User:KWatson/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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the chance of selling to the Times and indeed to ensure the spirit of NANA’s original arrangement with Hemingway. Far from dissatisfied, NANA wrote Hemingway at the end of August 1938 a letter of agreement for his coverage of “a general European war” should it break out, “written in your colorful style” (Hemingway was in Paris, on his way to Spain for the last time during the war (Wheeler). When Edmund Wilson criticized the selected dispatches reprinted in ''Fact'', Hemingway wrote him that “I was paid to write what are called ‘eyewitness’ accounts ...what is called or was asked for as ‘color stuff.’ Most of such stuff is faked. Mine was not. It was straight reporting and the personal stuff was what had been asked for by the editors.” Wilson’s estimation was also based upon ''Fact’s'' inclusion of the “The Old Man at the Bridge” story from ''Ken'', “not a news dispatch” at all (Hemingway, Letter to Edmund). Speaking at Carnegie Hall before the showing of a rough cut of ''The Spanish Earth'', shortly after his first trip to Spain and so very much in the context of his wartime work, Hemingway defined the writer’s problem as “project[ing][what is true] in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it”(Hemingway,“Fascism”193).

Personal, anecdotal journalism had been Hemingway’s signature style from his earliest days filing reports, in the early 1920s from Paris, when his editor at the ''Toronto Star Weekly'' “encouraged [. . .] what Hemingway did best: write about himself in the act of being a reporter” (Reynolds 45).How could he expect that NANA would expect anything else, if indeed NANA did expect anything else? In the Spanish Civil War he at least maintained his eyewitness posture; in World War II, however, he couldn’t keep himself out. His first piece, about D-Day, begins, “No one remembers the date of the Battle of Shiloh. But the day ''we took'' Fox Green beach was the sixth of June, and the wind was blowing hard out of the northwest” (Hemingway, By-Line 340, emphasis added). His venue too— ''Collier’s'' magazine—and the fact that he had not written anything in three years further contributed to the story-like nature of the WWII stories, in which he figured as a protagonist—not to mention the stories and involvement he couldn’t write about, armed and running around France more of a free agent than his guerilla-hero Robert Jordan ever was (though he began to transform these experiences into fiction in several unpublished stories). In wartime China in 1943, filing articles for Ralph Ingersoll’s short-lived ''PM'' New York afternoon daily, Hemingway did not even care to be called a news reporter (Moreira 99).

It should be mentioned that Hemingway and Matthews enjoyed a great

Page break 432-433

friendship and working relationship. Hemingway usually brought Matthews, who did not have a car, on his excursions. When Matthews left Madrid for a break in mid-April 1937, he had already ensured Hemingway would provide coverage to the ''Times'' through NANA. For one thing, Hemingway did not have to worry about Matthews as a rival for the history books. He could endorse his friends’ book, ''Two Wars and More to Come'', and praise him as “the ablest and the bravest war correspondent writing today” who “when the fakers are all dead [. . .] will be read in the schools” (Advertisement 21) because Matthews posed no threat to Hemingway’s own chances to be read in the schools. The only brief Hemingway ever expressed he really reserved for Matthews’ editors, for not wanting his Teruel street-fighting story and for cutting references to himself in Matthews’ Teruel dispatches so that it appeared only Matthews had been there (“To Hadley”462).

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 the chance of selling to the Times and indeed to ensure the spirit of NANA’s original arrangement with Hemingway. Far from dissatisfied, NANA wrote Hemingway at the end of August 1938 a letter of agreement for his coverage of “a general European war” should it break out, “written in your colorful style” (Hemingway was in Paris, on his way to Spain for the last time during the war (Wheeler). When Edmund Wilson criticized the selected dispatches reprinted in ''Fact'', Hemingway wrote him that “I was paid to write what are called ‘eyewitness’ accounts ...what is called or was asked for as ‘color stuff.’ Most of such stuff is faked. Mine was not. It was straight reporting and the personal stuff was what had been asked for by the editors.” Wilson’s estimation was also based upon ''Fact’s'' inclusion of the “The Old Man at the Bridge” story from ''Ken'', “not a news dispatch” at all (Hemingway, Letter to Edmund). Speaking at Carnegie Hall before the showing of a rough cut of ''The Spanish Earth'', shortly after his first trip to Spain and so very much in the context of his wartime work, Hemingway defined the writer’s problem as “project[ing][what is true] in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it”(Hemingway,“Fascism”193).
+Personal, anecdotal journalism had been Hemingway’s signature style from his earliest days filing reports, in the early 1920s from Paris, when his editor at the ''Toronto Star Weekly'' “encouraged [. . .] what Hemingway did best: write about himself in the act of being a reporter” (Reynolds 45).How could he expect that NANA would expect anything else, if indeed NANA did expect anything else? In the Spanish Civil War he at least maintained his eyewitness posture; in World War II, however, he couldn’t keep himself out. His first piece, about D-Day, begins, “No one remembers the date of the Battle of Shiloh. But the day ''we took'' Fox Green beach was the sixth of June, and the wind was blowing hard out of the northwest” (Hemingway, By-Line 340, emphasis added). His venue too— ''Collier’s'' magazine—and the fact that he had not written anything in three years further contributed to the story-like nature of the WWII stories, in which he figured as a protagonist—not to mention the stories and involvement he couldn’t write about, armed and running around France more of a free agent than his guerilla-hero Robert Jordan ever was (though he began to transform these experiences into fiction in several unpublished stories). In wartime China in 1943, filing articles for Ralph Ingersoll’s short-lived ''PM'' New York afternoon daily, Hemingway did not even care to be called a news reporter (Moreira 99).
+It should be mentioned that Hemingway and Matthews enjoyed a great
+Page break 432-433
+friendship and working relationship. Hemingway usually brought Matthews, who did not have a car, on his excursions. When Matthews left Madrid for a break in mid-April 1937, he had already ensured Hemingway would provide coverage to the ''Times'' through NANA. For one thing, Hemingway did not have to worry about Matthews as a rival for the history books. He could endorse his friends’ book, ''Two Wars and More to Come'', and praise him as “the ablest and the bravest war correspondent writing today” who “when the fakers are all dead [. . .] will be read in the schools” (Advertisement 21) because Matthews posed no threat to Hemingway’s own chances to be read in the schools. The only brief Hemingway ever expressed he really reserved for Matthews’ editors, for not wanting his Teruel street-fighting story and for cutting references to himself in Matthews’ Teruel dispatches so that it appeared only Matthews had been there (“To Hadley”462).