The Art of Manliness - The Writing Life of Ernest Hemingway

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast how did one of

00:00:11.720 history's greatest writers ernest hemingway get going with his craft develop his indelible style

00:00:16.820 and infuse his narratives with memorable life and compelling tension today we delve into the

00:00:21.660 answers to those questions with hemingway scholar mark torino who's a professor of english the

00:00:25.860 editor and author of half a dozen books on hemingway including ernest hemingway thought

00:00:29.420 in action and the host of the one true podcast which covers all things related to papa mark and

00:00:34.360 i begin our conversation with how hemingway cut his teeth with writing as a journalist how the

00:00:38.100 iceberg theory underlay his approach to writing as a novelist and how his years in paris and the

00:00:42.100 books people and art he encountered there influenced his work and the trajectory of his career we then

00:00:46.580 discuss how his travel and recreational pastimes allowed him to write with a vivid firsthand

00:00:50.700 understanding of certain places and pursuits what his writing routine was like and how the characters

00:00:54.880 in his novels explore the tension between thought and action we enter conversation with mark's

00:00:59.100 recommendation for where to start reading hemingway if you've never read him or haven't read him

00:01:02.660 in a long time and what mark thinks was hemingway's one true sentence after the show's over check

00:01:07.700 out our show notes at awm.is slash hemingway mark joins you now via clearcast.io

00:01:12.900 mark torino welcome to the show thanks brett you're an english professor and you've made

00:01:29.400 ernest hemingway the focus of your career you have a podcast called one true podcast where you discuss

00:01:35.140 ernest hemingway you're the editor of several journals about hemingway you've written a book

00:01:39.900 hemingway thought and action you also got a new book coming out one true sentence all about

00:01:44.240 hemingway so you're the hemingway guy how'd that happen how did you make hemingway a career for

00:01:48.160 yourself yeah it brett it really snowballed i think probably my origin point with hemingway i grew up

00:01:55.040 in a house full of readers my father was a journalist my mother was a writer so my mother was always reading

00:02:02.620 books my dad was always was always reading newspapers so i just gradually read through the

00:02:09.220 bookshelves their bookshelves were always full and then when i was about 20 or 21 i got to hemingway

00:02:16.100 and i just it he just really grabbed me the language the clarity of his language subject matter so yes i

00:02:24.920 read all his novels i read his short stories and i just was hooked i was hooked so yeah hemingway is a

00:02:31.580 huge part of my teaching and my research without a doubt yeah i think hemingway like if you grew up

00:02:37.600 like my parents had copies of him they had like like you know these old hardbound books of all of

00:02:42.340 hemingway's stuff fitzgerald's stuff and yeah i was kind of like you when i got into high school

00:02:47.400 i somehow like i was bored and we didn't have fortnight back then so i was like oh okay i'll read

00:02:53.240 for whom the bell tolls and it was great yeah and you know so i think i probably started with

00:02:59.320 the sun also rises just because it was probably shorter than for whom the bell tolls and looking

00:03:04.600 back i can't imagine i understood what i was reading because it's it's some of the stuff in

00:03:11.100 hemingway is not apparent on the surface i don't know if brett if you felt the same way i did but

00:03:16.800 there was something about the atmosphere like the way the characters spoke that it just i loved being

00:03:23.100 in that world even though i wasn't a hundred percent sure what was going on no i felt the

00:03:28.640 same way too sometimes you have to read it a couple times to for it to sink in no doubt yeah no doubt so

00:03:33.860 what i like to do with this episode is talk about hemingway's life in general but also his work and

00:03:37.780 his influence because hemingway is one of those he's one of those virile writers right he he did

00:03:42.440 manly things bullfights hunted went to war and then he wrote about those things let's talk about how

00:03:49.120 did hemingway find his way into writing was you know could you see when he was a kid growing up in

00:03:54.240 you know illinois outside of chicago that he was going to be a writer he really could actually his

00:04:00.580 mother was into the arts was a music teacher in addition to being a doctor his father was

00:04:05.960 a naturalist you know a hunter and extremely knowledgeable about all things nature hemingway also

00:04:16.120 had his ancestors were in the civil war and so all of the elements that would come to define

00:04:25.020 hemingway were were there really early on it's really funny to look at hemingway's high school

00:04:31.040 prophecy and he said i want to travel and write and i don't know if any of your listeners when you

00:04:39.500 were a senior in high school could nail your future so perfectly i want to travel and write well

00:04:45.400 what better definition of hemingway than those two activities because those are the two things that

00:04:50.760 would come to be his trademark no yeah and one thing too if i i read you know preparing for this

00:04:56.380 podcast i read uh carlos baker's seminal biography and one thing it talked about hemingway when he was

00:05:02.400 a kid like he loved to tell stories and like some of the like when he would tell people like what

00:05:06.180 happened like something an experience that he had he would embellish it like and he would sort of he

00:05:10.640 was kind of cutting his teeth and kind of creating he was creating himself into a storyteller yeah that

00:05:16.100 never changed in fact much to his own detriment even when hemingway did impressive things like go to

00:05:24.160 world war one as a red cross volunteer as an ambulance driver in world war one on the italian front

00:05:31.200 when he came back he would embellish it and if you look at his letters they're filled with a lot of

