And the Wind Begins

The weather channel is predicted heavy wind and ferocious thunderstorms for this evening into tomorrow, and at one point during the day it even cautioned about a possible tornado watch. I can't even begin to imagine the havoc a tornado would have on New York City--and hopefully I won't actually have to find out, either! The winds have just started picking up in tandem with the darkening sky, and I expect that the rains will commence within the hour. This is the perfect weather to curl up with a book and read before going to sleep. I think I'll do that with my Hemingway biography. I'm about three-fourths of the way through it, and it's really keeping my attention well. I enjoy the way that straight biographical facts are tossed about with literary criticism and some rumors and speculations.

But before I go, here's the Disney fact of the day: "Disney uses a well-known film technique called forced perspective to create a larger-than-life feeling in many areas of the resort, especially the Magic Kingdom. Cinderlla Castle is a prime example. Although it's only 189 feet high, it seems much taller. How? One example: Disney shrinks the size of the stones and windows as they get higher, creating the illusion of height." (Laurie Flannery, Little-Known Facts about Well-Known Places")

Happy Birthday, Hemingway!

Today is the birthday of Ernest Hemingway, author of many works, most notably The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises, and A Farewell to Arms. I've recently finished a spree of reading all of his novels, and I'm now reading a biography on Hemingway by Kenneth S. Lynn. The biography further confirms the sense that one gets, while reading, that much of Hemingway's material was grounded in his own life and personal experiences--even though this action was something he strictly preached that good writers shouldnt' do.

But despite his violation of his own rule, Hemingway is--in my estimation, at least--still a very good writer. While some of his novels, like To Have and Have Not, had me hoping it would end sooner rather than later, the good ones were very good. With stark prose and a short, choppy rythm, Hemingway could describe a scene more fulfillingly than a painter could paint it. His characters are always human. His vocabulary often had me looking up words in the dictionary. His endings always left a sour taste in the mouth but a certainty in the gut that that was, in fact, the only ending, and that anything else would have been cheating the story.

I never used to like Hemingway, but after reading through all of his novels, I've changed my mind. I'd encourage everyone who scoffs at him to just give him one more chance. At the very least, his works give an insight into the mind of a writer, the writer, and in his memoir, A Moveable Feast, he gives all writers some philosophical techniques to think about and, perhaps, improve.

Understanding

“I sat beside Brett and explained to her what it was all about. I told her about watching the bull, not the horse, when the bulls charge the picadors, and got her to watching the picador place the point of his pic so that she saw what it was all about, so that it became more something that was going on with a definite end, and less of a spectacle with unexplained horrors. I had her watch how Romero took the bull away from a fallen horse with his cape, and how he held him with the cape and turned him, smoothly and suavely, never wasting the bull. She saw how Romero avoided every brusque movement and saved his bulls for the last when he wanted them, not winded and discomposed but smoothly worn down. She saw how close Romero always work to the bull, and I pointed out to her the tricks the other bull-fighters used to make it look as though they were working closely. She saw why she liked Romero’s cape-work and why she did not like the others.”

- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises