My Two Cents

 A painting stands on its own.  People either enjoy looking at it or they don’t.  If enough people find it pleasant, it becomes popular and is generally considered good.  If it gathers enough praise, it becomes famous and hangs in a gallery behind a velvet rope, with security guards who only speak in whispers.

Writing, as I have discovered, can really stink and yet gather the praise of the public.  I’ll never know why this is.  Several years ago I read Ernest Hemmingway, and I found it to be terrible.  Both his writing and his chosen subject matter were annoying to me.  Yesterday I reread A Clean Well-lighted Place, by Ernest.  Yuck!  I just don’t see the attraction. 

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, his notoriety probably came when he was a war correspondent.  He was how people were getting their news.  They became familiar with him and with seeing his name in print.  Transitioning into literature was simply a stroke of good luck on his part and writing of foreign places gave the folks back home an imaginary vacation without wandering too many steps from their fridge.

To me, however, the emperor has no clothes.  Hemmingway was a hack, a bully with a Bic.  Not that I am making any comparisons to my writing.  I already know I stink.  My subject matter is usually silly, my descriptions too abbreviated and given the choice of reading something of mine or having a cold beer, well – bottoms up.

 

That’s it.  That’s my two cents.

As always, opposing views are welcomed.