/lit/ - Literature

>>11025438
Hemingway's "iceberg" theory doesn't get tired. What gets tired are the people who just capture the tip of the berg. Terse prose works when it points beyond itself, or allows for one to "read between the lines" as the saying goes. It also works well when used in conjunction with lyrical lines, so as to allow for the development of images in the narrative, or to change the flow or rhythm of the piece. What people mistake for "Hemingway's" style are grocery lists, or those stories that go on like:

>Bob entered the room. Bob turned on the light. He hung his coat up.

That's "terse" prose, sure, but it's as potent as a flaccid cock. Speaking of cock, what's the nature of Jake's injury in The Sun Also Rises? We know he can't have sex, but the novel never explicitly details what had happened, because it's Hemingway. A poorer writer superficially imitating his style would come out and write, "Jake had his dick shot off" or something crude. Instead we can ponder and debate decades later the nature of his injury and how that plays into the bull/steer imagery in the novel, etc.

Complex language doesn't necessarily mean better, either. Just look at thesaurus writers. Purple prose draws attention to its own overly ornate quality, obfuscated images, and consequently brings the reader's out of the text.

>>11011753
These type of people are usually white girls and gay men between ages 17 & 28 who pre-order YA novels, follow all of the latest series, post gif image reviews on Goodreads, and never try to challenge themselves. The kind of books they read, despite the size, can usually be read in 2-3 days. These are the people who grew up with Harry Potter.

>>11011618
A lot of other Beat writers (even Ginsberg too) were also reeling from the United States' nuclear capability. You have to remember the existential threat that posed to humanity and how that would have influenced their psyche. It's more distant, more out of mind nowadays than it was in the immediate post-war years. Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, and others all wrote about the bomb. And then you factor in things like the repression of sexuality and the consequences of transgression: electro shock therapy. The world might start to seem a little mad the way in which ordinary people could just throw on a suit and go about their careers and consumption with but a care in the world.