• Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.

    This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.

    Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…

    • Don't give offence
    • Don't take offence

    We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.

    You can dismiss this notice by clicking the "x" box

The Iceberg Theory

Invest in You. Get Full Membership now.
Status
Not open for further replies.

LegionWhale

Basic
Joined
Mar 3, 2018
Location
United Kingdom
LitBits
0
Recently, I read a little about the Iceberg Theory of minimalist writing, that writing a little and leaving the reader to engage more is better than describing everything in minute detail.

This theory seemed sound to me, so I decided to read my first book by Hemingway, (as he is the one who penned the theory) The Sun Also Rises.

I was rather disappointed to find that it left quite a shallow impression on me. There were some passages that I found incredibly powerful, but others which seemed bland, and I felt that the ongoing fiesta muddled everything. There is also the certainty that I'm not very familiar with the early 20th Century period setting, but I think it was more that just that.

What do you fellow writers think about Hemingway's style of writing?
 
Haven't read Hemingway since I was a kid, so can't give a meaningful comment on his writing. But I do agree that the writer needs to leave gaps for the reader to fill in from their own inimitable experience of being. If you try to nail everything down too much, you start to exclude / limit reader' responses, IMHO.
 
I don't like Hemingway. I don't want to read about fish. I'm sure there's more to The Old Man and the Sea but I get sea sick. He doesn't appeal to me.

But. He wrote this story and even though I must have read it for the first time about twenty five years ago, I never forgot it.

Hills Like White Elephants

So. There must be something to like about the guy. I suppose. For me. It's the story above.

He's sometimes credited with writing the shortest story ever.

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

I like sparse writing though. I like it a lot. I wish I could think of someone to recommend but.... in spite of the fact that I like it a lot... no one immediately comes to mind.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Further Articles from the Author Platform

Latest Articles By Litopians

  • The Shadow Durian
    As a lifelong foreigner, I’ve learnt that being open to new things smooths the path considerably. ...
  • Goodbye Eeyore, Hello Tigger
    Granny was churchy. She grew up in an era that saw living by the Bible as an important British chara ...
  • 21st Century Song of Summer
         It’s sobering to think that while summer is celebrated in some parts of the world with mus ...
  • Falcon Theory
    “So,” said Goethe to his friend Johann Peter Eckermann, “let us call it a Novelle, for what i ...
  • The Joy of Lit Mags
    While my first novel is tentatively making its way towards agents who already have too much to read, ...
  • Advertising and Social Media
    There has been much discussion in writing circles about how much a writer has to self-promote these ...
  • Future Abstract: Fights at Night
    SATIRE ALERT: The following abstract is entirely fictional and does not represent actual events or s ...
Back
Top