Dave.
Re: The Death Of Ernestway
Jeez, Dave, that was some potent shit. I kid you not. I was just reading along, minding my own business and flipped to page over. Wham. You took my breath away. Literally. And buy Ger a beer or something. I cannot believe how well he’s handled all the insane camera angles and dolly shots and still is so... thorough. Hats off to you both.
On to other matters.
I also have to admit that I’m pretty much with you on Hemingway. It seems to me Hemingway was so bent on being (and promoting himself as) his alter-ego that the books he wrote about himself (or his eidolon) were just a by-product of that obsession. And while I would say that Fitzgerald was a much better writer technically, he wasn’t much better on this account. Vapid, I guess would be the word I would use for both of these boys— and I guess you could use them as a mirror to all the literati who fawned over them both so excessively.
Something interesting, though. You mentioned that Zelda Fitzgerald was the best female writer you had read. Well, I would bestow that honor on Flannery O’Connor (so good a writer was she that I thought she was a man for some time.) O’Connor, if you aren’t aware of her work, was one of those Southern Gothic writers (though not anywhere as verbose as Faulkner; in fact, the very opposite), very much enamoured with using the grotesquery of the common (very common, like white trash common) people to mirror spiritual states of people, people who apparently didn’t find any resemblance between themselves and those... people (herself included, read “Good Country People.”) Anyway, she was talking about working on her first novel, Wise Blood, about a man who has to destroy everything in his life to finally except grace. Partially through writing it, she found out she had lupus, and that she would have to leave the New York literary circles she had been circulating in and return to rural Georgia where she grew up (and stayed there the rest of her days.) She made the remark during in this conversation— I don’t think she even understood the import of it— that God had made her to understand the nature of these people (these broken, grotesque people she was writing about.) Looking at that statement and when she came to that realization, it was almost as if she was implying (maybe not even consciously) that she had been given the outward grotesquery of lupus to understand the inner grotesquery of the people she was writing about. It begs the question: does God do this to artists (and people in general,) alter their lives so they might better use their gifts in understanding what they have been charged to write about?
I believe that free will to some degree is effective if only in how you choose to use what it is you are given to use. That much is up to you. Given your circumstance (by God,) it is very much up to you to do something with it. I suppose you could look at that as an ethical decision but I would say it says more about the person making the decision than anything else; God Himself does not change. Fitzgerald, it seems to me, was given an enormous gift, and what he managed to preoccupy himself with (dissolution, ennui) became what he was. Considered this way, God tried to nudge Fitzgerald often to change his focus— his petty wife’s insanity, his irrelevance in light of the Depression— and yet he steadfastly would not look up from his own reflection for anything. And so he became as frivolous as his work had been.
The ruination of Hemingway can easily be looked at this way as an extreme case. You mention that Papa’s self-promotion of himself as a superman served him in bad stead after the plane wrecks, but what about the Wilderness (the Heart of Darkness, you were talking about) itself? Certainly good ol’ Hem had a hand in the creation of aspect of the Africa he encountered, but more to the point, God had an even greater hand in it. “Here, Mr. Great White Hunter, Mr. Tarzan the Drunken Typist, let’s see what you do with the Heart of Darkness. The real one.” Hemingway did not understand. Certainly if Hem was writing about it (which he did and you can see just what I mean) he would have been taken on all the misfortune that was laid for him like Doc Savage, but let’s contrast that with how he really dealt with all of this. I would say Hem came out sorely lacking on any of the fronts he incessantly held up as constituting the basis for a Real Man. Not just bravery, but wisdom and self-control, among others. Mary certainly got him there, but it was Hemingway who forced God’s hand. God gave him the ability which he used to propagate this lie about himself, this double image, and then Hemingway tried to force it down God’s throat. And God, since He has seen this sort of thing for time immemorial, He just stripped him down. No one goes but naked before God and Hemingway naked was a pretty piss poor sight. Hemingway needed to be made to understand that he could not have it both ways. And he went home like a whipped dog. God turned him into a broken little old man. And more to the point, God had Hemingway do it to himself, to make him understand. Sadly this was a futile exercise on God’s part, but Hemingway really gave him little choice. Certainly, left as an object lesson, Hemingway retains his usefulness to God and to man. It’s just a matter of looking at him correctly.
By the way, “askari,” my Too Huge to Really Use Dictionary (pat pending Random House) defines as:
“askari— a native African police officer or soldier, esp. one serving a colonial administration [1885-90; < Swahili < Ar ‘askari soldier, equiv. to ‘askar army]”
You were close, though, as information on Imam Askari reveals:
“Samarra (Surre Mun Ra’) was a garrison town about 60 miles north of Baghdad. The river Euphrates flows in the middle of the town, and because of the surrounding hills a cool breeze keeps the area cooler in comparison to Baghdad. The word ‘Asker’ in arabic is used for army. Our 11th Imam’s title became known as Askari: the one who lived all his life in a garrison town.”
Luck,
D.B. Little
