Hemingway: On Style & Symbolism
A tip of the hat to the ever enlightening Kottke.org for this interesting Time Magazine read on the immortal and inimitable E. Hemingway.
Symbolism: "No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in," says Hemingway. "That kind of symbol sticks out like raisins in raisin bread. Raisin bread is all right, but plain bread is better." He opens two bottles of beer and continues: "I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things. The hardest thing is to make something really true and sometimes truer than true."
Style: "The right way to do it--style--is not just an idle concept," he says. "It is simply the way to get done what is supposed to be done. The fact that the right way also looks beautiful when it's done is just incidental."
