Complex Numbers

The Apprentice

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” -Ernest Hemingway

What are your thoughts on this quote by a writer many consider a master? Who are some other writers you admire or consider masters?

There's a joke floating out there somewhere that riffs on the old "Why did the chicken cross the road?" riddle.

One of the answers is:

Ernest Hemingway: "To die. In the rain."

One of the first things I noticed about Hemingway when I was forced to read him (and make no mistake, I had to be forced) was the forcefulness and brevity of his words. The chicken joke is spot on in that regard. I mean, look at the title of "The Old Man and the Sea." Six words, each one syllable, each exactly three letters, and it perfectly sums up the book.

Too bad the rest of the book is the equivalent of watching grass grow.

I mean, would it be as popular a book to torture high school students with if the title had been something like "A Senior Citizen Attempts to Catch a Fucking Marlin?"

In fact, Hemingway's bluntness is so infamous that I have to doubt the above quote can actually be ascribed to him. I mean, "apprentices" is four syllables, which is three more than he prefers to elucidate.

Look, here's the thing: I'm not a fan of "literature." About the only classic author I can stomach is Mark Twain. That guy is still freakin' hilarious after more than a century. I mean, just feast your eyes upon this utter smackdown of James Fenimore Cooper (as well as his fans), first penned in 1895:

http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/offense.html

It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature at Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper.

Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in "Deerslayer," and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.

No, seriously, I'm not kidding. Go read the whole thing. It's pretty short, and it's worth reading every word. Though it takes me twice as long to read it as it probably should, because it cracks me right up every single time.

That said, whoever penned that quote up top attributed to Hemingway (and I am willing to admit, grudgingly, that it might have been actually Hemingway) did get it right, in my opinion: There is no writer so great that he or she cannot improve. At some point, though, it becomes a matter of personal taste. No amount of convincing will get me to believe, for instance, that James Joyce was anything other than the literary equivalent of Jackson Pollack: splattering words around his paper canvas like bright paint, their arrangement so random that people see what patterns they want to see in it.

At least with Pollack, I can glance at a splatter painting for a brief moment, utter a dismissive "Bah!" and move on. Reading takes actual time.

But I digress. Point is, I'd rather read a good comic book than slog through another neurotic "literary" excrementation.