In A Moveable Feast Hemingway writes about his young-man mornings, going to a cafe in Paris, ordering a cafe au lait and sitting down to write. He writes this scene several times in the book and describes it as “the best times.” No frothy cappuccino for Ernie, (and, yeah, I realize he was in France, not Italy) just a simple bowl of coffee with milk.
In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway gives (good) writing advice around those scenes, saying, “Always stop work when you know where you will start the next day.” I think Hemingway was terrified NOT knowing where he was going the next day. He did, after all, compare writing to bull-fighting and characterize the blank sheet of paper in his typewriter as the “white bull.”
There are two movies I would like to see. One is about a writer/artist who’s not “tortured” for/by art and is not an asshole in any way and, in SPITE OF THAT, manages to do good work.
We really focus a lot on the lives of artists (more than? as much as?) we look at or read their work. During the time I was a university teacher, I saw Hemingway vanish from the shelves in the bookstore labeled “required reading for American literature.” Hemingway’s place was taken by, I don’t know, Kate Chopin (fine writer, but…) or someone. I thought, “Why not BOTH?” and was grateful I wasn’t teaching literature. Like Hemingway or not, he was a writer that had an influence on American culture but WHATEVER. Personally, I think our focus should be on the work people have done, not the incomplete schema we have of their personalities.
A couple days ago I read an article in Brain Pickings about a kid’s book that has been written about Gauguin. I wasn’t very impressed by the story, but I thought this was lovely. An old man teaches the little Gauguin about painting, saying, “Painting is magic,” he said to Paul. “You can start with next to nothing and still do anything you want.”
Gauguin, like Hemingway, is a victim of posthumous psychoanalysis and disgust and most of the comments following the article said Gauguin should not be shown, taught, to children (or anyone?) and we should not appreciate his work because Gauguin was a pedophile. Hemingway, of course, has been labeled a woman-hating, chauvinist SOB.
I thought about all that for a while and thought that probably in the case of both Hemingway and Gauguin (and many others, many of us) the truth lies in that 7 am untouched morning moment, that bowl of coffee and the empty page, the colors on the pallette, the vision that’s seeking realization. The tortured soul emerges sometime around 3 in the afternoon. I don’t believe the 3 pm person is any more real than the 7 am person. For myself, appreciating Gauguin’s painting doesn’t mean I condone pedophilia. Loving The Old Man and the Sea doesn’t mean I think Hemingway’s treatment of women was good.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2020/09/28/rdp-monday-froth/