In the summer of 1948, at his Finca Vigia mansion in Francisco de Paula, Cuba, Ernest Hemingway set about writing a preface for the next reprint of his novel A Farewell to Arms, first published almost 20 years earlier, in 1929. The preface, to be honest, seems like a hastily written text, perhaps to fulfill a publisher’s request. But in fact, it has its “tail behind it.
With Buck Lanahan
The writer lists the places where he wrote the first draft of the novel, then the second draft, then the final draft, in Paris nearby, saying that the novel could not have been completed anywhere else. He writes about work unrelated to the novel. He remembers friends who died in 1929. He recounts a meeting with Miss Bergman, who he seems to have cut short by claiming that he could not go into detail because he had “a very limited knowledge of the English language and a defective pronunciation”, this is Ernest Hemingway!
Finally, he hits where he has the greatest concern, where he hurts, what seems to be not simply related to the novel, nor to be a matter of literature. Despite this, he firmly asserts that a writer must deal with “that constant, arrogant, criminal, dirty crime that is war”. The writer who has been a participant in two wars makes a surprising statement this time: “wars are fought by the most beautiful people in the world”. And, the reader cannot help but underline such a statement and cannot help but be reminded of the martyrs of the wars he has known or read about. But, even if the most beautiful people are not those who fight the wars, Hemingway explains, let’s say that, the closer you get to the place where the fighting is taking place, the more beautiful the people you encounter. While wars are actually made, provoked and initiated by meticulous economic rivalries and by pigs who aim to profit from them, the writer accuses, adding: “I am convinced that all the people who aim to profit from wars and help provoke them will have to be shot the very day they start acting as accredited representatives of the loyal citizens who will fight those wars.”
It is precisely for this mission that the writer volunteered, promising that, if legally delegated by those fighting, he would carry out the task himself with complete correctness and humanity, taking care that all the corpses were buried in a dignified manner: “We could even bury them in cellophane or in one of the most modern plastic materials.” In the end, if there was any evidence that he himself had provoked the new war in some way or had not properly carried out the assigned task, the writer offered – even with joy! – to be shot by the same firing squad and buried with or without cellophane, if only they would leave his naked corpse on top of a hill. And he signed it: June 30, 1948.
Early love in WWI Agnes Von Kurowsky
This is how rereadings of beloved authors, in different times and situations, transform into new readings.
Once there was a traveller who journeyed alone to the Grand Canyon. He came to the brink just as the day died, and the slow mists circled upward. There he stood and he looked.
And there came, from behind him, the sound of footsteps—large, firm steps dealt by the accustomed feet of a lady tourist. She gained his side and stopped there, radiating native friendliness and the good cheer provided by Fred Harvey. She, too, looked. And woman’s world-old need of speech seized her, and seemed as if it would rack her very tweeds apart.
“Well!” she said. “It certainly is attractive.”
And I feel, my friends—for I think of every one of you gathered here tonight as my friend, and I want you to think of me that way, too!—I feel not unlike that good lady of the Canyon when I am asked by this hospitable house-organ to speak a few words about Ernest Hemingway. Well! He certainly is attractive.
For it is so neat in my mind that the author of “In Our Time,” “Men Without Women,” and “A Farewell to Arms” is far and away the first American artist, that it is the devil’s own task to find anything more complicated or necessary to say about him.
It is no misses’ size assignment to dash off a description of Ernest Hemingway, Writer and Human Being. One hesitates, in the first place, to add to the measure of bilge that has already been written; probably of no other living man has so much tripe been penned and spoken. And it is the present vogue to rip off sketches of the famous in a sort of delicate blend of the Anecdotal, or Brightest-Things-Our-Baby-Ever-Said, manner, and the Tender, or Lavender-and-Old-Rubbers, school. As a subject, Mr. Hemingway does not lend himself to the style. He will not—indeed, it is my belief that he can not—pluck you down from his memory any cobwebby pretties about his favorite school-teacher; nor will he help you along with your work by uttering Good Ones that you can set promptly on clean white paper. There are anecdotes about him, and beauties, too; and there are quotations from his conversations that, I think, must pass eventually into folk lore. But I may not give them to you here. I am sorry but I really can not feel that we are well enough acquainted for that. Mrs. Parker to you, if you please.
But people want to hear things about Ernest Hemingway. As the boys used to say, before they left the phrase flat and ran off in all directions with “gesture,” “good theatre,” and “the American scene,” he intrigues the imagination. People so much wanted him to be a figure out of a saga that they went to the length of providing the saga themselves. And a little peach it is.
I have heard of him, both at various times and all in one great bunch, that he is so hard-boiled he makes a daily practice of busting his widowed mother in the nose; that he dictates his stories because he can’t write, and has them read to him because he can’t read; that he is expatriate to such a degree that he tears down any American flag he sees flying in France; that no woman within half-a-mile of him is a safe woman; that he not only commands enormous prices for his short stories, but insists, additionally, on taking the right eye out of the editor’s face; that he has been a tramp, a safe-cracker, and a stockyard attendant; that he is the Pet of the Left Bank, and may be found at any hour of the day or night sitting at a little table at the Select, rubbing absinthe into his gums; that he really hates all forms of sport, and only skis, hunts, fishes, and fights bulls in order to be cute; that a wound he sustained in the Great War was of a whimsical, inconvenient, and inevitably laughable description; and that he also writes under the name of Morley Callaghan. About all that remains to be said is that he is the Lost Dauphin, that he was shot as a German spy, and that he is actually a woman, masquerading in man’s clothes. And those rumors are doubtless being started, even as we sit here.
