Hemingway's in hell...
...and so is Hunter S. Thompson, that's why you can't be like them. You can't stomp through life wringing every experience for all it's got, you can't drink two bottles of wine with lunch, you can't screw or shoot anything that moves, send dead rats to Jack Nicholson's daughter, invent gonzo journalism, challenge authority, write about the Hell's Angels, light things on fire, shoot things in your own house, write mean letters to the president, go to jail, blow things up, vote democrat, marry more than once, or drink absinthe.
Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)
You must obey the rules, bathe, and wear coulattes. There has to be this high Plexiglass wall between you and anything evil, even in your own life, and all characters must get saved in the last chapter. Okay, maybe this is too Pink-Floyd-song.
Are they in hell? I don't know. Will you go to hell for being like them? I doubt it. Should we all write the truth? Always. Did they? I don't know - Hunter said if he told all the truth he knew, he and about 600 others would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle.
"Call on God, but row away from the rocks." - HST
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." - HST
"All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time." - EH
"My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. " - EH
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. " - EH
"It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write. " - EH
posted by Steve Sheppard @ 9:17 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Hey, isn't there a middle ground here?
I was emailing my uber-smart brother about the nature of narrative. He's a Bible scholar and was talking about how a text can mean more than it means (Like: "Unto us a Child is Born" in Isaiah can refer to Jesus before Isaiah could've known Christ's name). I said that I think good writers, regardless of their spiritual persuasion, are good because they describe the section of the story they stand in as clearly and honestly as they can. That's why they can get it right and still go to hell. Because God's writing the big story, whether you believe in Her or not. An honest writer like Hem or Thompson can only tell God's story, even if they don't want to. They're committed to writing the truth of the human experience. And that truth belongs to God.
So whether or not the bad guy gets saved, don't write poor stuff. Even if there's cussing and debauchery in your writing -- if it's true, it points to God, one way or another.
agreed, I was on a rant I guess.
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