this is why i wanna be a farmer and hey i got into ucd

The Immortality of Writers: A Study of Ethos in Charles Bukowski’s “the hatred for Hemingway”

When we hear the names Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and George Orwell, why do we automatically assume these authors are good? It’s as if some one decided for the greater population that these authors are great, that we will teach these authors in our schools, and they will stay great and immortal. But these authors all failed in at least one book. We’ve all heard of The Old Man and the Sea, but who has heard of Across the River and Into the Trees? We’ve heard of The Great Gatsby, but what about The Beautiful and the Damned? If the New Critics, critics who interpreted works solely from the words on the page, dominated American criticism from 1940s to the 1960s, then how did these authors become so immortal (Meyer 1538)! I’m interested in the cause of their immortality, or what type of interpretation leads us to believe authors are good. An analysis of the poem “the hatred for Hemingway” by Charles Bukowski, will demonstrate the need for a condemnation of a biographical approach in interpreting literature. In other words, that the ethos of a writer should have no part in justifying his or her greatness or insignificance.

In his poem “the hatred for Hemingway,” Charles Bukowski strips Hemingway of his ethos and immortality as “one of the great American authors” through his own thoughts. Bukowski introduces his poem first by writing:

I gave Hemingway’s last book / Islands in the Stream / a bad review while most others gave him / good reviews. (1-5)

Bukowski isolates himself from “most others,” possibly literary critics who gave Hemingway “good reviews” on his latest novel, by writing that he gave it “a bad review.” The word choice of “a” here seems to suggest that he is the only person to give Hemingway one bad review, as the rest (“most others”), gave him a variable amount of good reviews. Further, we see that Bukowski limits his, and literary critics’, review to two over-generalized terms, “good” or “bad,” as these words are used to describe an entire novel, and possibly all of Hemingway’s other works. Through this contrast, we see that Bukowski seems to harshly criticize Hemingway far more than literary critics, but as Bukowski continues to write, “But the hatred for Hemingway…is incomprehensible to me” (6,9), we see that Bukowski actually likes Hemingway. We now understand that Bukowski criticizes Hemingway from a formalist perspective, critiquing the language, tone, and structure of the piece of art (Meyer 1538). From a formalist interpretation of his works, Bukowski disregards Hemingway’s intentions, historical influence and biography, instead of letting them guide him in his interpretations and likings. Bukowski further suggests that he may be unlike the literary critics that assume Hemingway’s greatness because he has been declared so! Bukowski throws Hemingway off his pedestal, but Bukowski’s point is to throw Hemingway off his pedestal for everyone as he begins to portray Hemingway as nothing but a mortal man.

Bukowski forces us to view Hemingway as Ernest, a normal human being, not an immortal celebrity. Bukowski strips Hemingway of his glory as he writes:

Hemingway pulled those big fish / out of the sea and endured a few wars / and watched bulls die and shot some / lions; / wrote some great short stories / and gave us 2 or 3 / good early / novels… (63-70)

With words like “some,” “few,” and “or,” Bukowski almost invites the reader to question Hemingway greatness. Instead of a great Hemingway, Bukowski shows us that Hemingway did what normal people do. People are fishermen and soldiers, and people go to bullfights, hunt, and write. Hemingway is no longer glorified for enduring x amount of wars and visiting x amount of bullfights and writing x amount of great stories. Hemingway is just an author who waves to “some kids going to school” (73). Bukowski continues to write:

then he stuck that gun into his mouth like a soda straw / and touched the trigger / and one of America’s few immortals / was blood and brain across the walls and / ceiling… (76-80)

He literally shows us how mortal Hemingway was, that he was nothing but “blood and brain across the walls and ceiling.” The extended run on sentence of the stanza makes Hemingway’s suicide seem insignificant by using a seemingly unrelenting list of all that makes Hemingway mortal. We now see that the suicide isn’t what makes Hemingway mortal, the de-glorification of Hemingway makes Ernest mortal.

Bukowski seems to condemn the biographical interpretation of Hemingway works. Bukowski introduces this idea in the dialogue between his thoughts, and the “unsuccessful female writer.” As the female writer begins to argue against Hemingway’s uniqueness and importance in literature, she ironically shows us how interpreting Hemingway’s literature from a biographical perspective predisposes us to over-analyzing, and therefore, keeps Hemingway immortal.

