Week 1 Post

Summary:   

  For my senior project, I've decided to read the works of two prominent authors from the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. I think, ultimately, I had several motivations for choosing this particular project. The first is that I've always wanted to spend a significant amount of time absorbing the writing of an important author, that is, somebody who is perceived to be central to the literary canon. Second, I've always wanted to really get to know a particular author, to feel that I had a good grasp of not just their work itself, but also the motivations behind it. With that in mind, I selected Hemingway and Stein a) because I'd heard good things about both of them but hadn't really read their work before and b) because I felt that there was something to be gained from reading them together. I knew that Stein and Hemingway were contemporaries, and I knew that Stein had been sort of a mentor figure to Hemingway so I was interested to see the ways in which each writer might have influenced the other. I also had a faint impression of Heminway as being a kind of hyper-masculine figure, and Gertrude Stein, based on what little I knew of her, seemed a nice foil to that kind of worldview.  

    This project will be mostly solitary, though Tony, my advisor, will be helping to guide my reading choices and will, perhaps, also give me some tips on how to approach these two authors. In terms of the structure of my project, my plan is pretty straightforward. First and foremost, I'll be spending the majority of my time trying to read as much as I can of both authors. I'll read Stein and Heminway simultaneously, working in chronological order starting with the Hemingway short stories and Stein's 3 Lives before moving to Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Alongside this primary material, I'll also be doing a little research on the personal lives of the two authors, perhaps beginning with Ken Burns's documentary about Hemingway and the book Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, which deals primarily with Stein's experiences during World War Two. Finally, I'll be visiting Hemingway's home in Ketchum, Idaho, to see the place where he both committed suicide and wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls. My three goals for this project are as follows: one, to consume as much of Stein and Heminway's work as I can; two, to try and understand how these two author's environments influenced their work; and three, to learn about the ways in which these authors might have influenced each other.  

Progress Report:  

    So far I've been having a very good time with this project. I got a little confused with the timeline, so I started by reading Hemingway's Farewell to Arms thinking that this was his first work. Tony has since set me straight and now I'm about halfway through a big collection of Hemingway short stories and nearly finished with Stein's 3 Lives. I went camping on Thursday and Friday, finding it very pleasant to read out in the wilderness (pictured below).  

 

    I'll start researching Stein and Heminway's personal lives on Monday, overall I'm feeling pretty excited about the project.