by David Drayer

Have you ever heard of Ernest Hemingway?

Of course, you have! Everybody knows Hemingway. Like Shakespeare, even if you’ve never read him, you know him. Which is not surprising. He wrote some of the greatest novels and short stories of the 20^th century, was an important voice for the Lost Generation, won a little thing called the Nobel Prize in Literature … and he was wild! 

He chased adventure. At 18 years old, he volunteered to be an ambulance driver in World War I, where he was severely wounded. This in no way deterred him. He was a correspondent in both the Spanish Civil War and World War II. He was married 4 times and had 3 kids. He was a man about town, a lover of booze and bars, he was a brawler, a big-game hunter, a deep-sea fisherman, truly, a legend in his own time.

The publication of his letters gives us a look at the man behind that legend. 

He loved to write letters. He wrote thousands of them and he appreciated getting them too. So many of the letters I’ve read start with “Thank you for writing…Thank you so much your letter…” He wrote to friends, family, fellow-writers, casual acquaintances, publishers, on and on. He was always interested in what everyone was doing, where they were, if he could meet up with them somewhere, and apparently, he also had a healthy appetite for the latest gossip.  

He didn’t see letters as serious writing and never intended for them to be published so he didn’t worry about the quality of the writing. He’d just bang them out and send them.  At the end of one letter, he adds: “This is a dreadful, sprawling letter. I’m afraid if I re-read it, I wouldn’t send it so I won’t re-read it—just say ciao and stick it in the envelope.”

This project is significant because it gives us an accurate and straightforward look at the man who is often eclipsed by his legend. Hemingway’s influence on 20^th Century and contemporary fiction—not just in America, but worldwide—can’t be overstated.  

I was asked to speak here this afternoon because Hemingway had and continues to have a profound impact on me as a writer. He was there when my journey as a writer began 30 years ago, he had a strong influence on my style of writing, and I still find the advice he shared on the actual work of writing incredibly valuable. 

I was born and raised in the small town of Rimersburg in southern Clarion County. I couldn’t wait to get out. I wanted to see the world, and have adventures, and write stories about them. But I had no direction. I was singing in a rock band, writing bad poetry, and working at the Sligo General Store. Something had to change. So I moved to Pittsburgh and enrolled in the community college. There, I discovered many things that would change the course of my life. One of them was Hemingway. 

His writing spoke to me because it was so simple and easy to read, yet there was so much going on there. So much of the story was between the lines. The people, the dialogue, the exotic locations he wrote about all felt real, felt true because he created fiction from experience. 

“In order to write about life,” he said, “first you must live it.”

Not that you have to have this super adventurous life to be a writer. Most writers do not live like that, but Hemingway did … and as a young man, that really spoke to me.

In some strange way, this gave me permission to just go for it. Because no matter what happened—success, failure, love, loneliness, wealth, poverty, fame, obscurity—it was all writing material. Grist for mill. 

It was adventure. And that’s what I wanted. 

Once I had a taste of higher education, I couldn’t get enough. I went from the community college to the University of Pittsburgh and on to get my Masters at the University of Iowa. All by the seat of my pants. I couldn’t begin to afford college. But I did it anyway. 

As an undergrad in Pittsburgh, I unloaded trucks for UPS every evening and by the time I had my Masters in Iowa, I was so poor, I couldn’t afford to leave the state. I was stuck there. So … my first job after earning my MFA was working harvest season in the corn fields of Iowa. 

It was crazy, but I went there for the education, that’s what I got. The degree didn’t mean that much to me. It was the education, the experience. And from then on, I have been living the life of a writer. 

I didn’t want a steady 9 to 5 job. I wanted to find my voice the same way Hemingway did, by creating fiction from my experiences. I survived by working countless temp jobs, whatever I could find. I lived in New York and LA and a bunch of places in between. It was tough. I was existing on cans of tuna and soup half the time, but, all along, I was living different places, learning about people, seeing the world from different perspectives. 

All the crazy, funny, sad, wonderful, and lousy things that I witnessed and experienced, I used as fodder for plays, screenplays, and short stories.

“Good writing is true writing,” Hemingway said. “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.”

