Preface to my Europe blog
Ernest Hemingway was an accomplished journalist basically his entire career. He has written in letters that he only worked as a journalist to pay bills and to gain experiences for his serious work - his short stories and eventually his novels. It took him a long time to gain the life and writing experience and the focus to write his first novel The Sun Also Rises as he discusses in the posthumously published memoir A Moveable Feast. He would write very focused but was sure to stop at a point when he knew where the story was going, what would happen next. Then he would go out about his day hoping he would notice everything that happened around him. To observe with all his might.
In a letter to a friend, he apologizes for his journalistic efforts. He says that the writing he has produced on a deadline is not to be considered part of his body of work, that his literary work was his serious work. It's funny that I read that quote in the preface of the celebrated collection of his journalism called Byline: Ernest Hemingway.
One of my favorite moments in Feast, Hemingway is sitting in a cafe writing a story. Actually the story is writing itself and his pencil can barely keep up. A woman walks in, she is beautiful. She sits by the window to watch for somebody. He wants the story he is writing to be about her but she doesn't enter the story or his life. She sits by the window waiting for someone. Instead he sits in Paris and writes about Michigan (the short story "Up In Michigan") but perhaps if he were in Michigan he could write about Paris.
So here I am, actually currently in Daphne, Alabama, excusing my blog notes from wherever I was in Europe when I wrote them. My writing on a deadline is not to be considered in the body of my blog. The computer time was expensive, the keyboards were strange, and there was much more to see. I've been taking notes, distilling memories, hoping to observe, writing, rewriting. I don't think what I will publish is brilliant but if I waited that long, I'd never publish.
So, in apology for my long hiatus, here is finally a chapter on our journey across the pond and roughly half of Munich, Mike and my first stop in Europe. I've written this in at least Alabama, Washington DC, Massachusetts. Maybe I will go back to Europe to write about Alabama.
Cheers,
Evan
In a letter to a friend, he apologizes for his journalistic efforts. He says that the writing he has produced on a deadline is not to be considered part of his body of work, that his literary work was his serious work. It's funny that I read that quote in the preface of the celebrated collection of his journalism called Byline: Ernest Hemingway.
One of my favorite moments in Feast, Hemingway is sitting in a cafe writing a story. Actually the story is writing itself and his pencil can barely keep up. A woman walks in, she is beautiful. She sits by the window to watch for somebody. He wants the story he is writing to be about her but she doesn't enter the story or his life. She sits by the window waiting for someone. Instead he sits in Paris and writes about Michigan (the short story "Up In Michigan") but perhaps if he were in Michigan he could write about Paris.
So here I am, actually currently in Daphne, Alabama, excusing my blog notes from wherever I was in Europe when I wrote them. My writing on a deadline is not to be considered in the body of my blog. The computer time was expensive, the keyboards were strange, and there was much more to see. I've been taking notes, distilling memories, hoping to observe, writing, rewriting. I don't think what I will publish is brilliant but if I waited that long, I'd never publish.
So, in apology for my long hiatus, here is finally a chapter on our journey across the pond and roughly half of Munich, Mike and my first stop in Europe. I've written this in at least Alabama, Washington DC, Massachusetts. Maybe I will go back to Europe to write about Alabama.
Cheers,
Evan
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