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...which goes to show us that more than four centuries after his first play was performed, Shakespeare stays with us as a writer for all seasons and all topics. With the help of a cool web site from MIT (www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare) which allows users to search the entire Shakespearean canon, I found a few particularly apposite words from the bard on some of the news of the week...
...Hemingway's life, and as theyexplained their responses to his work, a patternbecame evident, and I think it would not be unfairto say that if Hemingway's legacy is determined inlarge part by which of his works are read andvalued and thought beautiful or useful--aneffective definition of the canon expressed at theConference by the novelist Francine Prose--thenHemingway as a writer has been dramaticallyreduced...
...arguable that the size of Hemingway'scontribution to the writer's canon is unimportant:with some dissents, the majority of authorshonoring Hemingway's birth contended thatHemingway's gift to the craft of writing, and thusto literature, is exclusively "stylistic." NadineGordimer expressed in the conference's openingremarks what would be repeated a hundred times:Hemingway's was the art of omission andimplication rather than explication. Writers takefrom Hemingway the Biblical repetition, the artfulnonsequiter, the pacing, the avoidance of emotionthat brings on tears, the distanced voice. Theshort stories and A Farewell are enough,alone, to teach writers about this writing ofomission, writing...
Even imagining the separation of style andcontent requires a conception of style as simplywords on a page: one must not be interested in theimplications of Hemingway's omissions but merelyin the fact of omission. And it is here, I think,that Hemingway's place in the canon of what isread and appreciated by contemporary authors isslipping most rapidly. As those who grew to famewith Hemingway could easily see and as can perhapsbe easily forgotten today, what is implied byHemingway's subtlety is a set of social andhumanistic concerns of real depth and emotivepower. Malcolm Cowley considers Hemingway'sgreatest achievement...
...video arcade. When the school teacher did not know any better than to call Milton's masterpiece "Pair of Dice Lost," the program functioned as an ideological clarion call to future college students like you who would go on to demand the displacement of an ossified Western canon with more relevant investigations of low culture. Several years ago a student who will remain nameless--her name was Jen--handed in a pictoral interpretation of the essay question in place of a ten-page paper. I instantly knew that she had gleaned her air of entitlement and complete disrespect...