The New Yorker:

Although Ernest Hemingway’s novel makes positive claims about what one should be—brave, admiring of nature and grace—its architecture is held up primarily by hatred.

By Akhil Sharma

In tenth grade, I read a biography of Ernest Hemingway. I used to claim to have read a lot of books I hadn’t read, and I thought that if I read Hemingway’s biography I wouldn’t have to actually read him. But the biography amazed me. Hemingway didn’t go to an office; he travelled around all the time and did only cool things. I, too, wanted to travel around and do only cool things.

I was a sad, nervous kid, fat, acne-wracked, living in a house where my parents were always shouting. We didn’t have much money. I had a brain-damaged older brother and, when he was in the hospital, we would steal whatever we could find there. At home, my father used to wear a thin robe with the name of the hospital printed on the back.

Writing had allowed Hemingway to lead a glamorous life. I decided that I was going to be a writer. I had written stories before, but they had all been terrible. I believed I had written only two good lines in my life. These were from a science-fiction story I had attempted: I have seen stars swoon into darkness. I have seen cliffs of stardust a hundred billion miles high. I was so proud of these lines that I would recite them whenever I had the chance. The biography said that Hemingway wrote very simply, so that anything false would be exposed. I thought that Hemingway might have chosen to write this way for moral reasons, but I would do so because I wasn’t capable of doing any better.

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