00:05:37.500 fiction and so sometimes the fiction and the non-fiction blur and so you're saying like

00:05:44.140 hemingway's greatest fictional character that he ever created was himself that that kind of blustering

00:05:50.500 papa hemingway figure that to some people might be unattractive because there's something

00:05:56.780 inauthentic about it you know i i know that you said he you know he did virile things and manly things

00:06:02.260 and depending on how you define those things what it what does it mean to be manly what does it mean

00:06:08.720 to be virile i know those are chief concerns of your podcast is it also virile or manly to then

00:06:16.480 inflate those things or to boast about them or is it better to be understated and so these are things

00:06:23.000 that at various stages of hemingway's life are intention and you're reading the baker biography which

00:06:29.340 makes his life story it's so extremely interesting and then and then also can be a little bit sad

00:06:37.000 that whatever he did however impressive it was somehow was never enough yeah yeah i mean i i got

00:06:44.980 i got that sense that he was always trying to grasp for something more and you know it's interesting too

00:06:49.700 with the being a braggadocio if you look at different times in the history of masculinity

00:06:54.800 there's been periods where being a braggart was seen as a virtue and it was celebrated

00:07:00.640 at other times it was criticized and you know so maybe maybe that's why people often have

00:07:06.380 conflicted feelings about hemingway let's talk about you know how did he he did some writing when he was

00:07:11.700 in high school he wrote some short stories um that got you know his teachers like this is really good

00:07:16.520 he ends up eventually working as a journalist at the kansas city star how did that experience influence

00:07:22.580 his writing style that we'd see throughout the rest of his career right so i think i think it was

00:07:29.040 was huge it was a enormous impact the the writing that he did for the kansas city star and then also

00:07:34.820 the toronto star as a correspondent so first of all stylistically being a journalist taught him

00:07:44.000 how to do more with less in other words get to the point be clear be declarative

00:07:51.380 these are traits that would come to define hemingway's writing style even though it may not

00:07:57.660 encompass it totally it is certainly part of his early style is that hemingway was direct and clear

00:08:05.500 this is one of the things that can be so refreshing to read a hemingway novel or a hemingway short story

00:08:10.820 as opposed to like henry james right it's that journalistic clarity the objective fact that will then

00:08:19.700 convey the emotion to the reader without actually saying it so that was certainly a big part of it

00:08:25.960 i would also say that in kansas city he was covering characters so in other words he would cover crime

00:08:33.900 stories he would be out on the streets he would learn he would maybe see a side of life that he hadn't

00:08:40.520 seen in oak park before so he was he was sort of accumulating characters and experiences i think those

00:08:47.940 were those were extraordinarily important and then as we get a little bit later when he is a foreign

00:08:55.700 correspondent when he's in europe writing for the toronto star he is then reporting on wars like in

00:09:03.360 smyrna 1922 and the peace conference in lausanne so he's traveling around the world he's meeting you

00:09:10.000 know mussolini and denunzio and all all these characters so on the one hand as you were suggesting it's

00:09:16.400 certainly made a huge difference with respect to style but also the experience which later emerged

00:09:23.720 in his writing right and i think if anyone has read a hemingway novel they'll notice that sort of just

00:09:29.160 short declarative sentences right it's just there's no he doesn't waste anything with like lots of commas

00:09:34.720 and semicolons it's just bob bob bob and it and like you think it'd get monotonous but it doesn't it

00:09:40.800 seems really fresh and punchy and it also can convey a lot of emotion and i think that's just

00:09:45.820 part of that something he was able to hone throughout his career yeah at his best brett he

00:09:51.740 certainly does what you're describing his early short stories big two-hearted river for instance

00:09:57.440 soldier's home he'll write exactly as you're describing it and somehow the reader will get more

00:10:03.800 however he didn't you can't say that that style maintained consistently throughout his career it

00:10:12.140 it's really prominent in the 20s one sort of technique that he developed to as you say when

00:10:20.160 hemingway writes something you read it and you're like well there's more going on here and hemingway

00:10:24.680 is actually that was intentional by him way he had this thing he called the iceberg theory what is the

00:10:28.660 iceberg theory that hemingway developed oh yeah well the iceberg theory is is really crucial to

00:10:34.560 understanding hemingway as you as you said it's probably the most important aesthetic statement he

00:10:42.100 ever made about his own work and so in in 1932 and in his bullfighting treatise called death in the

00:10:50.620 afternoon it's mostly about bullfighting but occasionally he does also talk about art and he says in that

00:10:57.600 book he says if a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that

00:11:05.060 he knows and the reader if the writer is writing truly enough will have a feeling of those things

00:11:11.760 as strongly as though the writer had stated them now think about that actually we can go beyond

00:11:19.820 hemingway and even beyond literature and just think about that as an artistic statement where

00:11:24.500 when is it better for an artist to withhold information to withhold facts to withhold

00:11:32.300 any kind of expression in the hope that the reader or the audience will supply the rest

00:11:40.020 so in other words if you use understatement what you're essentially doing is forming a collaboration

00:11:47.820 with the reader so i'll give the reader i'll give the reader half and then i think the reader will

00:11:55.080 come the rest of the way let me just give you one example that i think might clarify what he's talking

