I’m an elder, however, I’m not old enough to truly have remembered the great writer, perhaps the greatest of a generation.

I was child when Hemingway decided to just not continue. Just not continue.

We all know the decision that Ernest Hemingway made.

Yet his writings changed American writing, and changed the world’s writing.

We know that their is an internet style. The internet style is closer to Hemingway’s style than it is to the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s or William Faulkner’s.

These are all writers, American writers, who contributed greatly to our understanding of writing.

I was in college during years when Hemingway was no longer considered the “literary darling.” I asked to take a course in Hemingway. And a certain professor told me, disparagingly that I could study Hemingway on my own.

Certainly this teacher, this professor was telling me that Hemingway was so simple that I didn’t need to study Hemingway. So Hemingway, who changed American writing, helped American writers to become the great writers, to become recognized along with the other great writers of the world, is rejected by the American literary established, rejected by the University English Departments. Of course, how does a rejected American writer feel.

Now our darling is Faulkner? The great style of Faulkner? The great complex language of Faulkner?

I suppose that Ernest Hemingway felt just like Richard Wright when the great Ralph Ellison came along and the great James Baldwin came along and said we are greater writers than Richard Wright who changed African American writer, who came with the great fist. Richard Wright the great American literary boxer coming with his big fist called Native Son. This great novel got Richard Wright lynched, first in America, and then in Paris.

Of course, Richard Wright had a lynching in Paris. He could have been lynched in America. He saw many lynched in America. So he wrote a great American novel, among the greatest American novels on the planet, perhaps among the great American novels.

Ellison joined in lynching Richard Wright. Baldwin joined in lynching Richard Wright. Baldwin even helped to lynch the great Protest Tradition, among the greatest of the traditions.

Then according to John A. Williams, the women just kept acoming, many of them used and misused also.

I’m not blaming these writers anymore than you can William Faulkner for joining in the “lynching” of Ernest Hemingway.

Americans like lynchings, in whatever form, literary or otherwise. This is the American story.