Hemingwayishness

Hemingway wrote a lot about life. He wrote well. He wrote in short sentences. Then he killed himself.

The Internet loves Hemingway's four rules of writing. The Internet also loves ignoring the rules by waffling on about the rules. I am not one to buck the trend, after all, who knows more than the Internet?

Contrary to the rest of the Internet, I will attempt to sum up the rules in a shortened form:

Keep it short.
Don't write like a ponce.

That about covers it, I think.

I would love to know who it was that gave Hemingway these rules on his first day at the Kansas City Star. I bet that guy wrote some great stuff about prohibition era Kansas City and I bet he'd already written some pretty strong stuff about the first world war.

Hemingway didn't invent the rules but he did live by them in an incredibly focused way and that is to our eternal pleasure.

Reading his work brings out an unpleasant tendency in a certain sort of person (and we'll see if I am that sort of person in a second) to mistakenly think that because something is simple it must be easy to replicate. I thought about this the other day while I wrote a parody of Hemingway (saw that coming, didn't you?)

The man was on the train north to Paris, it was the good train, the one we all took. It was a slow train but they let you shoot cows from the doors so we all took it when we'd been in the south.

The man was returning home to England where he would knock his wife around and drink good whisky with too much water. He'd seen things, he said, in the war, bad things that the whisky didn't wash away. He'd seen a sergeant shout at a man once, he said and another time had seen soldiers made to get up early, even if it was raining.

We didn't believe him but his stories helped pass the time between cow fields so we bought him harsh wine that was cool and good and little pastries with cheese and sausages which were salty and good. He got drunk on the wine and we thought less of him as a man until he hit a big bull flush between the eyes when we thought him fine again. He said a tailor in Carcassone owed him twenty francs so he got off the train and we didn't see him again.

We talked then about things that mattered at the time but didn't after. We drank more of the wine bought from the Spanish steward with his left sleeve slack. He'd lost it at Guernica, he said and we saw in his eyes the loss of the arm didn't bother him more than the loss of the war. The war was the thing we all lost and that we would all never lose, as long as we had the royalty cheques coming we would never lose that war.

So, in short, it's easy to write in a way that sounds like Hemingway but I won't be expecting a Pulitzer for that any time soon.

People make a similar mistake in other areas, believing that keeping things simple will make them seem too easy and thus be something you won't want to pay for. The next time a waiter shows up with a yard long pepper mill ask yourself how long you think the peppercorns that you'll shortly be getting ground onto your plate have been inside that thing. An ostentatiousness may be masking the fact that it is actually pretty easy to put your own pepper on your dinner. You might even graduate to pouring your own glass of wine next.

Hemingway did give us at least one rule for modern life entirely of his own invention and that is that it's okay to name your children after your favourite booze. This rule has largely escaped use by his traditional readership but has been enthusiastically taken up by the wives of professional sportsmen and those who would emulate them. It even extends to other favoured consumer goods with ever more interesting variation in spelling, how many modern classrooms don't have at least one Chanelle, Shardonnee or Thunderbird? Maybe not that last one so much but there is plenty of time and seemingly no shortage of victims for increasingly experimental parents. When will the first Meffadoan be registered?

That this rule is ignored by those Internet users who so love the rules for writing is, at first, a mystery. It seems that this is a cohort that loves to be different, loves booze and loves naming things. Closer inspection reveals that the one leg of the support structure missing is the most essential. The Internet geek is not noted for his great fecundity. That is a topic for another, more ribald, day.

As I've taken the subject of rules for this blog I suppose I should break at least one so there is no joke, I'm afraid. This is partly because I have no stick on which to write it, being at sea, currently unable to get to work because of the weather.

Life afloat is rather good though and though there are no sticks, the Coffee is as thick as a good soup, as befits this type of industrial demand.

Hopefully back with more directionless drivel shortly but I make no promises.