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  • Being Earnest: 3 of 3 Riffs on Hemingway

    By Oronte February 11, 2007 11:05 pm

    In the last post, I wrote about Ernest Hemingway’s “Paris 1922” writing exercise, which helped him find his mature style. “All you have to do is write one true sentence,” he said. “Write the truest sentence that you know.”

    In the spirit of the thing, I’ve written six modest sentences about college life. (They’re quite true but could use more discipline.) Please post your own true sentence as a comment here, on any topic at all. Start with “I have seen,” “I have heard,” or the like. Write more than one if you like. The best entry, to be determined by Mrs. Churm, will earn its author a complete set of six different Oronte Churm business cards and a certified marker drawing of Batman defeating the Strawberry Bars, by our four-year old, Starbuck.

    1) I have sat at a long dinner table as two young titans of American fiction spoke together so softly with heads nearly touching that it made it hard for me to eavesdrop on the secret knowledge they possessed of being wildly, unimaginably successful, so I tucked into the beef tenderloin that was really awfully very good after all.

    2) I have walked under open windows of a dorm on a Friday afternoon and heard voices and laughter and a girl shouting, “She wants your body!” and realized I had lost my invitation somewhere to the party that is Youth—maybe it fell out of my bag when I slipped in the slush pile by the gas station.

    3) I have seen the ruby lips of a secretary make a perfect O when the new Dean, hired from a country that evidently has no unions, said, “I don’t know why that woman cannot understand I don’t like my coffee this hot.”

    4) I have laughed so hard that everyone looked to see what was wrong with me when an assistant professor with wide eyes and a blue bandanna on his head said, “The clerk in the bookstore told me he was in the U.S. Air Force in Germany. His job was to destroy top-secret documents if The Enemy came, and then his friends were to shoot him as an extra security precaution. So his wife thought he should look for a new job.”

    5) I have seen a mime painting his face in the faculty club men’s room as the head of the English Department stood at the urinal, looking over his shoulder uncomfortably.

    6) I have heard a Ph.D. a little out of her field tell 160 undergrads in a lecture hall, "Do you remember the fairy tale The Old Man and the Sea? The old man catches a magical fish and brings it home, and the wife keeps wanting more and more and more until she wants to be queen."

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Comments on Being Earnest: 3 of 3 Riffs on Hemingway

  • Posted by ms lynch on February 12, 2007 at 1:15pm EST

  • I have stood in front of a class, leaning away from ephatically extended reading glasses, bewildered as a balding sexagenarian shrieked, "We librarians resent it, *resent it,* when you reaarange the chairs!"

  • Posted by ms lynch on February 12, 2007 at 3:41pm EST

  • I have misspelled horribly on blogs across the interweb. Emphatically. Rearrange. Gah.

  • Posted by Chaz , A true sentence on February 12, 2007 at 4:35pm EST

  • I have seen him walk down the sidewalk, city street, faster past the boys who spit once, at his feet, as he goes by.

  • Posted by Noah Gorz on February 12, 2007 at 8:05pm EST

  • I've seen both of my brother's crying at the same woman's kiss that left marks on them that looked like welts, but was only lipstick.

  • Posted by Jacob , Sailor at United States Navy on February 13, 2007 at 5:46am EST

  • I have watched an impossibly skinny man push an empty rust-red wheel barrow, flat tire fighting hard dirt, down an unpaved side street. His ragged shirt read “eat more” and the irony was too obscene for comment. We simply drove by, white faces pressed against a bus window, trying to be tourists, to forget we’d be Sailors tomorrow. Drinking seemed to help.

  • having read the instructions...
  • Posted by jacob , Sailor at United States Navy on February 13, 2007 at 5:46am EST

  • I have watched an impossibly skinny man push an empty rust-red wheel barrow, flat tire fighting hard dirt, down an unpaved side street, his shirt read “eat more” and the irony was too obscene for comment so we drove by silent, white faces pressed against a bus window, trying to be tourists, to forget we’d be Sailors tomorrow though only drinking seemed to help.

  • Posted by Dale , true sentences on February 13, 2007 at 12:45pm EST

  • I have stood in front of 24 16-year olds to explain a villanelle. I read Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night and shared with them the personal experience of my own mother's death so they could understand the moment that Thomas was describing. I was on the verge of tears from revisiting the memories it stirred within me. The only question I inspired was " Can I go to the bathroom?"

  • Posted by Drew , Children's Shoe Salesman at Nordstrom on February 13, 2007 at 1:40pm EST

  • I have sat on a junk bound for a distant island while a chorus of Argentine old women sang "Besame Mucho" as they danced in circles.

    I have felt the weight of 12 cars barrelling into me, have felt the sound of metal twisting and glass shattering into the ice.

    I have walked the forests of Lapland, tangling myself in blueberries and phosphorescent moss.

  • Posted by Nicholas Adams on February 14, 2007 at 10:51am EST

  • I have heard a child cry through the night like a blackbird in the morn.

    I have stolen a ceramic penguin from the neighbor's porch for no good reason.

    I have stood barefoot on the tree-lawn, quarters in hand, waiting for the approaching sound of a distant melody.

    I have ridden a laundry basket down the stairs to my cellar while my mother folded clothes and my father cursed knotted wood.

    I have driven 800 miles in darkness to find a woman that no longer saw the same world I did, for the world I saw was the world I knew, while hers was one of lore.

  • Posted by Sean on February 15, 2007 at 4:20am EST

  • I have watched a herd of drunken fraternity boys lurch down the street, tangled together in one great mass, and hoped that when they woke up the next morning they felt the same self-loathing for being intoxicated and idiotic that I felt for being young and sober as I fell asleep on Saturday night.

    I have seen a man raking leaves just after sunrise in February, two days before eighteen inches of snow covered his newly manicured lawn.

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