Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Hemmingway, Steinbeck, and O'Neil

Saving this here for future reference.  Periodically, I will not finish a book and will reference Dorothy Parker.  Dorothy was a writer from the early 20th century.  She is mistakenly credited with saying "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."  [I think George Kaufman actually said it.  Dorothy repeated it without attribution in a setting where attribution wasn't really called for.]

In Season 5, Episode 14 of the TV show M*A*S*H, Radar O'Reilly says that he was accepted by the Famous Las Vegas Writers School run by Hemingway, Steinbeck, and O'Neil*.

We find out that the school is run by Ethel Hemingway, Jerry Steinbeck, and Eunice O'Neal.

This post is just a reminder of that sort of flowery writing.  Lots of telling.  Not much showing.

Not worth reading.  Worthy of being tossed aside.  With great force.

Something to watch in the meantime.



*An obvious reference to Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Eugene O'Neil.  I'd never heard of Eugene O'Neil before.  I had heard of his son-in-law.

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