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Never been a fan of his writing style and I've tried because he always seemed like a cool guy.

Honestly I picked up a Hemingway book, don't remember the title and I wasn't impressed. I read a few pages and was confused as to how he became so famous. But maybe I wasn't in the right mindset? I'll give him another try someday perhaps.

I'm not a big fan of Hemingway. I've only read A Farewell to Arms, and I plan to give a few other novels a try just to be fair (every author can put out a bad story), but this was really lackluster. I actually thought he did a great job in the beginning of the novel. The description of the army camp and the battlefield was terse but sufficient to my mind. The emotionless tone of the dialogue even fit with the setting, as it gives the impression that everything is kind of routine and this point. I similarly enjoy the escape scenes later in the novel. However, the dialogue between the male and female protagonists (I don't remember their names because they were essentially paper dolls anyway) is terrible. There is no real emotion, yet there is so much neediness and repetition. How many times does there need to be an exchange where the woman asks the man if he loves her, he says yes, she asks Really?, and he says yes, and this goes on for a bit. They're neurotic and clingy but with the entirety of their emotions stripped down. The final scene, as heartless and callous as it seems, didn't really shock me as it fit perfectly with the tone of the novel.

This is a really interesting thread to read, because it probably is a pretty good representation of the cross-section of opinions of Hemingway across the world today.

Our opinion of Hemingway as a culture seems to go in waves of respect and derision and veneration. Maybe we've finally landed on uncertainty. Personally, I do think that Hemingway was pretty brilliant. I understand the idea that people don't see the depth in his writing, but my favorite parts of Hemingway were always those that were left unwritten. The ending of A Farewell to Arms, for instance, in its abruptness, can seem callous to many, but I found it to be brilliant in its deliberate truncation of the story as a way of articulating emotional pain.

Hemingway's economic style is perhaps a bit antithetical to what readers want today because it's not deliberately descriptive or verbose. He says just enough to get his point across and moves on. It's a style that, even if you're not a fan of it today, has influenced immeasurable amounts of writers to find simpler ways to say what they're trying to say. At the very least, he provides balance to the spectrum which has, at its other end, the likes of Charles Dickens and George Eliot.

While I do appreciate his minimalist writing style (I can't stand overly flowery prose in which the author takes an entire page to describe a room), I just can't get into Hemingway. My first introduction to Hemingway was A Farewell to Arms in high school. It wasn't assigned reading or anything. I just thought the premise sounded interesting when browsing through the books in the library. I was not a fan. It was far too depressing for me, and I swore off Hemingway at the time. A couple of years ago (I'm 30 now), I decided to give him another shot. I read The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and the Sea. I couldn't get into either one. I couldn't have cared less about his characters in The Sun Also Rises, and The Old Man and the Sea was depressing if I felt any emotion at all. A previous poster stated that Hemingway writes more like a news reporter than an author, and I whole-heartedly agree. I won't be picking up any more Hemingway books in the future.

I frankly couldn't complete a book written by Ernest Hemingway. I feel so bored while reading. I tried hard to continue The Old Man and the Sea but I couldn't.

He has such a straight forward way of writing, leaving the reader to make up their own pictures in their mind. To me he is a legend

I've enjoyed reading this topic, because I finally found out I'm not the only reader who doesn't care for Hemingway! I have read several of his books, but it was many years ago and I haven't had any desire to try them again. I have visited his home on Key West. It was interesting, but the cats had a lot to do with my interest

I think Hemingway's perception on writing was quite fascinating. There are many quotes by him referring to his life as a writer that truly speak to me. He was enormously talented, but also, crippled by his own demons. I wonder what other masterpieces he may have been able to turn out if only his life hadn't been so dark. I think his literary brilliance often gets overshadowed by his personal struggles.

Actually my post about Hemingway's novels not his personality. I read The Old Man and The Sea, Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. And when I was reading both of them, I was thinking maybe I just stop reading there -simply couldn't-. Because I was deadly curious about the end.
And at the end of all I was disappointed, they wouldn't suppose to be that simple in my opinion. But in the end life is that simple and I keep going to read Heminway's books.
PS: Sorry about all the grammer mistakes that I've been made. English is not my foreign language.

The special man!

I studied Hemingway back in school. And I've read The Old Man and The Sea. Amazing work, although very boring. But I liked it.

I think he's overrated. None of his writing has appealed to me.

I've read everything he's written, and I've written a thesis on him. His style is fascinating to me, and are the details of his life and relationships. He's such a cool glimpse of the ex-pats of his time. The Sun Also Rises is amazing: he creates truly selfish and unlikeable characters in a way that kept me interested and engaged.

Hemmingway's books have never really interested me. I found most of them to be boring if I am being honest.