1923 Hemingway put forward a new writing theory after finishing his short story "Inappropriate". In his memoir "The Flowing Feast" published after his death, he explained: "I omitted the real ending, that is, the old man hanged himself.
According to the new theory, you can omit anything ... and the omitted part will strengthen the story. "? Die in the afternoon? In chapter 16, he compares his writing theory to an iceberg.
Carlos Baker, Hemingway's biographer, believes that as a short story writer, Hemingway learned "how to get the most from the least things, how to trim the language and avoid wasting actions, how to increase the intensity, and how to only tell the truth and allow to say more than the truth." ?
Baker also pointed out that the writing style of "iceberg theory" shows that the narrative and subtle complexity of the story, together with the symbolic meaning, operate under the surface of the story itself.
Hemingway, for example, thinks that writers can describe an action, such as nick adams fishing in a river with two hearts, and at the same time convey different information about the action itself-nick adams is so absorbed in fishing that he doesn't have to think about the unpleasantness of his war experience. ? In his article "The Art of Short Stories", Hemingway is very clear about his method: "There are several things that I found to be true.
If you omit important things or events you know, the story will be strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you don't know, the story is worthless. The test of any story is you, not your editor, how well it is omitted.
Hemingway said that the novel only shows the tip of the iceberg-your readers will only see what is above the water-but your understanding of your role never appears in the story, which is like most of the iceberg. This is the importance and seriousness of this story.
By making the structure of the story invisible, he thinks that the author strengthens the novel. "The quality of the work can be judged by the quality of the material removed by the author." His style adds beauty: According to biographer meyers, Hemingway used "declarative sentences and direct expression of the visible world", and his language was simple and clear, which made him "the most influential prose stylist in the 20th century".
By making the structure of the story invisible, he thinks that the author strengthens the novel. "The quality of the work can be judged by the quality of the material removed by the author." His style adds beauty: According to biographer meyers, Hemingway used "declarative sentences and direct expression of the visible world", and his language was simple and clear, which made him "the most influential prose stylist in the 20th century".
Zoe Trode explained in her paper Hemingway's Eye of the Camera that Hemingway used repetition in his prose to build a snapshot collage to create the whole picture. She claimed that in his iceberg theory, it was "also a glacier waterfall, which was injected into motion by his multi-focus aesthetics".
In addition, she believes that Hemingway's iceberg theory "needs readers to feel the whole story" and the reader's purpose is to "fill the gap left by his negligence with his own feelings".
Hemingway's iceberg theory emphasizes the symbolic significance of art, and he explains the essence of human existence with body behavior. It can be convincingly proved that "when he expresses human life in a fictional form, he always puts people in the background of his world and universe and examines human situation from different angles."
background
Like other American writers such as Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, theodore dreiser, sinclair lewis and Willa Cather, Hemingway was a journalist before he became a novelist. After graduating from high school, he went to the Kansas City Star as a trainee reporter, where he soon learned that the truth often lurks under the surface of the story.
He learned about corruption in urban politics. In hospital emergency rooms and police stations, wearing a cynical mask "is like armor, which can protect any loopholes that still exist." What he wrote in the article was related events, not including the background. As a foreign correspondent of Toronto Star, when he lived in Paris in the early1968+1920s, he reported the war between Greece and Turkey in more than a dozen articles.
As Jeffrey Meyers, his biographer, explained, "He only reports the immediate events objectively to achieve the purpose of focusing attention-the spotlight instead of the stage".
From the Greek-Turkish War, he gained valuable writing experience and turned it into novel creation. He believes that fiction can be based on reality, but if you want to refine an experience, as he explained, then "what he made up is more real than what he remembered."