECISE SPOT HE WAS WOUNDED, AND DEFECATE ON IT. HE WROTE THAT A TRUE MAN IS WOUNDED BY THE WORLD, AS HE WAS, BUT SKIRTED COMPLETELY THE ISSUE OF A MAN KILLING. HE WAS A PERPETUAL VICTIM, PASSIVE, VERY UNSURE OF HIS ADEQUACY AND MANHOOD. A BRAGGART, AND A LIAR.
SOME OF HIS SHORT STORIES ARE GREAT.
CONSIDERING WHAT A DRUNKARD HE WAS IT’S A WONDER HE WROTE ANYTHING AT ALL.
HIS EL MACHO GRANDE EL MACHO TERRIFICO LIFESTYLE WAS PURE COMPENSATION FOR HIS FEELINGS OF INADEQUACY. THE STRONG IMPLICATIONS THAT HIS ALCOHOLISM CAUSED HIM TO BECOME IMPOTENT DIDN’T HELP MUCH WITH HIS SELF ESTEEM AND SELF IMAGE.
HIS SHORT STORIES, AND “THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA”, ARE THE BEST STUFF HE EVER DID. EVERYTHING ELSE HE WROTE WAS THE PORNOGRAPHIC EXHIBITIONISM OF A WOUNDED PSYCHE.
HE AIN’T SHAKESPEARE.
1000% RIGHT!!!!
knowing Burns he’ll probably spend half the documentary about how blacks were oppressed during Hemmingway’s lifetime and Hemmingway didn’t do anything about it.
I stopped reading after the first sentence. What a moron!
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