Ken Burns Documentary: Hemingway

[tantric superman 4,667]

10 minutes ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

That's a great story.  I saw three typos in it though and that really bugs me.

"Whisky" is an acceptable spelling. 

[NeverMarryAStripper 21,874]

1 hour ago, tantric superman said:

"Whisky" is an acceptable spelling. 

I'm not starting that argument here.  That wasn't one of the three.

[TwiceHorn 31,438]

1 hour ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

That's a great story.  I saw three typos in it though and that really bugs me.

Yeah scan errors or something. I've turned into my Dad on typos and obvious style errors.  Hemingway didn't commit many.

[Biff Tannen 45,665]

3 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Go watch his Civil War series.  

And then try and get this song out of your head 

 

This was played at my grandfather's funeral.

[F250 28,764]

On 4/5/2021 at 2:43 PM, TwiceHorn said:

How can you not like Hemingway?

I can understand if he's not your favorite.

One of the greatest short stories ever written, to my mind.

I am making a list of the non-Hemingway fans so they can be rounded up during the next purge along with the people that put ketchup on their steaks.

 

 

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

14 minutes ago, F250 said:

I am making a list of the non-Hemingway fans so they can be rounded up during the next purge along with the people that put ketchup on their steaks.

 

 

Come at me brah !!!!  Absinthe addled, suicide king.....

[jdhorn92 1,545]

Watched the first episode last night have the 2nd ready to record tonight.  Enjoyed it much more than watching the 1st half of Baylor game.

Couple takeaways, did I miss why he was stationed with the Itals in the Red Cross corp and not with our boys?  I know he had medical issues preventing him from active duty. 

He seemed to have some game, but man Hadley and the 2nd wife were a little hard on the eyes, even nurse Betty was no looker.   I suppose it could have been the era, but man those dames were a little rough.

 

I was amazed at how brazen his writing was for his era.  He wrote of date rape, abortion and many issues well before his time.  His use of women was incredible and so ahead of times. 

[kevwun 15,764]

He joined the Red Cross and got sent to the Italian army.  The Red Cross provided help to all of the allies after the US entered the war.

[atomheartbevo 89,628]

1 hour ago, jdhorn92 said:

Couple takeaways, did I miss why he was stationed with the Itals in the Red Cross corp and not with our boys?  I know he had medical issues preventing him from active duty.

US Army wouldn't take him, but Red Cross would, and he was desperate to do something.  When US entered, they took over part of the US Red Cross effort.

[F250 28,764]

1 hour ago, jdhorn92 said:

I was amazed at how brazen his writing was for his era.  He wrote of date rape, abortion and many issues well before his time.

I don't think it was brazen for his era. The writers, particularly the expats were on another level during that period.

 

[F250 28,764]

15 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

US Army wouldn't take him, but Red Cross would, and he was desperate to do something.  When US entered, they took over part of the US Red Cross effort.

I believe Walt Disney did the same thing during WWI.

 

[TwiceHorn 31,438]

25 minutes ago, F250 said:

I don't think it was brazen for his era. The writers, particularly the expats were on another level during that period.

 

The Gertrude Stein "Salon" in Paris, of which Hemingway and Fitzgerald were participants, was pretty forward in that regard.  Stein was one of the first prominent "out" lesbians.

Or, more broadly, the Lost Generation.

And this was the 20s.  Things were pretty debauched then, everywhere, but especially in Europe.

Edited April 6, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[DonkeyCigars 144]

On 4/5/2021 at 2:43 PM, TwiceHorn said:

How can you not like Hemingway?

I can understand if he's not your favorite.

One of the greatest short stories ever written, to my mind.

This is a fantastic read, which I've never read. Thank you for posting it. Fantastic.

[Reynolds Woodcock 4,739]

This documentary fucks

[ClubWhatever 12,120]

Haven’t read anything by this guy in 30 years and Burns is making me happy with my choice.  The unifying theme of his works and life seems to be the narcissistic infliction of pain and/or death on other beings.  Nice.  

[F250 28,764]

16 minutes ago, ClubWhatever said:

Haven’t read anything by this guy in 30 years and Burns is making me happy with my choice.  The unifying theme of his works and life seems to be the narcissistic infliction of pain and/or death on other beings.  Nice.  

Your opinion is terrible and you should feel bad for sharing your terrible opinion.

[DougO 5,243]

Great writer, but a bit too much of a commie for my taste.

Burns is hit and miss. Jazz was great, as well as a few others.

[Richard Kimball 1,494]

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

A Farewell to Arms 

[tantric superman 4,667]

7 hours ago, ClubWhatever said:

Haven’t read anything by this guy in 30 years and Burns is making me happy with my choice.  The unifying theme of his works and life seems to be the narcissistic infliction of pain and/or death on other beings.  Nice.  

Well to be honest, I think the unifying theme might be coming to terms with the infliction of pain and death that one does in one's lifetime, and if you look at it that way, that's pretty damn important and deep.

The problem is that lots of people try a novel and I just don't think he's novels work all that well, or maybe they are dated, or maybe he simply just wasn't as good in novels as he was with non-fiction or the short stories, which were short (I always for some reason thought of The Short Happy Life of FM as a novella, but it's pretty much a normal length short story - but it is the second longest short story he ever wrote.)  

