Re: Hemmingway and WP


Subject: Re: Hemmingway and WP
From: Cade Bois (cadere@HOTMAIL.COM)
Date: Thu Jul 15 1999 - 18:37:40 EDT


In defense of Hemingway, I'd just like to say that "great" isn't synonymous
with "good" and in critical context to call a writer great really refers
more to the degree of influence, which is more that appropriate in regards
to Hemingway. In critiquing his literary abilities, personally I find a
mixed bag, and I'd take Fitzgerald (whom Hemingway admired considerably,
which says something of his literary tastes) over Hemingway anyday (for both
literary and personal issues, since I am a female writer and the only more
bigoted criticism of female writers I've come across than Hemingway's would
be N. Mailer's). But to be fair, I personally have learned a few valuable
lessons about the craft of writing from reading and studying Hemingway, and
if he wasn't to a significant degree a competant and talented man I don't
think I could say that.

And not to harp on anyone...I felt a good twist in my gut reading Nikki's
first post cos I knew it would lead to the question of what influence the
Church had in WP's feelings about suicide. I'm not sure what Nikki's or
anyone's else's take on that matter is, but I personally have given this
much thought. I know that WP had difficulty saying much if anything in
regards to O'Toole's suicide, yet I most take a stand in defense of WP in
the face of some of the rather nasty criticism I'm come across on this
topic. First off, I don't think WP was that greatly influenced by the
Church's teaching on suicide, largely due to the fact that during WP's
lifetime the Church's understanding of suicide was in transistion. If that
had any influence I feel it would have been a sense of lacking a certain
moral guide on the issue. Moreover, it has been much to my experience that
anyone who has simply experienced the loss of someone, kin, friend or
"icon", via suicide would be enough to turn them negative on the matter.
That WP would have held suicide as a sin, even a damnable one, could have
just as easily sprung from his scientism, which would have held suicide as a
supremely irrational act contradicting basic human nature. Since sin is a
willful act of evil and as Aquinas says, evil is irrational, it would have
been a smooth transistion from the scientist concept of "irrational act" to
the Christian concept of "sin" without really changing much of WP's moral
attitude on the matter.

Additionally, I have a hard time with critics who'd say WP lacked compassion
towards the issue on the grounds that 1) WP wasn't so dull-minded regarding
moral and salvific matters, 2) he wasn't spiritually stagnant, and 3) to
accuse WP of lacking compassion flies in the face of the very impetus of his
writings. In a sense WP strikes me as a man similiar to Emerson in that he
could appear quite confident and resolute, even bull headed, in his public
writings yet was far too sensitive and probing and dialectic "interiorly" to
simply be what he appeared on the surface. Likewise, as with Emerson,
there's a risk in taking what WP says at face value, since such
interpretation evades the spiritual storm underneath from which those ideas
germinated and surfaced, although making objective sense of that storm could
very well be beyond anyone's ability. A hermenuetical conundrum, to say in
the least. That aside, the problem that arises which this kind of spiritual
complexity in regards to a matter like suicide is that resolution is often
impossible to arrive at, and the psychological and emotional aftereffect of
this nonresolution could manifest in anything from emotional
hypersensitivity, esp. anger, to moral and philosophical rigidity (I've seen
WP accused of both in regards to suicide). I've often wondered if this
spiritual complexity (presuming I'm any where near target) could have been
what attracted WP to Kierkegaard and, to more of my personal interest,
Guardini, who personally struggled unto his deathbed with the question of
why humans sin and why God allowed it, a struggle which is greatly belied by
his very eloquent and profound writings on that very subject. At any rate,
that my thoughts on the matter...thanks for reading...

Cade

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