Which author do you think , in terms of experimentation and presentation of complex themes, is superior?
It should be noted that this thread concerns itself only about the complexities of the authors' works.
I think Faulkner is more masterful, not overall because that would be very subjective and I think Hemingway is better in some other areas, when it comes to the complexities of this characters, voices, and imageries.
How do you take this?
I take it as a sign of wrath.Originally Posted by Alexander III
Np, more of a sign of what might come . . . there's been no shortage of debate in another thread on Faulkner and Hemingway.
As for complexity alone, like him or hate him, I don't see how anyone can deny that Faulkner is the more complex of the two. That doesn't make him better or worse.
Well, I would like to know why do you think he is more complex?
Complexity? Faulkner wins - hands down.
As Hemingway said in his famous back and forth with Faulkner, "you don't need big words to communicate big emotions." This is true. But, Faulkner deals with much bigger issues than Hemingway, and does it in a much more complex manner. Faulkner's world is very deep and very dark, there's incest, retardation, insanity, rape, destruction, poverty, racism, castration (****ing castration!)...Hemingway is a giant, but he's never delved quite that deep. His experience, however, might be more human than Faulkner's.
Sentence structure, odd punctuation use, stream-of-consciousness, odd narrators, odd stories, all-around odd grammar. Hemingway is pretty straight-forward with his simplistic prose.
Just look at the oft cited first paragraph of Faulkner's short story, "Barn Burning." You won't find anything like that with Hemingway:
"The store in which the justice of the Peace's court was sitting smelled of cheese. The boy, crouched on his nail keg at the back of the crowded room, knew he smelled cheese, and more: from where he sat he could see the ranked shelves close-packed with the solid, squat, dynamic shapes of tin cans whose labels his stomach read, not from the lettering which meant nothing to his mind but from the scarlet devils and the silver curve of fish - this, the cheese which he knew he smelled and the hermetic meat which his intestines believed he smelled coming in intermittent gusts momentary and brief between the other constant one, the smell and sense just a little of fear because mostly of despair and grief, the old fierce pull of blood. He could not see the table where the Justice sat and before which his father and his father's enemy (our enemy he thought in that despair; ourn! mine and hisn both! He's my father!) stood, but he could hear them, the two of them that is, because his father had said no word yet:"
That's funny because I'd just finished the piece a couple of days ago. Also, I have noted, based on my limited reading of the two authors' works, Faulkner's prose tends to be vocabulary intense. (meaning that difficult, unfamiliar words are more likely to appear on his pages)
Yes, and we thank the Gods for that. Just because someone strings a lot of words together doesn't mean that that writer does it well. Hemingway would have been less wordy, and he might have said something interesting or useful.
Faulkner from a diction point of view, is more complex - but on terms of style - they are both equally complex. I mean to create what Hem does requires just as much talent as to create what Faulk does.
Minimalism does not mean simple and easy.
I mean the first chapter of Farewell to Arms is just as stunning as any of Faulkner. Faulkner on first glance always appears, that there is a lot more behind there. Hemingway on first glance, it appears straightforward, he is more deceptive than Faulkner in that sense, as with Faulkner one is prompted to think and look and feel deeper - with Hemingway, one may never feel prompted to do that, by the seeming simpleness of his style. But in truth they are both stylistically highly complex and beautiful.
I think Hemingway, however is better at ending that Faulkner. Faulkner usually begins better - but outside of Tolstoy I don't think any one is able to create as beautiful and profound endings as Hemingway in the Novel.
but that is not exactly complexity, it is oddity.
You must think this way: Poe or Stevenson, Cortazar or Borges, Faulkner or Hemingway, Joyce or Kafka, Dostoievisky or Tchekhov. Baudelaire or Flaubert.
Sometimes they have the same themes, same deepth, but the style makes then be more dark or obscure. It is he basic classicism or baroque distinction, if you want to test your theory compary Faulkner with other apparently simplistic prose writers, Tchekhov, Borges, Stevenson, Kafka or Flaubert. They all can replace Hemingway in this argument. Would the idea that the themes or characters or narrative are as complex to sustain the position of Faulkner?
Actually, it was the opposite for me, Hemingway was always great on the first reading with diminishing returns thereafter. On the the other hand, Faulkner gets better with every reading. Hemingway is more complex than he appears on the surface, but so is Faulkner and to an even greater degree. Due to the complexity and erudition of Faulkner's prose, there is a tendency among the Faulkner novice to thus believe that everything is obvious. This had led to even scholars and critics missing entire themes in his work, only to have them discovered in yet another critical revision decades later.
Take the ending of The Sound and the Fury for example. It was long the established view that the ending represented a return to order and hence a sense of optimism on which to close the novel. Only later did critics realize the clockwise and counter-clockwise nature of the scene and how that ties into the theme of clocks and time that pervades the novel especially Quentin's chapter. When considered in this light, the ending is not a hopeful return to order, but an allusion to the inevitable fatalism of time, of decay and despair. Thus, the same ending long considered a ray of optimism in an otherwise haunting novel, becomes an ineffable cry of despair, of which Benjy's lugubrious effluviums are emblematic. Yet on another level this seems cathartic for Benjy, and Jason (the modern incarnation of Compson) seems at least accepting, this, in turn, is a double-edged sword. Is it a hope of redemption through acceptance and catharsis, or merely a case of being uncognizant (Benjy) or uncaring (Jason) of inevitable torment? Is Faulkner's point, in the final analysis, that apathy and idiocy are the only feasible means of coping with fate? Or is it a testament to the endurance of humanity?
This leads to my next point, which regards quality of endings. Hemingway is very good at making an emotional ending that tugs at the heartstrings, that I will readily concede. However, Faulkner's endings are more haunting, complex, and textured of which the aforementioned is but one example. Thus we have come full circle to my first point rereadability. “Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” is a great ending, the first time around. However, "I don’t hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I don’t. I don’t! I don’t hate it! I don’t hate it!" has a greatness that endures.
Last edited by kinesj; 09-06-2011 at 10:10 PM.
Hemmingway is more hidden, and more subtle in many regards. Take for instance the interesting collection In Our Time - there is a complexity linking the stories, and linking events together in that, mixed with fragments thrown into the confusion - the prose is simple, but what isn't there confuses, makes it complex beyond belief.
Likewise could be said of Faulkner's work, Flags in the Dust immediately springs to mind. Faulkner's style, furthermore, is a means of relaying the complexity and chaos of thought. Hemingway, on the other hand, is so self-conscious in his own editing of his prose that his work never approaches this level of authenticity. Thus (not entirely but to a certain degree as a result of this) was Faulkner able to create a living and breathing world that existed beyond each work into others. Hemingway gave us moments, Faulkner gave us history. Therein lies one difference, on an order of magnitude, between the two with regards to depth and complexity.
Last edited by kinesj; 09-06-2011 at 11:23 PM.
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