For it is hard not to tell spectacular things of Ernest Hemingway; people are so eager to hear that you haven’t the heart to send them away empty. Young women, in especial, are all of a quiver for information. (Sometimes I think that the wide publication of that smiling photograph, the one with the slanted cap and the shirt flung open above the dark sweater, was perhaps a mistake.)
“Ooh,” they say, “do you know Ernest Hemingway? Ooh, I’d just love to meet him! Ooh, tell me what he’s like!”
Well, I warned you the task sinks me. Ernest Hemingway is something—not exactly—like this:
He has, I should think, the best and the worst times of anybody living; he experiences several examples of both, every day. He has an uncounted number of interests, and a passionate concentration. Whatever he does, he goes in for hook, line, and good red herring. He has a generosity of energy that is absolute. He has a capacity for enjoyment so vast that he gives away great chunks to those about him, and never even misses them. I can say no more of him than that he can take you to a bicycle-race, and make it raise your hair.
He is in his early thirties, he weighs about two hundred pounds, and he is even better than those photographs. The effect upon women is such that they want to go right out and get him and bring him home, stuffed. Heaven help him, if he ever settles in New York and is displayed to the sabre-toothed ladies of stage, pen, salon, and suburb who throng the local Bohemian gatherings. He is susceptible to flattery, and then is stuck with the flatterer. He is afflicted with deep-seated illness in the presence of unhappily married women who are interested in the Arts.
His father was a Middle-Western doctor. I can find out nothing about his education—probably he read a lot of things. Anyway, he left home at something below the conventional early age, with the englamoured idea of being a prizefighter. (He was a bad prizefighter, so he is now a good amateur boxer.) Then he became a reporter, somehow, and then he went abroad, and Then Came the War, and there he was, in the Italian army. He suffered seven major wounds, and has a life-sentence to wear an aluminum kneecap. He received medals; it makes him sick if you ask him about them. He does not talk about the War, especially if you lead up to it.
He lives, for a bit of every year, in Paris—which is how the expatriation stories started. He and his wife do this because they like it, and because their rent is not high. (He doesn’t make much money—not half as much as you do.) They form no part of the dancing-and-light-drugs life of the French capital. Their apartment has no telephone; and any engagement made by telegram, letter, or word-of-mouth for a time set several days ahead throws Mr. Hemingway into one of those states of his—he hates anything, bad or fair, hanging over him. He writes there, mostly in bed, and he reads books that have a great many things going on in them—novels by the elder Dumas, and books and books and books about the Crusades.
When the Hemingways come to the United States, they dwell in the outlands. Their baby was born in Arkansas, and they spent last Winter in Key West, deep-sea fishing, and killing with harpoon or gun the major items of their menus. He avoids New York, for he has the most valuable asset an artist can possess—the fear of what he knows is bad for him. Somehow, you can not fit him into the jig-saw puzzle of New York life. Drink he does and did and will again, but he was not designed for night-clubs, and it is virtually an impossibility for him to speak easy. The mind refuses to function over the idea of his presence at a literary tea, or an evening of parlor games. Nor is his ambition beckoned toward the North Shore of Long Island. “Scratch a writer,” once I heard him say, “and find a social climber.” But nobody, including himself, can be with him, and keep remembering that he is a Writer.
With the possible exception of Ring Lardner, he is less the literary character-part than any author I have ever seen. Nothing is done about the thrill of creating, nor the need for expression, nor even the jolly good fun of spinning a yarn. He works like hell, and through it. Nothing comes easily to him; he struggles, sets down a word, scratches it out, and begins all over. He regards his art as hard and dirty work, with no hope of better conditions. He listens, with something of the expression of the tattered orphan outside the bakeshop window, to the literati’s tales of the necessity of still and pleasant surroundings and the employment of expensive devices to ease the gestating mind. Once he heard the odyssey of a highly-valued American writer; an account of ceaseless, fruitless flights to the more luxe, yet recondite, nooks of the globe, in quest of what was called “a good place to work.”
“—————,” Ernest Hemingway said, mentioning a certain word by name, “the only good place to work is in your head.”
Seventy times he rewrote the concluding pages of “A Farewell to Arms.” He had no idea of ever being completely satisfied with them; he merely hoped that the words would eventually come nearer to his meaning. The pile of scribbled-out sheets made a formidable manuscript. Seventy times . . . “Now I suppose,” he remarked, “they’ll say that the ending is hurried.”
