So...
About Hemingway...
Cultural icon Woody Allen puts him in a movie, and (I haven't seen it yet) apparently talking in the clipped fashion of his prose, and talking about his prose... 'if it is true... write it ... blah blah blah.' What are we to make of Mr. Allen's portrayal? Of course, because Woody Allen is, in a way, one of the few cultural people we have left--he tries, he tries--we have to respect Mr. Allen's picture... even if it edges toward humor, maybe Jewish humor... a humor which would kind of poke fun at Hemingwayisms. (And it's good humor, and it's funny, and we laugh, heartily.) Yes, if we are not careful here, we are very susceptible to putting Ernest into the play-dough form of that-which-is-stereotype-able. Mr. Allen coming out on top. If so, I don't see that as fair. I wouldn't, I mean, if that is the case.

All too easy to laugh at Hemingway, yes. But, if you were to take a grassroots poll of your friends, ... as some of us may try in our lives and in our little blogs or whatever... you may well find, a lot of respect, a lot of honoring. (In the same way we like that roman a cléf that has lasted so, All Quiet on the Western Front, par example.) In the same way a lot of people I care about selflessly chimed in at the mention of a certain recent milestone that says as much about us and ole' EH.

Hemingway, one has the sense, is of a different blood type than Mr. Allen. A different creature. One for whom there is not irony when he says he tucked pillows under his shoulders and read that great uncharted territory, Turgenev, Chekhov, and still learning from them page by page.

Whereas for us... is there not a quaintness we would tie to such efforts as reading 'Tolstoi.' When there once was a man bright and open learning about how to live and write prose, all of it tied together.