Styles, Habits of Navokov and Hemingway

Earnest Hemingway had a house in Florida. In his fishing trips he wrote many stories. Hi picture of a boxing bearded man with safari shirts and iconic beard makes me imagine his' Old Man'. Many famous writers had odd habits when writing. Capote always wrote in supine position with pencil in one and wine in other hand. Hemingway wrote in morning about 500 words each day, according to himself, he used to get 1 page of masterpiece in 99 pages of shit. Some writers wrote naked, some wrote immediately after waking up from dreams.

V. Nabokov used 3*5 index cards. 'Lolita' was such a controversial novel and I read a Nepali  translation of it in teenage. First I thought it was ridiculously imaginative, profane, evil and cheap like those cheap erotica novels sold on Bagbazar Street openly. I soon changed my position after reading the English version. I saw the prose style, melancholic, artful presentation, and very sympathy demanding Humbert. I thought the inclusion of such a incest story, profanity and trying to  make it appear to be artful literature is simply pathetic and demeaning. But I didn't for once realize the writer was not Humbert himself. He was not endorsing any position and he was not an addict. He focused more on details and style rather than plot development or the content itself. One of the reasons why Lolita's narration looked like clattering tools of unrhymed poem verses was the fact that he wrote numerous notes, plots, dialogues, details of characters in index cards and he used them wherever he wanted. Not very organized for my liking but, nonetheless, excellent. A great point of view again do describe a sincere but sexually addicted, incesting stepfather who was obsessed with a twelve year old Haze, who he nicknamed Lolita for her nymphomaniac nature.

Hemingway liked drinking but he said he never wrote while drunk. Navakov would be catching butterflies while writing. He wrote Lolita when he was in a Entomology trip in west US. He never typed, or even edited. All his edition, translation, writings, driving was done by his wife and his son. He was, in the beginning, very reluctant to publish Lolita. He once tried to burn all the manuscript, but Vera, his wife/ex-wife, saved it. He was also famous for plotting himself in the story but not as a major character who influence the story much just like he appears in Lolita out of nowhere, but may be that is a slight guilt, a hideous attempt to cover that he was not the Humbert himself who was sick in mind. I am not sure. He disliked Freud's psychoanalysis. He didn't believe in such things. His love and translation of Russian and English literature from and to one another is another remarkable talent of his.

In Hemingway's writings, I always found a dark, melancholic, depressive tone. Even before I knew about his personal life, I guessed that he had been a suicide planner all his life. I hate depression and I hate suicide planners. I am a Tagore admirer. I do not want dark, cold, lonely, fearful nights. I like to have Tagore's world.

'Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high 
Where knowledge is free...

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way 
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee 
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom...

Now coming back to Hemingway, as people are celebrating his birthday, I am  always amazed by wonderful expression of sadness in his stories and his connection to suicides. I remember one such story. I can't remember the title ...could be Old Man or Suicide. I just remember the plot. A bar attendant is curious about a old man, who comes in his bar regularly and sits in a dark, cold corner and drinks. He never talks much and he has no friends. When inquired with another customer, he finds out, that old man's daughter has committed suicide few days ago, and that old man tried killing himself unsuccessfully few days ago; and perhaps planning a next one.  After the bar is closed, the old man leaves. The bar-attendant also heads for home. When the attendant was  in the bar, everyone saw him smiling, happy, and in lighted part of the building whereas the old man was drinking in the dark corner. But as soon as bar attendant leaves, a darkness creeps in the street, silent road but distant howling foxes, stars in the sky but not enough to lighten him. He looks at his life, remember his home and realized he has nothing exciting to look forward to. He also has darkness waiting for him at home. Depressing, cold, silent, tired night... Excellent plot, and very clear picture of what the real 'Old Man' was going to do, very soon. 'Papa' Hemingway, the hunter, the story teller who was his own hero, Santiago, the Old Man who imitate himself in his books, short and sweet was his style, a parody unto himself, once wrote a six word story which he call his best work of all.

"Baby shoes, for sale, never used.

July 21, 2012

Irving