He is outrageously sensitive to criticism—probably because his work has begot some specimens that should really be preserved in alcohol. The American Mercury dismissed “In Our Time” as “sketches in the bold, bad manner of the Café du Dôme.” A certain young gentleman dedicated to beautiful letters confessed with a sort of laughing pride—in the pages of an organ also dedicated to beautiful letters—that he just wasn’t able to “understand some of the stories in ‘Men Without Women.’ ” There was another young gentleman who once occupied the editorial chair of a now defunct magazine of culture, and sought, from there, to form the taste of the American public; he was shown some of Hemingway’s work, then unpublished in the United States, refused it, and pronounced, “I hear he has been a reporter—tell him to go on reporting and not try to write.”
As I wrote this, the reviews of “A Farewell to Arms” had not yet reached Ernest Hemingway in Paris. All those by what are called the big critics may be laudatory, serious, and understanding; but it is safe to say that if there be included among them one tiny clipping announcing that Miss Harriet McBlease, who does “Book-Looks” for the Middletown Observer-Companion, does not find the new Hemingway book to her taste, that will be the one Our Hero will select to brood over. . . .
He has an immense, ill-advised, and indiscriminate tenderness. It is nice to note, by the dust cover of a recent novel, that its author is “a Hemingway become compassionate,” and one hastens to congratulate the lad on what must be such a pleasant change; but the original model was compassionate to start with. As always happens, the people for whom he is sorry eat greedily into his time. He is far more lavish with his sympathy than with his friendship. That goes in few directions, and is given with a little lingering, as if in the expectation of betrayal. But once you have it, there it is, and neither neglect nor bad usage can touch it.
Well—I told you it would sink me. Ernest Hemingway is something—not exactly—like that.
Questioners, in my experience, never conclude with the “What’s he like?” number. There is always one more interrogation, put in a delicately lowered, and yet lightly rippling, voice. “Does he,” it runs, “does he talk like he writes?”
Yes, he does talk like he writes. In fact, liker. But how do you know what his writing is like, when you can see in it only the rough words? (At least, that’s what I always mean to answer, and I may get around to it any day.)
It is a strange thing about Ernest Hemingway. Somebody—the public, the city of Boston, a blurb-writer, a reviewer, somebody—has bandied his name about until it has become a synonym for profanity generously laced with obscenity. They read him, and, with a nudge and a snicker, let him go at that.
The title of this interesting composition is taken, unasked, from a letter from Ernest Hemingway to his friend, Scott Fitzgerald. “I am now,” he wrote, “in the state of depression where you’ve gone over and over until you can’t tell whether anything you’ve written is any good or not; this is called the Artist’s Reward.”
And Mr. Hemingway has gained an additional, and an equally comforting, prize for his travail. He has lived to see any writer who employs the word “bastard” hailed as “another Hemingway.”
There is a thing about him that I have not yet mentioned, for I am a slow worker. He has the most profound bravery that it has ever been my privilege to see; and I am not the one who over-readily discerns examples of courage among my opposite sex. He has had pain, ill-health, and the kind of poverty that you don’t believe—the kind of which actual hunger is the attendant; he has had about eight times the normal allotment of responsibilities. And he has never once compromised. He has never turned off on an easier path than the one he staked himself. It takes courage.
That brings me to the point which I have been trying to reach all this time: Ernest Hemingway’s definition of courage—his phrase that, it seems to me, makes Barrie’s “Courage is immortality” sound like one of the more treble trillings of Tinker Bell. Mr. Hemingway did not use the term “courage.” Ever the euphemist, he referred to the quality as “guts,” and he was attributing its possession to an absent friend.
“Now just a minute,” somebody said, for it was one of those argumentative evenings. “Listen. Look here a minute. Exactly what do you mean by ‘guts’?”
“I mean,” Ernest Hemingway said, “grace under pressure.”
That grace is his. The pressure, I suppose, comes in, gratis, under the heading of the Artist’s Reward. ♦
The shattered remnants of a bygone era of glamour and excess reflect the profound sense of loss and displacement felt by the characters in Hemingway’s iconic novel.New Orleans Today
On the 100th anniversary of the publication of Ernest Hemingway’s debut novel ‘The Sun Also Rises’ in 1926, the author reflects on the book’s lasting influence and cultural significance. The story of the ‘lost generation’ of American expatriates in 1920s Paris has captivated readers for a century, with its vivid depictions of the post-World War I era and Hemingway’s pioneering minimalist prose style.
WHY IT MATTERS
Hemingway’s groundbreaking novel helped define the ‘lost generation’ of the 1920s and introduced a new, spare literary style that would influence generations of writers. As the book marks its centennial, it remains a touchstone for understanding the cultural shifts and disillusionment of the post-war period, as well as Hemingway’s lasting impact on American literature.
THE DETAILS
The author recounts first reading ‘The Sun Also Rises’ as a sophomore at Columbia University, alongside other modernist classics like ‘The Waste Land’ and ‘Ulysses.’ He reflects on the novel’s themes of alienation, masculinity, and the pursuit of meaning in the aftermath of World War I. The author also explores Hemingway’s complex personal life and relationships, as well as the ongoing critical debates around the book’s portrayal of gender, race, and sexuality.
The end of marriage to Hadley
The Sun Also Rises was first published in 1926.
Hemingway died by suicide in 1961 at the age of 61.
The 100th anniversary of the novel’s publication will be celebrated in 2026.
