Stranger on Earth

In my book there are two kinds of writers: the kind that produces record-breakers in publishing history, and the kind that tinkers away in quietude, far away from the limelight, the award shows, and public adulation.  Generalisations are unavoidable in the categorising of writers. The first kind is rarely preoccupied with aesthetic matters or ideological revolutions, preferring to do it “straight” to widen public appeal. His aim is to entertain (a filthy, filthy word in Literature) and to thrill the reader, to provide – here comes another scatological term – escapism(!) from the awful ordinariness of everyday life. The second kind is rarely aware of the reader’s needs and wants. He is more interested in his own thought process, the “sound” of the authorial voice, and the mechanics of writing. The reader is an afterthought to him. Every aspiring writer must at one point arrive at this crossroads and wonder which way to turn.  Either direction poses a series of...

From The New York Times July 4, 2012 To Use and Use Not By  JULIE BOSMAN In an interview in The Paris Review in 1958 Ernest Hemingway made an admission that has inspired frustrated novelists ever since: The final words of “A Farewell to Arms,” his wartime masterpiece, were rewritten “39 times before I was satisfied.” Those endings have become part of literary lore, but they have never been published together in their entirety, according to his longtime publisher, Scribner. A new edition of “A Farewell to Arms,” which was originally published in 1929, will be released next week, including all the alternate endings, along with early drafts of other passages in the book. The new edition is the result of an agreement between Hemingway’s estate and Scribner, now an imprint of Simon & Schuster. It is also an attempt to redirect some of the attention paid in recent years to Hemingway’s swashbuckling, hard-drinking image — through fictional depictions in the best-se...

The traditional reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is that of the Icarus legend: fly too high and too close to the sun, you will lose your wings and plunge to your death. Victor Frankenstein’s attempt to play God gives birth to a “monster” that will stop at nothing to destroy his loved ones. Its hideousness is an affront to civilised society and to godliness. Shelley’s novel does indeed lend itself fully to this reading, but a contemporary reading, one that bears in mind Man’s alienation in modern times, can reveal a new element or two. Doctor Frankenstein is referred to as “the Creator” on numerous occasions. His intellectual pursuit is entirely of a divine nature, as is evidenced in the following passage: It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my enquiries were directed to the metaphysical, o...

On May 10th of 1934, a month after the publication of his new novel, Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to his friend, Ernest Hemingway, and asked for his honest opinion on the book — a tale about Dick and Nicole Diver, a couple based largely on mutual acquaintances of both Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Gerald and Sara Murphy. Hemingway certainly responded with honesty. His engrossing reply — a letter that contains plenty of advice for any writer — can be read below. (Note: Hemingway's spelling is shown accurately. For example, he twice wrote "write" where, presumably, he meant "right.") ( Source: Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961; Image: Ernest Hemingway, via. ) Key West 28 May 1934 Dear Scott: I liked it and I didn't. It started off with that marvelous description of Sara and Gerald (goddamn it Dos took it with him so I can't refer to it. So if I make any mistakes—). Then you started fooling with them,...

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) is now remembered as Ernest Hemingway’s most enduring work, not least because of its detailed and personal account of the Spanish Civil War. Its laconic treatment of the universal subjects of friendship, sex, and love – essentials that give additional meaning to life in times of war – is the reason for its lasting appeal. The plot is crudely simple, like the characters’ motives. American Robert Jordan decides to do his part for the country he claims to love by working as a dynamiter for a republican guerrilla unit, and one day, owing to an assignment to blow up a bridge, he finds himself among a group of disparate rebels hiding high up in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra. The novel records only three and a half days of Robert’s experience (and yet this is the longest Hemingway novel); at the end of the “adventure,” things go horribly wrong, as foreshadowed, and the reader is forced to leave the hero behind and move on – just like the re...

And the sky, the light, the trees, the whole of Nature would be, as always, in league with them: Daniel was a man of evil will. (136)  This curious line describes Daniel, the only homosexual character in The Age of Reason , and his perception of himself. It is an unflattering image imbued with self-loathing, indicative of a mind that views its perceiver as a social outcast and a victim of universal oppression. It is interesting to note that Daniel’s homosexuality is hidden from the public, and that there is no indication that he has been openly discriminated against – and yet, what we have here is a young man in his prime, possessor of a “dark, handsome, blue-jowled visage,” whom Marcelle ironically calls “her dear archangel” (82), grappling with a self-hatred so powerful that every thought crossing his mind is associated with destruction and death. Our first proper introduction to him takes place in Chapter 7, and it is here that we find Daniel shaving “naked to the...

The first instalment of Jean-Paul Sartre’s trilogy Roads to Freedom , The Age of Reason ( L’ Â ge de Raison , 1945), compels the modern reader to re-define the idea of freedom, conventionally worded as “the condition of being free of restraints” (The Free Dictionary). “Free of restraints” is murky waters when it comes to Mathieu and Daniel, the two main characters of Sartre’s soul-searching work.  Sartre’s characters are primarily “for-itself beings,” existentially free persons who act according to the choices that have moulded them. The words “existentially free” are oxymoronic, and the phrase “free persons who act according to the choices that have moulded them” is painfully paradoxical. This is classic Sartrean paradox: it tells you that as an individual you are “free” to make choices, but these choices are pre-determined by a whole other set of choices beyond your control or manipulation. Mathieu Delarue has made the mistake of impregnating his mistress of seven ...