Writers and the Hemingway Complex
Emerging from the hideousness of having to disassemble ten thousand books, the closets, the kitchen, because a week ago a black widow crawled across my pillow just before I was going to turn out the light and go to bed. Result, inspection, surprise, termites eating the walls, black widows everywhere. Expensive treatment, massive work, my hands hurt so much I have trouble holding a glass of water.
Enough of that.
Sara Stamey, whose Ariadne Connection I thought a vivid, extremely tense thriller with an infusion of the fantastical, writes about the Hemingway Complex.
Her life: wow.
At the end, she asks if writers need a Hemingway Complex or can one write from pure imagination. The easy answer is, of course they can: Patrick O'Brian apparently never set foot on a tall ship, and he certainly couldn't have experienced the Napoleonic wars. Contrast that to memoirs written by people in harrowing experiences who managed to render them utterly banal.
Some of that can be attributed to talent, but I also think that memory is an issue here. It's such a weird thing, memory. We can remember every detail of something we've read with as much passion and emotion and even a sense that we could smell, taste, or touch the experience as something we actually experienced in our physical selves. People we've read about -- fictional characters who never breathed -- can be as real as relatives. And more precious to us.
It seems to me anyway that merely recounting physical experiences can be handled by journaling--or journalism. Fiction writers's minds--imaginations--take sights, sounds, smells, impressions and string them together into patterns that spark meaning in others' minds.
Enough of that.
Sara Stamey, whose Ariadne Connection I thought a vivid, extremely tense thriller with an infusion of the fantastical, writes about the Hemingway Complex.
Her life: wow.
At the end, she asks if writers need a Hemingway Complex or can one write from pure imagination. The easy answer is, of course they can: Patrick O'Brian apparently never set foot on a tall ship, and he certainly couldn't have experienced the Napoleonic wars. Contrast that to memoirs written by people in harrowing experiences who managed to render them utterly banal.
Some of that can be attributed to talent, but I also think that memory is an issue here. It's such a weird thing, memory. We can remember every detail of something we've read with as much passion and emotion and even a sense that we could smell, taste, or touch the experience as something we actually experienced in our physical selves. People we've read about -- fictional characters who never breathed -- can be as real as relatives. And more precious to us.
It seems to me anyway that merely recounting physical experiences can be handled by journaling--or journalism. Fiction writers's minds--imaginations--take sights, sounds, smells, impressions and string them together into patterns that spark meaning in others' minds.