Ernest Hemingway Analysis
ERNEST HEMINGWAY: Writer, war correspondent, international adventurer, lover, drinker, brawler. The tabloid reputation -- filled with truths, half-truths and flat-out untruths -- grows ever-wider. If you made up a character like Ernest Hemingway, how many would believe it? The mercurial Hemingway left people enchanted, hostile, endeared, confused, charmed, bruised, engaged, bitter. He was an extraordinary, unforgettable presence. As more than one person remarked: “Hemingway sucked the air out of a room.”
Though Hemingway’s extraordinary life and career has been exhaustively covered (too often the tabloid-sensationalism of this coverage has over-shadowed his unrivaled literary legacy), less thoroughly examined has been his fascinating friendship …show more content…
Utter opposites ... nothing in common ... the liberal intellectual artist and the conservative movie star. And yet ...
“Coop is a fine man; as honest and straight and friendly and unspoiled as he looks. If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it. He’s just too good to be true.” Ernest Hemingway on Gary Cooper to editor Maxwell Perkins.
Sun Valley, Idaho, September 25, 1940: A mutual friend described their first meeting: “They were like strange schoolboys sizing each other up, a line scratched in the dirt between them, until they ‘got ‘er done’. Then they were like old buddies from that moment on.”
But is the friendship of these two men who were “old buddies” immediately really so surprising? Consider these classically “less is more” passages from Hemingway, which are the only physical descriptions we ever get about the following Hemingway heroes:
“The young man, who was tall and thin, with sun-streaked fair hair, and a wind- and sun-burned face ...” Robert Jordan, For Whom The Bell …show more content…
In groping for an answer, many are looking back to another time to understand what real masculinity is, to come to grips with what manhood means in the face of impossible odds.
Not the courage of a so-called super-hero. But the courage of an ordinary man facing extraordinary circumstances. Not muscle-bound, ultra-professional warriors, not bullets-don’t-kill, super-masculine, super-heroes. Ordinary people ...
A long time ago, Ernest Hemingway and Gary Cooper dealt with this very subject, as no one had before, as no one has since. Hemingway’s fiction and Cooper’s persona -- which served as Hemingway’s alter ego on screen -- was never about brute winning, smash-mouth masculinity. What made/makes it so special, so moving, so timely, is that it was not about masculinity as a one-note, implacable force of nature -- a la, Schwarzenegger/Stallone, etc. -- rather, it was about the self-respect that comes from comporting oneself with courage in the face of impossible
Though Hemingway’s extraordinary life and career has been exhaustively covered (too often the tabloid-sensationalism of this coverage has over-shadowed his unrivaled literary legacy), less thoroughly examined has been his fascinating friendship …show more content…
Utter opposites ... nothing in common ... the liberal intellectual artist and the conservative movie star. And yet ...
“Coop is a fine man; as honest and straight and friendly and unspoiled as he looks. If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it. He’s just too good to be true.” Ernest Hemingway on Gary Cooper to editor Maxwell Perkins.
Sun Valley, Idaho, September 25, 1940: A mutual friend described their first meeting: “They were like strange schoolboys sizing each other up, a line scratched in the dirt between them, until they ‘got ‘er done’. Then they were like old buddies from that moment on.”
But is the friendship of these two men who were “old buddies” immediately really so surprising? Consider these classically “less is more” passages from Hemingway, which are the only physical descriptions we ever get about the following Hemingway heroes:
“The young man, who was tall and thin, with sun-streaked fair hair, and a wind- and sun-burned face ...” Robert Jordan, For Whom The Bell …show more content…
In groping for an answer, many are looking back to another time to understand what real masculinity is, to come to grips with what manhood means in the face of impossible odds.
Not the courage of a so-called super-hero. But the courage of an ordinary man facing extraordinary circumstances. Not muscle-bound, ultra-professional warriors, not bullets-don’t-kill, super-masculine, super-heroes. Ordinary people ...
A long time ago, Ernest Hemingway and Gary Cooper dealt with this very subject, as no one had before, as no one has since. Hemingway’s fiction and Cooper’s persona -- which served as Hemingway’s alter ego on screen -- was never about brute winning, smash-mouth masculinity. What made/makes it so special, so moving, so timely, is that it was not about masculinity as a one-note, implacable force of nature -- a la, Schwarzenegger/Stallone, etc. -- rather, it was about the self-respect that comes from comporting oneself with courage in the face of impossible