What do you think Hemingway's Best Fiction is?

Hemingway is one of the highest points where greatness in literature could ever reach. He was among the modern writers who are called "The Lost Generation," and an intimate witness of wars and conflicts. He was in a constant fight in himself and outside there were enough conflicts for him to tell the story of.

To me, his best work is: A Natural History of the Dead, a very short story where I could find all his philosophy as to the life in reality; a life which stands naked, cruel and vulnerable.

What is your pick?

I wouldn't rate Hemingway as highly as you obviously do but I do think he is a good writer and have read several of his works, though not the short story you mentioned. From the novels I would say that A Moveable Feast followed by Fiesta are easily better than his other novels.

I prefer Hemingway in these two works because for me he writes better when he is not trying to write fiction too much. In other words the more biographical his work the better I find it, strangely. I feel that in his other novels Green Hills of Africa, A Farewell to Arms For Whom the Bell Tolls etc, that he is trying to force things a little, whereas I prefer him in a more natural tone which is how I take the first two I mentioned.

Granted it has been a couple of years since I read Hemingway (apart from A Moveable Feast as I read that every year) but this is my take on Hemingway.

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Originally Posted by Neely

I wouldn't rate Hemingway as highly as you obviously do but I do think he is a good writer and have read several of his works, though not the short story you mentioned. From the novels I would say that A Moveable Feast followed by Fiesta are easily better than his other novels.

I prefer Hemingway in these two works because for me he writes better when he is not trying to write fiction too much. In other words the more biographical his work the better I find it, strangely. I feel that in his other novels Green Hills of Africa, A Farewell to Arms For Whom the Bell Tolls etc, that he is trying to force things a little, whereas I prefer him in a more natural tone which is how I take the first two I mentioned.

Granted it has been a couple of years since I read Hemingway (apart from A Moveable Feast as I read that every year) but this is my take on Hemingway.

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Interesting take on Hemingway, Neely. I like Hemingway, though, I must admit that I like him less and less as I get older. Still, the work of his that shines above the rest is The Sun Also Rises. And, I keep thinking about your [Neely] idea that his best "fiction" is more autobiographical than conscientiously fictional. The Sun Also Rises, I believe is another of those works that is more rooted in the author's personal experience than in his imagination.

The Old Man and The Sea, for me. I like its simplicity of language and its strong accessible themes.

I think Hemingway is WOEFULLY overrated. As is Virginia Woolf, Henry James and Anthony Trollope.

I just can't read Hemingway. I'm pretty sure that most of the people who love him are men- he has a very macho style which is sort of alienating for anyone who isn't a man.

I like some quotes from his work, which is why I want to finish a book, but...

I've read the following of Hemingway's works:
1. For whom the Bells Toll
2. The Sun also Rises
3. The Old Man and the Sea
4. Short stories, such as A clean, well-lighted place, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro

In my opinion The Old Man and the Sea is his best work, by far. I tend to like most of his stuff too, but to me that little novella reached a place that most works never do.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

I just can't read Hemingway. I'm pretty sure that most of the people who love him are men- he has a very macho style which is sort of alienating for anyone who isn't a man.

I like some quotes from his work, which is why I want to finish a book, but...

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Indeed, Hemingway has often been accused of being a misogynist, which I respectfully don't agree with. Maybe his excessive use of male characters in his works has created such an image of him in the minds.

Certainly, all of his protagonists are male and few female characters come to the fore in his books, but this is not a sound logic to base such a claim.

I assume this to be a mere artistic choice.

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Originally Posted by onioneater

I think Hemingway is WOEFULLY overrated. As is Virginia Woolf, Henry James and Anthony Trollope.

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Why do you think so, onioneater?

*Was his characters not genuine enough?
*Have you seen a defect in his use of language?
*Any flaws in the structure of his book?
*Or, was he too ordinary and even artless (a warmonger, a fight-monger) to write finer books?

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Originally Posted by beroq

Hemingway is one of the highest points where greatness in literature could ever reach. He was among the modern writers who are called "The Lost Generation," and an intimate witness of wars and conflicts. He was in a constant fight in himself and outside there were enough conflicts for him to tell the story of.