00:12:01.920 about a lot of hemingway's characters are soldiers or veterans well brett i know you have a lot of

00:12:09.720 soldiers and veterans on your program how do they usually talk about the war are they usually effusive

00:12:16.080 and forthcoming and you tell me about the war oh good i'm glad you asked and then they go on for 45

00:12:21.060 minutes no the ones that i've ever met are usually laconic and they're they they answer in kind of

00:12:28.080 objective ironic sort of terse statements because it's not pleasant to think about it's not it's it's

00:12:37.560 like the emotion of the story is too valuable so in fact it adds to the value by understating

00:12:46.000 does that make sense no that makes sense no that makes sense and there's a in thought and action

00:12:50.800 your book you wrote about hemingway you have a few examples of that where you had i think there

00:12:54.820 were short stories that hemingway wrote where you had soldiers they were obviously veterans going off

00:12:59.480 into the wilderness to kind of get away from it all but in the short story hemingway never says

00:13:04.480 that they were veteran i mean it was sort of implied like he never made it explicit though

00:13:08.640 yeah that's exactly right so i think the the best example of that that you're bringing up is a

00:13:14.820 short story called big two-hearted river which is an early short story that was published in 1925

00:13:20.340 in our time in that collection of short stories and as hemingway would later describe that story

00:13:26.460 he said it was it was it was a story about the war with no mention of the war so the boy nick adams

00:13:37.440 goes on a camping trip to kind of recuperate from the trauma of world war one and so what ends up

00:13:44.360 happening is we we learn about the camping and the fishing and making dinner in excruciating and when

00:13:52.560 i say excruciating it's wonderful it's not it's it's just that he it's painstaking detail he tells us

00:13:58.920 everything about the camp but what he doesn't tell us is why he's there so in other words he nick adams

00:14:06.420 the character is trying to banish the war from his mind in the same way that hemingway has banished

00:14:13.300 the word war from the story itself or at least from the text of the story a second example of that that

00:14:20.360 perhaps your listeners would have would be familiar with is hills like white elephants from 1927

00:14:27.080 which is a story about a man and a woman in spain arguing about whether she should get an abortion

00:14:36.500 abortion and again the word abortion is not brought up so the reader really has to bring

00:14:43.020 his or her own interpretive powers creativity own experience into the act of reading

00:14:52.140 and like you said that's kind of that's that replicates life a lot of times people do things

00:14:57.560 and there's a reason for it but they don't talk about it you know it's as simple as if someone

00:15:04.040 says how is your day and you say oh well i'm glad you asked so the alarm clock went off in the morning

00:15:10.540 and you know don't you hate one alarm clock they start they give you every single thing or you say

00:15:14.760 like how is your day how was work ah don't talk to me about work uh works work or if you know if they

00:15:20.720 say something all right well that's not really giving me much but you know what i can infer

00:15:24.680 i can infer that the meeting didn't go well it was a rough day you got yelled at you know there was

00:15:30.580 tension going on so i can i have to participate if somebody tells me every detail from the alarm clock

00:15:38.300 to how the coffee tasted to the commute i have no role in the anecdote or in the communication

00:15:45.860 and so i think you can see that it's very risky to write in this way because you're depending

00:15:54.480 on the energy of the reader and you know i i would even liken this to movies if you if you look at

00:16:04.240 the way actors used to act in the you know films from the 1930s all of their expressions and gestures

00:16:12.160 are operatic you know it's like over the top and now if you know if someone has just gotten some

00:16:18.480 terrible news sometimes an actor won't even react i'll just move his eyes or something it'll be in

00:16:25.380 a close-up and you have to say as as a audience member like well how would i feel if i were in that

00:16:31.960 position if i got that news and there's something a lot more intimate something a lot more inclusive

00:16:38.440 about this technique okay so the iceberg theory that can help a lot of people who have read hemingway

00:16:44.360 they're like i don't know what's going on here like understand that he he's saying he's left a

00:16:48.980 lot of stuff unsaid and that's part of the process and you got to kind of fill in the blanks well yeah

00:16:54.420 and brett let me just say it's called the iceberg theory obviously because one eighth of an iceberg

00:17:00.100 is visible and the bottom seven eighth is submerged and so you know he's like i when i was a kid i was

00:17:08.260 like well why did the titanic why didn't they just steer around the iceberg well it's like okay i didn't

00:17:12.360 realize it was a mountain underneath the water you know and so think about if in all of human

00:17:18.820 communication the vast majority of what is communicated what is expressed is not the words

00:17:27.000 it's gesture it's unspoken emotion it's suggestion it's things that are implicit and so perhaps this is

00:17:36.160 literature that hemingway is aiming for that replicates that realism of human expression okay

00:17:46.600 so when hemingway is a young man he goes off to italy joins the red cross as an ambulance driver gets

00:17:50.960 his leg blown up and he comes back but then he he goes back to europe and this is like the part like

00:17:57.200 i always i'm always like dumbfounded by this this part of hemingway's career because he goes back to

00:18:02.120 he moves to paris in his early 20s and he joins these cool authors like these are like the leading

00:18:07.740 you know modernist intellectual writers and he just shows up they're like okay this journalist from