THE PLAYERS
Ernest Hemingway
The renowned American novelist and short story writer, known for his pioneering minimalist style and exploration of the ‘lost generation’ of the 1920s.
Gertrude Stein
The influential American writer and art collector who famously described Hemingway’s generation as the ‘lost generation’ in a preface to The Sun Also Rises.
Clancy Sigal
The American novelist and screenwriter who wrote a spirited defense of Hemingway titled ‘Hemingway Lives’ in 2013.
Doris Lessing
The Nobel Prize-winning British novelist who connected the author to Clancy Sigal due to their shared political views and commitment to radical politics.
Martha Gellhorn
The American novelist, short story writer, and journalist who was married to Hemingway and traveled with him to Spain during the civil war and to China.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING
“To be like Hemingway is to escape from a normal, dull life into one of adventure and risk, without complaining.”
— Clancy Sigal, Novelist and Screenwriter
“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time.”
— Sal Paradise, Narrator of On The Road
WHAT’S NEXT
The 100th anniversary of the publication of The Sun Also Rises in 2026 will likely spur renewed academic and popular interest in Hemingway’s seminal work, with new critical analyses, adaptations, and celebrations of the novel’s enduring legacy.
THE TAKEAWAY
Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises remains a touchstone of 20th century American literature, capturing the disillusionment and alienation of the ‘lost generation’ in the aftermath of World War I. As the novel marks its centennial, it continues to resonate with readers and writers, offering insights into the cultural shifts of the 1920s and Hemingway’s pioneering literary style.
7 short books that make a big impression and cause a lasting impact
Some books don’t need hundreds of pages to leave a lasting mark. Short novels and novellas often capture powerful themes with sharp focus, emotional clarity, and memorable storytelling. Their brevity makes them accessible, yet their ideas stay with the reader long after finishing. Here are seven such short books that are widely celebrated for their depth, influence, and ability to provoke thought – all within a compact, impactful reading experience.
2/8
Animal Farm by George Orwell
A deceptively simple fable about farm animals overthrowing their human owner – only to recreate an oppressive regime under their pigs. On the surface, it reads like a children’s story, yet it is a sharp allegory of power, corruption, and revolution. Its brevity and clarity make its message accessible but brutally effective; ideals can be corrupted by those who only seek power.
3/8
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
This short novel centers on an aging fisherman’s epic struggle to catch a giant marlin, exploring themes of perseverance, dignity, and the human spirit. Its spare, almost poetic language conveys deep emotional and existential weight. The old man’s battle with the sea becomes a metaphor for life’s challenges: painful, solitary – yet meaningful.
4/8
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
A tragic tale of two displaced ranch workers during the Great Depression, this novella explores dreams, friendship, loneliness, and cruelty. Its tight narrative and minimal cast make every moment count, intensifying emotional impact. The fragile hope and eventual heartbreak resonate long after reading, forcing reflection on human nature and social conditions.
5/8
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
In this bizarre, surreal novella, a man wakes up transformed into a giant insect. The story’s strangeness and brevity sharpen its themes of alienation, identity, and dehumanization. Kafka’s work unsettles and provokes: the weirdness forces readers to confront uncomfortable truths about isolation, family duty, and the fragility of human dignity.
6/8
The Stranger by Albert Camus
A lean, philosophical novel about a man who commits a senseless crime and confronts the absurdity of existence. Its simple prose belies deep existential questions about meaning, morality, and society’s expectations. Short as it is, the novel challenges you to reflect – is life inherently meaningless, and if so, how should one live?
7/8
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Though often considered a “short novel,” Gatsby paints a vivid portrait of ambition, love, wealth, and disillusionment in 1920s America. Its lyrical style, symbolic depth, and tragic arc create a powerful commentary on the American Dream. The glamour, longing, and inevitable collapse leave a haunting impression long after closing the book.
8/8
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
A spiritual novella about a man’s lifelong journey to self-discovery, inner peace, and meaning. It blends Eastern philosophy, introspection, and poetic simplicity – showing that profound transformation and wisdom can come from quiet reflection and life’s subtle experiences. Its brevity makes the journey intimate and personal rather than sprawling.
Short books prove that storytelling doesn’t need length to be powerful. The seven above-mentioned works remain to impact the readers due to their ability to combine the shortness with the depth, directness with the emotionality. Be it the excursion into society, human nature, philosophy, or an individual transformation, each book has an experience that remains long after reading. These are the short classics that you can read to start with in case you are seeking meaningful literature and you have a hectic schedule.
Ernest Hemingway feature in works with great-granddaughter Dree Hemingway aboard as executive producer
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Actress and model Dree Hemingway (Starlet) is set to executive produce a new film about her legendary great grandfather, Ernest Hemingway.
The Hemingway Files will follow the writer’s last years, as his closest friends A.E. Hotchner and Duke MacMullen help him navigate his deepening mental struggles, his strained relationship with his trans daughter Gloria Hemingway, and the growing paranoia surrounding his belief that the FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, was watching him.
The film is produced by Jeremy Bolt (Resident Evil) and will be directed by Jessica M. Thompson, whose projects include SXSW-winning debut The Light of the Moon, Screen Gems thriller The Invitation, which made $38 million global, and Showtime series The End.
