Lori: We are a long way from Hemingway’s “Clean, Well Lighted Place” in Esther’s cafe. And we are just as far away from his clean, well lighted prose, suspicious of long serpentine sentences that coil back on themselves, and create nothing but confusion among many readers. Hemingway was triumphant with his short, clear, clean sentences and his “don’t tell us, show us” aesthetic was the model for most writers of the day. Except for those few like William Faulkner and Marguerite Young who understood that less is not always more.—-MS
I think you’re right too in seeing no evidence of the transcendent in Esther. There is in her theology no God or redemption, no rewards for virtue or punishment for sin. There is only endless fecundity such as that of the Octopus mother whose 80,000 babies are brooded over by her for four years until all at once they are expelled, looking remarkably like the “ghost babies” of Chapter 72.
Lori: We are a long way from Hemingway’s “Clean, Well Lighted Place” in Esther’s cafe. And we are just as far away from his clean, well lighted prose, suspicious of long serpentine sentences that coil back on themselves, and create nothing but confusion among many readers. Hemingway was triumphant with his short, clear, clean sentences and his “don’t tell us, show us” aesthetic was the model for most writers of the day. Except for those few like William Faulkner and Marguerite Young who understood that less is not always more.—-MS
I think you’re right too in seeing no evidence of the transcendent in Esther. There is in her theology no God or redemption, no rewards for virtue or punishment for sin. There is only endless fecundity such as that of the Octopus mother whose 80,000 babies are brooded over by her for four years until all at once they are expelled, looking remarkably like the “ghost babies” of Chapter 72.