00:18:14.520 oak park illinois you can hang out with us i'm always like every time i read that i'm like how did

00:18:19.140 that happen it'd be like you know someone just some kid going up to cormac mccarthy hey cormac can i

00:18:24.000 just hang out with you he's like yeah i don't think that would happen so why did hemingway decide to

00:18:28.380 move to paris and how did he get in with you know like gertrude stein and like i mean james he hung

00:18:32.560 out with james joyce like well how did that happen yeah i find that astounding as well so the story

00:18:39.280 is that he originally he and his first wife hadley had intended to move to italy and sherwood

00:18:46.260 anderson author of winesburg ohio a writer who is one generation older than than he is actually

00:18:53.420 suggested paris and also said that he would write letters of introduction to him to various

00:19:01.160 established writers who are around paris and he did he just switched and he went to paris and you

00:19:08.560 know if he had gone to rome instead of paris i'm not even overstating this i think 20th century

00:19:14.580 literature would have been totally different it really changed and i think as you're saying i i look

00:19:21.780 at his life and even more astounding than his writing ability his vision for his own art what is

00:19:31.020 really astounding is the gusto with which he networked how he hit the ground and he was so determined

00:19:41.860 to be a success and you're you're absolutely right he's hanging around with fitzgerald joyce gertrude

00:19:50.200 stein i think it was very important that he went to the bookstore shakespeare and company the english

00:19:56.700 language bookstore owned by sylvia beach which was like a hotbed for expatriates and the sort of

00:20:05.020 literati around around paris but yeah hemingway as much of a gift for writing as he had he really

00:20:12.180 had a gift for self-promotion well going back to that yeah he's he's like the greatest story

00:20:18.260 hemingway ever told was this hemingway that was the greatest story he was creating that yeah that's

00:20:22.800 right yeah he saw where he wanted to go and was absolutely single mon he was you know monomaniacal

00:20:30.500 f scott fitzgerald who had just published the great gatsby became his great advocate and he fitzgerald

00:20:41.480 convinced scribner you know the leading literary house to publish the sun also rises sight unseen

00:20:50.800 and i mean as you're saying in your question brett like imagine any other guy in his mid-20s

00:20:57.300 showing up to paris and having that kind of heavyweight support it's just so improbable

00:21:04.300 it wouldn't have happened in italy but it certainly did happen in paris he found himself

00:21:10.360 right where he needed to right where he needed to be well besides the networking and the contacts

00:21:15.660 that he developed there did his time in paris that that did that influence his writing at all like

00:21:19.860 did you know gertrude stein said you need to do this with your writing kid to make to get better

00:21:23.880 yes without a doubt in at least two ways the first way was he was exposed to art and i mean visual art

00:21:33.480 so hemingway was always he was never ignorant of art because of his his mother was cultured and you

00:21:40.960 know he lived right outside chicago but when hemingway talks about influence in that time i mean

00:21:46.880 you should read i'm sure you have a movable feast his memoirs he talks as much about the painters as he

00:21:53.900 does about writers so he was influenced by visual art too and of course paris would have been

00:22:00.180 the ideal place for that also secondly hemingway didn't have a college education i mean he did well

00:22:06.740 in high school but his college was you know going to italy in world war one and bouncing around as as

00:22:12.840 a journalist so what he really did was he read omnivorously he read the people that his mentors

00:22:21.540 told him to read and those were really russian writers french writers so things that he really would

00:22:29.600 not have been exposed to you know hanging around in oak park but he became much more cosmopolitan

00:22:36.860 and those were the types of books that really influenced his great work of the 1920s well what

00:22:44.700 are some of those like russian always like dostoyevsky like who was he who was he yes dostoyevsky

00:22:49.160 turganiev tolstoy when jake barnes and the sun also rises is reading a book

00:22:55.800 in pamplona before he goes to sleep he's reading turganiev's sportsman sketches so you can think

00:23:03.120 of it he's like shouts out to turganiev in the middle of the sun also rises basically you know

00:23:08.480 tipping his cat thanks for the thanks for the inspiration yes he read but he also read flaubert

00:23:15.060 stendhal it was like a college education it was just on his own it's really interesting the shakespeare

00:23:22.060 company has the their their lending cards available and so you can really see literally what he and his

00:23:30.920 wife checked out in the 20s and it's a lot of it's amazing that most they're mostly european writers

00:23:39.300 as opposed to keeping up on the american literary scene i think you also mentioned in thought and

00:23:45.740 action like he also read freud like he started reading all that stuff too and you could see that

00:23:49.640 influence in his in his works he did and i think he read my if i'm thinking about what freud might have

00:23:59.500 meant to hemingway my suspicion is that you know did hemingway actually read the interpretation of

00:24:06.600 dreams i doubt it but i think being in paris being an intellectual being alert to you know hanging around

00:24:15.860 smart people in the 1920s i think he would have been aware about modern psychology william james and

00:24:24.260 freud and bergson and so forth even if he didn't kick back and read freud on a rainy sunday you know

00:24:31.440 we might also add brett that freud said that the human brain was like an iceberg so seven-eighths of

00:24:40.040 what's going on in our mind we're not even aware of it's the subconscious as opposed to the one-eighth

