Previously in this series: How To Tell If You Are In A Brontë Novel.
1. Everyone you know respects you. This disgusts you.
2. The door is white and the day is hot. This pleases you.
3. A Jewish man believes you are his friend. This disgusts you.
4. You are a man. A man! A man is a man like a tree is a tree.
5. A Greek man is shouting incomprehensibly at you. This is why you are drunk.
6. You have lost something in a war. This is why you are drunk.
7. A woman is looking at you. She is wearing her hat in a manner you find unbearably independent and mannish. You despise her.
8. You are standing on top of a mountain. The mountain admires you for climbing it. You do not care what the mountain thinks of you, and you light a cigar. The cigar admires you for smoking it. You sneer casually at the sun. Somewhere there is a white door.
9. You are shooting a large animal but thinking about a woman. You cannot shoot her. This infuriates you.
10. You met a homosexual once in Paris. It took you two years snowshoeing across the backcountry in Michigan to recover.
11. You have said goodbye to a young girl with a white face on a black train. You are ready to die.
12. Waiter bring me another rum
13. You hate every single one of your friends. You have no friends. You are alone at sea. How you hate the sea, but how you respect the fish inside of it. How you hate the kelp. How indifferent you are to the coral.
14. Your stomach hurts; that is how you know you are alive.
15. You are standing in a river and something is coming to kill you. You will welcome it with open arms and a booming laugh when it comes.
What I have taken from this list is that I actually no longer have to feel guilty about never having read Hemingway. This pleases me.
me too. I always suspected I’d hate Hemingway; this cements it.
I have watched the hilariously terrible biopic In Love and War starring Sandra Bullock and Chris O’Donnell AS HEMINGWAY (I shit you not) more times that I should probably admit to; I always figured that was all the exposure I needed.
every time someone on my writers forum refers to him as a genius I roll my eyes and slump back in my chair and refuse to read anything by him
yes, yes, syaing a lot without a lot or prose, blah blah, the genius of sparse writing, yadda yadda, manly masculine writing… None of these things are of interest to me, so why would I give a shit?
I can only speak for myself, but his writing is sometimes extremely beautiful, and it’s not nearly as manly manly as it’s made out to be, at least before he started believing his own mythos.
*whispers* Hills Like White Elephants is really good and relatively short.
Yeah, no, I am all about Hills Like White Elephants.
HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS IS RIDICULOUS
(this is mallory i am at my sister’s house and i can’t figure out how to log in under my real name so just believe me i guess)
still love the lil buddy though
HLWE was the first piece I really dug into on my own lit crit wise back in high school. I pulled out all symbols and beat that shit into submission. It probably made me the English major I am today. *warm fuzzies*
Hills Like White Elephants is the only Hemingway worth anyone’s time. I wrote a screenplay based on it and there is just SO MUCH THERE. So good.
It is but it was also published in a collection called “Men without Women” so there’s that too.
The only one I vaguely recall enjoying was “A Moveable Feast”. Probably because it was so different from the rest of his work. I remember picking up one of his books when I first started reading “big people” books, maybe 5-6 years old, and being bored. Tried again 10, then 20 years later – not much improvement.
A Moveable Feast is the only one I’ve been vaguely tempted by, if just from a literary gossips perspective.
That’s exactly why I enjoyed it…
A Moveable Feast is really fun, because of all the gossip. Totally like it.
But I also like Hemingway, so eh.
Having read this list, you have now essentially read the collected works of Hemingway. Except the part about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s penis in A Moveable Feast.
Well I definitely can’t miss out on THAT. To the library!
Let’s just see it’s less Great Gatsby and more Tender Is The Night
!!!!
You may have just convinced me to read Hemingway…
Okay, but just so you know, the title “A Moveable Feast” does not actually refer to Fitzgerald’s penis.
count me out
I tell everyone to read it because of that part!!
The parts with Hemingway in Midnight in Paris and The Paris Wife really cap the amount of Hemingway I’m willing to tolerate.
While the above captures some of the essence of Hemingway, it is a shame if it puts you off reading his books because they -at least the ones I have read- are simply great. I read some of them 30 years ago as a teen and remember how wonderful they were to read. The Pearl. Old Man and The Sea.
See! This is why I had to put a personal ban on many times a week I can post links to The Toast on facebook. There is too much good on here and I can’t even handle it.
I have no shame, and bombard them with the best.
oh my God Mallory. Yes.
(You are wearing a tweed fisherman’s sweater. There is dried salt in your beard.)
I’d still hit it.
only so he could write a terse little story about the latest woman to steal a sliver of vitality from his thick salty beard
Right on! 🙂
The matador has killed the bull and died of his wounds. You respect the matador. The crowd cheers. You hate the crowd. You are the only one with authentic feelings, the only one in the world. This is why you are drunk.
You are a man as the matadors are men and they respect you for it. Everyone is drunk.
You respect the matador until he sleeps with the woman. Then you hate him. This is why you are drunk.
Hurdyburdy,
You did it again! Spot on…..
I despise Hemingway. Even when I’m drunk.
I despise Hemingway as well. This is why I am drunk.