The female writer’s analysis of Hemingway is portrayed through stanzas that bring outside biographical information into her logic. She interprets Hemingway’s short story The Good Lion as representing Hemingway’s suicide as Bukowski writes:

shooting lions only meant shooting / himself? she asked. does it? does / it? not when those lions were unarmed and / he was coming at them with a rifle and / didn’t even have to / come close. really! poor little Heming- / way. / it’s true, I thought, the lions don’t carry / rifles. (22-30)

Yes, Hemingway did travel to Africa more than once to go on safaris and hunt, and yes Hemingway did shoot himself, but does the biographical information provide any useful insight to what Hemingway might have been trying to say? Bukowski’s internal snide remarks seem to poke fun at the writer’s biographical interpretation, and as a result, it almost forces the reader to find the irrationality in her logic and interpretation.

            It seems that in adopting a biographical approach, the idea that an author’s life may help one in interpreting a piece correctly, distracts from the reader’s own interpretation, especially in interpreting Hemingway (Meyer 1540)! Hemingway did write stories and novels based on his life experiences, but they seem to be written more from a journalistic approach, rather than a novelistic.

As the female writer in Bukowski’s poem says, “Hemingway never got to be more than a / journalist” (46-47), then shouldn’t we interpret Hemingway, from a journalistic approach, a formalistic approach, a New Critic approach? These approaches don’t allow one to vehemently like or dislike Hemingway as a person, one can only vehemently like or dislike his art one piece at a time, because a journalist is nothing more than a presenter of truth; a journalist has an obligation to the truth, far more than the novelist, to allow readers to assess information themselves; a journalist should provide a forum for public discussion of criticism and compromise (Principles of Journalism). A journalist is supposed to tell you “what he saw” (48), not “what it meant” (49). A journalist is supposed to present the discussion, not the discussion itself.

Consider this:

He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The mountainside sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass. There was a stream alongside the road and far down the pass he saw a mill beside the stream and the falling water of the dam, white in the summer sunlight.

It seems to suggest nothing but the setting; that a man is laying in the forest on a mountain, next to a stream and a road during a summer day. That’s it. The author steps back to present the truth, and lets the reader interpret it. Furthermore, how could one love or hate this paragraph unless one loves or hates truth itself? Only after being told it is the first paragraph of Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, do we begin to make meaning of it’s greatness or insignificance. One might say, “The first paragraph is great because it seems to foreshadow everything that is to come in the novel.” But still that interpretation can only be articulated after one has read the book. Another might say, “The first paragraph is terrible because Hemingway doesn’t tell us what anything means.”

Biographical approaches to interpreting literature seem to attach blinders to our head. There might be something worth noticing with our peripherals, but because the biography acts as an imaginary road, we seem to only interpret what isn’t in front of us, just as the female writer in Bukowski’s poem could not see outside the fact of Hemingway’s suicide. What we should be focusing on is the real road that we missed the turn for, the real words on the page; the language the author uses, the tone the author conveys, the structure of the page and story, the themes that we can support with evidence from the text, not with biographical information.

            It seems that as humans, we put the opinions of people with Dr. in front of their names, before our own opinions. The opinions of others seem to qualify the greatness or insignificance of writers. But these opinions also acts as blinders. If we respect a person enough, it seems that we will believe what they will say, and if we investigate ourselves, we are already predisposed to the idea that this writer or that writer is good. We are therefore completely biased, and it seems that the only way to rid ourselves of this bias, or at least challenge it, is to interpret literature from a formalist perspective.

            Although there may not be a solution in ridding ourselves of the immortality of individuals, one way might be to interpret literature as if the author never existed. It is also important to suggest that the biographical interpretation of literature may not even be our faults! With things like “About the Author” pages in books, gold, silver or bronze stars saying “Best Seller,” or the common “Winner of the ______ Prize in Literature,” maybe the biographical interpretation or ethos of a writer is the media’s fault. Although I am only an unpublished college student without a Dr. before my name, one might consider listening to what I have to say. And if not, at least listen to someone hopefully not immortal anymore:

The writer himself, if he is a good enough writer, is nothing and the book is everything. (Preface)

-Ernest Hemingway