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Last night I watched the first part -- two hours of a three-part, six-hour documentary -- on Ernest Hemingway by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. No matter what your opinion of Hemingway might be as a writer (and opinions can differ), it is undeniable that he was a major American writer, and a profound influence on writers world-wide. A complicated and complex man with all sorts of flaws and faults, he was still enormously productive, well into old age. And he kept publishing for years after he died, LOL. The man, his life and his works have become a major cottage industry. And of course, the stuff of legends, as they say.
Ken Burns is also renowned for the many brilliant documentary series he has made (on Jazz, on the Vietnam War, on the Dust Bowl, on the Roosevelts). The first two hours of Hemingway are outstanding in its coverage of the first thirty years of the novelist's life. What blew me away, especially when viewed on my large plasma screen, was the quality of all those gorgeous, grainy, black-and-white photographs, some of them taken at night in Spain, in bars and public places, with beautiful, evocative use of light and shade. They capture a period of time in the early 20th century with poignancy and grace. The fact that all these images were assembled is in itself a testament to Burns' and Novick's skill.
Here's a link to the webpage put together by PBS:
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/hemingway/
In my mind, Hemingway's best writing was in A Farewell to Arms. Here is the often-quoted opening paragraph of the novel. It is beautifully written, with a sadness about war, about all wars, expressed vividly through the choice of simple words, of careful repetition. As an observer says in the documentary, he broke so many rules in this paragraph, and yet achieved a lasting effect that sets the tone for the entire novel:
“In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swifly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterwards the road bare and white except for the leaves.”
I hope you watch this series.
Ken Burns is also renowned for the many brilliant documentary series he has made (on Jazz, on the Vietnam War, on the Dust Bowl, on the Roosevelts). The first two hours of Hemingway are outstanding in its coverage of the first thirty years of the novelist's life. What blew me away, especially when viewed on my large plasma screen, was the quality of all those gorgeous, grainy, black-and-white photographs, some of them taken at night in Spain, in bars and public places, with beautiful, evocative use of light and shade. They capture a period of time in the early 20th century with poignancy and grace. The fact that all these images were assembled is in itself a testament to Burns' and Novick's skill.
Here's a link to the webpage put together by PBS:
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/hemingway/
In my mind, Hemingway's best writing was in A Farewell to Arms. Here is the often-quoted opening paragraph of the novel. It is beautifully written, with a sadness about war, about all wars, expressed vividly through the choice of simple words, of careful repetition. As an observer says in the documentary, he broke so many rules in this paragraph, and yet achieved a lasting effect that sets the tone for the entire novel:
“In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swifly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterwards the road bare and white except for the leaves.”
I hope you watch this series.
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