Friday, June 11, 2010

Hemingway in Toronto

I don't know why I think I should have known that Ernest Hemingway wrote for Toronto dailies in the 1920's, but i do. The book I'm reading is called By-Line: Ernest Hemingway. It is a compilation of his newspaper work from the 1920's to the 1950's.
I am just a short way in and I'm enjoying the read.
Perhaps it was the style of the day, a gateway to the world found cheaply in the local daily newspaper, but the articles read like short stories. It is all first person. Hemingway both telling the story and taking part in it, an art sharing program in Toronto, lugeing in Switzerland or a meeting of heads of state in Italy.
Yet it is not fiction, Hemingway coverd real events and became part of history as a result.
I have read collected essays from authors like Rushdie, Eco, Hitchens, and Orwell. A small selection from a large pool. These are great writers, authors and newspapermen, and they tell great stories. But what I found in Hemingway is the fullness of a story in breif amount of space. It is not that Hemingway gives you a truncated tale, cut to fit, unfinished. He does away with the superfluous. It is akin to a movie, where only what the director wants on screen appears there. Hemingway gives the reader the scene without disraction, a single plot line seen through, from start to finish.
I don't know if Hemingway was paid by the word or the story, but i'm not sure he would care. I get the feeling that the story was the point, writing was the reason, money was the means to keep writing.
I expect that the book will continue to hold my interest. The spanish civil war is fast approaching and after that is WWII. I find myself wondering how Hemingway's Spanish Civil war will compare to George Orweel's. I can't wait to find out.

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