Oct 31 2007
Hemingway on Faulkner
I found my paperback of Papa Hemingway, by A.E. Hotchner, behind my couch today. I don’t remember ever reading this book. A found a bookmark between pages 74 and 75. On page 75 it reads:
Hotcher: Mr. William Faulkner [said]… that you never crawl out on a limb. Said you had no courage, never been known to use a word that might send the reader to the dictionary.
Hemingway: Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. Did you read his last book? It’s all sauce-writing now, but he was good once. Before the sauce, or when he knew how to handle it. You ever read his story ‘The Bear’? Read that and you’ll know how good he once was…
That’s it. Just a quote because I got nothing else to blog about.
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Tags: faulkner, hemingway
