Friday, January 20, 2012

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#55) -- Ernest Hemingway

You've mentioned in interviews how much you like Hemingway.
What is it about his writing that you like so much?

I could wax on all day about how much writing changes post-Hemingway, but I'll keep it brief to spare you. Primarily I really admire the way he culled weak adjectives and adverbs from his writing and pared his prose down mainly to strong verbs and nouns. I also think he was able to imbue his characters with the oft-touted "grace under pressure" of his existentialist thought, which in effect created a new kind of novel hero -- one who didn't win by fighting obstacles tooth and nail but became heroic merely by persisting and enduring no matter what life threw at him or her.

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