Even worse than a head for figuresEven worse than a head for figures
“Too much honor destroys a man quicker than too much of any other fine quality.” – Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
Category: Lit & Crit
The great turkey shootThe great turkey shoot
“Killing cleanly and in a way which gives you aesthetic pleasure and pride has always been one of the greatest enjoyments of a part of the human race. Because the other part, which does not enjoy killing, has always been the more articulate and has furnished most of the good writers we have had a very few statements of the true enjoyment of killing. One of its greatest pleasures, aside from the purely aesthetic ones, such as wing shooting, and the ones of pride, such as difficult game stalking, where it is the disproportionately increased importance of the fraction of a moment that it takes for the shot that furnishes the emotion, is the feeling of rebellion against death which comes from its administering. Once you accept the rule of death thou shalt not kill is an easily and a naturally obeyed commandment. But when a man is still in rebellion against death he has pleasure in taking to himself one of the Godlike attributes; that of giving it. This is one of the most profound feelings in those men who enjoy killing. These things are done in pride and pride, of course, is a Christian sin, and a pagan virtue.” – Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
Populating the workPopulating the work
“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. If a writer can make people live there may be no great characters in his book, but it is possible that his book may remain as a whole; as an entity; as a novel. If the people the writer is making talk of old masters; of music; of modern painting; of letters; or of science then they should talk of those subjects in the novel. If they do not talk of those subjects and the writer makes them talk of them he is a faker, and if he talks about them himself to show how much he knows then he is showing off. No matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. For a writer to put his own intellectual musings, which he might sell for a low price as essays, into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature. People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time. A good writer should know as near everything as possible. Naturally he will not. A great enough writer seems to be born with knowledge. But he really is not; he has only been born with the ability to learn in a quicker ratio to the passage of time than other men and without conscious application, and with an intelligence to accept or reject what is already presented as knowledge. There are some things which cannot be learned quickly and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave. Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember: a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.” – Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (emphases in original)
A double shot of Mr. Molotov’s cocktailA double shot of Mr. Molotov’s cocktail
“After one comes, through contact with its administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action. If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it.” – Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
Licensed to thrashLicensed to thrash
“Where you see gratuitous cruelty most often is in police brutality; in the police of all countries I have ever been in, including, especially, my own.” – Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
Any way you look at itAny way you look at it
“All stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you. Especially do all stories of monogamy end in death, and your man who is monogamous while he often lives most happily, dies in the most lonely fashion. There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife then outlived her. If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it.” – Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
Keeping it realKeeping it real
“If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an effect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic quality.” – Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
What security, indeedWhat security, indeed
“I ask you what confidence you would have in a Court thus constituted—a Court composed of partisan Judges, appointed on political grounds, selected with a view to the decision of questions in a particular way, and pledged in regard to a decision before the argument, and without reference to the peculiar state of the facts. Would such a Court command the respect of the country? If the Republican party cannot trust Democratic Judges, how can they expect us to trust Republican Judges, when they have been selected in advance for the purpose of packing a decision in the event of a case arising? My fellow-citizens, whenever partisan politics shall be carried on to the bench; whenever the Judges shall be arraigned upon the stump, and their judicial conduct reviewed in town meetings and caucuses; whenever the independence and integrity of the judiciary shall be tampered with to the extent of rendering them partial, blind and suppliant tools, what security will you have for your rights and your liberties?” — Senator Stephen A. Douglas, 1858
Surf’s up!Surf’s up!
“A feeling of doom can be productive, if you know how to surf it.” – Victor Lodato, “P.E.”
Gotta start someplaceGotta start someplace
“It is fair that each man shall pay taxes in exact proportion to the value of his property; but if we should wait before collecting a tax to adjust the taxes upon each man in exact proportion with every other man, we should never collect any tax at all.” – Abraham Lincoln, “Speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment”
Not looking to need thisNot looking to need this
“Nothing justifies the suspending of the civil by the military authority, but military necessity, and of the existence of that necessity the military commander, and not a popular vote, is to decide. And whatever is not within such necessity should be left undisturbed.” – Abraham Lincoln, “To Benjamin F. Butler, August 9, 1864″
Free variationsFree variations
“We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.” – Abraham Lincoln, “Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Maryland, 1864″ (emphasis in original)
After you, my dear AlphonseAfter you, my dear Alphonse
“The advice of a father to his son, ‘Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear it that the opposed may beware of thee,’ is good, and yet not the best. Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.” – Abraham Lincoln, “Letter to James M. Cutts, Jr.”
