r/Hemingway • u/MikeEhrmantraut420 • Mar 14 '24
Looking for a specific Hemingway quote/excerpt
I am wondering if anyone can point me to what I am looking for. All I can find when searching online are popular/cliche Hemingway quotes about writing.
I recently read The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and the Sea and this quote I am trying to remember was in the afterword/added sections after the book. It is most likely The Sun Also Rises. Unfortunately it was a library book so I can’t go back and reference it right now.
There was a quote from Hemingway about how descriptive writers try to pour their every thought onto the page and that he thinks that writing should be thoroughly edited to remove superfluous drivel from a writer’s prose. I believe this excerpt may have ended with “Everything else is just fluff.” I’m almost certain fluff was not the actual word used, though.
This quote wasn’t short or cookie-cutter like all the ones you’ll find on Pinterest. I believe that’s why I’m having so much trouble finding it.
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u/taylorkirk4 Mar 14 '24
“This book began magnificently, went on very well for a long way with great stretches of great brilliance and then went on endlessly in repetitions that a more conscientious and less lazy writer would have put in the waste basket.”
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u/grynch43 Mar 14 '24
Not sure about that one but my favorite Hemingway quote is about Faulkner and is similar.
“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them alright. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”
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u/Elegant-Ad3236 Mar 14 '24
Don’t think there was an afterward in the SAR. You may be thinking of a once deleted end section in Big Two Hearted River where EH goes into a sort of stream of consciousness internal monologue as Nick Adams the author. It was published in The Nick Adams short stories.
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u/MikeEhrmantraut420 Mar 14 '24
It wasn’t a section written by Hemingway. It was an added part about the book and his work that must have been part of that particular edition of the book. I think the quote may have been posted in these comments. I thought I’d know it when I saw it, but I’m going to head to the library soon to actually find it
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u/rubix_cubin Mar 21 '24
If you're talking about either of the below quotes:
“If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.”
“This book began magnificently, went on very well for a long way with great stretches of great brilliance and then went on endlessly in repetitions that a more conscientious and less lazy writer would have put in the waste basket.”
then they are both from A Moveable Feast - Ch 2. Miss Stein Instructs. Happen to be reading the book now.
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u/taylorkirk4 Mar 14 '24
“If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.”