A Writer's Online Presence

Kirk, I like this very much! Sleek, cleanly organized, easy on the eyes. (Important, in my case!) Congratulations! I think you’ll find this a great “face” for your work.

By the way, I finished reading “A Time in the Sun” yesterday, and oh my is it good. You’ve inspired me to read some of Hemingway I’ve never gotten too–even the posthumous novels, which have been reviewed a bit savagely over the years. I’ve avoided them basically because of a panel discussion I saw many years ago, where the Hemingway scholars involved pretty much accused the family of butchering the work he left in order to make it “fit the image of Hemingway,” when part of his struggle as a writer late in life was to break out of approaches he’d been using. You’re far deeper into all this than I am, and I’m curious if you have a sense of whether this complain makes sense. Or are the scholars simply trying to clear the ground for their own editions of his posthumous works whenever the rights to publish them become available? (It’s a cutthroat world out there.)

On a more benign note, I can’t remember if I ever sent you the following poem, by the underrated poet Archibald MacLeish, who was a friend of Hemingway. I still knocks me out every time I read it:

HEMINGWAY
by Archibald MacLeish

“In some some inexplicable way an accident.”
–Mary Hemingway

Oh, not inexplicable. Death explains,
that kind of death: rewinds remembrance
backward like a film track till the laughing man
among the lilacs, peeling the green stem,
waits for the gunshot where the play began;

rewinds those Africas and Idahos and Spains
to find the table at the Closerie des Lilas,
sticky with syrup, where the flash of joy
flamed into blackness like that flash of steel.

The gun between the teeth explains.
The shattered mouth foretells the singing boy.

Kirk, I love it! It’s so clean and straightforward, and really focuses on you, the author. You have a very clear and budding presence on it, and I’m excited to see where it goes. Loved the passage about torturing beautiful characters; I’ve been writing in circles around a scene I’m dreeeaaading, but you’re right, we just have to do it!

I’ve heard that about WordPress too. Squarespace just has a set kind of template to follow, that you can then make individualized. Mine looks like this, and it only took me a few days to put together :).