Hands up, not American so Hemingway is maybe not my wheelhouse.
My wife raves about him. I have tried and tried to get something from his books.
I have tried
The Sun Also Rises.
For Whom The Bell Tolls.
A Moveable Feast.
I get nothing from them, honestly I found them dull and boring.
I understand that this is very much a ME problem and not a Hemmingway problem.
I am curious to know how others find him, has anyone warmed up to his work after not enjoying it or appreciating it at first?
Just for comparison sake I adore Steinbeck, Kerouac and Vonnegut.
by CosmoonautMikeDexter
23 Comments
I actually really liked his short story collection In Our Time. Struggled with his longer works.
Reading him makes me want to Hemingway myself.
It’s a Hemmingway problem.
I most enjoyed his short stories.
Hemmingway is short story gold for me. Not a fan of the longer format stuff.
There’s a lot under the surface of the writing. He’s very male oriented in his writing style with definite machismo however there is always a very vulnerable underlying story to all of his characters.
I had to read a couple of Hemingway books for an American Lit course in college. I didn’t get the hype about Hemingway. I found the writing bland, tedious. But I’d take Hemingway over Faulkner any day.
He makes me want to punch a Marlin.
He’s not for everyone.
I loathed Hemmingway, so you’re not alone.
The Old Man and the Sea is an all time great.
I really like the simplicity of the language. I think it allows other elements of the story and themes stand out. A Moveable Feast is the first Hemingway book I liked (tbf I only read Old Man and the Sea in highschool before that).
His writing style is certainly not for everyone.
I love Hemingway. I read The Old Man and the Sea when I was 14, and liked it, and then The Sun Also Rises when I was 15, and loved it. I grew up in a small town and hated it, and The Sun Also Rises and the stuff it talked about made me want to get out and see the world, and I did and I do.
My first encounter with him, which I think is typical for a lot of Americans, was in high school English. And because we read chronologically, we were coming into Hemingway the way people at the time did. So fighting our way through Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis, overgrown thickets of prose, why not spend an entire paragraph to describe the sun rising– and then suddenly Hemingway! these beautiful, clean sentences, spare stories with nothing excess to trim off, it was like coming out of the jungle into a sunny glade.
We read four books by him and loved all of them.
That said, he has a distinct style, and I think anyone who is a distinctive stylist is by definition not going to appeal to everyone. He may not be your cup of tea. That’s fine. I’m sure someone’s going to chime in here who just *loved* reading 1000 pages of Dreiser…. It was assigned to us over February vacation. 😬
Love his writing and The Sun Also Rises is one of my favorite books ever, but I can see why people wouldn’t warm up to him.
I love Hemingway, and totally understand what you mean.
Try short stories as others have said. I like Big Two Hearted River. That was a bit more forceful in its narrative for me, or at least felt more “pointed”. I also loved Old Man and The Sea but know better than to suggest it. There is just something nice about watching these stoic characters persist as the world falls apart around them.
I just finished reading A Farewell to Arms which also happens to be my first Hemingway book.
He was being way too elaborate on describing the environment rather than adding layers to characters. Again, it’s just my observation off of the only Hemingway book I have read.
Still not recovered from the heartbreaking ending.
I think he was unlike much that came before. An author who wrote like a journalist, sparingly.
But I’ve read it all and never went back to it or thought much about it. I think he was right for that time, but it never really spoke to me.
_For Whom the Bell Tolls_ is what did it for me. Hemingway’s lived experience as a journalist really informs the novel and captures war and the fight against fascism in a way no other work has done for me.
Honestly, the only Hemingway story I didn’t find immensely tedious was *The Old Man and the Sea.*
Never read any of his stuff as a Brit. The only great American literature we were made to read in school was John Steinbeck. Might give it a go.
With Hemingway I think you either love him or hate him.
I love him, to the extent I’m always on the lookout for other writers with a similar style.
Like many have suggested, maybe try a short story. He’s the master of the form. Try Snows of Kilimanjaro or The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber.
Of course I also count A Moveable Feast as a top ten book all time. Who knows why an author appeals to one person and not another.
I’ve got a pile of them I’ve never started reading. Too daunted maybe? But I’ve read Steinbeck and McCarthy.