At the Morgan Library until January 31. There are first editions, photos, letters, manuscripts and references to movies made from his books and stories in this first exhibit devoted to Hemingway. What is fascinating is that you learn from the show that Hemingway DID NOT create his simple style – it was imposed upon him. When he first started working as a journalist as a young man, the newspaper gave him a list of instructions to follow to write articles for them. In the list it required him NOT to use adjectives and to keep his sentences short and simple. Later in life he wrote a letter stating that he thought he didn’t use enough adjectives.
Hemingway fought in WWI and sustained 247 pieces of shrapnel hits in his body. He had to be sent home to recover, but these painful injuries and his experience of the violence of war shaped his outlook on life and he became pessimistic. It is worth noting that shrapnel leaves scars and some cannot be dug out. Contemporary US attacks, by design, give lip service to shrapnel, but there is no evidence in these scenarios of anyone suffering the aftermath of this horrible type of assault (like Hemingway actually did). During the Spanish Civil War and later in WWII, he was a war correspondent besides writing his fiction. – Patty
http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/ernest-hemingway
(c) 2015 by Patricia N. Saffran. All rights reserved.
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