Week 2 Post

 

 

  

Funny Story: 

    As I was researching Hemingway, I came upon a rather funny story about his time in Paris in the 50s. During that period, Hemingway was great friends with the Irish novelist James Joyce, with whom he would often go out drinking. Apparently, Joyce would often get into fights with people in the bars the two writers frequented. Joyce was a rather slight man, so whenever conflict looked imminent he would point at his antagonist and shout to Hemingway "Deal with him, Hemingway! Deal with him!" 

Progress Report:  

 This past week I finished the Hemingway short stories and Stein's 3 Lives, I also read The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and got about halfway through Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. In terms of the research portion of the project, I didn't get a chance to watch the Ken Burns documentary and the Stein biography hasn't been delivered yet, but I did manage to do some online research on both authors.  

    With regards to that research, while I've still got a lot of work to do, I do feel I've gained a pretty good grasp on the big picture details of Stein and Hemingway's lives. Hemingway the person I'm coming to like less and less, he seems to have been rather awful, full of sexism, racism, and a very caustic masculinity. On the other hand, he also seems to have led a very troubled life, plagued by depression, alcoholism, and, in his later years, a whole host of medical difficulties. Stein comes across more positively, especially for her patronage of the arts, but even she seems a complicated figure, particularly due to her collaboration with the Vichy French government during World War Two.  

    In terms of the books themselves, I'm still very much enjoying Hemmingway, in particular his short stories Fifty Grand and A Clean Well-Lighted Place. I really disliked Stein's writing at first, finding it very simplistic and repetitive but, after a conversation with Tony, I've come to understand how the quirks of Stein's writing constitute deliberate choices, meant to contrast the writing styles of the 19th century.

    In sum, I think I've made at least a little progress on all of my goals. I'm certainly consuming a good deal of both author's work and I'm beginning to connect them to their environment and to each other. Moving forward, I'll try to finish The Sun Also Rises and perhaps make a start on A Moveable Feast and the Stein autobiography. I think I could stand to be a little more focused in my reading, so next week I'll try to read with two questions in mind. First, what are the three main features of the writings of Stein and Hemmingway? And second, why might these two authors have chosen to write in such a fashion?