Word: hemingway
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...while his literary production grew and he became a Nobel Laureate and one of the most important literary influences of the 20th century, Hemingway's public persona expanded as well, and threatened even to overshadow the writing: Hemingway the brave idealist, the avid fisherman, the boxer. The mythic man impinged on the literary production all the more so because his poise and his life ran together--some would say to the extent that the discussion of one can not help but bleed into a discussion of the other. There was a sportsman's code to which he held himself...
...maybe there was no way for the Hemingway Centennial Conference, held this past weekend at the John. F. Kennedy Library, which also houses Hemingway's archived papers, to avoid the iconic Hemingway. The conference assembled many of the world's greatest living authors to "celebrate Hemingway's life" and to "assess the nature of Hemingway's influence on world literature" through the discussion of "significant themes in Hemingway's writing career including Africa, war, nature, creativity and despair." The many panelists were great writers and journeymen, both: the Nobel laureates Saul Bellow, Nadine Gordimer, Kenzaburo Oe and Derek Walcott...
Gradually, as the panelists told anecdote after inevitable anecdote about 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...
...Centennial Conference, Hemingway wasknown and evaluated, with few exceptions, based onhis personal ideology and his life and based on thestylistic importance of a tiny slice of hisliterary production. As America's most respectedcontemporary authors--asked which of Hemingway'sworks they found important--read and rereadselections from the short-stories "Big Two-HeartedRiver" and "Killers" and from the 1929 novel AFarewell to Arms, it became clear that the vastmajority of the participants were either ignorantof Hemingway's oeuvre, or that they had judged thegreat mass of Hemingway's writing to be unworthyof consideration as a valuable literary legacy...
...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...