well, as a high school english teacher for too many years
(temporarily
'retired'), i would like to throw water on the whole
conrad/hemingway thing by saying that as far as i know the
reason hemingway is preferred is because his stuff is short
and doesn't use big words. i imagine some of you have been in
the classroom as recently as earlier today, and you know what
the general reading level currently is.
and i can't stand hemingway. he's a chestbeater. and
superficial. and his sentence structure is too consistently
the same. it bothers me. a lot. neither am i wild for conrad.
but his work does not strike me as completely ego-bound, as
does hemingway's. i put them on the same shelf.
i don't think brevity or length has got anything to do with
anything when one is talking about literature. we all know
that good writing is what it is and no matter of length or
genre or era changes that.
http:/www.dennismcmillan.com
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