HEMINGWAY, A CHILD NEXT TO BORGES

My old friend John and I were talking about Borges and Hemingway the other day.

John and I agreed that Hemingway seems like a Cub Scout alongside Borges. Like a child.

In an earlier post here on this blog, I made some excuses for Hemingway, a macho writer who found his calling while writing about the outdoors, hunting and fishing, and about war. 

If Hemingway hadn't gone to war, he would have been at best a minor writer, I think.

Hemingway referred to himself as "Ernie Hemorrhoid, the poor man's Pyle." How right he was. (Ernie Pyle was a famous war correspondent who is no long remembered much.)

Borges's work has more depth and is vastly richer and more complex. I can read it over and over, endlessly.

It is interesting that the more manly writer was in a way less of a man in the long run. And less of a writer.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

BORGES vs. HEMINGWAY

I've been reading early Hemingway stories, and I am struck by how different he is from Borges. 

At first glance, Hemingway seems like the lesser writer, and yet the more I think about it, the more I see similarities and strengths in both writers.

When I was in Spain, in 1969, I saw young American men living the Hemingway life: drinking beer in the afternoon, with that Hemingway look, of exploring life in that way; going to the bullfights every Sunday; living in Spain to find something they would not have known was there except for Hemingway. Chasing Hemingway's memories and his ghosts.

There was a beauty and strength and dignity in the Spaniards that I didn't see in the often sleazy Italians or the stoic Greeks.

While I was in Spain, I read "Death In The Afternoon," about bullfighting. Hemingway thought he could tell what the bull was thinking as he charged the matador. That struck me as complete baloney at the time, but now I remember a scene in Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" from the point of view of the dog.

While Ernest Hemingway inspired macho behavior, I doubt if any young American adventurers went to Buenos Aires to live like Jorge Luis Borges, who spent his life in libraries and books. He was the more intellectual of the two, with a more subtle intelligence.

Yet the stories I remember best from Borges were about knife fights among thugs in cities and about hatred and jealousy among gauchos.

So both men were interested in macho behavior. Oddly, they were born the same year, 1899.

To tell the truth, I like Borges better, although Hemingway has a muscular strength in his language that I admire and enjoy. Borges has a more modern sensibility, playing with story and language and meaning in a way I've never seen in Hemingway.

Obviously, I find both worthwhile, for different reasons. Reading Hemingway is like eating steak and baked potatoes. Borges is like French cuisine, with delicate sauces and subtle flavors.

Depends on whether you'd rather shoot lions or see them in a zoo. At different times, I like to do both.

(BTW, I shot a lion in my pajamas last night. It was strange. I don't know how he got into my pajamas... Har-har-har.)
-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

EARLY HEMINGWAY

I have been reading some early Hemingway that I never read before. I used to agree with the late avant-garde writer Ron Sukenick that Hemingway was an overgrown boy scout. I didn't want to read how to put up a tent or how to cross-country ski or how to catch a catfish.

But lately I've been reading some early Nick Adams stories, and frankly some of them don't make much sense. At least to me. But what do I know?

In one story, "Indian Camp," Nick goes with his father, a doctor, to deliver a baby by Cesarean section, of an Indian woman off in the woods. They go there across a lake, by rowboat, and the woman is on a bunk in a shanty. She is screaming in pain, and the baby is breech.

They boil water and the doc uses a jack knife and he seems to do a good job. So the baby and the mother are safe. Whew, a relief.

But then, they discover that the squaw's husband is dead, in the upper bunk, his throat cut from ear to ear. They assume he committed suicide.

I don't get the point. This event doesn't make sense to me, in its symbolic action. What is Hem trying to say here? And how do you cut your own throat? Seems dubious to me.

Then there is some dialogue between Nick and his dad about suicide and dying. None of it seems meaningful. It seems flat.

Nick asks his dad if dying is hard. His dad says, "No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends."  

Huh? So what?

The whole story seems pointless. Several of these stories are like that. Maybe the genius is there, but I don't see it.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle