By-Line Ernest Hemingway

by Ernest Hemingway

  On the other hand his writing improved steadily. He may yet be a writer. But your correspondent, who sometimes has an evil temper, is never going to ship another hand who is an aspirant writer; nor go through another summer off the Cuban or any other coast accompanied by questions and answers on the practice of letters. If any more aspirant writers come on board the Pilar let them be females, let them be very beautiful, and let them bring champagne.

  Your correspondent takes the practice of letters, as distinct from the writing of these monthly letters, very seriously; but dislikes intensely talking about it with almost anyone alive. Having had to mouth about many aspects of it during a period of one hundred and ten days with the good old Maestro, during much of which time your correspondent had to conquer an urge to throw a bottle at the Mice whenever he would open his mouth and pronounce the word writing, he hereby presents some of these mouthings written down.

  If they can deter anyone from writing he should be deterred. If they can be of use to anyone your correspondent is pleased. If they bore you there are plenty of pictures in the magazine that you may turn to.

  Your correspondent’s excuse for presenting them is that some of the information contained would have been worth fifty cents to him when he was twenty-one.

  Mice: What do you mean by good writing as opposed to bad writing?

  Your correspondent: Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be. If he doesn’t know how many people work in their minds and actions his luck may save him for a while, or he may write fantasy. But if he continues to write about what he does not know about he will find himself faking. After he fakes a few times he cannot write honestly any more.

  Mice: Then what about imagination?

  Y.C.: Nobody knows a damned thing about it except that it is what we get for nothing. It may be racial experience. I think that is quite possible. It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more truly he can imagine. If he gets so he can imagine truly enough people will think that the things he relates all really happened and that he is just reporting.

  Mice: Where will it differ from reporting?

  Y.C.: If it was reporting they would not remember it. When you describe something that has happened that day the timeliness makes people see it in their own imaginations. A month later that element of time is gone and your account would be flat and they would not see it in their minds nor remember it. But if you make it up instead of describe it you can make it round and whole and solid and give it life. You create it, for good or bad. It is made; not described. It is just as true as the extent of your ability to make it and the knowledge you put into it. Do you follow me?

  Mice: Not always.

  Y.C. (crabbily): Well for chrisake let’s talk about something else then.

  Mice (undeterred): Tell me some more about the mechanics of writing.

  Y.C.: What do you mean? Like pencil or typewriter? For chrisake.

  Mice: Yes.

  Y.C.: Listen. When you start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none. So you might as well use a typewriter because it is that much easier and you enjoy it that much more. After you learn to write your whole object is to convey everything, every sensation, sight, feeling, place and emotion to the reader. To do this you have to work over what you write. If you write with a pencil you get three different sights at it to see if the reader is getting what you want him to. First when you read it over; then when it is typed you get another chance to improve it, and again in the proof. Writing it first in pencil gives you one-third more chance to improve it. That is .333 which is a damned good average for a hitter. It also keeps it fluid longer so that you can better it easier.

  Mice: How much should you write a day?

  Y.C.: The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.

  Mice: All right.

  Y.C.: Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start. Once you are into the novel it is as cowardly to worry about whether you can go on the next day as to worry about having to go into inevitable action. You have to go on. So there is no sense to worry. You have to learn that to write a novel. The hard part about a novel is to finish it.

  Mice: How can you learn not to worry?

  Y.C.: By not thinking about it. As soon as you start to think about it stop it. Think about something else. You have to learn that.

  Mice: How much do you read over every day before you start to write?

  Y.C.: The best way is to read it all every day from the start, correcting as you go along, then go on from where you stopped the day before. When it gets so long that you can’t do this every day read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start. That’s how you make it all of one piece. And remember to stop while you are still going good. That keeps it moving instead of having it die whenever you go on and write yourself out. When you do that you find that the next day you are pooped and can’t go on.

  Mice: Do you do the same on a story?

  Y.C.: Yes, only sometimes you can write a story in a day.

  Mice: Do you know what is going to happen when you write a story?

  Y.C.: Almost never. I start to make it up and have happen what would have to happen as it goes along.

  Mice: That isn’t the way they teach you to write in college.

  Y.C.: I don’t know about that. I never went to college. If any sonofabitch could write he wouldn’t have to teach writing in college.

  Mice: You’re teaching me.

  Y.C.: I’m crazy. Besides this is a boat, not a college.

  Mice: What books should a writer have to read?

  Y.C.: He should have read everything so he knows what he has to beat.

  Mice: He can’t have read everything.

  Y.C.: I don’t say what he can. I say what he should. Of course he can’t.

  Mice: Well what books are necessary?