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Beautifully said - bravo! I have not read quite as many of his short stories as I have his novels; I have only read Winner Take Nothing. Of his novels, I have read quite a number, and have a lot of difficulty choosing a favorite; I loved them all for their own unique reasons. A Moveable Feast took me a bit longer to get through than most of his novels, because I could not connect with it quite as much, until about half through, particularly the parts with F. Scott Fitzgerald; For Whom the Bell Tolls had me on the edge of my seat in the same way that Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment did, due to its intensity; The Old Man and the Sea, which I read in one sitting (I could not put it down), brought me to tears; A Farewell to Arms I thought also a very emotional novel and deeply touching; The Sun Also Rises jumped around a lot, plot-wise and character-wise, but I thought this novel had the greatest depth for characters out of all I have read of Hemingway.
Overall, I would call it a three-way tie for A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea. Do any other of my fellow Hemingway-ians suggest what I should read next?

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Originally Posted by onioneater

I think Hemingway is WOEFULLY overrated. As is Virginia Woolf, Henry James and Anthony Trollope.

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Ironic, I have always thought the same about J.R.R. Tolkein.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

I just can't read Hemingway. I'm pretty sure that most of the people who love him are men- he has a very macho style which is sort of alienating for anyone who isn't a man.

I like some quotes from his work, which is why I want to finish a book, but...

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I admit, I have noticed more men enjoying Hemingway than women, very true, and good point; he can get a bit abrasive, and Hemingway, himself, even married many times - he grabbed life by the horns in multiple masculine acts (war, travel, hunting, etc.). Men in his novels have a common trend, at least out of the ones I have read, including a number of his short stories - every novel has a man as a sole main character, despite the book's written perspective; every one of those men, including while portraying himself in A Moveable Feast, has a gruff, harsh, strong-as-iron manner, but they all additionally have a frequently repressed emotion, sensitivity, and fragility about them - some of the main characters even shatter in emotion and tragedy, like in parts of A Farewell to Arms. I think this says a lot about Hemingway - a very masculine man, but a very sensitive individual.
Women can often get portrayed as weak dependents in his novels, I agree, and, in the words of that silly woman in the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the man will often function as the head in every plot of his novels, but the woman functions as the neck, and turns his head every direction. In the novels I have read, all of the male main characters have a weakness for beautiful women, particularly in For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms, and the female main characters in both of those novels, especially the former, end up appearing virtuous, hardworking, determined, and frequent decision-makers.

My favorite is The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) - great atmosphere.
Second place goes to For Whom The Bell Tolls.

Best regards

You can feel the testosterone coming out of his books

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

You can feel the testosterone coming out of his books

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What's wrong with that? Men don't have to hate Jane Austen just because her books are oriented more toward feminine issues. Masculinity is a point of view and a valid one. As Jerry Holkins recently wrote "Eventually, we'll come to understand that the universe is wide enough to contain ideas which do not pertain to us." Something may be quite good which is nevertheless not our cup of tea, and feminist or not, Hemingway is arguably the greatest prose stylist of the English language.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

What's wrong with that? Men don't have to hate Jane Austen just because her books are oriented more toward feminine issues. Masculinity is a point of view and a valid one. As Jerry Holkins recently wrote "Eventually, we'll come to understand that the universe is wide enough to contain ideas which do not pertain to us." Something may be quite good which is nevertheless not our cup of tea, and feminist or not, Hemingway is arguably the greatest prose stylist of the English language.

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Yes, but one could argue that Hemingway enforces and projects a sense of ideal masculinity that has become dated to our society. I wouldn't dismiss the books on those grounds, but I would acknowledge that that is somewhat founded criticism. His attacks on Fitzgerald, for instance, for being too womanly, illustrate a sense of Macho, patriarchal masculinity, that one can argue is a negative construct.

One doesn't even need to be a feminist to critique him - one could argue that his view of masculinity is harmful to males, as it enforces a male ideal identity.