Spoiler alert: Hemingway despised Hemingway, too, and did something about it.
I wish I were still writing lit. papers, because I would cite the hell out of this whole series.
5. A Greek man is shouting incomprehensibly at you. This is why you are drunk.
Wait, Hemingway wrote about my marriage?
ba dum bum! I literally LOL’d at this (and pictured you w a hand mic)
Have I mentioned the time I thought Hills Like White Elephants was about trepanning?
lol, i wish!
Now that I think of it, you may be right!
I’ve always seen Hemingway as the Bear’s Bear, a man so manly there is no way his manliness is aught but a performance to attract other manz. A cabled fisherman’s sweater is a harness by any other name.
it worked on fitzgerald
(there is NO WAY anyone will convince me they did not touch dicks at some point in their lives. sexually. for pleasure. not pleasure like before the war, of course, but what passed for pleasure in the jazz age.)
ALSO Hiddleston/that dude in Midnight in Paris (see below) (swoon yes)
COREY STOLL. yes. yes. yes to both of them
This is very funny, but more about the idea of what Hemingway is like than his actual writing. Horrified critics: please actually read some Hemingway before telling me I’m wrong.
Oh, for sure (still Mallory, still on my sister’s laptop, still can’t remember my actual login), the subtitle for this series could easily be “Comically Exaggerating Already Idiosyncratic Writing Styles.”
Hemingway RULES the school
You’re wrong, though.
I have read all of Hemingway, most of his works several times. This is so exactly what Hemingway’s writing is like that I could not stop laughing.
Even the Hemingway I actually like (both books) he’s so self-important. If he’d just had like an ounce of ability to laugh at himself, what a writer he could have been.
You are exactly right, Janet. Bravo!
You are not wrong. You are right. This disgusts you.
Wait but what about the cats?
yessss. my friend and her husband visited key west this summer and I was all like “shut up about the beach–did you see those six-toed angels?” She said you aren’t supposed to touch them (I have not verified that fact) but that her husband did anyway.
I totally pet them when I was there and it was worth it
I had NO IDEA what the White Elephant story was about until my son read it in his high school AP class and when I remarked, hey you’re reading that weird Hemingway story, and he explained slowly and patiently that it was about abortion. To his credit, he did not roll his eyes.
Amazing.
Have we all seen Midnight In Paris? The portrayal of Hemingway in that movie was just the best. The friggin best. I fell in deep and instant love with his monologue to Owen Wilson’s character – “All cowardice comes from not loving, or from not loving well, which is the same thing.” (The rest of his dialogue was all about drinking and disliking Zelda and bulls. So many bulls.)
That’s the closest to swooning I’ve been in a long time.
I respect the character’s words but I despise the creator.
OH GOD I LOVE THAT PART SO DEEPLY. When he talks about war? So perfect and I SWOON.
Also after that movie I was desperately hoping they would cast Tom Hiddleston as Gatsby in the movie.
my bf and i quote THAY Hemingway all the damn time because its flawless
He was the best part of that movie, no question about it.
omg the rest of his dialogue was yelling at literally no one WHO WANTS TO FIGHT
HAVE YOU EVER SHOT AT A CHARGING LION
he is the only hemingway one can love
THAT MOVIE. Whenever I watch that movie, I find Owen Wilson’s character’s issue of having to choose between the grown up, brunette Regina George, the exquisite Marion Cotillard, and that other french Manic pixie dream girl utterly insufferable. But then the clock strikes twelve and they bring out Hemingway, Tom Hiddleston as Fitzgerald (!), and Adrian Brody as Dali (!!!) and I find myself smiling like an idiot.
Oh Hemingway. One winter break in HS I read The Bell Jar and The Sun Also Rises. My memories of the scene in TBJ where the narrator talks about meeting a real live woman-hater (the dude who gives her a diamond) and the whole of TSAR are inextricably linked. Then I read some Gertrude Stein, which was… an improvement.
I’ve never read Hemingway because my father, The One Who Reads (as opposed to my mother, who has other interests), was so over him by the ’80s. This list is giving me a serious case of the confirmation bias giggles.
“confirmation bias giggles” I KNOW WHAT TO CALL THEM NOW
AH hahaha to #12. I mean this whole thing is amazing obviously, but violations of parallel construction for purposes of humor are my favorite.
Can’t pick out a favourite line, it’s all SO good. Let’s bombard Melis with more author ideas because I can’t get enough of this series (and the accompanying comments are always funny/droll/insightful, too!).
& Toast get out of my mind! I just started reading A Moveable Feast LAST NIGHT
I dunno if this list is going to help anyone; probably most Hemingway characters have already ragequit The Toast after all our flippant remarks about taking to the sea.
I never could stand those mannish girls and their independent hats.
It is raining. A woman is afraid of the rain. This disgusts you. You are going to die in the rain. This pleases you.
Guys my dad used to play “The Hemingway Game” with his college lax bro friends where they could only speak in Hemingway’s sentence structure, a la:
“We are going to get pizza.”
“This beer is cold. Cold is good and true on this hot day.”
