Sentences

I’ve been on a minor Hemingway kick lately. Last time this happened a few years ago, I reread “The Sun Also Rises” but in conjunction with “Reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.” The second book annotated the first, chapter by chapter, placing Hem’s book in its historical context, and sometimes lifting the metaphorical iceberg he wrote about to show what was going on underneath the words.

This year, I’m reading a new edition of “A Moveable Feast,” his memoir of Paris. This reedited version of a book Hem left unfinished, because of his suicide, restores material his last wife, Mary, had cut, and threw in other Paris sketches, incomplete drafts, and even alternative drafts.

Reading this edition was like sneaking into his writing space and rummaging among his papers. Seeing how he wrote could give you ideas about changing your processes.

For example, in the “Fragments” section, the editors printed Hem’s many attempts to write an introduction to “Feast.” None of them were used.

There are 11 attempts, ranging from three sentences to several paragraphs. All of them are variations of the “this book is fiction” theme. All of them want us to understand that Hadley (his first wife, who he dumped for a younger and richer model) was the “heroine” of the book and that he hopes she understands why he wrote this.

Sometimes, his train of thought took a different siding. He’ll talk about a subject grounded in fact, like the changes in skiing — “Nobody has to climb on seal skins anymore” — then turn mystical — “People break their legs and in the world some people still break their hearts. They come down faster and they drop like birds that know many secrets.”

These are snacks for Hemingway fans, but to writers who struggle with putting their thoughts down on the page, it’s comforting to see great writers struggle too. Hem fought back by being persistent. Instead of rewriting the same paragraph — he started from the beginning. Perhaps it was the best way to get his thoughts in order, to hear the music of the sentences.

In another example, he talked about F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was a long paragraph, and we can conclude that it went on too long about Fitzgerald and took the reader away from the purpose of the introduction. It’s a reminder to kill our darlings. It can be beautifully written, but if it doesn’t work, cut it out.

The Value of the Right Details

But that wasn’t what I’m here to talk about. But since I’m not Hem I’m going to leave it in.

In “Feast” there a sketch about writing called “Birth of A New School,” and my attention was arrested by the opening.

Writing teachers tell us that we should use all our senses in our work. We should put in details to help ground us in the story. Dean Wesley Smith talks about this in his class on writing with depth, and the example below seems to apply here.

Smith talks more about depth in this post about Dean Koontz.

I want to quote two paragraphs from the sketch to show what I mean. “Birth of A New School” opens with you, the writer, in a Paris café. It’s early morning and in the air hangs the smell of the new day and the sweeping and the mopping. You have your lucky charms (a horse chestnut and a rabbit’s foot, the fur worn down to muscle and sinew) in your coat pocket, two pencils, the blue-backed notebooks, and your luck scratching inside your pocket, reminding you that it’s there.

First sentence, second paragraph:—

“Some days it went so well that you could make the country so that you could walk into it through the timber to come out into the clearing and onto the high ground and see the hills beyond the arm of the lake.”

Plain description. Country … timber … clearing … high ground … hills … arm of the lake. It trusts the reader to fill in the details with their own experiences.

Some people wouldn’t get it. Perhaps they’ve never walked through the woods. Or they want to see the picture painted by the writer, like Bob Ross filling in one of his landscapes. This is still immersive writing.

Second sentence. Note how it shifts back to the writer, then shifts back into the scene. It’s a long sentence, but you never lose your way, so long as you read each word:—

“A pencil-lead might break off in the conical nose of the pencil sharpener and you would use the small blade of the pen knife to clear it or else sharpen the pencil carefully with the sharp blade and then slip your arm through the sweat-salted leather of your pack strap to lift the pack again, get the other arm through and feel the weight settle on your back and feel the pine needles under your moccasins as you started down for the lake.”

This caught my imagination. I’ve worn backpacks, so I could recall the feel of it on my back, and how you had to move the straps to support its weight. I can also remember and re-experience the moment when you fall into your story, when the words you’re putting on the page turn into memory and experience.

I also experienced this, so to give Hem a chance to tell it properly, I’ll back up a bit before running into the third paragraph:—

“… get the other arm through and feel the weight settle on your back and feel the pine needles under your moccasins as you started down for the lake.

“Then you hear someone say, “Hi, Hem. What are you trying to do? Write in a café?”

“Your luck had run out and you shut the notebook. …”

The rest of the sketch details the encounter between Hem and the intruder. It’s very funny, and I’ll leave you to discover it for yourself.

The lesson I’m learning is that to describe a place truly, choose the right words and only the right words. Descriptions are not necessary, but what the person inhabiting the space experiences is. What that person feels — the sweat-salted leather, the feel of pine needles, the weight of the pack — can mean more to the reader than what the person sees.

And the second lesson is to find a café where your friends can’t find you.