Friday, May 9, 2008

Twain and Hemingway

Answer to the movie line:
William Forester, the author portrayed by Sean Connery in Finding Forester, to high school writing prodigy Jamal Wallace, portrayed by Rob Brown.

The new quote is by Mike Royko. Anonymous nailed it.

jim-w came pretty close on the other seven. Although he got only three, he made logical switches for the remaining four: Dave Barry for Lewis Grizzard, George Will for Michael Kelly.
The correct answers are:
1. Will Rogers
2. Erma Bombeck
3. George Will
4. Dave Barry
5. Mark Twain
6. Lewis Grizzard
7. Michael Kelly

Only two of the seven (eight if you count Royko) columnists are still living, George Will and Dave Barry. Lewis Grizzard died in 1994. He steadfastly refused to use a computer for his column, continuing to use his old typewriter until his death. Erma Bombeck died in 1996. Michael Kelly was killed in 2003 in Iraq, where he was an embedded reporter.

Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, two of America's most famous novelists, got their start in newspapers. I thought you might enjoy reading some of their comments on writing.

***

Mark Twain:
The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.

In twenty-one years, with all my time at my free disposal, I have written and completed only eleven books, whereas with half the labor that a journalist does I could have written sixty in that time.

Ernest Hemingway:
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

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

***

So now, fellow wordsmiths, I'm putting you on the spot. Sum up your own philosophy of writing in one or two sentences. Not to put the pressure on, but this statement will be quoted by English professors teaching your work long after you are gone.

By the way, I agree with Ernest on Faulkner. In my opinion, no other American writer's fame so eclipsed his talent.

1 comment:

Mumbling Mary said...

I don't know about a comment on writers, but I can make a comment on the beauty and power of the written word. A Confederate soldier retreating from a winter battle in which he and his comrades suffered defeat, wrote this in his diary: "No one can know how we suffered from hunger and cold. No tongue or pen can paint it." Though there have certainly been great writers, there is a special power in being able to convey something that universally touches the human heart in only a word or two. That, to me, is great writing.