Ernest Hemingway’s 125th birthday

Which Hemingway?

HEMINGWAY FESTIVAL 2024

IN ANY study and celebration of Ernest Hemingway, his life and writings, the question becomes: Which period? Which of his writings? Which stories, novels, or books are most representative of the writer, the man, the myth?

Young Hemingway burst on the scene age 26 in 1925 with his first and best novel, The Sun Also Rises, the style and sensibility fully developed thanks to an arduous apprenticeship in craft and life. Sun is the ultimate travelogue and extended drinking binge, climaxed in Pamplona, Spain when bulls, bullfighters, metaphors and under-the-surface conflicts break out amid the best descriptions of being drunk ever written. Sharp clarity of memory– at the time the style was revolutionary.

Many prefer his prior minimalist in our time/In Our Time vignettes and stories. Few readers like two very bad, often-embarrassing later novels. Two other impressively titled novels– you know them– accentuated his fame.

After ups and downs including the hazards of celebrity, and multiple spouses, Ernest pulled things together with a popular novella, The Old Man and the Sea, containing some much-denied Faulkneresque Christian imagery. For many of us, the first readable-and-compelling introduction to the guy. Led to his 1954 Nobel Prize.

Reflections on the Twenties, A Moveable Feast, is good albeit not notably better than similar excursions of score-settling by Robert McAlmon and John Glassco.

FOR ME, the apex of Hemingway’s art are two Esquire magazine short stories of the 1930s. He toys with structure in both of them: with “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” more obviously. In “The Short, Happy LIfe of Francis Macomber” the seams aren’t showing, as Hemingway artfully switches viewpoints– even stepping briefly into the head of a lion– toward building to an unsurpassed climax. The best short story ever written? The most impressive, and short of a tale by little-known Richard Connell, the most exciting. Excitement with meaning and impact– we’re never completely certain of the “Why?” of what happened.

Those two stories blew me away when I first read them– and shouldn’t that be the objective of all writing?

-K.W.

(famous Yousuf Karsh photograph)

END 2024 HEMINGWAY FESTIVAL

1957’s The Sun Also Rises

A MOVIE REVIEW

HEMINGWAY FESTIVAL 2024

After Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in 1954, Hollywood studios rushed out movie versions of his novels and stories. Among them was “The Sun Also Rises,” produced with much fanfare by Twentieth Century Fox and using their wide screen presentation known as Cinemascope.

The verdict? Well, the color cinematography is first-rate, ideal for displaying the visual splendor of Spain. However–

— the acting could be better. Way better. Ava Gardner (a first-rate Lady Brett) and Errol Flynn as her dissolute fiance Mike Campbell are both good. Flynn is particularly worth watching when he becomes angry about something in the middle of the film and begins knocking beer bottles around. (A frustrated swashbuckler?) Mel Ferrer as Robert Cohn is adequate. Tyrone Power– the star of the movie– and Robert Evans, miscast as the bullfighter, are truly abysmal. (Evans would go on to running a movie studio and marrying actress Ali MacGraw.) Power is either simply going through the motions of playing the lead– frowning a lot– or revealed as never-been-able-to-act in the first place.

The two fight scenes in the movie are among the worst ever, reminiscent of something out of the Three Stooges. Shoddily choreographed– as if director Henry King were as tired as his stars and just wanted to get the production over with. Newsflash: movies aren’t literature. If you have an opportunity to inject a few minutes of excitement into an undramatic drama, you’d better jump at it. King and the producers missed the opportunity.

A QUESTION: Will movie producers be rushing to make film versions of recent Nobel winner Jon Fosse’s books? I kinda wouldn’t bet on it.

-KW