Good morning Allie, welcome to Authors’ Corner.  You have been working on the Hemingway Project for some years now. What got you started on it?

The Hemingway Project is over five years old now, which is a pretty good run for such a specific subject. It started in a college library in Idaho when I was involved in one of the quirkiest and most productive writers’ groups of my life. Each of us choose a non-fiction subject to write about that had two distinctly opposing camps of opinion, using interviews to illustrate differing points of view. At that time, I was working at the front desk of the public library, and conversed with people about books all day long. I was getting ready to go to Europe for the first time to visit my son in San Sebastian, Spain and was rereading Hemingway for the trip, so for weeks, that’s what I talked about.  From what I read and overheard in the library where I worked, Hemingway was either the best writer, and most alluring male who ever lived, or he was scoundrel. I wanted to find out. It helped that part of his story was set in Paris and Spain in the 1920’s and 30’s, and his friends were people like Picasso, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

When I started the Hemingway Project, I was primarily writing poetry, and I saw the project as a way to get some practice writing prose. I wanted to learn how to write about travel, and Hemingway was by far my best teacher. Hemingway’s work taught me to listen, to see, to regard all human beings as a potential story.  I am less shy than I used to be, and like Hemingway, I see the world as my oyster. My connection with Spain and Europe is deep and fierce. I only wish Hemingway influenced my work habits!

I read The Sun Also Rises when I was in my 20’s and it didn’t make a big impression on me. When I read it again after living in Argentina for a year and a half, I was so impressed by how accurately Hemingway portrayed the loneliness, excitement and sense of atrophy of being an expat, especially in a country where the currency is devalued and expats are living cheaply. I don’t think anyone has ever written about this as well since. I also loved it as a travel book – the writing was visual, and it gave me my first feelings for Spain. When I visited France and Spain and saw Paris and Pamplona and San Sebastian, it was like a promise fulfilled; the depth and the beauty there were just as he described. He captured the essence of the places he loved.

James Michener called Spain the most inwardly mystical country on earth and I believe that it was that mystical sense or duende that compelled Hemingway to explore Spain so deeply. Death In the Afternoon is another amazing book about Spain, explaining out the drama of Torero against the background of Spanish history and tradition. The last chapter in Death in the Afternoon is, to many people, the most beautiful writing that he has ever done. In this chapter he talks about all of the things about Spain that he loves and finds difficult to capture in words. Nevertheless, he captures it perfectly His longing to reach the essence or soul of Spain leaves the reader wishing that Hemingway would continue to write that last chapter forever.  Hemingway was extremely in tune with nature and his surroundings. His physical location in the world was always important to him and he was precise in his understanding and description of “place”. I think Hemingway’s interest in the natural world grounded him as an artist.

I am amazed at the afterlife Hemingway is enjoying! About six years ago, our youngest son studied abroad in San Sebastian, Spain. When I visited him, we planned a trip that followed The Sun Also Rises story. At almost every stop, we found someone else following the Hemingway trail, and it was natural to become friends. Stories and emails were exchanged and I found a subject that I really wanted to research and write about. My blog is now over 5 years old, and I am still surprised and delighted by Hemingway and the fascinating sub culture of fans that have existed for decades.

I was thinking about this the other day after going through a box of my old writing. As a young woman, I read almost nothing but poetry. I wasn’t interested in anything else. So I read day and night, in fields, on camping trips, in cars and airplanes, everywhere, every day, poems. I began to think in poems and I began to write my own. During those years I learned so much about rhythm, phrasing, and cadence, that when I finally came to Hemingway’s short declarative sentences, his compact language, his ability to make a word do things it normally does not do. I understood him completely. To me, Hemingway reads like a poet. I think his lifestyle, his travels, his adventures, and his big personality add to his endurance as an important writer – he redefined the image of an artist as someone who participated in life, who played hard with the world, while at the same time, observing it. People still follow Hemingway’s stories all over the world, trying to re-create something that is impossible to repeat. I think that will go on for as long as there are books!

Allie’s blog and The Hemingway Project can be found on http://www.thehemingwayproject.com