HEMINGWAY TAUGHT HENZE

Hemingway Taught Henze How to Write (Says Henze)

"It all started  for me, with A Moveable Feast – with those conversations Hemingway had with Gertrude Stein about writing," explains Henze. "It left a great impression on me that they would talk about things like 'the many truths about rhythms and the uses of words in repetition that were valid and valuable.' It set me off on a path to discovery."

On the topic of repetition, Henze recalled a recent conversation with a writer friend who had written a book and was in the process of editing that book. This writer friend expressed concern over the fact that he had used the word "gentle" two times in the same paragraph and was looking to replace the second "gentle" with another word.  He had been taught in college to avoid repetition. Henze, having been taught by Hemingway, advised his friend that he might not want to replace the second "gentle" with another word, then read to him a passage from A Farewell to Arms where the main character falls into a river. Henze pointed out how Hemingway wrote "the water was very cold" two times in the same paragraph and then at the beginning of the next paragraph Hemingway stated again: "the water was cold" and two sentences later wrote: ". . . I lay in the icy water." 

And being on the topic of rules, Henze also pointed out that "very" is one of the many words Hemingway uses often that we are taught, by many, not to use. He referred to a quote from an online source that teaches writing: "Very is an intensifier without an inherent meaning. Many inexperienced writers use intensifiers like "very" to add power to their writing. This is a mistake. Avoid using very in a sentence because it's a weak word that diminishes your meaning." So according to this "educational" site Hemingway, in ways, is an inexperienced writer???

Anyway . . . back to repetition. Henze said to his writer friend, that maybe, before getting into "editor" mode, instinctively he wanted the reader to feel, really feel, the gentle in gentle and therefore wrote it twice to emphasize it as an act of good storytelling, and that to take out the second "gentle" would make the paragraph stiff and formulated (which it did) being that it was contrary to healthy writerly instincts. 

The awareness of the uses of repetition in writing that Hemingway turned Henze on to, Henze then noticed in all of his favorite books going back to Edgar Allan Poe. "People in many ways were less uptight back then," explains Henze. "In many ways they were freer than writers today. I read The Tell-Tale Heart for the first time in a long time and I was pleasantly surprised and entertained by Poe's abundant use of repetition. But it's the sort of repetition that creates rhythm – the type of rhythm that Hemingway and Stein discussed."

Henze says he could write a book on the things that Hemingway has taught him, and maybe he will, but it is perhaps Hemingway's philosophical musings that tantalize Henze the most. Henze told of the day Hemingway (in an extra good mood) shared with Henze one of his most cherished philosophical thoughts. "I was alone with Hemingway, up in his head as I read Green Hills of Africa, when he said to me: "Don, prose has a fourth and fifth dimension that can be gotten to."

"Yes, yes, I think I know what you're talking about," Henze replied.

"And if a writer can do this," continued Hemingway, "then nothing else matters. It is more important than anything he can do. The chances are, of course, that he will fail. But there is a chance he succeeds." And true to Hemingway's dedication to teaching, he then instructed: "First there must be talent, much talent. Talent such as Kipling had. Then there must be discipline. Then the writer must be intelligent and disinterested and above all he must survive. The hardest thing, because life is short, is for him to survive and get his work done. But I would like us to have such a writer and to read what he would write."

"Yes, it shall be done," said Henze to Hemingway.

Please share with us what Hemingway has taught you about writing and by all means read Henze's new book: Roger Daltrey and the Bright Shiny Object and let us know if he has indeed reached a fourth or fifth dimension.