Seeing Life and History Through the Eyes and Heart of Ernest

Seeing Life and History Through the Eyes and Heart of Ernest

     I think that it is appropriate or fortuitous irony that Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was named "Ernest/earnest"; a word in the English language that means honest, striving to be open and transparent, being someone or something that is real in his/her attempt to do or be the thing that they want to do without trickery or chicanery.  Without cheating. Yes, safe to say that Ernest Hemingway wanted the "real". At least in his writings. He did not want to cheat or to be false. He, of all people, never wished to be duplicitous, not hiding or absconding the truth. That is what most people take away from his writing, I would assert.  Although, biographers  and the rest of us observers can certainly find the imperfections and pecadillos of his life, how he as anyone can be false and secretive, or hypocritical.
   
      In his writing Hemingway tried to achieve a true core of reality, to be earnest, open, truthful: Hemingway is known to most Americans as a realist, and perhaps to the rest of the world (what do Germans and Russians and Chinese think of him? hard hitting? rugged? truthful?) as a "man's man", a rugged gentleman who pursued "manly" things and tried to arrive at the heart of reality and the truth, whatever that may be. He himself tried to be the person that life meant for a person to be, to suck up all its juices-- and put it on paper to share with the rest of us. Many of those things that he tried to communicate through his literature was the truth of death, war, heartache, passion (which included alcohol), sport, spectacle-- but not fake spectacle-- for example, bullfighting lead to real consequences that were both bloody and risky. A spectacle with real world results, if you will. A sport "for keeps".

    Albeit mostly through  fiction, much of the literature based on real experiences and true life emotions and knowledge, informed by his own senses and perceptions, Hemingway became a scion of literature in the American and global conscious for his truth, his earnestness to convey passion and life as he knew it.  It resonated with people as real, and became great in the eyes of millions. In the late 20th century it was recognized that Hemingway was among the list of "Top 5 American" authors of that post-modern age, one hundred years of formative human existence. These authors are, in no particular order:

1. Ernest Hemingway

2. John Steinbeck

3. Jack London

4. William Faulkner

5. F. Scott Fitzgerald

   In this group of American men, and yes, they are all men, (I am not trying to advance that men are the best as opposed to female writers, and that a woman or four might be the better US authors for the 20th century; this was not my generated list--it has sat with me for decades now) they all five represent different parts of truth and reality.  Yet, like all "great" authors that are recognized as universally whole, and essential to the human condition, as I define a great author to be able to be defined, they all share and communicate universal truthes about us, the human family.

    Jack London, perhaps the least of the five, goes into rather fabulous tales of men (and beasts) and the outdoors; the sheer physicality of challenging land and sea and other human obstacles, arriving perhaps closest to the essence of survival at its most delicate, or living and existing most vitally at the basest root: life is hard, and treacherous; simply the earthly elements alone are enough to make life and the world a hard place. Through his use of animals as characters, and the usually hardy characterizations of people in the north of the Canadian Yukon and Alaska, London shows an earthy world of brute strength and naturalistic cunning. Of the five great writers, London might stretch the parameters of reality the most, the archetypes embodied in dogs, or more importantly, half dog-wolves, that must scrap and fight for their mere existence, and take the arduous pathways that they must alight onto and grind into in order to achieve their success, their end state finality of triumph or failure.

    Hemingway does this too, and sometimes on a grander scale. Like in the backdrop of a human conflict in the greater political military sense, such as the Civil War in Spain, or better even, World War I.  He, like London, embodies these traits and narratives in the individuals while in the outdoors: Nick Adams in northern Michigan, a bullfighter in the ring, a fisherman in the Caribbean, a hunter in Africa.  Man versus nature at its finest. Like the stories of Jack London, an individual versus all the elements: the evils of humans, beasts, and the elements. One man, proto-typically, can conquer them all. Or not. Human will is a huge theme.

