2001-07-10 - 12:52 p.m.
"Kenny, honey, Last night was great! I hope we can do THAT again soon, baby. P.S. Don't hate Ernest Hemingway,'cause he loves you. Did you really hate "The sun also rises" ?. It's considered a manifesto of the Roaring Twenties. Give it another shot. "
from bob
Gee, thanks, bob, but I believe the exact opposite to be the case. Last night was only mediocre, I hope it never happens again (by the way, despite what you might have me believe, that doesn't happen to every guy. Only impotent ones), and Ernest Hemingway does not love me. If Ernest Hemingway loved me, he wouldn't go out of his way to ensure that his crappy books are considered "classics" and thus force-fed to poor high school English students. He'd let them languish in on the bargain bookshelf, where they belong.
Or, better yet, he'd write good books.
Don't get me wrong. I'm just trashing Hemingway's works. I have a great deal of respect for the man himself. "Be a Man, Kill a Man. Be a Man, Kill Yourself." I've always been a firm believer that anyone who wants to kill themselves should do so. And they shouldn't mess around doing it. And he did. And he didn't mess around with sissy methods like pills and wrist slashing that would have left him time to panic and reconsider. He just went ahead, and the only mess he had was the one left when his brain erupted out of his skull (I hear some people swore that legible words were found in the goo. If so, they should have been published. Couldn't be much worse than anything he actually wrote down on paper...). (Give it another shot? That was a funny one, Bob. I damn near wet myself from laughing so hard.)
Okay, tasteless suicide humor aside (although I got a lot more where that one came from, at least, in regards to Hemingway. I've got Hemingway suicide jokes like...well, like I've got Marlon Brando fat jokes.) In all seriousness, though, I do in fact respect the way Hemingway never got too full of his own artsiness. I've vented before about how much I hate "actors" in black turtlenecks and black berets who can't carry on a conversation without striking several dramatic poses and dropping names no one else has heard of. Ken Hill once told me about a guy he saw at a Q+A session with Paul Newman where a guy like the one I described got up and said, "Mr. Newman...I'm an actor/writer/director like yourself..." Yeah, pal, the difference is that Paul Newman gets paid. And people like me don't want to punch him in the nose when we pass by him in the hallway.
But I digress. The point is that I'm sure the literary world is full of people like that, too (If I ever meet a real writer, I'll know for sure), and I respect Hemingway for not turning into one of those pretentious pricks. He may have sucked, but by God, he did it in a genuine way, much like you do when you visit the men's prison on weekends, bob. I hope to maintain that sense of "Hemingwayishness" myself as I surround myself with pretentious pricks in the future...I even dress in only white shirts. And I don't wear berets.
Moving on, though...
"Manifesto of the Roaring Twenties"? Did the back of the Cliff's Notes version give you that phrase, Bob? Loosen up that black beret, bob, and put on another black turtleneck. Hemingway did a much better job depicting the angst of the WWI generation with Big-Two Hearted River...
Did I just say "the angst of the WWI generation?" Did I just use a word like "angst" to describe something other than a "Stabbing Westward" album? With a straight face? Ugh. I have to go wash my mouth out with soap now. Ernest would have slapped me silly. See what associating with twinks like you brings on, bob?
As I was saying. "Big Two-Hearted River" and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the Nick short stories, are about the only works of Hemingway that are even mildly not-horrid. Hemingway's coarse, adjective-free style makes "River" a good story. With everything else, it's just irritating. I can write like Hemingway, too. Watch-
Nick picked up the orange juice. It was cold.
"This orange juice is cold," said Nick.
"Si," said the grocer,"yes."
Wasn't that easy? When you write a whole novel like that, you sound like a six-year old with Downs Syndrome...
Also, because "River" actually worked as a story, I personally believe that Nick is just a better, more interesting character than Jake Barnes (the main character in "The Sun Also Rises," for those of you who don't read), although, Bob, I can see where you would find yourself empathizing with Jake, him being impotent and all.
The more accepted, "True Manifesto" of the Roaring Twenties is "The Great Gatsby," but it's a moot point because that book sucks, too. I take a perverse delight in knowing that not even the "great" Robert Redford could make a decent movie out of it. I wanted to take a baseball bat and an egg-beater and go crack myself a few "West Egg Omlettes" of my own. (anyone get that one?)
I hate F. Scott Fitzgerald personally. I have no respect for anyone who has a name like that. If you want to be known by your middle name, fine, but then drop any hint that you have a first name. Scott Fitzgerald looks just as good on a book jacket without the F. All people who do this piss me off- F. Scott Fitzgerald, F. Lee Bailey, L. Brent Bozell III (Head of the Parents Television Council. Der Fuhrer himself. Read a newspaper, people). They can all fellate my dog.
"Hi Mr. Fitzgerald. Can I call you F. Scott? How about just F?"
F you too, Scott Fitzgerald.
Wanna read a real book about America? Set your timeframe back to 1906 and go read "Ragtime" by E.L. Doctrow. Manifesto my ass....
And before anyone jumps on me for the fact that the guy goes by E.L., there's two things that make it acceptable.
1) it's two initials, not just one, so you know to just call him E.L. (much like C.S. Lewis, and if I had a name like his, I'd go by C.S. too. Look it up.) and
2) His book doesn't suck. Sorry to use such a crude term, bob, but I've run out of synonyms for "bad" that you could understand (i.e., ones with less than three syllables)
Yeah, that was the writing equivalent of a low blow, but they work. No man alive can withstand the dreaded Nut Shot. ("One swift knee to the Happy Sack, he'll drop like anyone else" Anyone get that one?)
I must thank you, bob. In addition to providing me with inanity to write about (I've been a little stuck for inspiration these days), you have done me one other huge service. I'm quickly erasing any vestiges of sensitivity or capacity to feel any emotions that I have displayed here in recent...well, ever. And instead, you enable me to be bitter, cynical, and, well, just me. Before you, bob, my life was depressingly cheerful, like one of those heinous Mitford books (Jan Karon, Penguin Press, $12.99 a pop. I've gotta take a break from work)
Now, however, our verbal sparring and your cheap shot at my sexual orientation have mercifully brought me into that happy, shining world only before ventured into by people like Poe and Sylvia Plath. And for that I thank you...
Ready for Round 3 whenever you are...
Ken
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