You’re stuck on an island and you must choose between a stack of Hemingway or a stack of Fitzgerald’s writings, which would you choose?
The truth: oh Lord, neither. Just imagine for a second having only one of those authors to read for an indeterminable amount of time. I appreciate them and love some of their works, but they are at times dull…angst-y…and how much can we really take of bull fighting?
With Hemingway I’ve read a good chunk of his short stories (as has every writer—I’d say “Hills Like White Elephants” is the first short story professors have you read.) I do love Hemingway’s technique in short stories. He was a master at causing you to reach beyond the words on the page; to sincerely peer between the lines. (And I can’t forget the ever-returning Nick.)
However, I fell asleep every time I picked up The Sun Also Rises. I super skimmed it because I had to read it for class. I couldn’t get into it at all and I don’t even want to retry. I’m stealing from Goodreads because I can’t pretend to give a summary of the novel:
“The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.”
Sounds a lot more interesting than I found it to be, but I do realize it just wasn’t my cup of tea and it could definitely be yours.
And then we have good ole Fitzy. My first reading of The Great Gatsby had me asking one thing, “Why does everyone think he’s so great?” It’s a good book, but I don’t think it’s his best. While taking an American literature class I decided to do my research paper over Fitzgerald’s works; therefore, having to read his finished novels and some of his short stories.
Anyway, I read Tender is The Night—and holy crap if you haven’t read it, please do—and the scale was tipped in his favor. It was such a beautiful novel and I do believe in Fitzgerald’s case you really can investigate his life through his writing. It can’t necessarily be proven, but anyone who has read his work knows it’s autobiographical in certain ways. Not the plot, but characteristics of people, circumstances, etc.
Stealing this summary from Goodreads as well because It’s been almost two years since I’ve read it and I’ll probably botch it:
“Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick’s harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character, Tender Is the Night is lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.”
It wasn’t the plot that I loved so much, but Fitzgerald’s characterizations and how they interacted with one another / with the world. Who his characters were is how the story managed to have my heart in twisted knots.
And so, I may have a great appreciation for Hemingway’s short stories, but Fitz stole my heart with Tender is The Night.
Who has your preference, no matter how little that is?
This is an easy call for me. Fitzgerald is by far the one I would choose. I would do so if only to read and reread the short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I love this story along with many others he has penned. Hemingway is a master but I struggle when I read his work. It just doesn’t resonate with me.
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Hemingway’s writing is tough to get through. Even with the short stories I did like, I had to pull myself through them. I think it’s because he – for the lack of a better word – is a “man’s man” when it comes to his work, at least his novels are.
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A lot of his work is very “masculine”, true, but personally I think the woman in White Elephants is one of the best female characters writen by a man, at least that I have read. She feels like she was written by a woman.
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That’s true.
I was turned off by The Sun Also Rises simply because I couldn’t connect to anything/couldn’t force myself to care about what was going on. I think in the novel it’s overly prevalent because “masculinity” is a major theme in the novel, whereas it’s not with the short story.
I also fully recognized that while attempting to read it, I was already biased because I knew there was more bull fighting. That’s on me! Ha.
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Yeah, The Sun is a little hard to connect to but Farewell and For Whom are much more engrossing. For Whome the Bell Toll is one of my favorite novels and my favorite by Hemingway.
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Someone else brought that one up too so I’ll have to grab it next time I’m at a bookstore!
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Hemingway for me, hands down. His stories range so far that you can read twenty stories about twenty different subjects. If you didn’t like The Sun Also Rises, check out Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Both are magnificant. You wont be falling asleep during either I guarantee it.
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Admittedly I’m reluctant to try, but I’ll check them out!
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I have never liked anything I read by Fitzgerald, so I’ll pick Hemingway. I agree that he is sometimes difficult to read, As a child I loved The Old Man and The Sea and now I recently read For Whom the Bell Tolls and I couldn’t put it down (though it is a little depressing). I will say Fitzgerald tends to be more flowery in his writing, while Hemingway is much more practical. But to each their own. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t pick either of them if I had the choice.
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I’ll have to try to read a different novel by Hemingway! Since reading The Sun Also Rises I haven’t tried, but another person suggested I read For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Aside from Fitzgerald’s short stories I really only like Tender is The Night. I also watched a documentary on Fitzgerald right before reading it, so I kind of played myself! lol
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Good grief, I would rather draw in the sand than read those books again! Many people I know were put off reading because of them, and I’m a believer in supporting newer brighter cleverer and more emotionally relevant authors. Reading time is too precious to waste wallowing around in turgid outdated dramas. Gosh, did I really just write that? Nothing personal intended, Zarah.
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Haha 😂 I don’t mind! I didn’t write myself that neither would be the real answer!
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I too am excited about current, emotionally relevant authors like the author of Red Clocks and Zinzi Clemmons What we Lose. Two of the top of my head. Emotional relevance is what drove me to complete one novel anyhow. Many others on the shelf.
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Hemingway. Hands down. However, Hemingway was so prolific, that some of his weaker works blemish his powerful ones. A total aside, there was one killer biography of Zelda Fitzgerald!
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I really want to like both. I feel like I’m supposed to. I have immense respect for both and a compulsory need to read both. I have this romanticized image of the the 20’s in Paris. I want to be like Owen Wilson in Midnight In Paris. I want to go hang out with that group of Hemmingway, the Fitzgeralds, Picasso, Come Porter, Gertrude Stein, & Alice B. Toklas and soak up some genius. I would love to have that or an Algonquin Round Table. That said, I’ve never been able to get into either of them.