00:24:46.140 that we're actually conscious of so anyway more beneath the surface than than above the surface

00:24:50.920 we're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors

00:24:53.480 and now back to the show so something about hemingway he was extremely competitive and he's

00:25:00.500 also very critical of other writers like in yeah in paris he called everyone phonies like ah these are

00:25:05.080 phony said as a poser but were there any writers that he could openly admit to admiring

00:25:10.420 well i mean do you know those people who like they can't give you a compliment without a

00:25:17.240 qualification or an exception the back the backhanded compliment you get yeah yeah it's like there it's

00:25:23.660 like oh you know if you did this you'd be good or hey when you do this you're good or this one time

00:25:30.640 you were and and so if you it's actually a really fun game if you can go through hemingway and try to

00:25:36.780 find unqualified compliments especially to other writers and they're so rare it's actually an aspect

00:25:45.740 of hemingway's personality i find incredibly unattractive just how ungenerous he is to other

00:25:52.660 writers now you asked if there were writers to whom he was completely complimentary only a couple come to

00:25:59.740 mind i think james joyce although i can think of things that he criticized about joyce but he really

00:26:05.680 did revere joyce and shakespeare however he said like about joyce in and i know we're we're speaking

00:26:14.300 in the hundredth anniversary of ulysses he would say oh and joyce bloom is great but stephen dedalus

00:26:21.120 is not that great so one of the characters was great the other character was not that great molly was

00:26:25.960 great steven was not that great and you're like are you kidding me you know to be so to be critical

00:26:32.020 of ulysses you know the greatest english language novel of the of the 20th century even writers like

00:26:37.880 dostoyevsky tolstoy tryganev who we were talking about fitzgerald stein sherwood anderson who actually

00:26:44.940 gave him his big break in paris hemingway was critical of everybody he he could he could compliment

00:26:53.020 he could compliment them occasionally but he was very sparing with that a great example of this also

00:27:00.020 just to conclude here would be mark twain so everybody remembers that he said all modern

00:27:06.460 american literature begins with huckleberry finn you think like wow can you have a better compliment than

00:27:12.560 that well keep reading the quote because the quote continues it goes however if you read it you have to

00:27:18.880 stop when the boys meet back up with jim right and like so in other words the last quarter of the book

00:27:25.860 is faking so even this great compliment what some people say is like the most you know the most colossal

00:27:32.020 compliment in literary criticism it's only a half compliment and i find that really sad even when

00:27:38.360 when hemingway reached the status that nobody could ever you know pulitzer nobel he was still he was still

00:27:47.840 pretty catty well yeah like what what do you think drove that i mean it's kind of petty like what do

00:27:52.520 you think drove that what was behind that do you have any i mean this again you're just psychoanalyzing

00:27:56.240 here of course insecure i mean i would say that when i that for the same reason if you know you and i

00:28:02.320 were hanging out with somebody who was acting like that i would say it's insecurity so you know we

00:28:08.940 talked about earlier that hemingway he led a very active life he hunted he fished he traveled he was

00:28:13.880 an aficionado of bullfighting how did all that stuff impact his writing well you can't even separate

00:28:21.320 it it was a symbiotic relationship where he did all of those activities to feed into the writing

00:28:29.000 and in writing he sort of explored the magic behind all of those activities so with hemingway you can't

00:28:38.120 really imagine one without the other you know we started this conversation by talking about

00:28:42.740 hemingway's childhood when he was really exposed to fishing and hunting he went to war as an extremely

00:28:49.280 young man right he was 18 years old when he was blown up in italy so all of these pursuits were

00:28:57.020 really part of him they were just baked into who he was and so that when he was writing about them

00:29:04.500 they were very natural and like for instance you know bullfighting is a great example i've never

00:29:10.240 seen a bullfight uh never attended the bullfights i really don't to be honest don't really have much

00:29:15.580 interest in doing it however what hemingway wanted to do he didn't just want to write like oh let's set

00:29:20.820 a novel at the bullfights he wanted to find that kind of magic or glory or something that was

00:29:30.980 that only somebody who truly understood the bullfights could impart so that when you read the

00:29:39.340 sun also rises even if you're not you know a particular fan of bullfights you need to know

00:29:45.700 that he loved the bullfights and that he understood the bullfights and his characters did and so to me

00:29:51.760 that's good enough you know what i'm saying it's like he under he had a real insider's appreciation for

00:29:58.740 all these activities even drinking i might add well he reminds me a lot of uh theodore roosevelt he's

00:30:04.660 the same way he was very active but roosevelt also turned his his stuff that he did into writing like

00:30:10.720 you know the reason yeah he went hunting in africa and he turned that into a book yeah the the great

00:30:16.820 the great uh hemingway biographer michael reynolds he said that i mean he points out that

00:30:23.460 like any other american boy born in 1899 or thereabouts you know theodore roosevelt would

00:30:32.020 have been the icon that you would have looked up to and so when hemingway goes to africa in the 30s

00:30:37.960 and then again in the 50s you know that's all sort of under the spell of what theodore roosevelt

00:30:44.100 how he projected manhood so one of the you know there's kind of this image again that hemingway

00:30:50.740 has and i think he perpetuated it he kind of spurred it on his ideas like this party animal

