Me on Hemingway on Bullshit

bullfighter: Well-Clad Moron Taunts BullDamn it. I should have just stolen it. I could probably fend off Contra Costa County Library late fees until I’m dead. It was a great little book called Hemingway: Writers on Writing or something like that which I rented last summer. It’s actually just a bunch of excerpts from letters he wrote to family and big names: Charles Scribner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein. As luck would have it, the last quote in the book says something like “For God’s sake, do NOT publish any of these letters!”
The tone of that last quote sums up a great deal of the book (which I have introduced as explanation and apology for the nonexistent citation, bibliography, quotation marks, and things which Ernest Hemingway actually said) which I regrettably no longer have. Here’s where I wanted to start:
The greatest thing anyone has said on the topic of writing came from him. A good writer, Hemingway said, is someone who is great at detecting bullshit. He can sniff it out of others’ books and he can sniff it out in his own. The man had very little tolerance for the stuff. How do I know? Because he said he would probably fail a college course on Hemingway. That’s a joke for the Lit. Department but he was a self-proclaimed anti-intellectual. What do the sharks symbolize in The Old Man and the Sea? What does Jake’s war wound represent? What is the significance of bullfighting in the context of an emasculated postwar generation? In what way does Cohn’s religious identity parallel the plight of the other characters? I believe he would not tolerate such questions as an appropriate response to his work. If you don’t believe me, go out and find the book. The man was a grouch.
So, in honor of Mr. Hemingway, I will forego critical analysis and Latinate words and those terms we were told to be the bread and butter of collegiate parlance - terms like “juxtapose”, “symbolize” and “foil”. Jake represents Jake, Brett is a metaphor for herself, and Cohn is a tautologically instantaneous and permanent ramification of the fictionally extant character Robert Cohn. The sun also rises. Sure, good things happen after bad things if that’s how you want to interpret it. Now, onto what is and what is not bullshit.
Since we’re on the subject, let’s make a pertinent segue; let’s talk about me. Last summer I went to Europe with a couple of friends. I started The Sun Also Rises on the plane and finished it the day we left Paris. The book made the rounds with 3/5 of us. We emulated it unsuccessfully. We drank and drank and wandered and said little but spoke with understated import and had flings and wandered aimless and tried to be jaded and drank more and communicated on unspoken understandings and friendships and were nasty to each other and things were “fine” and things were “nice” and wrote in long run-on sentences and ate a great deal of expensive food. They make it look easy. It’s hard work and not very much fun. Why were we unsuccessful? Well for one thing, we weren’t in WWI. Or WWII for that matter. We weren’t even in ‘Nam so we were obviously unprepared for disillusioned, resigned and aimless Euro-tripping. It’s not a virtue now matter how tactfully and artfully executed; it’s harrowing and pathetic. We had nothing to escape, nothing to forget. We were bullshiting. Hemingway’s characters are not.
I should end it there, but there is something I cannot let go. I have one charge of bullshit I would like to level against Mr. Hemingway. I’ve never been to Pamplona. I’ve never been to Spain. I’ve never seen a bullfight in person. Having read the book a second time, I was struck by the grace, beauty and poetic nature of the passages on bullfighting. That last sentence is bullshit. Being “struck” by any of those things is a tired way of saying “I think it’s pretty” without sounding like Forrest Gump. But is that what bullfighting is really like? I YouTube’d (apostrophe?) it and found somewhat less romanticized versions. I’m not particularly squeamish or a PETA member, I just dislike men being lauded for behaving like idiots. It must be a cultural thing or some deficiency in my testosterone levels but I found myself put off by someone who takes pride in outsmarting an animal that chases primary colors and capes. It’s bullshit. I’m rooting for the bull.