Kerriem,

I know your Canadian, but what of United Statesonian authors? How about Faulkner? Clemens (Mark Twain)? Melville? Hawthorne? Henry? That boring guy who wrote The Bostonians and The Ambassadors? Fitzgerald?

How about non-American Authors in English like Conrad? James Joyce? Thomas Hardy (prose only)?

Or guys in translation like Dostoyevsky (spelling, I know)? Thomas Mann? The guy who wrote Metamorphosis and The Starvation Artist?

Do I have carte blanche to make all those boards?

Oh, Hemingway has nothing much to say. He wastes no time in not saying it. Even in the rain.

Certainly, William, you have carte blanche! Take it to town, as my mom likes to say. (Although I think I already included Dostoyevsky here in Literature.)

I agree that my literary orientation is slightly Canuck- (and definitely British-) centric...something I actually didn't realize fully until I started adding authors here.
So, as I told MarkN over on the Horror board, there are gaps in my knowledge that you (or anyone else with an author they care enough about) are welcome to fill. All I ask is that you stick to the author format.

As for Hemingway, I did A Farewell to Arms in high school and...well...while I appreciated it in terms of quality, it just wasn't my thing, really. All those clipped sentences and manfully squelched emotions. Actually, I'm wondering if there are a whole lot of honestly devoted female Hemingway fans out there? What do you think?

On the other hand, I have always loved the legend of the Hemingway cats - apparently he kept forty or so at his home in Key West, and their descendants are there still (identifiable by their six toes), roaming the Hemingway home, a sort of furry memorial. So it appears that the original Macho Man had a soft spot or two after all.

Franz Kafka is the author of The Metamorphosis.

Lessee, of the author you've mentioned, I've read Papa Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, several of Faulkner's books (As I Lay Dying may be my favorite). Of course, I love Mark Twain, particularly Huck Finn. (Political correctness be damned, that book rocks!) I read The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables and The Wonder Book by Hawthorne.

Of Joseph Conrad, I've only read The Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. I have read Joyce's Ulysses, but I had a copy of Cliff Notes with me the whole time. I plan on re-reading it without the Cliff Notes training wheels. I've got a couple of Thomas Hardy's books. I just haven't read them yet.

I have read Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and Kafka's The Metamorphosis.

I've just recently started Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It's hard enough to understand that I've resorted to finding websites that contain commentaries on it. (And in the process, found out it's the wrong book to make one's introduction to Nietzsche's work.)

Hemmingway wrote simple sentences.

Compound sentances were OK, but rare.

When he actually has a deeper point besides the plot, however, the compound-complex sentences start and he becomes more a more animated writer.

Then it would be over. The plot needed development. The old man thought of Dimaggio. The Italian army retreated from Capparetto. (Two virgins, a Priest, a Seargent, three Italian ambulance drivers and an American Lieutenant try to find a short cut. It is raining...)

Nits in Hemmingway are rare. It is hard to screw up a simple sentence. It is harder in the rain.

I learned in high school english class back in
West Anchorage High(home of the West Anchorage
Eagles motto:West is Best,East is Least.Was there my sophmore and junior years in high school)that
the reason for Hemingway's writing style was that
it came from his background as a journalist.One of the first things he learned as a journalist was to write in short,crisp,clear sentences.

A Farewell To Arms is semiautobiographical as
Hemingway was wounded serving as an ambulanceman with the Italian army during WW1.

The Old Man And The Sea is probably the greatest shortstory written in the Twentieth century.

The Old Man And The Sea is probably the greatest shortstory written in the Twentieth century.

Nonsense! Any one of Ratliff's Marissa stories far outshines it!