That being said, I personally like a few of his books. The Sun Also Rises namely, and his Short Stories. As for greatest Prose stylist, one of the better ones, certainly, but I am reluctant to use the term greatest anywhere, especially since style, if good, is always idiosyncratic, and hard to compare.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

What's wrong with that? Men don't have to hate Jane Austen just because her books are oriented more toward feminine issues. Masculinity is a point of view and a valid one. As Jerry Holkins recently wrote "Eventually, we'll come to understand that the universe is wide enough to contain ideas which do not pertain to us." Something may be quite good which is nevertheless not our cup of tea, and feminist or not, Hemingway is arguably the greatest prose stylist of the English language.

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Yep, that is a good point which I have expressed before to some people. I don't know about him being the greatest prose stylist but I do think Hemingway takes a lot of unfair criticism due to his perceived "macho" style which I think is unfair to Hemingway the writer.

Good point and comparison about Austen, I would champion Austen from the rooftops for her effortlessness and ironic voice if nothing else, viewing her from a purely critical and impersonal level. However, I am not particularly drawn to her works as I am with some other writers, but this shouldn't, and doesn't, affect my critical view of her as a writer.

The bottom line for me is that Hem is has much more sensitivity and is in tune with some of the fundamental elements of life/nature then many give him credit for. I don't think he is the greatest thing since sliced bread but he is much more than a typical macho male novelist; to think so does him a discredit I think, read some passages from Fiesta to see what I mean.

his bull fighting documentary, 'Death in the Afternoon' and some of his Bylines (newspaper stories). The two I enjoy the most are 'The Sun Also Rises' (fiction) and 'A Moveable Feast' (autobiographical about his early days in Paris). I believe that which works you like the best is determined by the stage of life you are at when you read him. The 'Sun also...' is the best Hemingway dramatization of any of his works. Most of his stories were poorly done by Hollywood, but this one actually pretty well follows the book. Tyrone Power is a great Jake, and so is Ava Gardmer as Lady Bret. The supporting players are very good also: Errol Flynn, Eddie Albert, Audrey Hepburns' first husband whose name I can't remember. Hemingway is one of the great authors of the 20th cnetury. It is foolish and inane to dismiss him for some ill defined feminist reason, Great literature should not be ignored since ir leaves a definite gap in your reading. What the heck, I like Jane Austen, and I have read 'Gone with the Wind' twice. Don't let your emotions overcome the enjoyment most get out of Papa Hemingway.

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Originally Posted by Neely

I wouldn't rate Hemingway as highly as you obviously do but I do think he is a good writer and have read several of his works, though not the short story you mentioned. From the novels I would say that A Moveable Feast followed by Fiesta are easily better than his other novels.

I prefer Hemingway in these two works because for me he writes better when he is not trying to write fiction too much. In other words the more biographical his work the better I find it, strangely. I feel that in his other novels Green Hills of Africa, A Farewell to Arms For Whom the Bell Tolls etc, that he is trying to force things a little, whereas I prefer him in a more natural tone which is how I take the first two I mentioned.

Granted it has been a couple of years since I read Hemingway (apart from A Moveable Feast as I read that every year) but this is my take on Hemingway.

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I rate Hemingway about the same as you Neely. His novels are not the cream of the crop, but I do think his body of work with the short stories is as good as anyone. I also thin A Moveable Feast is a great work. Interesting you read it every year.

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Originally Posted by The Comedian

Interesting take on Hemingway, Neely. I like Hemingway, though, I must admit that I like him less and less as I get older. Still, the work of his that shines above the rest is The Sun Also Rises.

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The same thing has happened with me. The older I get, the less the novels impress. I do think that The Sun Also Rises is his best and perhaps only classic. However, the shear beauty of his prose in A Farewell To Arms should be noted.

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Originally Posted by mono

Do any other of my fellow Hemingway-ians suggest what I should read next?

I think this says a lot about Hemingway - a very masculine man, but a very sensitive individual.
Women can often get portrayed as weak dependents in his novels, I agree, and, in the words of that silly woman in the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the man will often function as the head in every plot of his novels, but the woman functions as the neck, and turns his head every direction.

