Hemmingways In Our Time :: Hemmingway In Our Time

Hemmingways In Our Time   Half-way through use uping Hemmingways collection In Our Time I was interrupted by my roommate, George. He wanted to know how I liked the story. He seems to be very impressed that Im reading Hemmingway. I explained to him that it was, in fact, not one story, but a collection of short stories. He asked if they had a common theme or not, and I found it nasty to answer. "Yeas and no," I said. I then went on to explain that although one character, Nick, appeared occasionally, the stories didnt flow as one large story. "Its sort of like a painting," I told him, "If you could picking out any one individual brush-stroke and study it, it would be meaningless. But if you pull back and see all the brush-strokes, you can view the painting in its entirety." He thought this was very wise and went away, contented that I was a literate genius. Myself, I didnt really know what to gather from the stories. Ive never honestly read any Hemmin gway previously. Ive started to read The Sun Also Rises about ten times and gotten waylaid by Batman, Robert B. Parker, and the like each time. I think I read The honest-to-goodness Man and the Sea ages ago in high school, but it was so long ago that it has slipped completely from my memory. He is one of those authors that I always subsume with my father and his college years for some reason, although Im not entirely sure why. Ive always wanted to read Hemmingway, but Ive always wanted to read all of Shakespeare, Homer, and Eliot, too. The variant Im reading has the short stories separated by "Chapters" which do and dont tell a story. The "Chapters" strongly remind me of Pink Floyds The Wall. I was also surprised at how elemental it is to read them. They are perfect examples of how Poe defined the short story quick, (sometimes) powerful, and written to evoke one feeling. After reading The End of Something, for example, I was struck by how easily Hemmingway made m e sad. The ending to A Very Short Story was pure torture. All the stories are simply constructed, no superfluous words, no redundant images to clutter the feeling. They seem to be written with Strunk and Whites Elements of Style in mind.