35 Comments
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Peco's avatar

Wonderful! I’ve never quite forgiven Hemingway for that last scene in A Farewell to Arms, but this essay helps.

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Joel J Miller's avatar

I read Farewell about 25 years ago but hardly remember it. I need to revisit it.

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Tessa Lind's avatar

I completely agree on the ending to Farewell...

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Peter C. Meilaender's avatar

Fittingly timed, since Hemingway's 125th birthday was earlier this year. Thanks for the write-up.

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Joel J Miller's avatar

Thanks for reading! It was a real joy to work on this piece.

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Jeff Cook-Coyle's avatar

It is a truly wonderful essay. The insights are important, the subject fascinating, and the writing sublime. Well done!

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Jeff Cook-Coyle's avatar

Joel, I was so inspired by you that on my restack, I edited it to shorten a sentence! Periods, not semicolons, when writing about Hemingway! Thanks again.

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Joel J Miller's avatar

LOL. My pleasure!

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Carol's avatar

I reread A Moveable Feast recently and it is now on my top 10 list of faves. I was mixed on Hemingway and gave him a retry and found different things to like amid his shortcomings. Great article.

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Joel J Miller's avatar

He’s definitely a complicated man—someone seemingly immune from contemplating the consequences of his actions.

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Adrian Neibauer's avatar

As a young man, I was fascinated by the caricature of Hemingway. His writing life in Paris was an impossible standard I felt like I had to hold myself to if I wanted to be a real writer. “If only I could move to Paris and drink coffee and whiskey, then …” This memoir sounds like a good window into the reality of that image. Thanks for pulling out these three facets of his work to pique my interest!

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Joel J Miller's avatar

Yes, it’s a very humanizing portrait. A fun read, too.

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Renee Hale's avatar

Intentionally distracting yourself so as not to think about work is all well and good during your waking hours, but I need to know the trick for keeping the thoughts contained while drifting off to sleep!

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Tessa Lind's avatar

I keep this Hemingway quote before me as I write. "You see I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across-not just to depict life-or criticize it-but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful, you can't believe in it. Things aren't that way. It is only by showing both sides, three dimensions, and if possible, four, that you can write the way I want to."

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Frankie Chocolate's avatar

He is dark. No question . I read his forward in his short story collection. I’m reading the ones he said were his favorites but “light of the world was just terrible.”

And as far as demons, I think the one that convinced him life was hopelessly was the same one who preyed upon his descendants.

That’s why Jesus is so important . Have the son have life. Don’t have the son don’t have life.

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Thaddeus Wert's avatar

Earlier this year, I read Lesley Blume's Everybody Behaves Badly, which is about Hemingway's time in Europe. It's a great book, and I wrote up a brief review here: https://fractad.wordpress.com/2024/02/25/everybody-behaves-badly-in-both-fiction-and-real-life/

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Joel J Miller's avatar

That looks excellent. Loved your review. This sums Hemingway up well: “He was by no means an admirable person, character-wise, but he was certainly a gifted writer.”

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Thaddeus Wert's avatar

Thank you, Joel. It was this Substack that inspired to write up something on every book I read this year!

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Cassie Troja's avatar

Confession time: I've never been a Hemingway fan, although I can recognize and appreciate his abilities. His death was tragic, but I've always thought he left echoes of the demons that haunted him in his writing. It definitely put a darker tint on his writing for me, which is probably why I didn't like it originally. Perhaps it's time I revisit Hemingway to try to appreciate his writing from a more mature perspective. Where would you recommend starting?

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Joel J Miller's avatar

I think I’d start right here, with the memoir. It has the flavor of his early work since he’s writing about the period with the perspective of him as an older man. A Farewell to Arms, which he wrote in 1929, is also a great place to begin.

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Frankie Chocolate's avatar

Joel, that was a most excellent review of Hemingway. He really is the gold standard for me. I need to read more of him. Write more terse sentences like him. But not drink and whore like him.

Thanks for redirecting me.

Your pal, frankie chocolate

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Joel J Miller's avatar

My pleasure! Also good life advice there!

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Holly A.J.'s avatar

That part of Hemingway's writing technique that stayed with me was how he got through writer's block, telling himself: "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."

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Joel J Miller's avatar

Yes, that comes out in this book! I found that aspect of the book fascinating.

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Paul Clayton's avatar

Thanks for this, Joel. To me it's a lament for a for a lost world. Lost not just in time, but in a quagmire of false truths and new imposed unrealities. No more can a Hemingway, Ford, Pound or Fitzgerald rise to the top with the folks who now run Random House/Penguin/HarperCollins/Simon& Schuster/Hachette, and Holtzbrink. Male writers must accept the new reality.

The King is dead. Long live the Queen.

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Joel J Miller's avatar

I don’t know. There are plenty of strong male writers still out there. I think of one of my favorites, T.C. Boyle, or Percival Everett.

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Paul Clayton's avatar

I think I may have read Drop City. The plot sounds familiar. (Is there another novel out there with a similar plot?) I agree that there are still some. I think writers with a history of best sellers can still find a house. But I still believe that new upcoming authors must adhere to the new sociopolitical orthodoxy to be published. Boye's latest, Blue Skies, deals with global warming, human-caused, no doubt. I looked up Everett's latest; it's Huckleberry Finn, from Jim's POV. Not that Jim doesn't or shouldn't have a POV. This book already has a Spielberg movie in the works. This book wades into racial injustice in America's past. Anybody not living in a cave and eating bugs knows that past racial injustices in America, and global warming (human caused) are two of the sexiest topics in publishing and movie making. Publishers now have 'global warming' categories and thousands of young wannabe writers are penning/typing dark tales about our future as cave-dwelling bug-eaters if we don't get our act together.

I'm not saying that these cannot be well written and entertaining, but it does seem like a sanctioned scary fantasy at this time in America.

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Ted's avatar

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that I can only read biographical stories of H’s early years. For God knows why, he became (turned himself into?) a complete ass, even while remaining a great writer. Thanks for writing this piece and for highlighting a wonderful book. I’ve got to look for the new edition.

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Joel J Miller's avatar

He did become something of a caricature of himself in later years.

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Contarini's avatar

Great post.

Hemingway is in my pantheon.

A Moveable Feast is an all-time favorite.

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Joel J Miller's avatar

I enjoyed most every page. I frankly couldn’t believe I waited so long to read it.

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Matthew Long's avatar

I enjoyed some of Hemingway's work when I was in my 20s but haven't read him in years. This is one that I must have missed so will need to check it out. Thanks for the detailed overview. He was an interesting individual for sure.

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Joel J Miller's avatar

Agreed! And my pleasure. It was a great book to explore.

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Chris L.'s avatar

I borrowed A Moveable Feast from a friend 20ish years ago, bit didn’t realize the context of its writing. I’ll have to revisit it soon.

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Joel J Miller's avatar

Excellent!

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