Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Hemingway

A conference on Ernest Hemingway on Friday and Saturday at San Diego State University will be the intellectual version of a Beatles’ convention, considering the almost fanatical dedication of some of the 20 scholars attending. They include:

- SDSU professor James Hinkle, who memorized “The Sun Also Rises” when he worked as a hotel clerk during his college years at Harvard. He said it took eight hours to recite the book, but he can’t do it any more.

- Jackson Benson, also an SDSU professor, has written three books on Hemingway, one of them an academic best seller.

- Michael Reynolds, a professor at North Carolina State University, who wrote a book about “Farewell to Arms” 10 years ago that is considered by many to be the best thing ever written on Hemingway.

- William Meyer, a free-lance writer from Beaumont, Tex., who says in the conference agenda, “Trust me. I know more than ‘The Hemingway Review.’ ”

- Paul Smith, a teacher at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., is one of the best-known authorities on Hemingway’s short stories. He is a former president of the International Hemingway Society.

While these academicians have dedicated much of their careers to studying Hemingway, Benson, co-chairman of the conference, said he doesn’t think they can be called fanatical.

“I don’t think they’re fanatical because they can find fault with the author, unlike a starry-eyed fan,” Benson said. “They’re not religious about Hemingway and they have other interests.”

“We picked these 20 people because they had fantastic approaches to Hemingway,” said Hinkle, the other chairman. “The audience at the conference will learn more about these people’s approach than they will about Hemingway.”

Hinkle, who will discuss repetitions in “The Sun Also Rises” at the conference, became interested in the author when he took a modern fiction class in graduate school. Since then, Hinkle has become an expert on Hemingway.

“I was chosen as one of six readers in the class,” Hinkle said. “My job was to grade 100 papers on ‘The Sun Also Rises.’ Prior to that time, I was not particularly impressed with the book. But after reading those papers, I knew that the students were missing something. Hemingway is always writing something more than what seems to be on the surface.

“Now I am an expert on two authors, Hemingway and Faulkner. Last year I was the chairman of the Faulkner conference at SDSU. After this year, I will be out of topics. That’s all I know about.”

Hemingway, who was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Ill., wrote six novels and more than 50 short stories. He died in 1961.

Benson, who will discuss the life and psychology of the writer, delved into Hemingway’s work in the early 1960s, when critics were down on the author. They criticized his work, calling him a he-man and a phony, Benson said.

“I think Hemingway was an extremely important writer,” he said. “He was one of the inventors of the modern prose style. The whole idea of short sentences was carried into the 20th Century through him. His philosophy was also very important. He was an existentialist before it was in vogue, writing about man’s struggle over overwhelming forces.”

As for the conference, Benson said, “I think that any time you reach out to bring people from all over the country to speak, you enrich the local community and bring prestige to the school.”