THE WRITERS STUDIO TUCSON Reneé Bibby / (520) 591-8795 / [email protected]

Excerpt from “The Killers,” by Ernest Hemingway from The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike.

The door of Henry’s lunch-room opened and two men came in. They sat down at the counter.

“What’s yours?” George asked them.

“I don’t know,” one of the men said. “What do you want to eat, Al?”

“I don’t know,” said Al. “I don’t know what I want to eat.”

Outside it was getting dark. The street-light came on outside the window. The two men at the counter read the menus. From the other end of the counter Nick Adams watched them. He had been talking to George when they came in.

“I’ll have a roast pork tenderloin with apple sauce and mashed potato,” the first man said.

“It isn’t ready yet.”

“What the hell do you put it on the card for?’

“That’s the dinner,” George explained. “You can get that at six o’clock.”

George looked at the clock on the wall behind the counter.

“It’s five o’clock.”

“The clock says twenty minutes past five,” the second man said.

“It’s twenty minutes fast.”

“Oh, to hell with the clock,” the first man said. “What have you got to eat?” “I can give you any kind of sandwiches,” George said. “You can have ham and eggs, bacon and eggs, liver and bacon; or a steak.”

“Give me chicken croquettes with green peas and cream sauce and mashed potatoes.”

“That’s the dinner.”

“Everything we want’s the dinner, eh? That’s the way you work it.”

“I can give you ham and eggs, bacon and eggs, liver—”

“I’ll take ham and eggs,” the man called Al said. He wore a derby hat and a black overcoat buttoned across the chest. His face was small and white and he had tight lips.

He wore a silk muffler and gloves.

“Give me bacon and eggs,” said the other man. He was about the same size as Al.

Their faces were different, but they were dressed like twins. Both wore overcoats too tight for them. They sat leaning forward, their elbows on the counter.

“Got anything to drink?” Al asked.

“Silver beer, Bevo, ginger ale,” George said.

“I mean you got anything to drink?”

“Just those I said.”

“This is a hot town,” said the other. “What do they call it?”

“Summit.”

“Ever hear of it?” Al asked his friend.

“No,” said the friend.

“What do you do here nights?” Al asked.

“They eat the dinner,” his friend said. “They all come here and eat the big dinner.”

“That’s right,” George said. “So you think that’s right?” Al asked George.

“Sure.”

“You’re a pretty bright boy, aren’t you?”

“Sure,” said George.

“Well, you’re not,” said the other little man. “Is he, Al?”

“He’s dumb,” said Al. He turned to Nick. “What’s your name?”

Notes on Narrative Technique

Ernest Hemingway famously said, “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the baroque is over.” Whether you agree with Hemingway’s proclamation, you have

to concede he practiced what he preached. And many—from Raymond Carver to the annual winners of The Bad Hemingway Contest—benefited greatly by studying the blueprint of Hemingway’s technique.

“The Killers,” an early Nick Adams story, wherein Nick assumes avatar status for the author as a young man, is quintessential Hemingway. The story embodies all the craft the author continued to hone throughout his successful writing career. Not that

Nick’s an autobiographical cipher. He is a character created by the author in order to explore what is most emotionally urgent to him. In this story, as in most of his work, the themes are large and universal: morality, mortality, and what it means to become a man.

Here’s the paradox: One cursory read of the attached excerpt and who would guess “The Killers” contained such a potent mix of meaning? Desultory and repetitious insults? A dispute over what constitutes dinner time? Pork tenderloin and chicken croquettes? And yet, by the time the story ends, the main character, Nick, has learned an immutable lesson about the way the world works, and the reader knows it’s just a matter of time (no matter what the clock in Henry’s Diner says) before Ole Andreson gets whacked. All the danger and import runs unspoken beneath the surface.

Biographers and critics have come to refer to Hemingway’s writing ethos, which had its genesis in his early career as a journalist but became his signature style, as both the “theory of omission” and the “iceberg theory.” Hemingway described the way he worked this way: “If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about, he may omit things, and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of the movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it is above water.” But here’s the catch: “A writer who omits things because he does not know them only creates hollow places in his writing.”

Go back and read the excerpt again. Take note that although the dialogue is seemingly mundane, it is artfully crafted. Speech patterns are repeated (“I don’t know,” one of the men said. “What do you want to eat, Al?” / “I don’t know,” said Al. “I don’t know what I want to eat.”) The staccato back and forth between George and the gangsters takes on a rhythm, which is gorgeously broken with the near-lyrical sounding

“I’ll have a roast pork tenderloin with apple sauce and mashed potato.” Sometimes the attribution of a line of dialogue reads said Al. Sometimes it reads Al said. Other than that, the narrator interjects itself rarely: the triggering opener (The door of Henry’s lunch-room opened and two men came in…) and three other occasions in these two pages (Outside it was getting dark…; He wore a derby hat…; and He was about the same size as Al…) Not a word here is expendable. Every line is crafted to generate maximum tension without ever once referring directly to it.

Exercise

Using Hemmingway’s “theory of omission,” figure out what you want to write about, feel

the emotion deeply, but keep everything under the surface. Craft a scene that is mostly

dialogue among a couple characters. Have the dialogue be about anything other than

what is really going on in the scene. Strategically use your third person omniscient PN to

create a mood of apprehension; tone is reportorial. If you want to, establish a main

character who initially seems to be an observer.

Preamble: Craft a scene that is mostly dialogue among a couple of characters. Connect strongly with the emotion driving the story, but keep it under the surface. Have the dialogue be about anything other than what is really going on in the scene. Tone: Reportorial. Mood: Dark.