The project is being produced under JB Pictures. Script comes from Cory Todd Hughes and Adrian Speckert (Armor). The film is currently in development with casting discussions underway.
Hemingway is the totemic U.S. author, Nobel Prize winner and larger-than-life personality known for novels including The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea.
Dree Hemingway, who has starred in films including Sean Baker’s Starlet and Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young, said: “My great grandfather’s story has been told many times but rarely with this level of empathy and honesty. The Hemingway Files is about understanding him not as an icon, but as a father, a friend, and a man trying to hold on to himself.”
“This is one of the most important scripts of our lives,” Hughes and Speckert said in a joint statement. “Dree Hemingway’s support and trust in this project mean the world to us. We feel a deep responsibility to tell the truth of what Hemingway endured in those last years, his battles with his mind, his government, and his heart. The world deserves to know who he really was beneath the myth.”
Thompson said her vision is to approach Hemingway’s decline “with empathy and honesty. I want to peer underneath the mask of Hemingway’s legend and lay bare the truth of this multifaceted artist. I’m fascinated by the intersection of myth and reality. Hemingway’s story isn’t just about a writer grappling with obsolescence, it’s about the cost of masculinity, the fragility of family, and the truth that even the strongest among us can struggle.”
Several screen projects have explored Hemingway’s life including the 2012 HBO film Hemingway & Gellhorn, the 2015 movie Papa: Hemingway in Cuba and the 2021 Ken Burns documentary series Hemingway.
I remember reading Hemingway in high school American lit class: The Sun Also Rises , “Hills like White Elephants,” and maybe some others – I don’t remember everything we read there. He wasn’t my favorite author, but he wasn’t anywhere near the worst we read that term. I remember his sparse, bald style – which went well with the sparse baldness of his themes.
So, when I read Ozy Brennan’s recent post “Reject Hemingwayism“, I immediately had a lot to say. I agree with Ozy on a lot of points, but there are some important points that writers should learn from Hemingway. Hemingway did write well – and he wrote a specific type of story, but there are still some good lessons to take from him more generally.
Ernest Hemingway. Is this man to blame for all the bad things in modern literature?
To start with, I agree with Ozy against Hemingway that writers shouldn’t hesitate to show melodrama.
Hemingway’s stories are a specific sort of story. He was trying to write bald stories with bald facts and setting, to show the world as it is rather than as it might be dressed up to be. “Many are strong in the broken places,” as he said in Farewell To Arms.
And to him, and to the Lost Generation of which he was a member, they must first come to terms with the brokenness as it is. Melodrama was meaningless, lost in the carnage and waste of World War One. His characters don’t cry, because they’ve been through far worse. His readers don’t expect them to cry, because they the readers have also been through far worse.
But to those of us who haven’t survived the trenches of Flanders, melodrama can still have power. Even among Hemingway’s fellow soldiers, some – like J. R. R. Tolkien – came out of it with a different perspective. Tolkien’s characters weep, for “not all tears are evil”. They, like Tolkien himself,do find some higher hope beyond the Dead Marshes or the deathly trenches. This builds a different type of story, and one I very much appreciate.
Hemingway-style restrained characters definitely do have a role. When I was acting in my first amateur theater play as a teenager, my dad introduced me to the effect of understated emotion. I was playing a butler in this one scene, with just a few lines in the background – and my first impulse was to visibly react to the events on stage, but my dad showed me how much power there can be just a few raised eyebrows and understated reactions.
It can be almost as powerful in print as on the stage. But not every character should be that way. In fact, such characters – like Mr. Spock in Star Trek – can be even more powerful when contrasted with more-emotional characters around them. As scriptwriter David Gerrold said, Spock’s lack of emotion is good specifically because of the emotion it evokes in the other characters.
(Is this masculine, as Ozy suggests some think? A certain sort of masculinity, probably. But the entire medieval tradition to which Tolkien was alluding practices a different sort of masculinity.)
Hemingway doesn’t show this contrast. He’s going for a different sort of effect – and he does it well, but it’s an effect I don’t care to read that often. I certainly don’t want every book to have that effect, either.
Hemingway’s style of words, though, is more complicated.
“It’s true,” Ozy says, “that adverbs and adjectives can be crutches used to sustain a weak noun or verb: “he went slowly” instead of “he strolled.”” And therefore, Hemingway’s famous writing advice is to find the right noun and verb rather than dressing up a weak one. Against this, Ozy holds up several example passages, and concludes “English didn’t evolve several parts of speech, multiple punctuation marks, and half its vocabulary because they’re stupid useless things that no good writer would employ.”
I agree, as such. However, this’s minimizing the importance of Hemingway’s advice. As Twain put it, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is… the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Finding a strong word is much stronger than dressing up a weak word. Ozy quotes good authors who use adverbs and adjectives well, but this’s much more important for newer authors who don’t necessarily have the talent to tell how to use them very well.
Before my high school lit class where I encountered Hemingway, I read a writing advice column – I don’t remember by whom – which gave the same advice: don’t dress up weak words, but use strong words. I still agree.
