Ernest Hemingway Versus Oscar Wilde
“Writing is about reality, about what men do, not what they imagine in some velvet-lined parlor,” Hemingway grumbled, his brow furrowed over a tumbler of gin.
Here is a fictional dialogue:
Wilde raised a manicured hand. “Reality? It's a dreary affair, vastly overrated. The charming veil of fiction is preferred, where one can truly be one's self.”
“Fiction is a lie that makes you believe the truth,” Hemingway retorted, gripping the glass tighter. “Your writing is all flourish, no bone, no muscle."
“And yours, Mr. Hemingway, is all bone and no soul,” Wilde countered with a saccharine smile. "You mistake brevity for depth, as if a skeleton could ever be as beautiful as a fully dressed man."
"A skeleton has truth," Hemingway growled, leaning in, "your pretty words are just a mask for fear."
"And your 'truth', Ernest, is merely the art of leaving out the interesting parts," Wilde said, a sharp glint in his eye. "You write to live, I live to write beautifully, "you write as if every verb were a boxing match and every adjective a wasted breath,” Oscar began, a languid hand gesturing toward a volume on the shelf. “Your prose is like a very long, very dull telegram."
Hemingway set down his glass heavily. “Better a telegram with true words, Oscar, than a cathedral of lies and cheap paradoxes. You talk about style, but I write about what is real: clean, strong sentences about life and death and hunger in a true place.”
Wilde smiled, a flash of emerald silk at his cuff. “Life, my dear Ernest, is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."
"And art," Hemingway retorted, his voice low and hard, "is knowing when to stop talking and when to tell the truth with one clean stroke, not twenty just for the sound of them."
"Truth is rarely pure and never smple," Oscar murmured, adjusting a flower in his lapel. "Your heroes, they are all the same, mute men with silent anguish. You mistake a lack of vocabulary for a depth of soul."
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