A letter from the future.

[Ray9]

To: Earnest Hemingway and John Steinbeck,

Seventy years ago, if you wanted to write something you could get a piece of paper and a pen and convert your thoughts into scrawled symbols by putting ink on a surface made of wood pulp. You learned cursive writing in school which was essentially a connected-letter type of writing where the writing instrument stayed on the surface to allow a flowing type of writing that was faster than artful printing. Creating something interesting to others usually involved a rough draft initiated this way because cursive writing or handwriting as it is called cannot always be deciphered clearly by readers due to personal quirks of the writer.

So, a mechanical, outmoded device called a typewriter could be used to place standardized letters on pages that could be easily read by any eyes that understood the language represented by those letters. Both handwriting and typing were skills that could make or break a writer. The incredible genius of writers like you, Earnest and John, is all the more impressive when one realizes the primitive technology you used to produce masterworks that endure to this day.

Your eyes allowed you to see the obvious and to state it-something that is not easy as the obvious is often so ubiquitous that it goes unrecognized by those living in it. Unwinding the obvious is much harder than it appears and what most people feel is no simple task to take from thoughts converted to symbolic code to gain access to the heart. You two delivered to the people an ability to gain a deeper understanding of their superficial lives.

For this we are thankful.

But the future is here, and we in the contemporary world can write to our heart’s content with technology that would have been science fiction in your day. Mistakes can vanish in an instant with no smudges and no mechanical break downs of ribbons or stricken keys. The possible quantity of written words is unlimited in our time, but the quality is disappearing. Your works are becoming figments of a time that loses connecting relevance to modern existence.

The more complex modern technology becomes, the more superficial users of this technology are inclined to be modeled. There is a shallowness of mind and spirit here in the future that renders thoughtful examination of human relationships insignificant and unnecessary. Did either of you know Orwell or Huxley?

I am not sure great works like A Farewell to Arms or The Grapes of Wrath would survive the attention spans of readers today. And controversial subject matter is becoming more and more forbidden.

I salute you both.

 

[Auld Phart]

To: Earnest Hemingway and John Steinbeck,

Seventy years ago, if you wanted to write something you could get a piece of paper and a pen and convert your thoughts into scrawled symbols by putting ink on a surface made of wood pulp. You learned cursive writing in school which was essentially a connected-letter type of writing where the writing instrument stayed on the surface to allow a flowing type of writing that was faster than artful printing. Creating something interesting to others usually involved a rough draft initiated this way because cursive writing or handwriting as it is called cannot always be deciphered clearly by readers due to personal quirks of the writer.

So, a mechanical, outmoded device called a typewriter could be used to place standardized letters on pages that could be easily read by any eyes that understood the language represented by those letters. Both handwriting and typing were skills that could make or break a writer. The incredible genius of writers like you, Earnest and John, is all the more impressive when one realizes the primitive technology you used to produce masterworks that endure to this day.

Your eyes allowed you to see the obvious and to state it-something that is not easy as the obvious is often so ubiquitous that it goes unrecognized by those living in it. Unwinding the obvious is much harder than it appears and what most people feel is no simple task to take from thoughts converted to symbolic code to gain access to the heart. You two delivered to the people an ability to gain a deeper understanding of their superficial lives.

For this we are thankful.

But the future is here, and we in the contemporary world can write to our heart’s content with technology that would have been science fiction in your day. Mistakes can vanish in an instant with no smudges and no mechanical break downs of ribbons or stricken keys. The possible quantity of written words is unlimited in our time, but the quality is disappearing. Your works are becoming figments of a time that loses connecting relevance to modern existence.

The more complex modern technology becomes, the more superficial users of this technology are inclined to be modeled. There is a shallowness of mind and spirit here in the future that renders thoughtful examination of human relationships insignificant and unnecessary. Did either of you know Orwell or Huxley?

I am not sure great works like A Farewell to Arms or The Grapes of Wrath would survive the attention spans of readers today. And controversial subject matter is becoming more and more forbidden.

I salute you both.

tl/dr

 

[night_son]

To: Earnest Hemingway and John Steinbeck,

Seventy years ago, if you wanted to write something you could get a piece of paper and a pen and convert your thoughts into scrawled symbols by putting ink on a surface made of wood pulp. You learned cursive writing in school which was essentially a connected-letter type of writing where the writing instrument stayed on the surface to allow a flowing type of writing that was faster than artful printing. Creating something interesting to others usually involved a rough draft initiated this way because cursive writing or handwriting as it is called cannot always be deciphered clearly by readers due to personal quirks of the writer.

So, a mechanical, outmoded device called a typewriter could be used to place standardized letters on pages that could be easily read by any eyes that understood the language represented by those letters. Both handwriting and typing were skills that could make or break a writer. The incredible genius of writers like you, Earnest and John, is all the more impressive when one realizes the primitive technology you used to produce masterworks that endure to this day.

Your eyes allowed you to see the obvious and to state it-something that is not easy as the obvious is often so ubiquitous that it goes unrecognized by those living in it. Unwinding the obvious is much harder than it appears and what most people feel is no simple task to take from thoughts converted to symbolic code to gain access to the heart. You two delivered to the people an ability to gain a deeper understanding of their superficial lives.

For this we are thankful.

But the future is here, and we in the contemporary world can write to our heart’s content with technology that would have been science fiction in your day. Mistakes can vanish in an instant with no smudges and no mechanical break downs of ribbons or stricken keys. The possible quantity of written words is unlimited in our time, but the quality is disappearing. Your works are becoming figments of a time that loses connecting relevance to modern existence.

The more complex modern technology becomes, the more superficial users of this technology are inclined to be modeled. There is a shallowness of mind and spirit here in the future that renders thoughtful examination of human relationships insignificant and unnecessary. Did either of you know Orwell or Huxley?

I am not sure great works like A Farewell to Arms or The Grapes of Wrath would survive the attention spans of readers today. And controversial subject matter is becoming more and more forbidden.

I salute you both.

Excellent post. Hemingway's gift for simple, compact prose befuddles even the most advanced writing software of our day. Myself I began writing short stories in school issued composition notebooks, some of which various English class teachers graded harshly but often praised in secret. I carried that practice over to outlining novels on folded sheets of printer paper and slowly evolved from a 90's electric typewriter to a second hand laptop running Windows 3.1 and finally—a desktop computer hooked up to a big screen television, which is my preferred instrument of fiction writing, for the time being. But I still outline and brainstorm with pen and paper—often outdoors when possible.

What I've discover (more like endured) after years spent in online writing groups and workshops is that any prose composed of sentences greater than a few words really tends to drive younger readers to extreme hatred. No neo-Faulkner need apply. As do prologues, extended descriptions of settings and exploration of deeper character traits. We must face the facts of our Age: it's now a time of little more than short attention span theater and the demand for instant action gratification by page two. If a modern fiction writer fails to deliver either expectation his or her books go quickly into the bin of the unwanted; the unread.