00:30:56.840 you know living big you know drinking etc did that carry over to his work or was he pretty regimented

00:31:03.140 with his work so i hesitate to make a blanket statement because i think during his life his work

00:31:09.780 habits changed you're absolutely right and when you say party animal well the european title for

00:31:17.400 his first novel was fiesta right for the sun also rises was actually called fiesta so he's often seen

00:31:23.720 as somebody who celebrates the you know the festival of san fermin and and and so forth i think the best

00:31:31.020 way to think about hemingway is that he was disciplined for most of his life in that he would wake up

00:31:37.080 really early and he would write so he'd wake up early and maybe he would do some correspondence and

00:31:43.400 then he would put in a morning's work and that could be two three four hours and then around lunchtime

00:31:52.160 the drinking would begin and so he would be drinking he would be maybe he would go fishing or he'd go

00:32:00.200 hunting he'd see people so that would really be and and so there was a discipline to the way that he

00:32:08.020 approached alcohol for much of his life it wasn't like he would be writing while he was drunk but

00:32:15.060 that's how much of his life was structured yeah he took his writing really seriously in fact he called

00:32:21.460 it the awful responsibility of writing and i really like this quote from the the carlos baker biography

00:32:27.680 he said that for hemingway nothing could match a writer's satisfaction and making a new piece of

00:32:33.540 the world and knowing that it would stand forever writing was what he had come to earth to do it was

00:32:39.660 his true faith his church his politics his command so yeah i mean even if he had you know stayed up late

00:32:46.780 the previous night or he's hung over i mean the guy still got up at 5 30 or 6 in the morning and got

00:32:52.260 down to work and like you said you know he kept his drinking till after work but it was hard to

00:32:57.440 maintain that lifestyle and i i mean it did catch up with him and his health and we also had some

00:33:03.560 like serious injuries throughout his life that oh yeah probably affected i mean what i mean i

00:33:08.100 yeah i was reading the biography and it's like man this poor guy like he fell on his head like five

00:33:12.180 times in a plane crash car accident car accidents i mean he got blown up in italy so yeah a lot of

00:33:18.520 physical trauma that he experienced throughout his life yeah and we would you know there's there's a

00:33:23.420 a there's a book out called hemingway's brain that really makes the argument that by andy farah who

00:33:30.600 makes the argument that essentially hemingway might have had cte you know like the concussion

00:33:35.700 malady that football players and boxers have yeah i mean he got his head knocked around every

00:33:40.840 every you know frequently he was also a boxer and you know he kept you know he would crack his head

00:33:47.820 open on his boat the pillar yeah so yeah he was he was certainly accident prone yeah and his cte

00:33:54.500 might also have contributed to some of his bad behavior as well as his suicide so when hemingway

00:34:01.640 went about his work he wrote like i know jack london another virile writer soon as he wrote like he was

00:34:08.100 done with it he didn't want to look at it again was hemingway like that or did he like to read over

00:34:12.360 and edit his own work yeah so that's another excellent question that also depends on the

00:34:20.060 era of hemingway that we're talking about it's a famous story that in a farewell to arms he would

00:34:26.920 literally read the entire book up until the point where he was writing and then continue that day's

00:34:32.800 work so imagine that that you're literally rereading that book over and over and over again to get into

00:34:38.820 the world of the book and then you continue on whatever new writing you have that day now i don't

00:34:44.840 say he always did that hemingway also it's it's i've i've been very lucky that i've studied hemingway's

00:34:52.280 manuscripts a lot so there's a lot of hemingway archives are in boston at the john f kennedy library

00:34:58.700 which is like nirvana for a hemingway scholar you get to see essentially how the sausage was made you 0.76

00:35:04.720 know and you you get a really good sense of hemingway as a craftsman where hemingway would

00:35:10.580 labor over syntax and word choice and you could really see how he kind of whittled his sentence

00:35:19.820 down until it was at its most powerful however later in life like a novel that i've spent a lot

00:35:26.920 of time with is called across the river and into the trees which was published in 1950 and he was a much

00:35:33.000 less careful editor in that book he seemed like he was almost in love with his own voice and his

00:35:42.540 character's voice and he would just let them ramble on and he didn't pare that down the way he might

00:35:48.040 have 25 years earlier well i think there was one point in his career when i think it was more

00:35:52.840 meticulous like he really took both the craftsman approach and then he also but he believed in like

00:35:57.440 the the artistic like the muses like sometimes you just get hit with something and it just comes out of

00:36:02.080 you but he's able to synthesize the two sort of approaches yeah i think that's a good point he you

00:36:08.820 know there's a famous statement that he made about fitzgerald in his memoir immovable feast where he says

00:36:15.500 fitzgerald had the talent that was as natural as the pattern that dust makes on a butterfly's wing

00:36:22.700 but then once fitzgerald became conscious of it he you know he spoiled it and then he couldn't he

00:36:28.100 couldn't fly anymore and so in other words like fitzgerald was this sort of preternaturally

00:36:33.560 talented precocious guy who couldn't didn't have the discipline to foster his own talent to kind of

00:36:40.140 take care of it whereas hemingway sort of like worked for every word it was like a brick layer that

