Friday, February 3, 2012
Austen vs. Hemingway
I have to say that I prefer Austen to Hemingway. Hemingway is a very masculine writer and his book The Sun Also Rises is not that exciting. I prefer Austen because you can relate to her characters and she has a more detailed writing style. *spoiler* Pride and Prejudice ends on a happy note. I would not be surprised if Austen had put "and they lived happily ever after"at the end of the book*spoiler*. Now when you compare Austen's books to the movies based off of them, the movies are better. The movies leave out the pointless or overlooked parts and just focus on the juicy drama stuff. Hemingway's book did not end happily and none of the characters grew or changed. Lizzy Bennet is one of my favorite characters in literature. She is strong, independent, and sees life the way I do. None of Hemingway's characters appealed to me at all and all of them were annoying and were just wasting their lives away. I did feel sorry for Jake and thought Brett was really cruel to him and all the other men. I did start to sympathize once I learned about her previous marriage. I still did not agree with what she was doing but I understood it more. And that is why I like Austen, not Hemingway.
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Yikes. I would wager to say that you won't get lots of folks agreeing with the idea that happy ending=good book. Similarly, one person's "pointless" parts are another person's idea of good writing. Can you point to a specific part that seems pointless to you?
ReplyDeleteI agree, out of these first two novels, Pride and Prejudice was much more bearable for me. It at least HAD an ending.
ReplyDeleteI personally prefer Hemingway's to the point, almost curt, writing style. His minimalist approach really appeals to me rather than Austen's over-abundance of words. With both of them you have to read between the lines and that is easier for me when less is said rather than more.
ReplyDeleteI like Kevin's point here--with either writer, you still have to do a bit (or a lot!) of work as a reader concerning what is left unsaid.
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