Hemingway PBS Ken Burns

[billems]

Loving it. Most great artists are egotistical, and many are troubled; some have faults far greater than his. I don't hold any of that against him, and just continue to accept the gifts he left for us without reservation.

Here! Here!

[Skimpole]

I read A Farewell to Arms 40 years ago. I don't remember much except his use of rain as a literary device, and I may have picked that up from the professor.

I watched the last two episodes of the Burns documentary. It seemed to me tragic that he was so thoroughly ill but not accepting of help at the end. The organic brain damage was quite obvious, especially in the interview with NBC.

I may study him and his writings further thanks to this film.

[St Vrain Angler]

For some excellent insights into Hemingway and his writing, read Lesley Blume's Everybody Behaves Badly, the story behind the story of The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway was as troubled as he was talented, but there's no doubt about his creativity and influence on American literature.
For my money, the short stories "Hills Like White Elephants" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" are as fine as anything he wrote.

[Greg Reynolds]

For some excellent insights into Hemingway and his writing, read Lesley Blume's Everybody Behaves Badly, the story behind the story of The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway was as troubled as he was talented, but there's no doubt about his creativity and influence on American literature.
For my money, the short stories "Hills Like White Elephants" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" are as fine as anything he wrote.

Thanks for posting this--I ordered a copy.

[bluesjay]

Hi Guys, This has a lot of good Hemingway:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By-Line:_Ernest_Hemingway

Jay Edwards

[Shrimpman]

"He's a fisherman. The most overrated writer of the century. I mean, man he is the perfect American Author - fat, violent, drunk."
Also: "Jack Kerouac doesn't have to kill a bull to have something to write about. I mean, man, he's out there burning, feeling, grooving on life!"
I found Kerouac's "grooving on life" to be insufferable hipster tripe, so...
Note to self: Read more Hemingway

[Loogie]

We all seek our own Hemingway along life. When I’m out in the Mangroves and wondering about life, I get interrupted by the beauty of nature and it takes me away to far away places, and every now and then I am gifted a large gamefish!

Yes read more Hemingway.

[mlarocco]

CBS News Blurb (CBS Sunday Morning) on the Hemingway documentary

posting.php?f=70&mode=reply&t=136728&si ... ffe531b096

[bluesjay]

Hi Guys, I might argue that both Hemingway and Kerouac changed writing, but yes, read more Hemingway.

Jay Edwards

[GMflyf1sh]

Another fine production from Ken. I have ther first episode under my belt and the other three on my DVR

[BigTJ]

Am I the only one who thinks he is an over rated writer? I do not feel he offered a unique view of the world, though he wrote some nice sentences.

Randy

For those of us who believe in Occam's Razor aka the principle of parsimony he’s probably the greatest author who ever penned a sentence. It’s challenging for me to understand how somebody would not bask in the gorgeous simplicity and power of his unique prose. The first time I read Hemingway it blew me away and his writing still does.

Looking at it another way, he is not considered that great in some circles of academia but he was and is a tremendously popular author. If lot of people think an author is great then there is something to that. But no author is for everybody.

The Pulitzer and Nobel prizes are pretty heavy accolades but I think he earned them. He should have won it for “For Whom The Bell Tolls” His biggest knock in the day was that he wrote profanely not that he wasn’t a great writer. A lot of people couldn’t and still can’t handle his unvarnished depiction of reality.

John

[Minnesota]

Am I the only one who thinks he is an over rated writer? I do not feel he offered a unique view of the world, though he wrote some nice sentences.

Randy

In “For whom the Bell Tolls” Hemingway, writes a paragraph describing the partisans success. The last, sentence reads “ ...and then the plane’s came”. That in a nutshell is why Franco won. He had gotten them from Hitler. The outcome of the Spanish Civil War was won by the Fascists by air power. Calling this”a nice sentence” is to miss the whole point and thrust of Hemingway’s writing!
Richard

[St Vrain Angler]

The portrayal of a man dealing with what we now know as PTSD certainly "offered a unique view of the world" in 1925. And it still does for many readers.
Check out "Soldier's Home": http://www.somanybooks.org/eng208/SoldiersHome.pdf

[JMQ4]

I binged it Sunday at 1.25X speed based on this thread. It was certainly entertaining.

I haven't read much Hemingway - lots of starts though without completing his novels.

I think I've read everything that Jack Kerouac wrote, some more than once.

[JamesEric]

Like most Ken Burns docu-dramas, Hemingway requires a few pauses, a few naps, more snowy days than normal to get through it and really well done. The story was fascinating but came away not liking the man very much but will always appreciate the author. I wonder how many other writers Ernest inspired or what would have never been written without him? His mental illness was and is far too common and probably touched a nerve in some...critics.
Great topic Jay!
Jamie on the North Fork.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[teter]

Having read a fair amount of Hemingway from high school on, I was familiar with his writing style and influence and of course aware of his stature as a celebrity sportsman. I knew little about his personal life (other than that he was a serial womanizer and raging drunk whose family was tragically plagued by suicide over several generations.) I did not realize the extent of the head injuries (internal and external) that he had suffered before his death or how much they probably affected not just his moods but how he treated others. All in all, I found the documentary illuminating while at the same time terribly depressing.

[davemaine]

I too found the documentary illuminating yet depressing.

It struck me that he was never able to really heal from his numerous emotional traumas. His over the top masculinity--and especially his drinking--didn't serve him well at all in this regard.

Alcoholics, almost by definition, remain "stuck" in the developmental stage they were when they started drinking to deal with pain. There was undoubtedly something very adolescent in his character.

It seems to me, too, that this "stuckness" hurt his development as a writer. He never could move beyond that (to my mind) overly-simplistic tragic view of life to explore other dimensions of human experience.

Still, a great writer and a very well done documentary.