by Ernest Hemingway
I usually try to avoid reading books by dead people. When I was in high school I would read books by Tolstoy, Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Mark Twain, Sir Walter Scott and many others with great relish. Once I graduated I started to shun all the greats. My reasoning was, that if everyone just keeps reading books by dead people how would modern authors ever get their works to become classics, must reads, generation defining or what have you. So for years I read nothing but books by still living writers.
This means that I have slogged through a lot of terrible books. To be fair I do get the occasional good one, but very few that make me sit up and take notice, maybe see something from a different point of view.
A couple of years ago I had enough of that and decided to start reading all the big names that I never have before.
I'm getting ready to start on Hemingway and have been reading what I can about his background. I came across the above short story on a web site about him. Its only eight syllables long but conveys so much heartache and sadness.
It also makes me wonder just how short a story can be and still be considered a story. The above story has no characters its not man vs man, himself, nature, society... None of the things you are taught a story should posses are in it yet your mind quite easily invents all those things for you.
So many authors use huge amounts of words, describing everything in great deal, and don't manage to get as much emotion and information across as Hemingway, in those six words.
I was going somewhere with this but its late and I've lost my train of thought.
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