Less Is More?

[LOT64 at aol.com]

Cal,

You make a number of good points in your post about Hemingway and modernism.
 Hemingway talked about the reason he stripped away adjectives and this, I
believe, relates directly to the modernist aesthetic.  Hemingway felt that
the best way to describe an emotion felt by a character was not to name the
emotion and then elaborate on it with adjectives.  To use a crude example,
instead of saying a person was scared, or very scared, or scared as hell,
Hemingway felt that he could convey the same idea far more powerfully by
describing the physical feelings of the the character: sweaty palms, shaking
hands, rapidly blinking eyes.  He would never mention the word "scared" at
all.  He would give the data to the reader and then the reader would make the
connections on his own.  This way the prose becomes much more involving and
powerful.  The artist forcing a more active, interpretive role on the
audience, is an important element of modernism.  It calls for increased
participation by the reader or viewer.  Joyce and Pynchon achieve similar
ends through very different means.

                                               Ron Churgin