hemingway gives the best concrit

[queenlua]

So there's this blog called Letters of Note that's been popping up on Hacker News lately (I have no idea why it keeps popping up on Hacker News, as it has nothing to do with hacking, but whatever). Basically, the blog posts various interesting letters and notes—mostly letters written by famous folks, but there's a few cute randos in there as well.

Anyway, today's letter of note is a fantastically blunt letter Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald—evidently Fitzgerald asked what he thought of Tender is the Night, and boy did he ever tell him:

[...] Goddamn it you took liberties with peoples' pasts and futures that produced not people but damned marvellously faked case histories. You, who can write better than anybody can, who are so lousy with talent that you have to—the hell with it. Scott for gods sake write and write truly no matter who or what it hurts but to do not make these silly compromises. You could write a fine book about Gerald and Sara for instance if you knew enough about them and they would not have any feeling, except passing, if it were true.

The full letter is here, and if this is your sort of thing I highly recommend following the blog. He posts lots of writers' letters—the most interesting ones I recall being posted recently are from Jack London, C.S. Lewis, and Kurt Vonnegut.

Comments

[quasiemblem]

Brilliant! Shame he didn't write like that in his novels. Maybe I would have liked them.

[amielleon]

That's pretty lovely.

I more or less agree with him. Change someone's background and you risk ringing false. He has a lot of other great little lines in there, too, the bits about hurt. And his affection for Fitzgerald is pretty sweet.