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Stumpage Reports
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Monday, January 20, 2003 :::
Bonus Early Morning Quote of the Day, Brought Upon By An Online Chat With Big Ed
The following is from a short story by Ernest Hemingway. This is part of a passage that was at the end of his classic story "Big Two-Hearted River." Gertrude Stein advised him to cut out the extended passage, she said "Those are remarks, not writing." The section was later published in The Nick Adams Stories under the title "On Writing." This could make your brain hurt: as most people know, Hemingway drew on his experiences for his writing. He spent a lot of time as a young man in northern Michigan fishing and camping, as did his protaganist Nick Adams. In this passage, a character named Nick Adams, in a book of Nick Adams stories, talks about the stories he writes, some of which were in the book this was originally intended for, stories Hemingway actually wrote, Nick Adams also refers to writing some non-Nick Adams story that Hemingway wrote and also some stories Hemingway was yet to write. Wrap your brain around that shit. I hate terms like "post-modernism," but "On Writing" is post-modernism written when modernism was just starting. When Hemingway was good he was the best. Enough of my yakkin, here's the quote...
He wanted to write like Cezanne painted.
Cezanne started with all the tricks. Then he broke the whole thing down and built the real thing. It was hell to do. He was the greatest. The greatest for always. It wasn't a cult. He, Nick, wanted to write about country so it would be there like Cezanne had done it in painting. You had to do it from inside yourself. There wasn't any trick. Nobody had ever written about country like that. He felt almost holy about it. It was deadly serious. You could do it if you would fight it out. If you'd lived right with your eyes.
He knew just how Cezanne would paint this stretch of river. God, if only he were here to do it. They died and that was the hell of it. They worked all their lives and then got old and died.
--- Ernest Hemingway, "On Writing"
Coming Tonight: Fun in Pre-OSHA North Carolina
::: posted by tom at 12:27 AM
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