[lit-ideas] Re: [SPAM] Writing while drinking
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:57:34 -0400
Lawrence, I imagine this proves that drinkers like to drink. I read somewhere
that Ernest Hemingway promulgated the notion among his fellow writers that his
writing flowed effortlessly off the tip of his pen, when in fact he suffered
out every sentence. The passage below is consistent with the persona of
himself that he spun. Again one might wonder why, if drinking were so much
fun, people go out and kill themselves instead of continuing to have more fun
until they die. What in your opinion was the Hemingway Code all about?
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 10/17/2006 6:10:17 PM
Subject: [SPAM] [lit-ideas] Writing while drinking
?It was a pleasant café, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old
waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on
the rack above the bench and ordered a café au lait. The waiter brought it and
I took out my notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to
write. I was writing about up in Michigan and since it was a wild, cold,
blowing day it was that sort of day in the story. I had already seen the end
of fall come through boyhood, youth and young manhood, and in one place you
could write about it better than another. That was called transplanting
yourself, I thought, and it could be as necessary with people as with other
sorts of growing things. But in the story the boys were drinking and this made
me thirsty and I ordered a rum St. James. This tasted wonderful on the cold
day and I kept on writing, feeling very well and feeling the good Martinique
rum warm me all through my body and my spirit.
?A girl came in the café and sat by herself at a table near the window. She
was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins
in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair was black as a crow?s
wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek.
?I looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited. I wished I
could put her in the story, or anywhere, but she had placed herself so she
could watch the street and the entry and I knew she was waiting for someone.
So I went on writing.?
From page 5 of A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Lawrence
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