Depopulating My Library, Part II: A Farewell to Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner

I started college early by going to summer school at the University of Kansas instead of waiting for the fall semester. I don’t remember I took any books with me, other than maybe the Webster’s dictionary given us as some sort of high school graduation honor. But across the hall from my dorm room I encountered a character who not only had books, but had racks of steel shelves to hold those books.

I became enraptured of him and his books. In the room next to mine was an older man who had finished his Navy tour and was taking courses to go to medical school. He had books. Art books, too that featured reproductions of fine art by Michelangelo, Di Vinci, and other famous artists.

All this was wonderful and new to me.

Through that first person, John Kiely (who would be come a friend, future roommate, mentor pictured right and now, sadly, long dead), I encountered Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway wrote in a simple, straightforward way that communicated directly with one’s perception by creating through words a sense of the reality of life. How is that possible using words? It amazed me. He created scenes, but also emotions. A couple of examples:

From the Nick Adams stories:

“In the fall the war was still there, but we did not go there anymore.” Wonderful use of the self-reflective “we” instead of the technically accurate “I.” And the repletion of “there” when most advice says don’t repeat the same word. Through his prose he distilled and found the essence of things.

The first sentence from A Farewell to Arms: “In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.” That cascade of prepositions carries you along and again “in a house in a village” repeats a preposition that works perfectly.

His style entices young writers to imitate him. And, of course, brings the danger of being a copy cat. I took a fiction writing class at KU. The Southern writer Reynolds Price came to visit and would read what we presented to him. I had only a few paragraphs. Here’s one of them:

March Snows

The snows came in March and it was unfair because that same morning there had been the smell of spring in the air. But during the night the snows came, and I awoke when I heard the wind. I got up and parted the curtains and looked out at the street lamp and saw the snow blowing as it collected in drifts around the trees and her car in the driveway. A happiness I did not understand filled me when I looked down at the bed where she slept. I slid down under the covers again and she stirred, her lips slightly parted and her yellow hair everywhere. I pulled her close to me and slowly inhaled our warmth—man warm and woman warm together—as the wind continued to howl

Price called the paragraphs “quite lovely.” But then he was a lovely man. The Hemingway imitation is obvious. But I still like those paragraphs and I hope I learned that finding rhythms and sentences is a virtue, not an imitation.

Hemingway himself became a caricature of his macho self. And the prose ran its course in the same manner. Much wonderful stuff and should be read, of course. But I don’t need them anymore.

There is one Hemingway novel I will, however, keep. Oddly enough, it is one of his most panned works: Across the River and into the Trees. I still don’t understand why, but the evening of the day I received the phone call from my aunt telling me my father had died, I pulled that novel from the shelf and reread it with pen in hand. I underlined passages that were important to me at the unique time in my life.

I will keep that now battered, mutilated book. The other Hemingway books are now gone. Not gone is my desire to complete a simple sentence with the right rhythm to cast the right spell upon a reader.

Faulkner, with his denser prose, could cast spells, too. I enjoyed my swimming, wading, and sometimes slogging through his stories and sentences. But I have no desire to reenter his waters, lush though they were. Hemingway's popularity continues. The son of a couple we are good friends with opened a bar in Westport called "The Pressed Penny Tavern," which many Hemingway fans may recognize. He has an alcove of Hemingway books and memorabilia. I had given him many early editions of Hemingway's work and books about Hemingway. Encourage my KC Facebook fans to stop in and at find out why Gordon Roberts gave his bar that odd name.

So the Hemingway and Faulkner portions of my library have been purchased by owners of Wise Blood, a soon-to-open used bookstore at 300 West Westport Road here in Kansas City.

Selling those collections gave me enough cash for a couple of drinks over which I contemplated my few successes and my many failings. And realizing I am thankful for both and the so many people I have met along the way.

My Love/Hate Affair with Ernest Hemingway.

Well, hate is a bit strong. More like disappointment. I first read Hemingway as many young folks do in college. Not for assignment. And here was prose that was direct, fresh, sincere, and connected with me. So you want to write you start to imitate. Not a bad thing to do. You learn how sentence rhythms can be created. The Southern writer Reynolds Price (A Long and Happy Life; The Names and Faces of Heroes) was a visiting lecturer and as part of being in the creative writing course we were given a one-on-one with him. I didn't have much to show, just some prose poems, which he pronounced were "lovely."

One began: "The snows came in March and it was unfair because that same morning there had been the smell of spring in the air." Yep, that's pretty Hemingwayesque. But it's not a bad way to begin to find one's own writing voice. I digress.

Hemingway became a caricature of himself. And then his later prose became a caricature of his early prose. His late work Across the River and Into the Trees, deserved the ridicule it received through E.B. White's satire "Across the Street and Into the Grill" in The New Yorker.

You read Across the River today and groan: "I could learn it really well, he thought, and then I'd have that." Oh, Lord, please. And "Keep it clean, he said to himself. And love your girl." Jezz, really?

And yet. And yet. On one of the most emotional evenings of my life I turned to that book for a kind of solace. I had learned my father had died of a heart attack and the next day I would drive to Hutchinson. I reread Across the River and underlined passages. Today, almost 50 years later, I still have that book in my library.

Until the other day, the last Hemingway novel I had read was Islands in the Stream, published posthumously. I thought it pretty awful. Didn't connect at all. So when I read about another novel to be published posthumously I didn't bother, which was quite some time ago: 1986.

Wandering through an estate sale I came across The Garden of Eden, by Ernest Hemingway and it caught my eye because I was unfamiliar with that title. Looking through it, I realized it was the posthumous publication, so I bought it.

I'm just one chapter into it, but it was like meeting up again with an old friend. Here was early Hemingway prose: fresh, sincere, and it connected with me. I don't know how the rest of the book will go, but it's been a great joy so far to reconnect with my younger self and Ernest Hemingway in this odd way.