  Y.C.:He should have read War and Peace and Anna Karenina by Tolstoi, Midshipman Easy, Frank Mildmay and Peter Simple by Captain Marryat, Madame Bovary and L’Education Sentimentale by Flaubert, Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, Joyce’s Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses, Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews by Fielding, Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme by Stendhal, The Brothers Karamazov and any two other Dostoevskis, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Open Boat and The Blue Hotel by Stephen Crane, Hail and Farewell by George Moore, Yeats’s Autobiographies, all the good De Maupassant, all the good Kipling, all of Turgenev, Far Away and Long Ago by W. H. Hudson, Henry James’s short stories, especially Madame de Manves, and The Turn of the Screw, The Portrait of a Lady, The American—

  Mice: I can’t write them down that fast. How many more are there?

  Y.C.: I’ll give you the rest another day. There are about three times that many.

  Mice: Should a writer have read all of those?

  Y.C.: All of those and plenty more. Otherwise he doesn’t know what he has to beat.

  Mice: What do you mean “has to beat”?

  Y.C.: Listen. There is no use writing anything that has been written before unless you can beat it. What a writer in our time has to do is write what hasn’t been written before or beat dead men at what they have done. The only way he can tell how he is going is to compete with dead men. Most live writers do not exist. Their fame is created by critics who always need a genius of the season, someone they understand completely and feel safe in praising, but when these fa
bricated geniuses are dead they will not exist. The only people for a serious writer to compete with are the dead that he knows are good. It is like a miler running against the clock rather than simply trying to beat whoever is in the race with him. Unless he runs against time he will never know what he is capable of attaining.

  Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you.

  Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged.

  Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?

  Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

  Mice: Do you think Thomas Mann is a great writer?

  Y.C.: He would be a great writer if he had never written another thing than Buddenbrooks.

  Mice: How can a writer train himself?

  Y.C.: Watch what happens today. If we get into a fish see exactly what it is that everyone does. If you get a kick out of it while he is jumping remember back until you see exactly what the action was that gave you the emotion. Whether it was the rising of the line from the water and the way it tightened like a fiddle string until drops started from it, or the way he smashed and threw water when he jumped. Remember what the noises were and what was said. Find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling that you had. That’s a five finger exercise.

  Mice: All right.

  Y.C.: Then get in somebody else’s head for a change. If I bawl you out try to figure what I’m thinking about as well as how you feel about it. If Carlos curses Juan think what both their sides of it are. Don’t just think who is right. As a man things are as they should or shouldn’t be. As a man you know who is right and who is wrong. You have to make decisions and enforce them. As a writer you should not judge. You should understand.

  Mice: All right.

  Y.C.: Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice. When you’re in town stand outside the theatre and see how the people differ in the way they get out of taxis or motor cars. There are a thousand ways to practice. And always think of other people.

  Mice: Do you think I will be a writer?

  Y.C.: How the hell should I know? Maybe you have no talent. Maybe you can’t feel for other people. You’ve got some good stories if you can write them.

  Mice: How can I tell?

  Y.C.: Write. If you work at it five years and you find you’re no good you can just as well shoot yourself then as now.

  Mice: I wouldn’t shoot myself.

  Y.C.: Come around then and I’ll shoot you.

  Mice: Thanks.

  Y.C.: Perfectly welcome, Mice. Now should we talk about something else?

  Mice: What else?

  Y.C.: Anything else, Mice, old timer, anything else at all.

  Mice: All right. But—

  Y.C.: No but. Finish. Talk about writing finish. No more. All gone for today. Store all close up. Boss he go home.

  Mice: All right then. But tomorrow I’ve got some things to ask you.

  Y.C.: I’ll bet you’ll have fun writing after you know just how it’s done.

  Mice: What do you mean?

  Y.C.: You know. Fun. Good times. Jolly. Dashing off an old masterpiece.

  Mice: Tell me—

  Y.C.: Stop it.

  Mice: All right. But tomorrow—

  Y.C.: Yes. All right. Sure. But tomorrow.

  The Malady of Power: A Second Serious Letter

  Esquire • NOVEMBER, 1935

  IF you tell it to them once they think it is marvelous. When you tell it to them again they say, “We heard that before somewhere. Where do you suppose he got that from?” If you tell it to them a third time they are bored to death and they won’t listen to it. It may be truer every time. But they get tired of hearing it.

  So this month we wrap it all up in a series of anecdotes so that perhaps you will not taste the castor-oil in the chop suey sandwich. But having read the President’s reported statement to a group of Representatives that he could, if he would, put the U.S. into war in ten days, this one is still about the next war.