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I recommend his Collected Short Stories Mono as next. He was actually more sensitive than he lets on and people think. I think you hit on Hemingway's female characters. They are essentially cartoons. They are extremely two dimensional. They are not real. At least not for me.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

What's wrong with that? Men don't have to hate Jane Austen just because her books are oriented more toward feminine issues. Masculinity is a point of view and a valid one. As Jerry Holkins recently wrote "Eventually, we'll come to understand that the universe is wide enough to contain ideas which do not pertain to us." Something may be quite good which is nevertheless not our cup of tea, and feminist or not, Hemingway is arguably the greatest prose stylist of the English language.

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Very good. I agree. We read Jane Austen and the Brontes and we don't complain about how feminine they are. :D

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Originally Posted by JBI

Yes, but one could argue that Hemingway enforces and projects a sense of ideal masculinity that has become dated to our society. I wouldn't dismiss the books on those grounds, but I would acknowledge that that is somewhat founded criticism. His attacks on Fitzgerald, for instance, for being too womanly, illustrate a sense of Macho, patriarchal masculinity, that one can argue is a negative construct.

One doesn't even need to be a feminist to critique him - one could argue that his view of masculinity is harmful to males, as it enforces a male ideal identity.

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I don't see the problem with him being dated. For God's sake do we criticize Chaucer for being out dated in his values? That's all relative. My problem with his masculinity is that at times, when he's forcing it (as someone above characterizes it) it's not real. It comes across as dishonest. But who am I to say if it's honest or not.

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That being said, I personally like a few of his books. The Sun Also Rises namely, and his Short Stories. As for greatest Prose stylist, one of the better ones, certainly, but I am reluctant to use the term greatest anywhere, especially since style, if good, is always idiosyncratic, and hard to compare.

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I think we completely agree in that assessment. :)

Much of the work of Ernest Hemingway belongs geographically to Europe and Africa: the background of A Farawell to Arms is Caporetto. This is I believe his most charactersitic work despite that I much prefer his Islands in the Stream, a very simple, impressive novel about which noone talked thus far. Many, however, prefer Death in the Afternoon, a bull-fighting masterpiece, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Neely wrote:

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I wouldn't rate Hemingway as highly as you obviously do but I do think he is a good writer and have read several of his works, though not the short story you mentioned. From the novels I would say that A Moveable Feast followed by Fiesta are easily better than his other novels.

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Virgil wrote:

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I rate Hemingway about the same as you Neely. His novels are not the cream of the crop, but I do think his body of work with the short stories is as good as anyone. I also thin A Moveable Feast is a great work. Interesting you read it every year.

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Hemigway's laconic sentences (indeed, they are all painfully compact) and air of half-callous detachment that goes along with a very fine sensitiveness towards women and nature, his observe of sentimentality -- all have a great influence on me. These qualities I believe make him one of the greatest in history.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

What's wrong with that? Men don't have to hate Jane Austen just because her books are oriented more toward feminine issues.

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Yes, but Austen is criticising her gender, and her style isn't overly feminine. Hemingway's is too macho and unpoetic- as in if a man looks at a tree, he just writes 'The man was looking at a tree.' I can't read like that.

I had a pretty tough time reading Hemingway this term. I read A Farewell to Arms, and I came so close to not finishing it more than once. No offense to any Hemingway fans, but he's boring! Too much details, and even if I tried to skip certain parts (something I only started doing with Hemingway) I feel that I'll be skipping the whole novel. There's no beauty about his writing, his dialogues didn't even make sense at times. His fans probably see something that I couldn't see, but I don't think I'll be reading any of his books any time soon.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

Yes, but Austen is criticising her gender, and her style isn't overly feminine. Hemingway's is too macho and unpoetic- as in if a man looks at a tree, he just writes 'The man was looking at a tree.' I can't read like that.

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I would disagree that his prose is unpoetic. It may not be overly descriptive like Faulkner's, but if by poetic, we mean the careful choosing of each and every word, Hemingway is poetic to the extreme.