During those years when I was really learning to write, developing my own style, I was drawn to Hemingway’s minimalist approach. He once said, “My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”

There was no fluff in his writing. No window dressing. Those short, declarative sentences cut right to the heart of moment. Raymond Carver became another huge influence on me, and not surprisingly, I later found out that he was greatly inspired by Hemingway.

This effect on my style as a writer is most evident in my first book, Strip Cuts, which was published 22 years ago. It’s still one of my bestselling books, and in fact, it was just picked as next month’s book club selection at the Watershed Bookstore, so grab a copy and join in their discussion next month.

One of the things that readers like about Strip Cuts is its accessibility, which was my take on the minimalist style I first experienced reading Hemingway. Strip Cuts has been taught in contemporary literature classes at several different colleges and was on the syllabus for 12 consecutive years at a community college in Ohio. Students found it easy and fun to read, and yet, there was so much going on between the lines, underneath the surface that it gave professors plenty to dissect and discuss. 

Since the publication of Strip Cuts, I’ve written and published 4 other books and am working on number 6. 

Fun fact: I wrote most of my books by working two or three jobs at a time and saving my money. Then, quitting all my jobs and writing until the money ran out. 

Talk about adventure.

All of my books are quite different from each other because I am always experimenting with different styles and genres. I’ve learned and changed a lot over the past 30 years, but I still find Hemingway’s insights on writing as relevant as ever.

One of the best examples of this is what he called “the well” theory. He would never write himself all the way out at the end of the day, or empty the well, so to speak.

“The best way” he said, “is to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next.”

His theory was that the well would refill overnight, that the subconscious would continue working on it so when he came back the next morning, the well would be full again.

I can tell you, this works! 

I’ve tested the theory. It is my nature to write myself all the way out, but when I’ve done that, I find I have to start all over again the next time I sit down to write. 

So, I’ve learned to take his advice, and I stop before I am quite finished with the day’s writing. And sure enough, when I go back the next day, that little part I left unwritten … has turned into a large part waiting to be written.

Along with the practical advice, Hemingway never tried to pretend it was easy. 

With his incredible success and accolades, he could have glossed over this and been like “Hey, I am this incredible, world-renowned talent and it just pours out of me,” but he never did that. He said things like:

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

In a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934, he wrote: “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

In 1928, a friend of his, Waldo Peirce, was trying to write and having a difficult time. This is what Hemingway wrote to him, “My God it’s hard to write. I never start a damn thing without knowing 200 times I can’t write—never will be able to write a line—can’t go on—can’t get started—stuff is rotten—can’t say what I mean—know there is a whole fine complete thing and all I get are bacon rinds—you would write better than anybody, but the minute it become impossible, you stop. That’s the time you have to go on through, and then it gets easier. It always gets utterly and completely impossible. Thank God it does—otherwise everybody would write and I would starve to death.”

These last two quotes came from the collection of Hemingway’s letters, and is a taste of the kind of things that you will find there. 

  The legend of Hemingway is the man’s man, the tough guy, the big game hunter, the rich and famous writer, but through the letters, readers see a real person, someone who was vulnerable at times, who worried about money, who doubted his ability from time to time. 

A lot of what you get in the letters is not flattering. The guy was a mass of contradictions. A complicated person. He knew this about himself. He was a very disciplined writer, but he loved to party. He could be kind to someone and then be incredibly cruel. He really wanted to be a good husband and father, but he was married 4 times and was often away from his children.

His recognition of his flaws often came out in his sense of humor.  

In a letter to Fitzgerald in 1925, he wrote that in his idea of heaven, he would have “two lovely houses in town.” In one, he would live with his wife and his children and be monogamous and love them truly and well; and the other would have “9 beautiful mistresses on 9 different floors …”

Also, in those two houses, he would have the magazines of the editors he didn’t like specially printed on the toilet paper.

Perhaps the most significant way Hemingway influenced my life is something I didn’t realize until I sat down to write this speech. 

My passion for life … is fed by my passion for writing … and vis-versa. 

I will never have everything figured out. There will always be more to discover, to get a handle on.

Hemingway puts it like this: “…see and hear and learn and understand and write when there is something that you know, and not before, and not too damned much after.”