  In the old days, when your correspondent was a working newspaper man, he had a friend named Bill Ryall, then a European correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. This Ryall had a white, lantern-jawed face of the sort that is supposed to haunt you if seen suddenly in a London fog, but on a bright windy day in Paris meeting him on the boulevard wearing a long fur-collared great coat he had the never-far-from-tragic look of a ham Shakespearean actor. None of us thought of him as a genius then and I do not think he thought of himself as one either, being too busy, too intelligent, and, then, too sardonic to go in for being a genius in a city where they were a nickel a dozen and it was much more distinguished to be hard working. He was a South African and had been very badly blown up in the war while commanding infantry. Afterwards he had gotten into the intelligence service and at the time of the peace conference he had been a sort of pay-off man for the disbursing of certain sums spent by the British to subsidize and influence certain individuals and certain organs of the French press. He talked very frankly about this and as I was a kid then he told me many things that were the beginning of whatever education I received in international politics. Later Ryall wrote under the name of William Bolitho, went to New York, became a genius, and worked at it until he died. You may have read his Murder For Profit, his Twelve Against The Gods, or some of the pieces he wrote in the old N.Y. World. I never saw him after he became Bolitho, but when he was Ryall he was a wonderful guy. He may have been even finer when he was Bolitho but I do not see how it would be possible. I think sometimes being a genius in that hick town must have bored him very much. But I never saw him to ask him.

  In the fall I am remembering we were all covering the Lausanne Conference and Ryall, a man named Hamilton, and myself used to eat together nearly every night. The weather was very pleasant in Lausanne that fall and the conference was split up into two main parts; one was the enormous, spreading Beau-Rivage Hotel down on the bank of the Lake of Geneva where the British and the Italians were and the other was the very red plush Palace Hotel up in the town where the French and the Turks were lodged. To get from one to the other you took a steep little funicular railway, you walked up a steep stairway, or you wound your way up the terraced roads in very expensive taxis. The sessions of the conference itself were secret and your official news came in hand-outs or press conferences with the spokesmen for each country and, since each country was anxious to present its version of what had happened before credence was given to any other country’s account, these press conferences followed in rapid succession and you had to step very fast to get them all in.

  Your correspondent at that time was running a twenty-four hour wire service for an afternoon and morning news service under two different names and was accustomed to file his last dispatch around three a.m. and leave something with the concierge to open the wire with in the morning at seven. Then at eight-thirty your correspondent would wake, read the papers, interview his tipsters, have breakfast in bed and during breakfast file another powerful piece. He would be slipping back into sleep when the telephone would ring and there would be the ruddy, well tubbed, cheerful, outdoor voice of G. Ward Price, the Best Dressed Newspaper Man of the Ages, the Monocled Prince of the Press, The Inheritor of the Tradition of William Harding Davis and one of the best newspaper men of his time, and it’s still his time if you read his recent interview with Mussolini for the Rothermere papers, saying, “What about a spot of exercise?”

  “No,” your correspondent would reply and hang up the receiver. The phone would immediately ring again and Ward would say, “Come on. I’m off to the gym.”

  Always a moral coward, your correspo
ndent would dress, cursing, and reach the gym, slightly bleary-eyed, just in time to see Ward finishing a quick turn with the pulleys and getting ready for a go at the heavy bag.

  “You’re a lazy mucker,” he would say. “Come on. Get the gloves on.”

  After this, with pauses for rest during which your correspondent would lie on his back and breathe heavily while Ward did exercises or shadow boxed about the ring, the very debonair, handsomely built, tall, one hundred and eighty pound, perfectly conditioned Price would stick the finest left hand I’ve ever seen out of the professional ring into your correspondent’s puss for a period of a half an hour. He had very good foot work, he stayed way behind that left jab and popped it into you like a piston and you couldn’t hit him with a sackful of confetti. I mean I couldn’t.

  “Wasn’t that a marvelous work-out,” Ward would say after we had showered and before he selected a fresh monocle. “Doesn’t that set you up for all day?”

  Your correspondent with a headache composed of one part yesterday noon’s Martinis, one part last night’s before-dinner whiskey-and-sodas, two parts last night’s brandies until three o’clock this morning, and eight hundred and seventy-three parts Ward Price’s bloody left hand would try to say something very open air and sporting, like, “Oh rugger ruddy bloody,” and fall to wondering when the people who paid him to send news dispatches would begin to discover he was getting punch drunk.

  So in the evening we were all having dinner and your correspondent was all but crying into his Chianti.

  “What’s the matter with you?” asked Ryall. “You’re a jovial cove tonight.”

  “You don’t have to box that goddamned Ward Price every morning after working all night and have him knock your ruddy can off so you can’t even think until eleven o’clock.”

  “A.M. or P.M.?” asked Ryall, always a stickler for accuracy.

  “Go to hell,” said your correspondent.