. . . the fact is, nothing much changes, and an older generation will always sooner or later get the two-fingered salute (just as they gave it to their mums and dads)

If for whatever reason — it could be frustration, simple boredom or just malice — you want to end a discussion in its tracks, the ruse to use is to announce ‘well, it really does depend on what you mean by . . .’ It works every time.

First of all, the discussion itself is immediately diverted from its original course, and from there on in it is the simplest of tasks to muddy the waters to such an extent that everyone taking part, all intent on promoting their own take on whatever is being discussed and rarely having the patience and tolerance, let alone the good manners, to listen to the views of others loses interest; and, metaphorically, they wander off.

The irony, of course, is that it is true: it really does depend on ‘what you mean by . . .’ It really does matter that what is understood by a word or idea is crucial to any discussion of that idea; and if we are all working on a different understanding, any discussion becomes more than a little pointless. Yet all too often those involved in such discussion are simply unaware that the others don’t understand that concept in the same way.

A good, though undoubtedly hoary first-year-of-philosophy example is the notion of ‘freedom’: does it mean ‘free to’ or ‘free from’? In some situations, of course, they might coincide — if I live in a society ‘free from’ tyranny, I am ‘free to’ speak my mind without concern for my safety. In others, though, the distinction is crucial.

If someone were to claim that it is crucial ‘that we all have our freedom’, you might then ask him or her whether or not that would cover the freedom of a paedophile to indulge in sexual activity with a child. The likely response to that would be ‘of course not, it must be freedom to act and behave within the bounds of our established morality’. Well, quite, but by then — within a very brief ten seconds — you have already taken a diversion from the main discussion.

Certainly, the bounds and dictates of the morality prevalent in any given culture have a bearing on what we are ‘free to do’, but by now we are no longer discussing the notion of ‘freedom’ in abstract (as we thought we were) but already limiting ourselves to the notion of ‘freedom’ in our particular culture. And that is more of a practical matter than philosophical.

I got to be thinking along those lines when, plodding on with this bloody Hemingway project (which, contrary to what you might gather from my description of it as ‘this bloody Hemingway project’, I am still enjoying although almost by the hour the task seems to get bigger and bigger) I got to a point where I decided the best and simplest way forward is to look at the man, his life and his work a little more obliquely, to consider various related matter.

So, for example . . .

Some time ago I came across the review by Virginia Woolf of Hemingway’s second volume of short stories. It is, though, more an essay by Woolf on critics and criticism. In it she makes some good points, not least that most of us, almost despite ourselves, regard ‘the critics’ as somehow better informed and more qualified to pass judgment than we are (and wonders why). You can read her piece here, but her introduction sums it up well:

Human credulity is indeed wonderful. There may be good reasons for believing in a King or a Judge or a Lord Mayor. When we see them go sweeping by in their robes and their wigs, with their heralds and their outriders, our knees begin to shake and our looks to falter. But what reason there is for believing in critics it is impossible to say. They have neither wigs nor outriders. They differ in no way from other people if one sees them in the flesh. Yet these insignificant fellow creatures have only to shut themselves up in a room, dip a pen in the ink, and call themselves ‘we’, for the rest of us to believe that they are somehow exalted, inspired, infallible. Wigs grow on their heads. Robes cover their limbs. No greater miracle was ever performed by the power of human credulity.

Perhaps her observation rings a bell with you. It certainly did with me. And I wonder how many of us settle for simply adopting wholesale as our own the verdict of a critic (and, of course, then pontificate loudly about the book or writer in question as though we knew what we were talking about) for no good reason than that she or he is ‘the New York Times/The Observer/The Sunday Times/the Washington Post reviewer?

So in this Hemingway bollocks I decided to consider different questions in relation to Hemingway rather than just approach him and his work four-square. That approach also has the virtue of not having to plough my way through all his bloody work and just stick to the three volumes of short stories and his first three novels. Death In The Afternoon, The Green Hills Of Summer, Across The River And Into The Hills and the rest? Fuck off. I’ve read enough reviews of them to know when enough is enough.

So, in relation to Woolf’s essay, I’ve decided, for example, to consider the notions of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘objectivity’, as in ‘can there really be an “objective judgment” of a work by Hemingway (or any other writer for that matter)?’ And if we line up all the critics in their underwear and strip them of their robes and wigs, just how much more ‘valid’ are their verdicts than yours or mine?

Then there’s the question of what are we supposed to make of the fact that critics disagree with each other in their judgments of a novel, exhibition, play or film? Who is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong’?