To pick one of the writers Ozy quoted, Tolkien: there’s a reason we remember lines like “Renewed shall be blade that was broken; the crownless again shall be king.” There’re only two adjectives in that couplet; one of them (”broken”) is a participle and the other (”again”) tells us the order of events. None of these words are “fancy Latinate words” or otherwise unusual; like Hemingway, Tolkien is giving us sparse, simple language.
Tolkien is using simple language here for a reason – or specifically, two reasons. In-universe, this’s a poem composed by Bilbo the Hobbit; Tolkien is doubtlessly making a point of having him use simple language hearkening back to the simple Shire. Beyond that, it’s a poem composed about Aragorn who is the lost king returning to his throne; the simple language casts our minds toward the simple ancient fairy-tale theme.
Complex language wouldn’t fit the same.
Tolkien does this very well throughout his works. He uses unusual sentence constructions, but usually simple sentences. For example, when the Fellowship is leaving Rivendell:
The Company took little gear of war, for their hope was in secrecy not in battle. Aragorn had Anduril, but no other weapon, and he went forth clad only in rusty green and brown, as a Ranger of the wilderness. Boromir had a long sword, in fashion like Anduril but of less lineage, and he bore also a shield and his war-horn.
What adjectives are here? Few, and ordinary. The continued simple words have their own effect. The old-fashioned constructions (like “their hope was in secrecy” or “he bore also”) give us a different sort of effect that doesn’t violate Hemingway’s rules and is even stronger because of it.
In fact, it’s much briefer on the page than it might seem in our memory. The description of Cerin Amroth which Ozy quotes is one short paragraph, but as Tolkien scholar Michael Martinez puts it, “Tolkien’s conciseness in sharing details provides that illusion of long writing.” It looms much larger in our memory than on the page, because of Tolkien’s strong words.
Hemingway around 50 years old
Hemingway used his simple language to the same purpose as his characters’ lack of emotion. After the carnage and waste of World War One, pretty language was a mere window-dressing on the hard world. Again, he achieves this well – yet other books are trying for other purposes.
So, it might seem proper for people writing different themes to use different styles. As Ozy says, Catherynne M. Valente’s Space Opera reads differently from a more bald factual stating of the Fermi Paradox.
I agree! This is a corollary of the narrator being a character in your story. Your narrator shouldn’t be Hemingway’s narrator, unless you’re writing a story where Hemingway’s narrator makes sense.
Yet one must not forget the lessons of Hemingway’s style.
Finding the right words means something. Even if you’re writing a passage as ponderous with adjectives and adverbs as Gormenghast , finding the right nouns and verbs matters. Or, to take Ozy’s other quote, from Tolkien: Aragorn “ was wrapped in some fair memory,” and “ the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white”. Note the strong participle “wrapped” and the classical “clothed” rich with connotations (including Biblical connotations which I think Tolkien fully intended here.) I don’t see many adjectives and adverbs or advanced constructions here. In fact, Tolkien’s prose seems almost as bald as Hemingway’s!
Ernest HEMINGWAY during Spanish Civil War. In December 1937 Ernest Hemingway was covering the Loyalist assault on Teruel, the walled town in the bleak mountains of Southern Aragon, Gen. Franco was planning to use this corridor route to the Mediterranean thus seaparting Barcelona from Valencia and Madrid. Robert CAPA the photographer and Hemingway would with some colleagues drive daily to Teruel from Valencia and return each evening. Valencia. Dec. 1937. Hemingway visiting the front line.
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Ozy laments Hemingway’s influence on modern prose.
When I tried to think of examples, for a while, I couldn’t. I wished Ozy had pointed out more examples. Maybe that’s because I don’t read the same sort of books – I definitely know I haven’t read much “literary fiction”. But if there’s a parade of authors aping Hemingway’s style – I haven’t seen it.
(Or, well, I have seen it in one place: amateur authors writing online what might be their first-ever stories. Sometimes, they tack much too far into Hemingway. But other times, they tack much too far into the opposite pit-trap and drown us under a tsunami of adjectives and adverbs.)
But then I reread Ozy’s post and realized: I’m not noticing Hemingway’s influence because I’m already swimming in it.
Though modern novels haven’t aped Hemingway’s style, they’ve been influenced by it: they’re much balder than nineteenth-century novels. Modern novels – even Valente – use fewer adjectives, and less melodrama, than (say) Charles Dickens or Jules Verne. This probably isn’t just Hemingway – Hemingway was one exemplar of a movement around his time – but Hemingway can be a synecdoche for this very real movement.
Is this a bad thing? Probably. On the one hand, modern authors are building off a longer tradition than Dickens, so they can do things more artfully (just like I discussed about playwrights earlier). If authors can produce more sentiment and more vividness with fewer narrative asides and fewer individual adverbs, that’s not bad. But looking back, I do feel the effect built by modern novelists is poorer in some ways. Imagine A Tale of Two Cities without the narrative comments, or the famous beginning!
Modern readers don’t expect the melodramatic effect or description of Dickens or Verne. Even when they’re reading melodrama, it’s not the same sense of melodrama.
One of my favorite photos of Hem, Idaho
More melodramatic than anything in Hemingway… or since Hemingway?
