Guess I'll be the first to say it: I'm crazy about Hemingway (check out my sig
). When I think of Hemingway, I think of
For Whom the Bell Tolls, one of my favorite novels. To my mind it's a tale of great courage, and though it's very sad (made me cry and cry at the end), it's ennobling and uplifting. And Pilar is one of my all-time favorite female characters in fiction.
The next thing I think of is Hemingway's excellent Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which contains, IMHO, some of the most poignant and moving statements ever made by a writer on writing, excerpted here:
"For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.
"How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him."
And the third thing I think of is his skill with short stories. He had the short story down to an art form.
Edited to say: Ha, I'm not the first on this thread to say "I like Hemingway", after all -- Kristie911 posted while I was still getting this post together.