From there it was just a short skip and a jump to realising — or, more cautiously, coming to the conclusion — that there is no ‘objectivity’ in criticism because there simply cannot be. Each judgment is subjective, like it or not. Granted, a critic is probably better read than you or I, but her or his judgment, at the end of the day, is still a subjective one. And, strictly, no number of such ‘subjective’ judgments, however much they agree with each other, add up to one ‘objective’ judgment — ‘the critics are all agreed’ merely means ‘the critics are all agreed’. It doesn’t necessarily mean ‘the critics are all right’.

A further complication, though I make this point merely by the by, is that different generations favour different styles and, furthermore, each ‘new generation’, keen to put as much clear blue water between itself and its parent generation, will favour books, music, films and fashions as different from those popular with its parent generation as possible.

That, I shall be suggesting when I post my Hemingway project (are preliminary post is here, though what I have posted there has since been cut by two-thirds to make way for a prologue) is one essential factor in the rise of Hemingway to prominence. (Would the rise of ‘conceptual art’ really have occurred if its quintessence wasn’t sticking up two fingers (US ‘the middle finger) at the previous generation?

So with Hemingway, no one had before used the words ‘damn’ and ‘bitch’ in print, for example, or had the novels characters getting rat-arsed and sleeping around, and the dizzy, hedonistic young folk of the Jazz Age, as keen to upset the older generation as they were to have a great time loved it. Just loved it.

Another aspect I want to take a look at is ‘modernism’ and more specifically Hemingway’s modernism. What it might be? Like many other things, we — well, more modestly, I — think we ‘know’ something, but when we begin to consider what it is we ‘know’, we realise we know close to fuck-all about it.

Hemingway is often talked of as a ‘modernist’ writer, but from where I sit (and I am really not as well-read as I might be to make such a point, but . . . ) there seems to me less ‘modernist’ about him than there was about Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and later Virginia Woolf. But what is modernism? How is it defined?

I’ve always assumed that ‘modernists’ were working from some underlying philosophy or aesthetic theory, but how true is that? Were they? Was it necessary? From what I know of Hemingway’s views, there wasn’t much theorising, and even his much-quoted ‘iceberg theory’ is, to be frank, essentially pretty threadbare and, as he states it, middlebrow Sunday supplement stuff.

One very obvious point, which has been made several times by others, is to ask why he thought his ‘theory of omission’ was so ‘new’ or even revolutionary when for many years writers had been composing their work specifically to allow and encourage their readers to ‘read between the lines’. We, the readers, read between the lines, for example, in Hemingway’s story Hills Like White Elephants and gather a guy is trying to persuade his gal to have an abortion. But ‘writing between the lines’ (if you see what I mean), is also something writers of fiction had been doing long before that story was written.

A Hemingway freak might counter that ‘that isn’t what Hemingway meant’ by his ‘theory of omission’, to which I would counter-counter that if Hemingway did mean what he seems to have meant — that ‘you could omit anything . . . and the omitted part would strengthen the story’ — he was kidding no one but himself if he meant that he could leave out a detail completely and I mean completely (like the suicide in the oft-given example of his story Out Of Season), but that the reader would somehow still ‘pick up’ on that detail. It’s all just a tad too pseudo-metaphysical for me. Or perhaps I have got it wrong and he doesn’t quite mean that, either.

Certainly, many of his stories were not ‘about’ what they were ostensibly ‘about’, but that has been the essence of interesting and engaging fiction for many years before young Ernie first put pen to paper. Why did he think he had hit upon something new?

On the question of ‘Hemingway’s modernism’, it is also worth mentioning that he was notoriously, not to say very ostentatiously, anti-intellectual. There are suggestions that, much like his very ostentatious and increasingly unconvincing displays of machismo, the anti-intellectualism was something of a front.

One friend from on the Toronto Star, Greg Clark, who had known him when he first turned up in Toronto in 1919, remarked when he returned to the paper in 1923 for a staff job after freelancing in Paris (for what turned out to just a few months): ‘A more weird combination of quivering sensitiveness and preoccupation with violence never walked this earth’. But whatever the reason for it, Hemingway was remarkably reluctant to discuss intellectual matters.

His friend in Paris (and later until, invariably and inevitably, Hemingway fell out with him) Archibald McLeish remembered many occasions when he attempted to start a discussion and tease out Hemingway’s thoughts on aesthetics and related matters, only for the great man swiftly to change the subject to hunting or fishing or boxing or bullfighting or some such topic.

For me the task is now to learn a lot more about ‘modernism’. But at least I now realise I know next to bugger all, so that’s a start of sorts.

Pip, pip.

Here’s a bit of modernism for you to keep you happy . . .