But, that tide can shift. But I wonder how the sentimental ear of Dickens’ narrators would feel to a modern audience. If it’s artfully written, especially if the narrator is characterized well themself, I suspect it could go well.
So, to aspiring writers, Hemingway does have at least one important lesson: use vivid nouns and verbs, without depending on adjectives or adverbs to dress up weak words.
But at the same time, all in all, I agree with Ozy on a literary level: Hemingway’s influence has been too great.
Hemingway writer and scholar, Curtis DeBerg, has brought forward an amazing note of Hemingway history that gives us insight, raises questions, and informs what we may think about Hemingway’s end.
In a New York Times Article published January 23, 2026, John Rosengren covers the discovery of an inscription that Hemingway wrote by hand on June 16, 1961. He killed himself on July 2, 1961 with a gunshot. Hemingway who was at the Mayo Clinic receiving treatment for depression at the time he wrote an inscription in “The Old Man & The Sea” to one of the nuns who was caring for him named Sister Immaculata. For those of us who read and love Hemingway, it is profound. It reads as follows:
“ To Sister Immaculata: this book, hoping to write another one as good for her when my writing luck is running well again, and it will.”
Ernest Hemingway, St. Mary’s, June 16, 1961”
Hemingway entered a psychiatric unit at St. Mary’s Hospital affiliated with the Mayo Clinic in November of 1960 and stayed until almost the end of January 1961. He received electroshock therapy and returned to the facility in April 1961 for additional care. The public was unaware of his condition and his wife Mary signed him in claiming it was for high blood pressure.
Hemingway was released by the chief psychiatrist claiming that he was well enough to go home. He lived in Idaho at that point.
Here is where Curtis DeBerg comes in. The book appears to have been largely forgotten until 5 years ago when one of the Sisters mentioned it to Curt who was doing research at the Mayo Clinic. At the time, Curt thought, “Was he kidding himself thinking he was going to be able to write again after all those electroshock treatments or is he thinking in the back of his mind “I’ll never write another book like this.””
Until now, the book with its inscription was locked up and largely forgotten on the shelves in the library at St. Mary’s Hospital. Five years ago, one of the Sisters mentioned it to Curtis DeBerg who has written two books about Hemingway and was doing research at the Mayo Clinic. DeBerg who wrote “Traveling the World with Hemingway” and the more recent “Wrestling with Demons” also about Hemingway, appropriately said more people should see this and it’s a part of very important Hemingway history.
DeBerg wonders if Hemingway was kidding himself thinking he was going to be able to write again after all those electric shock treatments or was he thinking in the back of his mind “I’ll never write another book like this.” He also ponders if the sunniness of the note was designed to convince the Mayo Clinic doctors that he was ready for release which he was not.
When DeBerg toured the Nobel Prize museum and learned it had no Hemingway artifacts he suggested the Franciscans donate at St. Mary’s the book. The order’s Leadership Counselor agreed to do so and turned it over to DeBerg in November. At the ceremony in Sweden on January 23, DeBerg discussed the inscription’s significance and it will now rest at the museum.
Endless gratitude to Curtis DeBerg for seeing the book and its inscription and making it known to the rest of the world. Even in his despair or hope depending on how you see this, Hemingway showed kindness and gratitude to Sister Immaculata which was the flipside of his aggressive side and what I like to think is his true, mid-western nature.
What a find! So much to think about and discuss.
With much gratitude to Curt who brought this to my attention. Thank you, Curt, for your dedication to Hemingway’s memory.
The United States boasts a rich history of Nobel laureates whose achievements have profoundly influenced science, literature, and peace. These exceptional figures, including pioneering scientists, visionary writers, and inspiring leaders, represent America’s innovation and commitment to progress. Their remarkable accomplishments and lasting legacies have advanced human knowledge and inspired generations to strive for a better world.
The United States has a historical reputation for being home to some of the most eminent Nobel Prize winners internationally, whose paths of achievement have impacted the progress of the world in science, literature, peace, and more. These exceptional figures represent America’s innovation, leadership, and creativity. They include pathfinding scientists, visionary writers, and inspiring leaders whose commitment to peace and equality has informed the course of humanity.
Each Nobel laureate has improved the state of human knowledge and inspired each new generation to dream a little bigger and achieve more towards making the world a better place. The following list of the top 10 famous American Nobel prize winners highlights the remarkable accomplishments and lasting legacies of those shifted the course of history through their brilliance and purpose.
Top 10 Famous American Nobel Prize Winners
Here are the top 10 famous americans who have won nobel prize along with the year of their achievement and field in which they have specialised:
No.
Name
Year
Field
1
Martin Luther King Jr.
1964
Nobel Peace Prize
2
Barack Obama
2009
Nobel Peace Prize
3
Ernest Hemingway
1954
Nobel Prize in Literature
4
Richard P. Feynman
1965
Nobel Prize in Physics
5
John Bardeen
1956 & 1972
Nobel Prize in Physics
6
Bob Dylan
2016
Nobel Prize in Literature
7
Toni Morrison
1993
Nobel Prize in Literature
8
Albert A. Michelson
1907
Nobel Prize in Physics
9
Henry Kissinger
1973
Nobel Peace Prize
10
Frances H. Arnold
2018
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
1. Martin Luther King Jr. – Nobel Peace Prize (1964)
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel recognition Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent fight against racial injustice and segregation in the United States. Through his example as a gifted orator and a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, he personified the ideals of human rights, justice, and treatment commensurate with equality and peace around the globe. King’s inspired words and nonviolent action made him a universal moral voice of the age and etched his legacy in the U.S. and world history.
