It's a guess, but I wonder, is it classic blood type O chemistry running in Hemingway. Os produce more adrenaline and noradrenaline in the fight or flight response, I read in Doctor D'Adamo's book about blood type and diet, one I constantly refer to. And Os have a harder time coming down, of regaining the proper balance of calmness. (Os are susceptible to relying on outside sources of dopamine, like alcohol, for a sense of well-being. Os crave wheat and red meat as both are rich sources of tyrosine, the precursor to dopamine.) Writing is therapeutic, naturally calming for folks with O blood.

Interesting that dopamine works in the parts of the brain where higher thought is handled. One extreme is an excess of dopamine, schizophrenia, marked by excesses like meaningless laughter and verbal behavior, including writing. It would be nice if Os had a fail-safe switch that allows them an increase of dopamine to return to the a lower-adrenal state?

Is writing/proper analysis itself a by-product of proper dopamine returning?

Hemingway's stories often tell of finding a way to unwind after something stressful, or to return to a natural setting, the natural settings that either offer a release from stress or a place where it's okay to have the juices of the driven hunter lingering in the blood. Does a Hemingway story need the war, the bullfight, the hunt in order to bow the cycles of blood chemistry that allow the finely-honed observation?

An O needs the regulation offered by aerobic exercise, it seems. Smaller battles, but with victories just as significant. Less chance of burn-out.

Hemingway poached a blue heron as a teenager, hiding from the law, the game warden. He wrote a story about it, with Nick confiding with his little sister in a peace set apart from the adult world. Read it as an early sign of an addiction to the hunt? Maybe addiction is the wrong word.

Maybe the stories say, in effect, that ultimately you get tired and need to find a way to relax into the Zen of it all. Or rather, a story succeeds to the extent that it builds a relationship between the current state of experience and the religious-toned state of peace, as the knowledge of peace is defined through juxtaposition with that which is not peaceful.

D'Adamo suggests that writing is a natural way for Os to calm down. (Good for anger management for a wound-up O seeking resolution, fairness, what-have-you.) Moby Dick works for the same reason, as a natural organic response to a stressful situation and the occasion of the great hunt. Subliminally, the reader gets it, that the words, in all their great complexity and poetry, are human.

The figure of Ahab bears the suggestion that the mind, the brain's chemistry, isn't always to be trusted, the sort of ritualized addictive behavior that is the natural chemistry of fight-or-flight gone awry into obsession. Melville's portrayal is not sanctimonious, too distantly pious, holy, or preachy, as if there was indeed some of Ahab within his own behavior. Perhaps writing itself can go either way, into healthy working through something, or obsession.

So is the chase a classic subject.




Perhaps it's hard to admit, a sense of guilt by association, that perhaps those who have written well were enabled by some kind of dopamine-fueled flight of proper exercise or artificial means. As we might gather from the Tour de France, those who write better than the rest of mortals might be on something. Or, they may have some tendencies toward chemical imbalances along the lines of schizophrenia and depression plainly visible, one way or another, in their work. We all know the struggles Mr. Wallace had, sadly.

Maybe though still a complete picture should allow that solid writing usually has to it a perspective, both on the self and the world, before we all renounce the exercise of great creative writing as meaningless, pointless, worthless to society, the idiot's game. Struggles are fought in writing; sometimes they are won. A Buddhist-friendly vision, in Shakespeare and Cervantes, in Dickinson, in Hemingway, in Kerouac, is to be praised. Even as there must be an acknowledgment of the great slipperiness as far as keeping these visions and applying them to every day battles to secure basic needs and wants. At the least, an engendering of compassion for fellow beings, is some achievement.

Any writer will have professional worries, ask himself or herself, 'what's the point.' The ego of Hemingway made comparisons with what the rest of the tribe has written into a boxing match where he was the winning side, or at least a draw after a long glorious sporting match. For a writer will respond to what others have written. Kerouac, well-read, studious, deeply reflective, in competition with himself, has some lasting peace, at least stuff that lingers, albeit elusively as answers on life for the rest of us. One wishes him better health, more exercise, enough green vegetables or whatever else would have helped his phlebitis or his alcoholic tendencies. Flawed though he was, not always perfectly non-hypocritical, the reader can't miss a sweetness of heart beyond whatever chemistry there was.