[HN Gopher] Ernest Hemingway vs. William Faulkner (2017)
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       Ernest Hemingway vs. William Faulkner (2017)
        
       Author : fnord77
       Score  : 28 points
       Date   : 2023-04-28 03:43 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (edamurray.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (edamurray.com)
        
       | smitty1e wrote:
       | > Don't be fooled by the big words attempting to yield big
       | emotion. But likewise, don't be fooled by the big emotion
       | attempting to yield unquestioned belief.
       | 
       | It was just occurring to me, seeing a headline about the dearth
       | of debate in the schedule for primaries, how little substantive
       | policy is considered at election time.
       | 
       | The government is insolvent, so we get a high school personality
       | contest in lieu of a substantial choice for a corrective course.
        
       | ioblomov wrote:
       | I came across a story (which Google, alas, was unable to locate)
       | how Faulkner supposedly didn't keep a dictionary at home. And so
       | whenever he had to look something up, he'd take a walk down to
       | the drugstore in town, which luckily kept a dictionary on hand
       | for him to use. The writer suggested this may explain Faulkner's
       | occasionally idiosyncratic use of some words--usage that, while
       | at times may have been incorrect, coming as it does from a Nobel
       | laureate, nevertheless altered the dictionaries he didn't have.
        
         | elguyosupremo wrote:
         | https://amsaw.org/amsaw-ithappenedinhistory-092503-faulkner....
         | may be what you are looking for.
         | 
         | ``` He wrote all of his books in longhand, often struggling
         | with words and definitions. He didn't own a dictionary. Often,
         | he would make up his own words to suit the moment, combine two
         | words into one, or turn nouns into verbs and vice versa. If he
         | couldn't spell something, he would walk down to the local
         | drugstore and ask someone there to look it up for him.
         | Sometimes, he would stop people on the street and ask them for
         | the meaning of a word. "I'm looking for a word. It means the
         | same as 'running fast' but I don't want to use 'running fast.'"
         | ```
        
           | elguyosupremo wrote:
           | of course if I ask bard if Faulkner owned a dictionary:
           | 
           | ``` Yes, William Faulkner owned a dictionary. In fact, he
           | owned several dictionaries, including a copy of the Oxford
           | English Dictionary. He was a voracious reader and had a deep
           | love of language. He was also a very meticulous writer, and
           | he often consulted dictionaries to ensure that he was using
           | words correctly.
           | 
           | In an interview in 1947, Faulkner was asked about his writing
           | process. He said that he would often start by writing down a
           | stream of consciousness, and then he would go back and edit
           | it, using a dictionary to help him find the right words. He
           | said that he wanted his writing to be "as clear as crystal,"
           | and he believed that using the right words was essential to
           | achieving that clarity.
           | 
           | Faulkner's use of language is one of the things that makes
           | his writing so distinctive. He was a master of using complex
           | words and phrases to create vivid imagery and to convey
           | complex emotions. His writing is often challenging, but it is
           | also rewarding. It is a testament to his skill as a writer
           | that his work continues to be read and enjoyed by people all
           | over the world. ```
           | 
           | So for future purposes Faulkner probably owned a dictionary.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | kragen wrote:
             | bard makes total bullshit up tho
        
       | kragen wrote:
       | this is just a faulkner quote and a hemingway quote in response
       | to it plus some worthless filler
        
       | MikeBVaughn wrote:
       | This is a remarkably facile discussion of an interesting
       | relationship, and I was hoping for more substance than what's
       | here. The conclusion feels like something I might have done in
       | more than one 100-level American Lit midterm essay.
        
         | mattmaroon wrote:
         | I honestly thought it was written by a bot. It's very
         | reminiscent of the AI-generated recaps of tweets the internet
         | is littered with these days.
        
       | AlbertCory wrote:
       | There are much better literary feuds than this:
       | 
       | https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/09/18/typing/
       | 
       | Anyhow, some words I'm dying to use in my own writing aren't big
       | at all. Like "louche".
        
         | jmclnx wrote:
         | >Access Denied - GoDaddy Website Firewall
         | 
         | Well this is using something even worse than cloudflare, did
         | not think that was possible :)
        
           | AlbertCory wrote:
           | Wow, sorry. This was Brave, and I just tested it in an
           | incognito window on Chrome, and on Safari (both passed). I
           | have no explanation.
        
       | davidajackson wrote:
       | My grandfather was a young writer living in Spain a long time
       | ago. At one point he wrote that he saw Hemingway sitting and
       | working in a cafe, but didn't go up to him since he didn't feel
       | he had proven anything yet.
        
         | ioblomov wrote:
         | As a fan, I'm torn. It would've been amazing to chat with him,
         | but then there was that passage (in A Moveable Feast, I think?)
         | where he lambasts a stranger (long after the fact, in said
         | piece) for interrupting his train of thought while writing at a
         | cafe.
        
       | hodgesrm wrote:
       | > Rarely do literary names get tossed around when speaking of
       | such rivalries, but in the 1950's arguably the two biggest names
       | in the industry took a shot at one another.
       | 
       | This was far from the only feud. Hemingway got in a fist fight
       | with Wallace Stevens--or perhaps the other way around. Hemingway
       | knocked him out. [0] Stevens also feuded with Robert Frost but it
       | apparently stopped short of fisticuffs. Writers of yore were
       | feisty indeed.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.kwls.org/key-wests-life-of-
       | letters/ernest_heming...
        
         | everybodyknows wrote:
         | Remarkable behavior for someone whose day job was insurance
         | executive.
        
       | wayeq wrote:
       | This essay seems like something you'd write for your lit class
       | when you realize it is due in 30 minutes.
        
       | Nimitz14 wrote:
       | What a joke of a blogpost.
        
       | sema4hacker wrote:
       | It's kind of a stretch to say an exchange of two comments is a
       | feud.
        
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       (page generated 2023-04-29 23:02 UTC)