{"id":179,"date":"2014-09-24T15:51:44","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T22:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hollywood-nobody.com\/blog\/?p=179"},"modified":"2014-10-02T21:31:52","modified_gmt":"2014-10-03T04:31:52","slug":"hemingway-a-dissenting-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hollywood-nobody.com\/blog\/?p=179","title":{"rendered":"HEMINGWAY: A DISSENTING REPORT"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ernest Hemingway is the Neil Simon of literary novelists.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve said it, and I\u2019m glad.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well, I may be overstating my case a bit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have to admit that he did, in fact, change the face of American literature.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Taking his cue from Chekhov and Sherwood Anderson, he tossed plot out the window and gave the readers of his stories slices of life in place of conventional narrative.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Inspired by his work as journalist, he stripped language bare, cutting away adjectives, adverbs and other modifiers, leaving his readers only the bare bones, or as he himself put it, \u201cthe thing itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Following the wise advice of that old fool Polonius, he used \u201cindirection to find direction out,\u201d suggesting or implying meanings that he never stated, his words nothing more than the tip of an iceberg with four-fifths of its substance lying beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Without Hemingway, there would have been no such thing as a New Yorker<\/em> story, no Raymond Carver, no. . .well, you get the picture.<\/p>\n

Consider \u201cHill like White Elephants.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No more than four or five pages in length, it is an objective account of an American couple having a beer at a train stop in Spain.\u00a0\u00a0 A slice of life without any plot.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The style is as bare and unadorned as the hills that give the story its title: \u201cThe hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The unnamed man and woman are having a conversation that begins with her observation that hills look like white elephants, but it quickly descends into conflict, bitterness, and irony. And although Hemingway never explains their situation, never uses the word \u201cabortion,\u201d it\u2019s clear that she is pregnant and wants to have the baby growing inside her, while he finds the idea of a child and the responsibility it entails abhorrent, as abhorrent as she finds the notion of aborting it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They have gotten off one train and are about to board another. The romance of their relationship is ending. Ahead\u2026nothing but pain and recrimination.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And there is, of course, that wonderful dialogue in which the characters appear to be saying one thing but are, in fact, saying quite another. When the man tells the woman he\u2019s never seen a white elephant, she replies, \u201cNo, you wouldn\u2019t have.\u201d And in those words, you have a capsule characterization of the man, and you know exactly where their relationship stands at this moment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the moment when she decides she\u2019d like to try Anis del Toro, a drink she\u2019s never had before. After a sip, she observes that it tastes of licorice: \u201cEverything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you\u2019ve waited so long for, like absinthe.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 She, of course, is talking not about drinks but about their relationship and what it\u2019s come to.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That is the glory of Hemingway dialogue: its indirection.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Why, then, is his dialogue so often and so easily subject to parody?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Why are there so many \u201cBad Hemingway\u201d contests around the world even today, more than half a century after his death?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Because it is so mannered.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And because every Hemingway character sounds like every other Hemingway character.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I discovered, during my story analyst and story editor days when I read literally thousands of screenplays, that the best screenwriters, like Hemingway, make their dialogue indirect\u2026but that they, unlike Hemingway, give each character a distinctive voice.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No two characters should sound alike. Each should have a voice that reflects their background, their experience, their values. With the best dialogue, a reader needs no character labels to know who is talking: he can hear<\/em> the character\u2019s identity in his speech.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is where Hemingway\u2019s dialogue comes up short. All of his characters sound the same. In A Moveable Feast<\/em>, even Scott Fitzgerald ends up sounding like a Hemingway character when he consults his friend Ernest about the size of his penis. Hemingway tells him he could have consulted a doctor, and Fitzgerald supposedly says, \u201cI didn\u2019t want to. I wanted you to tell me truly.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And that is why I see Hemingway as the Neil Simon of literary novelists. Yes, Neil Simon\u2019s plays are fun and funny. Every character is witty. Every character makes us laugh. And every line of their dialogue is interchangeable. With perhaps the single exception of The Odd Couple<\/em>, his plays are filled with characters who sound exactly like one other.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And so are the stories and novels of Ernest Hemingway.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WANT TO WRITE GREAT DIALOGUE?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SIGN UP FOR LESSONS OF THE MASTER!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

AVAILABLE SOON <\/strong><\/p>\n

ON<\/strong><\/p>\n

HOLLYWOOD-NOBODY.COM <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Share<\/a>