2. Barack Obama- Nobel Peace Prize (2009)
Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to strengthen diplomatic relations and collaboration among countries. He was recognized for his vision of a future where nations would not possess nuclear weapons or be defined by borders.
Obama emphasized the need for dialogue rather than the pursuit of war and fought for the ideals of hope and change. He promoted peace, dialogue with inclusion, and finding avenues for cooperation and commonality to the forefront of the world stage.
3. Ernest Hemingway – Nobel Prize in Literature (1954)
For his remarkable prose and simple style, Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature, particularly spotlighted through The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway’s stories displayed themes of courage, perseverance, and struggles of humanity.
His distinctive style changed the course of modern stories, and influenced both writers and readers throughout the generations, through his straight forward style of a powerful story that portrayed the truth of dealing with life and humanity.
4. Richard P. Feynman – Nobel Prize in Physics (1965)
Famous physicist Richard P. Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his transformative research quantum electrodynamics. His research changed the way particles behaved and interacted with electromagnetic behaviors in particles.
Along with his research, Feynman became famous for his entertaining and informative lectures, his quick wit, as well as the spirit of curiosity-driven science. Feynman became an inspiration for countless generations of students and scientists in college and universities to examine the universe with creativity and wonder leading to a lasting impact on physics.
5. John Bardeen – Nobel Prize in Physics (1956 & 1972)
John Bardeen is the only person ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, twice. The first was awarded for his invention of the transistor, which changed the electronics industry and eventually opened the door to modern computing. The second honored his theory of superconductivity. Bardeen’s inventions changed technology and industry and positioned him as one of the most important scientists in modern history.
At Pamplona’s San Fermín festival, a tiny minority of women run with bulls
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Dressed in the traditional bull runner’s garb of a white shirt and red neck-scarf, Yomara Martínez, 30, sprinted in the death-defying morning run or “encierros” taking place this week in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona.
Yet despite being in a crowd of thousands, Martínez was among only a handful of women daredevils running with the stampeding bulls at the San Fermín Festival.
“At the end of the day, the bull doesn’t know about sexes, age or body shape,” Martinez said. “It doesn’t matter if you are woman.”
Every year, thousands of people line the medieval streets of Pamplona to witness the centuries-old tradition of running with bulls. Many watch from balconies and wooden barricades along the course. Millions more follow the spectacle on television.
Women bull runners are rare, though Martínez and other women taking part in the adrenaline-fueled tradition as more than mere spectators say it’s growing in popularity.
“There are times I feel small. And ask myself ‘what am I doing here?’ Because, although you may not want to, you do feel slightly inferior because of your physique,” said 32-year-old Sara Puñal, an administrator who took part in Sunday’s run.
“But in the moment, you are all equal,” Puñal said of the run.
The bulls pound along the twisting cobblestone streets after being led by six steers. Up to 4,000 runners take part in each bull run, which takes place over 846 meters (2,775 feet) and can last two to four minutes.
The expert Spanish runners try to sprint just in front of the bull’s horns for a few seconds while egging the animal on with a rolled newspaper. Gorings are not rare, but many more people are bruised and injured in falls and pileups with each other.
“I think many have a desire to see what it feels like but they don’t try because of fear,” said Paula López, 32, a shop assistant who also took part in a run earlier in the week. López said she grew up in the masculine world of bull fighting. She wasn’t fazed by how few women take part in the event.
“It’s complicated, but it is pretty exciting,” López said.
The event’s reputation took a hit years ago following complaints by women about having suffered sexual harassment and abuse from revelers.
In 2016, five men raped an 18-year-old woman during the festival in an infamous case that sparked an outcry across Spain. The men, who had a WhatsApp group named “La Manada,” or “The Animal Pack,” were imprisoned for 15 years by the Supreme Court in 2019.
Since then, organizers have said they’ve stepped up security measures.
Women didn’t participate in the bull runs until 1975 due to a decree repealed one year earlier that prohibited women, children and the elderly from being in the streets where the bulls run during the festival.
The spectacle was made internationally famous by Ernest Hemingway’s classic 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises,” about American bohemians wasting away in Europe.
It is precisely for this mission that the writer volunteered, promising that, if legally delegated by those fighting, he would carry out the task himself with complete correctness and humanity, taking care that all the corpses were buried in a dignified manner: “We could even bury them in cellophane or in one of the most modern plastic materials.” In the end, if there was any evidence that he himself had provoked the new war in some way or had not properly carried out the assigned task, the writer offered – even with joy! – to be shot by the same firing squad and buried with or without cellophane, if only they would leave his naked corpse on top of a hill. And he signed it: June 30, 1948.
To Sister Immaculata, this book, hoping to write aother one as good for her when my writing luck is running well again 