The short stories>the bullfighting books>a movable feast>the novels (for some reason Islands in the Stream sticks out for me - but that was posthumous and maybe reads more like the short stories), but I really don't remember them all.

I did like the way they hit on the short stories in the first episode - you almost think they could have build the whole documentary around the short stories. 

In the morning the sun was up and the tent was starting to get hot.

[tantric superman 4,667]

22 hours ago, jdhorn92 said:

I was amazed at how brazen his writing was for his era.  He wrote of date rape, abortion and many issues well before his time.  His use of women was incredible and so ahead of times. 

I'm not sure if he was brazen or not, but John Dos Passos (The USA Trilogy) sure made life seem a lot tougher and meaner and dirtier than Hemingway did.

[Biff Tannen 45,665]

Good book too, for anyone interested.  Different perspective on his life than most.

[Chewbacca 7,767]

On 4/5/2021 at 10:20 AM, Onboard 2.0 said:

Not a big Hemingway his life was an adventure, and I'll be watching.   It's Ken Burns, always worth the watch.

Yep.  I would not be watching if anyone else had made it.  That said, Ep 1 was very good.  I'm guessing he didn't care for his mom much...

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

23 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

Yep.  I would not be watching if anyone else had made it.  That said, Ep 1 was very good.  I'm guessing he didn't care for his mom much...

I missed the first episode and have only seen few minutes of the second night. Now we're driving to Maine, NY, and Vermont for 7-10 days of April skiing so won't see any more this week 

 

what I saw was great 

Edited April 7, 2021 by Onboard 2.0

[OWLVIS 557]

I don't like the way he treats women. 

Although I sadly think his mother reminds me a great deal of mine. And his father my father.

 

[atomheartbevo 89,628]

19 minutes ago, OWLVIS said:

I don't like the way he treats women. 

He had some serious abandonment/attachment issues, and it came through in his writing.  Him not leaving one wife unless he had another lined up speaks volumes about his mental state, and would have made him a prime candidate for Surly if he was around.

[DougO 5,243]

Watched a little more tonight. He seems way more fucked up than I thought. i think I'm pretty much out.

[billfromlaketravis 11,448]

Ken Burns love him or hate picks a narrative and steers his docs to fit it. Hemingway’s toxic masculinity pushed him into alcoholism and depression.
 

Burns touched briefly on the concussions and constant pain from chronic injuries, but never explored Hemingway possibly suffering from CTE.
 

Hemingway battled severe concussions and chronic injuries, and he’s an unsympathetic asshole because he was mean to women and wrote some cruel letters. 
 

Chris Benoit battled severe concussions and chronic injuries, and he’s a tragic, sympathetic figure because he had CTE. Despite the fact that he was a family annihilator. 
 

I don’t quite understand the double standard. 
 

Edited April 8, 2021 by billfromlaketravis

[F250 28,764]

My favorite writers in this order are Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson. All were great writers and all of them were pretty fucked up. It kind of comes with the territory.

 

[notre dame joe 186]

 

On 4/6/2021 at 12:46 PM, F250 said:

I am making a list of the non-Hemingway fans so they can be rounded up during the next purge along with the people that put ketchup on their steaks.

 

 

My Dad didn't care when EH died and likes it well done. 

On 4/6/2021 at 7:48 AM, atomheartbevo said:

Go watch his Civil War series.  

And then try and get this song out of your head 

 

I always assumed Ahokan Farewell was some kind of traditional hymn from the 19th century.  When I decided to learn in on the piano I was quite surprised to learn it is not that old and the composer is still alive.  

 

A Civil War by Ken Burns

GOAT documentary?

[Travo 15]

On 4/5/2021 at 4:31 PM, Onboard 2.0 said:

The dustbowl series or the national park series ?

Dust Bowl for me. National Parks is my second favorite though. I'll definitely be watching Hemingway.

Edited April 8, 2021 by Travo

[atomheartbevo 89,628]

1 hour ago, billfromlaketravis said:

Ken Burns love him or hate picks a narrative and steers his docs to fit it. Hemingway’s toxic masculinity pushed him into alcoholism and depression.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's this:

1 hour ago, F250 said:

My favorite writers in this order are Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson. All were great writers and all of them were pretty fucked up. It kind of comes with the territory.

Maybe, just maybe, Burns was showing that all of the fucked up things in Hemingway's life contributed to him being an amazing fucking writer, even if he was not a good person. Burns didn't pull the "toxic masculinity" out of thin air - As you mention, and as we know, Hemingway wrote extensively about not being a good person. It was in his letters, in his conversations with others.

And he didn't touch on the CTE stuff much, because you're talking about diagnosing somebody who died over 50 years ago, but who also did a lot of other shit that could have led to the problems in his life, and more importantly, that family had a hereditary thing going on with abuse and suicide that spanned at least 4 generations.

Maybe I'm misreading you trying to assign too much to CTE, but CTE would not have come into play with the early patterns that he would keep repeating later on - he was still very young when he left Hadley for another woman, and that's a pattern that was a constant in his life, well before some of his later injuries (and arguably was influenced by an aggie dumping his ass as a teenager, leaving him to abandon women before they abandoned him).