The way you use poetic, however, I take to mean ethereal, beautiful, and lyrical. That is the way I usually mean poetic. In this case, I might point you toward the first chapter of A Farewell to Arms which simply describes valleys, streams, and mountains. Hemingway's prose is often fantastically poetic when dealing with nature - especially in The Sun Also Rises, when man can only really be himself in nature, and outside of the city. Take Jacob Barnes baptismal leap into the water near the end of the novel.

As for his work being overly macho. I'm on the fence. His male characters are almost always stoic and enduring, while his female characters are underdrawn and submissive. Nearly all of his male characters drink a fairly large amount of alcohol in any one sitting and often avoid talking about their feelings.

However, since one of the main themes of The Sun Also Rises is the repression of emotion to a subconscious level - and as the novel presents this as not necessarily a good thing - I could not describe Hemingway (at least in this novel) as specifically overly masculine.

The prose is not unpoetic. There are times Hemingway rises to shear peotry. Here's a passage I just pulled out of The Sun Also Riese:

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We packed the lunch and two bottles of wine in the rucksack,
and Bill put it on. I carried the rod-case and the landing-nets
slung over my back. We started up the road and then went across
a meadow and found a path that crossed the fields and went
toward the woods on the slope of the first hill. We walked across
the fields on the sandy path. The fields were rolling and grassy
and the grass was short from the sheep grazing. The cattle were
up in the hills. We heard their bells in the woods.

The path crossed a stream on a foot-log. The log was surfaced
off, and there was a sapling bent across for a rail. In the flat pool
beside the stream tadpoles spotted the sand. We went up a steep
bank and across the rolling fields. Looking back we saw Burguete,
white houses and red roofs, and the white road with a truclc going
along it and the dust rising.

Beyond the fields we crossed another faster-flowing stream. A
sandy road led down to the ford and beyond into the woods. The
path crossed the stream on another foot-log below the ford, and
joined the road, and we went into the woods.

It was a beech wood and the trees were very old. Their roots
bulked above the ground and the branches were twisted. We
walked on the road between the thick trunks of the old beeches
and the sunlight came through the leaves in light patches on the
grass. The trees were big, and the foliage was thick but it was not
gloomy. There was no undergrowth, only the smooth grass, very
green and fresh, and the big gray trees well spaced as though it
were a park.

"This is country" Bill said.

The road went up a hill and we got into thick woods, and the
road kept on climbing. Sometimes it dipped down but rose again
steeply. All the time we heard the cattle in the woods. Finally,
the road came out on the top of the hills. We were on the top of
the height of land that was the highest part of the range of
wooded hills we had seen from Burguete. There were wild straw-
berries growing on the sunny side of the ridge in a little clearing
in the trees.

Ahead the road came out of the forest and went along the
shoulder of the ridge of hills. The hills ahead were not wooded,
and there were great fields of yellow gorse. Way off we saw the
steep bluffs, dark with trees and jutting with gray stone, that
marked the course of the Irati River.

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I'm surprised so many people favor The Sun Also Rises. I'm also surprised that nobody seems to have mentioned The Old Man and the Sea, which I personally think is his best work.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

Yes, but Austen is criticising her gender, and her style isn't overly feminine. Hemingway's is too macho and unpoetic- as in if a man looks at a tree, he just writes 'The man was looking at a tree.' I can't read like that.

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That's exactly what I like in Hemingway. No single overt romanticism. No hyperbolic sentence structure. If one wants to be poetic, let him/her write poetry.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

The prose is not unpoetic. There are times Hemingway rises to shear peotry. Here's a passage I just pulled out of The Sun Also Riese:

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But that reads like a complicated map. Apart from the 'This is country' part, I can't see anything poetic in there.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

But that reads like a complicated map. Apart from the 'This is country' part, I can't see anything poetic in there.

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I'm with you Kelby. I think Hemingway would be the last writer whose works I would ever willingly pick up.