“The party tonight will be fun.” “Yes.”
Anyway, he taught me to play it when I was little before I’d even heard of Hemingway.
Anyway anyway, I just sent this to him because I love it.
This is so awesome it hurts.
I think my dad’s a Toastie waiting to happen, honestly.
My sister and I used to have Talk Like Hemingway Thursdays! I’m so glad other people do this.
We actually did it to irritate our father, who was the only one in the family who liked Hemingway.
I laughed at this so hard I cried. A+++
I quoted a Clean Well Lighted Place just last week! “Our nada who art in nada”
Sigh. I have such issues with Papa (obviously. As we all should) but there are some of his short stories that are kinda okay if you don’t like structure your whole life around them.
Is it too reductive to say that I hope to never read anything of Hemingway for the rest of my life?
This list makes me feel like that is fine.
Everyone has their pet peeves when it comes to authors, but if the criteria is “people I believe to be noble and would enjoy hanging out with,” your library will likely be quite small.
Your syntax is special. You break up all your phrases. With belligerent periods. Like you’re a talking Tommy gun. Bludgeoning your listener. With macho staccato.
These are all the stage notes I need to impersonate Hemingway and/or Ron Swanson. THANK YOU
“The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.”
(Ernest Hemingway)
You say something obnoxious. You rile up Mallory. You see her tip her hat rakishly but in a womanly way. Parody bites you in the ass.
You know the Hemingway story I really, really, REALLY hate? “Indian Camp.” That’s the one where little Nick as a little impressionable boy goes with his doctor daddy out to the camp of Indians in the woods to deliver a baby. Those Indians, they all live together in one hut, right?
Well, the Indian woman has been in labor for days. Nick’s daddy doctor had to do a c-section, without anesthesia, on Mom. (I can’t remember why. Certainly we had ether at this point, so who knows. Maybe we just don’t do anesthesia with savages?) Anyway, pregnant mom screams all through the surgery, because who would not. Little Nick has to help hold her down.
You think this is a story about the suffering of women? PSYCH!!
The story ends with the camera dollying back to show Dad, who has been in the upper bunk all along. And — he has CUT HIS THROAT with a straight razor, because he just couldn’t TAKE IT!!!
Yep. That’s right. It’s all about the Menz.
Dad being the Indian woman’s fella, not Nick’s doctor daddy.
The doctor daddy is later.
I once had an English professor refer to Hemingway as “a very good second-rate writer”. I’ve only read The Old Man and the Sea which, despite not being very long, was a struggle to get through, as I kept falling asleep. I’d be willing to check out some of his other stuff, but, man…that was so boring.
#13 is my personal favorite. It’s the indifference that adds that certain sublime Hemingwayness:
“You hate every single one of your friends. You have no friends. You are alone at sea. How you hate the sea, but how you respect the fish inside of it. How you hate the kelp. How indifferent you are to the coral.”
This is hysterical, but it’s sort of sad to read all the comments using this as some sort of unimpeachable excuse not to read him.
It’s funnier if you *have* read him. Every time I read something by Hemingway — whether a novel or a collection of short stories — I always close the book, think, “Damn, that was well-crafted,” and then fling it across the room at a wall.
I like Hemingway. This is still funny.
Precisekly, as a contemporary character who was also unironic about his masculinity might put it.
Same difficulty as with Norman Mailer (who I don’ t like) or with John Irving (whom I adore): sorting out the fictional strategies and language quirks from the (not always tolerated) real issues from the unfashionable stances about the real issues.
Divine. I want to forget this post, so I can read it for the first time again and laugh my ass off.
While snowshoeing in the backcountry you come across an Abercrombie & Fitch photo shoot. You
curse the bare chested youths smiling for the camera. You fall and do a face plant in the snow. You lay there hearing their taunting laughter. You think of the homosexual you met in Paris. You lift a flask of virgin rum from your coat pocket. You get drunk.
Can you do Tennessee Williams?
*If you have an uncanny desire to eat human flesh*
*If you have an uncanny desire to be eaten*
7. A woman is looking at you. She is wearing her hat in a manner you find unbearably independent and mannish. You despise her, and the repressed feelings of homosexuality it brings out in you. That is why you’re drunk. That, and the memories of your mother dressing you like a girl, so you would be your sister’s “twin.” You write, but never publish “The Garden of Eden.”
I was that homosexual in Paris. But now I love, love, love Mallory Ortberg. Love to see a comparison with Tennessee Williams, he of the white sky vs he of the white door.
I was that homosexual in Paris. But now I love, love, love Mallory Ortberg. Love to see a comparison with Tennessee Williams, he of the white sky vs he of the white door.
Honestly I should start reading him someday. Pity I can’t drink or smoke. I should look like him with a beard but it is ugly certainly.:-)
That is *precisely* my response to Hemingway.
It makes me angry. – A Man
You are watching a corrida and throwing around pretentious vocabulary. You criticize the bulls for not being at the perfect age.
Your sentences must be as dry and matter-of-face as possible.
You make dick jokes in Spanish.
Womensk! The bane of all that ist Hemingway! If it’s not one thing it’s your mother.