00:36:47.180 he would just lay down the words and so like hemingway was blue collar sort of a craftsman

00:36:52.960 while fitzgerald was like an artist yeah and i think that that dichotomy is a little bit too easy

00:37:00.160 it really it really i mean if you look at the manuscript of the great gatsby no yeah labored

00:37:06.140 yeah oh he worked he worked he had to do the work you know just like nothing comes out of you that's

00:37:11.740 the great that sounds like the great gatsby just because you got lucky but i think what is important

00:37:16.740 about that is that that shows what hemingway valued and hemingway loved the self-image that he was

00:37:24.480 maybe not as talented as fitzgerald but through hard work and discipline and professionalism

00:37:32.520 he became more successful than fitzgerald so one of the criticisms that's levied at hemingway

00:37:38.720 is that his characters are you know these like kind of one-dimensional action-oriented he-men

00:37:44.660 right but you make this really compelling case in your book ernest hemingway thought and action

00:37:49.580 which i yeah i really enjoyed this well thank you that if you read hemingway closely you actually

00:37:54.920 discover that hemingway's characters are actually very extremely thoughtful and introspective how did

00:38:01.600 hemingway's books explore the tension and dynamic between you know introspection and action yeah i

00:38:08.280 brett i think that really is is the crux of it and and that's what i i explore in that book thought

00:38:15.580 and action so really there is a cartoon image of hemingway and maybe to some extent hemingway is to

00:38:23.000 blame for a lot of this but if you look at his characters his characters are are intellectual you know

00:38:29.960 they're either journalists or you know frederick henry in a farewell to arms wants to be an architect or

00:38:35.440 they're writers or they're painters you know they're not um they're not really tradesmen or

00:38:42.000 like blue collar workers they're really not so what hemingway i think what hemingway's approach was

00:38:49.020 is to say okay men of action doing things that are active is not that interesting intellectual people

00:38:57.500 who are busy in thought that's not that interesting what's interesting is when somebody who is thoughtful

00:39:06.600 is forced to act and so if you are how do intellectual sensitive vulnerable introspective

00:39:17.820 people behave at war or when they're hunting or when there's a crisis

00:39:26.980 how does the mind work under that kind of stress so what do you do when thought is either not

00:39:36.360 appropriate or it's not useful or actually it's even injurious it's it can detract from your behavior

00:39:44.880 one of my favorite statements about this is what when hemingway's talking about he says the greatest

00:39:50.780 gift for any soldier is the ability to suspend imagination however imagination is the most

00:39:59.240 important trait for a writer so go ahead now go try and figure out that contradiction like so how do you

00:40:06.180 how do you function if you have and if your brain is telling you don't think about this don't think

00:40:12.140 about that don't think about this but that's the way your brain is structured and i think that is

00:40:18.280 where a lot of tension comes in hemingway novels i think all of us have experienced that where

00:40:24.640 we yes where thought gets in the way we like we're in a crisis right or we're in this problem like

00:40:29.800 actually thinking about the thing too much is going to prevent you from from succeeding

00:40:34.580 yes except that and hemingway said another thing hemingway said he said the reason very few

00:40:42.900 good soldiers ever become good writers is because if during the battle you were thinking about the

00:40:50.920 battle or let's say reacting to the battle or doing what you were told or functioning as a professional

00:40:56.620 soldier well then you probably weren't able then to create the scene fictionally and so he says of

00:41:08.380 shakespeare the reason shakespeare he said shakespeare writes like he was a soldier he's like

00:41:13.820 shakespeare's able even though shakespeare never went to the military was not in the military he writes

00:41:19.560 like he did and to hemingway you you know you can't offer higher praise than that you know let me if i

00:41:26.120 could just add one thing brett uh hemingway around world war ii edited a collection an anthology

00:41:32.880 called men at war where he essentially assembles his favorite war writing that uh has ever been

00:41:41.160 published so in other words it'll be things from it could be things from the bible it could be

00:41:47.900 stephen crane's red badge of courage stendhal tolstoy etc etc and it's a really interesting window

00:41:53.660 into hemingway's reading and how he viewed this dichotomy of of thought and action

00:41:59.880 did he ever solve the tension did he figure it out do you think between thought and action

00:42:06.040 yeah uh at his best he i think i think he did at his best he he did and so in other words to show

00:42:14.840 how precious thought is he would what he would do would be like i must not i mean if you read for

00:42:24.600 for i think probably the best example of this or at least the most striking example is is for whom the

00:42:28.720 bell tolls underline every time he says i must not think about this i must not think about that

00:42:34.360 i must he's he's coaching himself on what is going to be useful thinking and what is not useful what is

00:42:43.320 going to distract him and so that's kind of that's called metacognition which is to when you have

00:42:50.340 thoughts about your thoughts uh you're saying like what would be useful to think about in this

00:42:55.240 circumstance and what will end up getting me killed and getting my friends killed so what's your 0.68

00:43:01.640 favorite hemingway novel and why is that and then like also this is the follow-up question like let's

00:43:05.460 say someone's listening to this and they haven't read hemingway since college or whatever like what

00:43:09.300 would you recommend to start up with and why yeah so my terrible answer for my favorite hemingway novel