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Originally Posted by wessexgirl

I'm with you Kelby. I think Hemingway would be the last writer whose works I would ever willingly pick up.

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And I would probably be the last person to pick up a Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts, or Harlequin Romance book. I'm just not the intended audience for those novels. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to brushing my hair in the mirror, listening to Enya, and practice putting on my makeup so it doesn't smudge.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

But that reads like a complicated map. Apart from the 'This is country' part, I can't see anything poetic in there.

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I don't see what's so complicated about it. Looks rather simple to me. But whatever.

I have a love-hate thing with Hemmingway. I did not like his real life persona at all, so perhaps that influenced my feelings, but when I am able to put that aside and not think about him at all, I liked very much The Old Man and the Sea and Farewell to Arms because they get to the heart of issues and they seem rather able to embrace feelings commen to all man. Aside from that I choose not to think of him much.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

And I would probably be the last person to pick up a Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts, or Harlequin Romance book. I'm just not the intended audience for those novels. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to brushing my hair in the mirror, listening to Enya, and practice putting on my makeup so it doesn't smudge.

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I would NEVER pick up ANY of those authors or genres either, so what are you trying to say?

Is the implication that because I'm a woman I would automatically go for that trash, and not a male writer? I read writers from both sexes. I just don't like Hemingway. I don't like his macho posturing, but that doesn't mean I don't like male authors.

And for the record, I don't listen to Enya, and don't need to practice putting my make-up on. I have been doing it for long enough to have it down pat. Make-up on and hair brushed in 5-10 minutes in the morning, and out of the door, without a worry all day about if its smudged. Dear me, I'll be drummed out of the sisterhood!

You seem to have a very old-fashioned image of the role of the sexes.

men= Hemingway= manly and deep, (obviously too deep for little old me, flutters eyelashes and simpers)

women= being girly and shallow, not enough of the old brain-power to understand the profundity of writers like Papa. We have to go for light and fluffy, or our brains might explode.

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Originally Posted by mortalterror

And I would probably be the last person to pick up a Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts, or Harlequin Romance book. I'm just not the intended audience for those novels. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to brushing my hair in the mirror, listening to Enya, and practice putting on my makeup so it doesn't smudge.

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Classic...

I have to say why would the posters that have issues with a writer feel the need to do this to a thread that the OP just asks for an opinion on an author's best work. I don't vent spleen on threads whose subjects that ask for similar opinions of writers I loath (and there are A LOT of these). What does that accomplish or how is that germane to the OP? IMHO it shows a lot of disrespect to the forum member who started the topic.


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As to the OP, I would say its between The Sun Also Rises or some of the short story gems.

I read A Farewell to Arms back in 1990 as part of my American Lit coursework and had an excellent and passionate teacher who hammered a passion for this writer in my head. I loved Hemingway, I loved the Farewell and short stories. Came back to read Old Man and the Sea a couple of years ago and found it OK, read The Sun also Rises a few months ago and was thoroughly irritated by that sparse style (Hemingway's strength). I admire his philosophy of 'grace under pressure' which defines my own personal philosophy in life. Everybody breaks but it is how you behave at the breaking point that really matters. He has some superb things to say on writing and life which can really change your outlook on things. Unfotunately now I find his fiction tedious as I approach my 40th year. 19 years on I can not recall any writer that I studied in that US Lit course with whom I really failed to fall in love. A good teacher can inject an amazing amount of enthusiasm.

"As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary." Ernest Hemingway

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Originally Posted by promtbr

Classic...

I have to say why would the posters that have issues with a writer feel the need to do this to a thread that the OP just asks for an opinion on an author's best work. I don't vent spleen on threads whose subjects that ask for similar opinions of writers I loath (and there are A LOT of these). What does that accomplish or how is that germane to the OP? IMHO it shows a lot of disrespect to the forum member who started the topic.

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I was agreeing with a previous poster's opinion, not "venting spleen" as you put it. Excuse me, but I thought this was a discussion forum. If we all agreed about how wonderful every author mentioned is, there would be no such board. I don't have "issues" with Hemingway, I don't like him. And by saying that I'm not trying to disrespect the original poster. I feel however that those comments aimed at me were patronising in the extreme.