Not in the power of the parties, eitherNot in the power of the parties, either
“It is not always in the power of governments to enlarge or restrict the scope of moral results which follow the policies that they may deem it necessary for the public safety, from time to time, to adopt.” – Abraham Lincoln, “To the Workingmen of Manchester, England”
Justly shore ’em upJustly shore ’em up
“That Congress has the power to regulate the currency of the country can hardly admit of doubt; and that a judicious measure to prevent the deterioration of this currency, by a reasonable taxation of bank circulation or otherwise if needed, seems equally clear. Independently of this general consideration, it would be unjust to the people at large to exempt banks, enjoying the special privilege of circulation, from their just proportion of the public burden.” – Abraham Lincoln, “To the Senate and House of Representatives”
The choice is clearThe choice is clear
“It is not the qualified voters, but the qualified voters who choose to vote, that constitute the political power of the state.” – Abraham Lincoln, “Opinion on Admission of West Virginia into the Union” (emphasis in original)
And Purgatory is a ski resortAnd Purgatory is a ski resort
“Hell is a place on earth. Heaven is a place in your head.” David Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives
Resistance trainingResistance training
“My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit.” – Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music (quoted by Bridget Riley in “At the End of My Pencil”)
Toiling upToiling up
“No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty—none less inclined to take, or touch, aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which, if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them, till all of liberty shall be lost.” – Abraham Lincoln, “Annual Message to Congress,” December 3, 1861
Straightening the relationsStraightening the relations
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital, producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation.” – Abraham Lincoln, “Annual Message to Congress,” December 3, 1861
Yeah, so calm down, all you virtuous vigilant folkYeah, so calm down, all you virtuous vigilant folk
“While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.” – Abraham Lincoln, “First Inaugural Address”
Litmus testingLitmus testing
“The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink, to decide the cases properly brought before them; and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.” – Abraham Lincoln, “First Inaugural Address”
Long live the kingLong live the king
“A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissable; so that rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.” – Abraham Lincoln, “First Inaugural Address”
Grand teleologyGrand teleology
“To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy and from positive enmity, among strangers, as nations, or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization.” — Abraham Lincoln, “Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society”
It’s hardIt’s hard
“Learning to write is a mother-fucker. But what great feelings of joy and power and something more atomized than clarity when you get it right.” – Eileen Myles (from Amy King interview in Denver Quarterly)
Mightier than the sword, able to leap long centuries in a single boundMightier than the sword, able to leap long centuries in a single bound
“Writing—the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye—is the great invention of the world. Great in the astonishing range of analysis and combination which necessarily underlies the most crude and general conception of it—great, very great in enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.” – Abraham Lincoln, “Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions” (emphasis in original)
Gone with the windGone with the wind
“When we review the past, it would seem that Christianity was but a name—that the Atonement had failed, and Christ had lived and died in vain.” – Phoebe Pember, A Southern Woman’s Story: Life in Confederate Richmond
A nation of hothouse flowersA nation of hothouse flowers
“As if it weren’t ludicrous enough for every child to be ‘gifted’, now they have to be ill as well: a touch of Asperger’s, a little autism; dyslexia stalks the playground; the poor little gifted things have been ‘bullied’ at school; if they can’t confess to being abused, they must confess to being abusive.” — Edward St. Aubyn, At Last
There is seethingThere is seething
“Behaviours could be changed, attitudes modified, mentalities transformed, but it was hard to have a dialogue with the somatic habits of infancy. How could an infant express himself before he had a self to express, or the words to express what he didn’t yet have? Only the dumb language of injury and illness was abundantly available. There was screaming of course, if it was allowed.” – Edward St. Aubyn, At Last
The reptilian brain awaitsThe reptilian brain awaits
“Neither a soul nor a personal identity was needed to precipitate a human life, just a cluster of habits clinging to the hollow concept of independent existence, like a crowd of grasping passengers sinking the lifeboat they imagined would save them. In the background was the ever-present opportunity to slip away into the glittering ocean of a true nature that was not personal either.” – Edward St. Aubyn, At Last