Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do. But it was very difficult, and I did not know how I would ever write anything as long as a novel. It often took me a full morning of work to write a paragraph.
— Ernest Hemingway
I am no Hemingway, but I love to read him. For all his shortcomings as a human being, his talent for writing compelling words has entranced generations. He was to literature what John Wayne was to cinema, with that superhuman dose of machismo that all male baby boomers secretly long for.
I suspect that Pappa was as much Ernest Hemingway’s artificial persona as John Wayne was Duke Morrison’s invention. What the world obvserved were not the real men, but the carefully crafted and cultivated images they developed over the course of their careers.
Nothing about 20th century celebrities is real. But the really great ones are wonderful to watch.