The Essential Tragic Conservatism Of Ernest Hemingway

Never a radical, Hemingway became apolitical and remained so for the rest of his life. . . . [H]e was one of the least overtly political writers of his generation.[1]

Which both writers shared a distaste for.

Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.[28]

Jake might have expanded on that laconic sentiment, but that would have led to the abstractions of theology and philosophy, which a Jake Barnes or an Ernest Hemingway would have steered clear of.

[5] The Short Stories, 383.

[6] Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life (New York: Dover, 1954) 90.

[12] http://www.lostgeneration.com/childhood.htm

[13] Henry S. Villard and James Nagel, Hemingway in Love and War: The Lost Diary of Agnes Von Kurowsky (New York: Northeastern University Press, 1989) 187.

[14] See the endless list of works, not just writers, but painters and composers, that Hemingway says influenced him. George Plimpton, interview with Ernest Hemingway, Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Second Series. 215-239.

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/The-Ernest-Hemingway-Collection/~/media/143FD43007D14DB89A4CE973C2EAC3F5.pdf

[20] The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, 486.

[21] Joseph North, ed. New Masses: An Anthology of the Rebel Thirties (New York, International Publishers) 199-205.

[22] See Stephen Koch, The Breaking Point (New York: Counterpoint, 2005).

[26] Unamuno, 1.

[27] Unamuno, p. xv.

[29] The Sun Also Rises, 247.

[30] The Sun Also Rises, 249.

[31] The`Sun Also ises, 103.

[34] William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Modern Library, 1902), p. 138.

Sam Bluefarb is Prof. Emeritus, Los Angeles Harbor College.

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