Earnest Hemingway and Kansas City

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist, with strong Kansas City connections. His distinctive style, which was characterized by economy and understatement, had a significant influence on the development of fiction in the twentieth century. The protagonists in Hemingway’s writing were often seen as projections of his own character. They were stoic men, men who must show "grace under pressure".

Nicknamed "Papa," Hemingway was part of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, which he described in his novel A Moveable Feast. A prominent member of "the Lost Generation", Hemingway led a turbulent social life. He was married four times, and allegedly had various other romantic relationships during his lifetime.

"Kansas City was a strange and wonderful place.” Hemingway later said. “The food is good….and people spoke the purest American.”

After high school Hemingway did not pursue a college education. In 1917, at the age of seventeen, he began his writing career as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star. Hemingway worked dilligently at hoaning his writing craft at the Star. Although he remained at the newspaper for only six months, he used the guidance he recieved from the Star's style guide throughout his lifetime, as a foundation for his writing style:

1. Use short sentences
2. Use short first paragraphs
3. Use vigorous English
4. Be positive, not negative

In later years, Hemingway was quoted as saying, "Those were the best rules I ever learned in the business of writing. I've never forgotten them. No one with any talent, who feels and writes truly about the things he is trying to say, can fail to write well if he abides by them."

The Kansas City rules served Papa well. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature. Hemingway received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Not bad for a cub reporter from Kansas City!

In 1961, at age 61, he committed suicide, as had his father befor

posted by B.G. Roberts @ 7:31 AM