Hemmingway’s oversimplified style had always bothered me. I read somewhere that it was a reaction to the overly flowery prose of the late 1800s. Reading James Fennimore Cooper & Nathaniel Hawthorne, I can see how one could desire something a little more natural. He just took that shit so far that’s it’s unnatural. He also got completely unnatural in the dialogue for the Spanish speakers in For Whom The Bell Tolls. It.’s like they all learned to speak English by reading The Bible. The Old Man And The Sea is probably the most boring book I’ve ever read. On the other side, I loved the autobiographical A Moveable Feast. Though, it did bother me that he alwayalways referred to Alice B. Toklas as “Gertrude Stein’s friend” and never by name or her “partner,” if you will.
I haven’t read Tender Is The Night but it is in my queue. I’ve always found Francis Scott Let Fitzgerald to be whiny and pretentious. Most of what I’ve read, The Great Gatsby, This Side Of Paradise…, are all about the problproblems of rich, beautiful, intelligent, people who have everything. I can’t feel sorry for these people. I can’t relate to these people. I do love that he doesn’t churn out happy endings. Not all life’s problems are solvable. Not every story has a happy ending. I did really like The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. Though, the reactions to him were really bizarre. How easily it was accepted that he was born an old man and the need to blame someone for his condition. He also completely ignored the tremendous damage giving birth to a grown man would have done to his mother. I can’t imagine rendering a tiny, soft baby.
I think, given the options, I would go with Fitzgerald. Hemmingway’s gruff, blunt style doesn’t draw me into a story. Fitzgerald, while soap opera-y, has a more palatable writing style for me.
Sorry, that was really long. That might be my writing for the day.
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I just realized I misspelled Hemingway. I’m dumb. I just woke up. That’ s my excuse.
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Haha no worries!
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I’ve always felt that Heminway was the more pretentious one, but that’s just me being biased and not an opinion in any kind of fact lol
As for Fitzgeralds work, it is about the upper class, but if you notice most of the time it’s about someone trying to break into that upper class and then never truly fitting in. Like, Gatsby. I’d give you an example from Tender is The Night but I don’t want to spoil anything! 😊
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Hemingway has never struck me as pretentious. I imagine him as the old school dad who has had way too much to drink and he’s telling his 9-year-old a wildly inappropriate story with a glass of bourbon in one hand and cigar in the other. “Now, go to sleep. I’m gonna go punch your mom and have sex with her.”
I see your point with Fitzgerald. He was bringing his own insecurities about his place in the world and not fitting in into his writing. I’m eager to start Tender Is The Night now. I think I’ll read that next.
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You know, breaking Hemingway down like that suddenly makes way more sense lol!
And I’m glad you’re going to read it! Let me know how you like it!! 🙂
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Wonderful question… I read for language… I don’t care if I see myself in the characters, I don’t even care about the characters. I don’t even care about the plot 😳. Although, the fact that I am human, like they, is enough to establish a philosophical connection. But, there is no emotional component for me in my consideration of a text. Although, the language does draw emotion… I’d have to take Fitz bc he writes the most beautiful and profound passages that I sit and ponder for days. Albeit, I can’t stand him bc of his real-life obsession with avarice which colors his work for me, but, objectively, he has a stunning command of language. And, there is something morbidly beautiful in reading his work knowing the tragedy of his actual life.
But, the profundity that Hemingway manages with such simplicity is quite a wonder, too… Hard question to answer! 🙂
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I have to agree, there is something morbidly beautiful in reading Fitzgerald and knowing about his life. Thats the reason I lean more in his favor lol I can’t help it😊
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Neither! I guess I’m with you on this one. I didn’t go to college (unless you count the navy as the University of Hard Knocks), I’m a self-taught author who writes what I’d like to read. I was only forced to read the Crashing Bores… sorry, the Classics, through high school, and I still find Dickens, the Bronte Sisters, and their peers to be the greatest cure for insomnia I’ve ever encountered. Give me a stack of Salvatore, Brooks, or Catton, and I’ll be entertained for a good long while!
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I’ve got to agree with you on Dickens! I have a hard time getting through anything he wrote.
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The poet in me choose Fitzgerald but the prose writer in me prefers Hemmingway (He also admires a stiff drink.) Can we pick a third? Nabokov, perhaps?
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Nabokov?! One of my favorite books may be Pale Fire, but I don’t think I’d want his work with me if I was stuck on an island.
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I can read that ornate prose everyday.
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I don’t know if I could read the same person everyday, not even my own work. If I really had to choose (outside of my original question) I’d really need two options to balance it. So I’d go with writer’s like Tolstoy & Jane Austen 😂
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Tolstoy I could live with.
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If you don’t think much of The Great Gatsby, then perhaps you should read it again. It’s as close to perfect fiction as I’ve ever read and I’ve read a lot of great authors. True, Tender is the Night is very good, too. The Sun Also Rises is one of Hem’s best.
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Well, that was just my initial thought after reading The Great Gatsby. Since, I’ve come to love it as well.
To appreciate Gatsby I think it takes more than just reading it, but thinking on it, discussing it with someone, and reading it again.
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Hmmm, hard to chose for me. I love Hemingway (although I haven’t read “The Sun Also Rises” yet). But I’ve not read any shorts by him. On the other hand, I’ve read short stories by Fitzgerald and was blown away by them. But I haven’t read any of his novels.
What sort of terrible penal colony island is this that would require such a choice? LOL
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