    John Steinbeck explores a lot of human terrain, interestingly originating on the Pacific West Coast, as opposed to Hemingway, who is based in the middle and upper parts of the United States.  Jack London is also California-based, but most of his stories take place farther north, to the Arctic circle. Both Steinbeck and Hemingway eventually make it to Europe, and there they do their share of explicating the Continent of American origins, which is important. We must know them, the people and byways of Europe, to know ourselves as Americans. And the wars, irrespective of the Yankee interventions, help us know who we are, and how ugly we can be. Humans and beasts, we all suffer under the same conditions. Cruelty and dire pain are a part of our sojourn. Like a bullfight.

    War.  It's gritty, it's heartbreaking, it has all the pathos you ever need. Hemingway and Steinbeck understand this. It is perhaps humanity at its worst and best.  And they both witnessed and felt it.  As an author, a writer, a narrator of the human condition, this is probably the prerequisite.

    I am not sure if the greatest volumes in human history do it justice: the records of Herodotus, the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Art of War by Sun Tzu, Tolstoy, Garcia Marquez, the complete works of Shakespeare...

   If anything, Hemingway and Steinbeck give us this. They show the human side of battles, the human toll of army campaigns and strategies, the victims and heroes, usually in that order, of how war effects us, the human animal.  The person damaged, the family, the community, the culture changed and marked, injured like the soul of the one as much as the collective identity of our people. Outside of the war commentaries, they both harvest the fertile juices of life in the times of peace as well. Yet, their contributions to the understanding of human conflict in the time of military combat is large. Huge.  They and us as co-inhabitants of the planet would not be the same without it. However, Hemingway and Steinbeck, like Melville and Hawthorne generations before, delve into the human spirit in times of peace. And, as we see through their "peacetime" writings, life is still a hard row to plow. Poverty, hunger, desperation, love and death, belonging; the greater themes of life.

     Hemingway and Steinbeck do this. Of the five, these two are my personal favorites.

    On the home front, Faulkner and Fitzgerald also are able reach the levels of the human spirit and who we are in their literature. Faulkner represents the great American South, which in my case requires a bit more time and maturity, I suppose (I am almost 48!) to fully appreciate as a region and as for his style, on the personal front. I think I will achieve that one of these years, attempted first as a senior in high school back in 1989, back when the South was more my enemy, unrealized in many ways... (I will save that for another blog post). There's some history of wrestle that I have had with the American South, which requires some explanation, and most likely affects my views and tastes with Faulkner. I digressed. Pardon.

   Similarly, Fitzgerald has another sensibility, that of the Northeast, New York, which obviously is a vital place of the American experiment, this new country and land filling its destinies between the old and the new, back to the ancient valleys of Mesopotamia, Harappa, Huang Ho... Combined with our own mostly forgotten Mesoamerica to the south. Like Faulkner, my time for his stories and skills, like my own late mother who requested Fitzgerald's books while in her dynamic later years, his is a flavor of which I am still in need of acquiring.

    The five of them, arguably, are who they say they are, or, who they have been appointed: great narrators of our time. Our-- perhaps the greatest American writers of the century=-- from which I am derived, as well as most of the rest of us.

   So again, earnestly seeking, I seek more in Hemingway. I recognize that which I have not read of his and countless others' ponderings and reflections; I realize I need it. I need to see and somewhat feel what he saw, and felt. I need to see and feel some of that pathos that he evokes.

   Hemingway was earnest, imperfect and fallible. Ernest was a voice to listen to, to ponder. And perhaps, another Midwesterner like myself, a generation or two later (he was my grandparents' age) can further explain the mysteries and designs that elude us, me in life.

   Who am I? What is the United States? Who are we, us humans walking the earth, floating on all sorts of watercraft, perusing creeks and rivers, new banks and streams, lakes and beaches? Who are you? Does Hemingway hold a mirror up to you, to me? To the American continent, to the rest?

This on my Sunday morning. Seeking Hemingway, seeking myself.