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Originally Posted by wessexgirl

men= Hemingway= manly and deep, (obviously too deep for little old me, flutters eyelashes and simpers)

women= being girly and shallow, not enough of the old brain-power to understand the profundity of writers like Papa. We have to go for light and fluffy, or our brains might explode.

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I am afraid you are being to harsh toward Hemingway. I don't think he ever meant that women have to be shallow. Female characters in his books are as deep and complicated as the male ones.

That's true, Hemingway, especially in his short stories, talks not too much about women but when he talks, he makes them as real as his male characters are.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I recommend his Collected Short Stories Mono as next. He was actually more sensitive than he lets on and people think. I think you hit on Hemingway's female characters. They are essentially cartoons. They are extremely two dimensional. They are not real. At least not for me.

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I will definitely consider it, Virgil, during my next trip to the bookstore. I've read the majority of Winner Take Nothing, but, otherwise, have only read a few here and there. Thanks! :)

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Originally Posted by mayneverhave

As for his work being overly macho. I'm on the fence. His male characters are almost always stoic and enduring, while his female characters are underdrawn and submissive. Nearly all of his male characters drink a fairly large amount of alcohol in any one sitting and often avoid talking about their feelings.

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'Stoic' sounds like the most appropriate term, I believe. The men have little expression, show even less emotion, and appear as mostly impervious and indifferent to their surroundings, with a few exceptions (such as the main male character of A Farewell to Arms); internally, however, they all have hearts as soft as fresh cotton.
I still stand very true to my opinion that many female characters in Hemingway novels appear weak and submissive only on the surface of them, throughout the novel later seeming deeply thoughtful, strong decision-makers, and occasionally very dominating and short-tempered, such as the main female character from For Whom the Bell Tolls. Calling all Hemingway female characters weak, submissive, and unintelligent demeans the depth of all Hemingway characters, whether male or female; all his women have an undeniable beauty, whether in personality or physiological, or both, strength, and unspoken yielding manner to them, but for the reason of conformation to their surroundings, rather than fighting everything.

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Originally Posted by beroq

I am afraid you are being to harsh toward Hemingway. I don't think he ever meant that women have to be shallow. Female characters in his books are as deep and complicated as the male ones.

That's true, Hemingway, especially in his short stories, talks not too much about women but when he talks, he makes them as real as his male characters are.

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That may be true of Brett - the major female figure of The Sun Also Rises. But even with her, her primary motivating factor is using her sexuality to establish power in social situations (hardly a complimentary attribute).

In A Farewell to Arms, the character of Katherine is hardly a character at all except through the perspective of Frederick Henry.

The traditional Hemingway criticism is related to the macho criticism - his female characters have no depth.

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Originally Posted by mono

I still stand very true to my opinion that many female characters in Hemingway novels appear weak and submissive only on the surface of them, throughout the novel later seeming deeply thoughtful, strong decision-makers, and occasionally very dominating and short-tempered, such as the main female character from For Whom the Bell Tolls. Calling all Hemingway female characters weak, submissive, and unintelligent demeans the depth of all Hemingway characters, whether male or female; all his women have an undeniable beauty, whether in personality or physiological, or both, strength, and unspoken yielding manner to them, but for the reason of conformation to their surroundings, rather than fighting everything.

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This is a persuasive argument, but one I don't completely buy. I must admit, however, that I am no Hemingway expert, and have not read enough of his material to come to a conclusion on his entire body of work.

'The Old Man and The Sea' is one of the most powerful, and beautifully crafted novels I have ever had the pleasure of reading and studying. The man so effortlessly and poetically wrote an iceberg of meaning!

The discussion keeps returning to women in Hem's fiction, and as much as I love his writing, he did often have problems with creating believable female characters and love stories.

Some critic suggested - it may have been Lynn in his Hemingway biography - that Hemingway had some real issues with women, something that started with his mother dressing him up in girl's clothes. To what extent this is true or interesting can be debated, but there is a rather striking development as regards women in his writing. Step by step, their roles in the novels changed.