 

[WhatTheBuck 28,775]

What a loon. 

[kevwun 15,764]

The best artists are almost always tortured souls.  Pain is apparently the greatest muse.

[Player 4,575]

The clip from that interview that he gave to (NBC?) where he was verbalizing punctuation, "period" "comma" "period" ,was pretty sad. He was clearly messed up from either the concussions, the booze, the pills, or likely all of the above. 

 

[tantric superman 4,667]

On 4/5/2021 at 10:28 AM, BearSchlong said:

Very happy to watch this, also visiting his house in Key West at the end of the month.

Tell us what you think.  I would have liked living in that house.

[billfromlaketravis 11,448]

I'd like to visit Finca Vigia without faking a humanitarian trip to Cuba or flying to Mexico first. Maybe someday. 

[RPM 26,317]

I'm going to have to take a second run at this. About 45 minutes in I was so fucking depressed I considered sucking on a 12ga. Talk about milking it for all it was worth.

[Mach 1 1,677]

I enjoyed it.  The Spanish Civil War stuff was interesting, didn't know most of that stuff.

Gotta admit, cruising around the Keys all day with a boat filled with buddies and booze, fishing and searching for Nahzi U Boats, looked pretty appealing.

[jdhorn92 1,545]

On 4/6/2021 at 6:38 PM, TwiceHorn said:

The Gertrude Stein "Salon" in Paris, of which Hemingway and Fitzgerald were participants, was pretty forward in that regard.  Stein was one of the first prominent "out" lesbians.

Or, more broadly, the Lost Generation.

And this was the 20s.  Things were pretty debauched then, everywhere, but especially in Europe.

Yes thank you. I picked up on that, very interesting. I could see why Paris had such allure for him.  

[billfromlaketravis 11,448]

On 4/8/2021 at 6:10 PM, Mach 1 said:

I enjoyed it.  The Spanish Civil War stuff was interesting, didn't know most of that stuff.

Gotta admit, cruising around the Keys all day with a boat filled with buddies and booze, fishing and searching for Nahzi U Boats, looked pretty appealing.

Read Islands in the Stream. 

[RPM 26,317]

I need to take another run at this. I punched out about 1/3 of the way thru Ep 1. What a pussy and Momma's boy. I thought Hemmingway was rough and tumble.

[kevwun 15,764]

I wouldn't call him a pussy.  He voluntarily fought with an infantry unit on at least a few occasions in WWII.

[Deej 76,755]

On 4/7/2021 at 11:30 AM, DougO said:

Great writer, but a bit too much of a commie for my taste.

Burns is hit and miss. Jazz was great, as well as a few others.

The Battle of Schrute Farm was great. 

[atomheartbevo 89,628]

4 hours ago, billfromlaketravis said:

Read Islands in the Stream. 

Some of Kenny Fuckin’ Rogers’ and Dolly Patton’s finest work.  

[notre dame joe 186]

5 hours ago, kevwun said:

I wouldn't call him a pussy.  He voluntarily fought with an infantry unit on at least a few occasions in WWII.

He seemed kind of a free lancer.  

 

Did Burns rebut the legend that Hemingway got to Paris ahead of the US army and 'liberated' a bar?

[Post Oak 20,208]

I'm going to add the Sun Also Rises and A Farewell To Arms back to my Goodreads list.

"Isn't it pretty to think so"

[bullzak 416]

On 4/10/2021 at 8:30 PM, notre dame joe said:

Did Burns rebut the legend that Hemingway got to Paris ahead of the US army and 'liberated' a bar?

Ritz in Paris. Helluva bar whether the story is true or not. 

[oSuJeff97 3,435]

On 4/6/2021 at 6:38 PM, TwiceHorn said:

The Gertrude Stein "Salon" in Paris, of which Hemingway and Fitzgerald were participants, was pretty forward in that regard.  Stein was one of the first prominent "out" lesbians.

Or, more broadly, the Lost Generation.

And this was the 20s.  Things were pretty debauched then, everywhere, but especially in Europe.

Yeah. "A Moveable Feast" is a pretty interesting look at that time.

[DonkeyCigars 144]

Just finished this and had a few thoughts.

Hemingway is one of my favorite writers because of The Sun Also Rises. I never liked For Whom the Bell Tolls or A Farewell to Arms, but after watching this I think I want to reread The Old Man and the Sea.

Dude was clearly an alcoholic nut, on a crash course to suicide, for a decade at least. An interesting sign of the times how mental illness was addressed (or rather, ignored and covered over). Even in his National death notice it was reported he was at Mayo for “blood pressure”. Also super interesting how Hemingway was a little gender fluid or experimental, which you don’t think of when you think of his brand of toxic masculinity, and it didn’t seem as if he was too discreet, and not surprised with his younger son.

[billfromlaketravis 11,448]

I think Mary Welsh was a a very successful editor. Without her we don’t have A Moveable Feast and something resembling novels in Islands in the Stream, and The Garden of Eden. Tip of the cap.