00:43:15.740 is always the novel i'm about to teach okay so i teach lots of hemingway novels and on rotation

00:43:21.840 so i don't get bored of them and like the next one i'm going to teach is the sun also rises so that's

00:43:27.140 what i'm most excited to to teach what i would recommend to people who are let's say just getting

00:43:32.720 into hemingway is i i would start with the short stories so you know hemingway published 49 short

00:43:39.280 stories the first 49 and of which like 10 or 12 are fantastic i would read the killers hills like

00:43:47.720 white elephants indian camp the snows of kilimanjaro you know any number of those great short

00:43:53.860 stories and then if you like them you know the old man in the sea is only about 90 pages and you

00:44:00.080 could read that in a day or two and then if you like that you can go on to the the longer novels like

00:44:05.040 a farewell to arms for whom the bell tolls the sun also rises what's your favorite bread for whom the

00:44:10.620 bell tolls yeah right yeah that's a good one i've read it a couple times well that's a big one you

00:44:15.660 know that's a you have to admit that's a that would be a big one to to bite off first but it's

00:44:21.180 a it's a it's like i don't know i didn't feel laborious to read it's just it's a it was an

00:44:25.740 enjoyable read so you are the host of one true podcast and that takes the show takes its name from

00:44:32.120 a famous quote of hemingway's where he said this he said all you have to do is write one true sentence

00:44:37.940 write the truest sentence that you know so you often ask your guests that you have on your show

00:44:42.680 what they think was hemingway's one true sentence so and i'm gonna turn the tables on you what do

00:44:48.780 you think was his one true sentence and why so one true sentence really started because when i when

00:44:56.140 i teach hemingway i often start with one sentence as kind of an entrance into this broader topic that

00:45:03.080 is hemingway so i can give you i can give you several one true sentences but here i think is the

00:45:09.020 one that i would i would choose by way of context in 1922 so when hemingway was a young man still

00:45:17.080 unpublished as a fiction writer he was covering a conference in switzerland as a journalist and his

00:45:25.160 wife brought him all of his writing his unpublished work in a suitcase in a paris train station

00:45:34.080 that suitcase was stolen which means that hemingway lost a year or two of his writing now this is of

00:45:42.180 course in the days before flash drives and sending it to yourself on email and so forth so hemingway and

00:45:49.540 you can picture hemingway's first wife had to go tell hemingway that all of his material had been

00:45:54.660 had been lost so apparently hemingway as he tells it in a movable feast he rushes back to paris

00:46:01.460 because he can't believe that all this stuff is gone and then here's the sentence it was true all

00:46:07.560 right and i remember what i did in the night after i let myself in the flat and found it was true

00:46:14.680 so he says it was true all right and i remember what i did in the night after i let myself in the flat

00:46:22.740 and found it was true and the reason to me that is a magnificent one true sentence is because it is

00:46:31.920 probably the best encapsulation of the iceberg theory that i've ever seen in one sentence

00:46:37.720 because what he tells you in that sentence is that yes it is true and that he remembers what he did

00:46:44.280 but of course he doesn't tell you what you really want to know which is what did you do

00:46:50.900 did he tear up his his apartment did he resolve to break up with his wife did he go out and get

00:46:58.280 drunk did he do something violent did he do something he was ashamed of and what are the

00:47:03.440 range of things that he might have done as a reaction to losing all of his writing and i love

00:47:10.220 that in this sentence all he is telling us that 30 years later 35 years later he remembers what he did

00:47:19.580 so that's a pretty good iceberg sentence isn't it that is a good one you also you have a book coming

00:47:25.100 out where you have people talk about their one their favorite one true sentence yes so we have a book

00:47:31.820 coming out july of 2022 this is it's called one true sentence writers and readers on hemingway's art

00:47:39.720 it's coming out from godine and yes exactly it's a collection of these types of interviews with our

00:47:47.700 guests where we ask them the first question of every interview is what is your one true sentence

00:47:52.300 and why and then we take it from there and so we have elizabeth strout sherman alexi a scott berg and

00:48:00.100 on and on and on a lot of hemingway scholars and different people who have different experiences with

00:48:07.520 hemingway and they have different reasons for responding to some of these sentences uh ken burns and

00:48:14.600 lynn novick wrote the introduction so we're really excited about the book and it's it's actually

00:48:19.580 a nice way to kind of sample hemingway for people who might be like okay well what's your what is your

00:48:26.020 take on hemingway uh so we hope that this book does a good job of that well mark this has been a

00:48:30.820 great conversation where can people go to learn more about your work well we are on twitter at one

00:48:37.400 true pod so the number one true pod and one true pod.com so o-n-e true pod.com and yeah we hope

00:48:46.260 you listen if you're interested in hemingway well mark torino thanks for your time it's been a pleasure

00:48:51.240 brett thanks so much for having me my guest today was mark torino he's the author and editor of

00:48:56.980 several books on ernest hemingway including ernest hemingway thought in action he's also the host of

00:49:00.960 the one true podcast available on all podcast players check that out if you want to go to a deep

00:49:05.360 dive on ernest hemingway also check out our show notes at aom.is slash hemingway where you find

00:49:09.540 links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the

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The Art of Manliness - March 17, 2022

The Writing Life of Ernest Hemingway

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