In Sun Also Rises, Brett is probably the strongest character of all, and in Farewell to Arms, Henry, the 'code hero', learns his way of living according to the code from Katherine. In for Whom the Bell Tolls, by contrast, Maria is a young girl of virginlike qualities (though she has been raped), who is extremely submissive and visits Robert Jordan in his sleeping bag right after they have met. While she is restored to life from their love, she is little but a love interest for Jordan, or even just sex. Across the River is a love story between an old man and a young woman where the woman listens to the man's stories and Old Man and the Sea does not feature a woman at all (except for a tourist at the end or something).

Step by step, the women in his books changed from being strong leading ladies (some might argue) to passive observers of men and their manly business, in the end disappearing completely.

Someone mentioned Pilar, the strong woman and leader of the guerrilla band in FWBT. Some critics have read Maria and her for a way to Hemingway to split his fears and desires of women into two different characters, rather than having them in one as in earlier books.

It has been awhile since I read Farewell, but I wrote a paper on FWBT last term and I love that novel despite its ridiculous love story. It is one of those books that just has an amazing atmosphere, some suspense and even a bit of humour.

Of course the simplest way to approach Hemingway is through his short stories. If you don't get excited by stories such as "Indian Camp" or "Old Man at the Bridge", you need not bother.

Why does every book have to include not just women but strong female role model type characters? I find that as ridiculous as suggesting that every movie needs to have a kid and a small animal in it. That's a nonissue for me. That's a big SO WHAT? There aren't any Russians or unicorns either. I imagine the people voicing such objections as saying a lot of other ludicrous nonsense like ”What do you mean there aren't any pirates in this novel?” “If there aren't any piebald horses why should I bother?” and “Frankly, I find anything that doesn't have a spaceship or a dragon on the cover pedestrian.” A strong female character is not an essential building block for the construction of a great work of fiction. Why is everyone pretending like it is?

I agree with you Mortal. I think it's the influence of the radical feminists on criticism.

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Originally Posted by Tallgren

The discussion keeps returning to women in Hem's fiction, and as much as I love his writing, he did often have problems with creating believable female characters and love stories.

Some critic suggested - it may have been Lynn in his Hemingway biography - that Hemingway had some real issues with women, something that started with his mother dressing him up in girl's clothes. To what extent this is true or interesting can be debated, but there is a rather striking development as regards women in his writing. Step by step, their roles in the novels changed.

In Sun Also Rises, Brett is probably the strongest character of all, and in Farewell to Arms, Henry, the 'code hero', learns his way of living according to the code from Katherine. In for Whom the Bell Tolls, by contrast, Maria is a young girl of virginlike qualities (though she has been raped), who is extremely submissive and visits Robert Jordan in his sleeping bag right after they have met. While she is restored to life from their love, she is little but a love interest for Jordan, or even just sex. Across the River is a love story between an old man and a young woman where the woman listens to the man's stories and Old Man and the Sea does not feature a woman at all (except for a tourist at the end or something).

Step by step, the women in his books changed from being strong leading ladies (some might argue) to passive observers of men and their manly business, in the end disappearing completely.

Someone mentioned Pilar, the strong woman and leader of the guerrilla band in FWBT. Some critics have read Maria and her for a way to Hemingway to split his fears and desires of women into two different characters, rather than having them in one as in earlier books.

It has been awhile since I read Farewell, but I wrote a paper on FWBT last term and I love that novel despite its ridiculous love story. It is one of those books that just has an amazing atmosphere, some suspense and even a bit of humour.

Of course the simplest way to approach Hemingway is through his short stories. If you don't get excited by stories such as "Indian Camp" or "Old Man at the Bridge", you need not bother.

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Great points Tallgren. I've never said that Hem's problems with women were that they were all weak. That is flatly untrue by those that claim it. Anyone reading For Whom The Bell Tolls knows that Pillar may be the strongest woman of 20th century lit. The problem with Hem's women, and you say this too, is that they are two dimensional.