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Comment by V-2 | Hacker News Reader

This was my impression as well. Well, being a non-native speaker I tend to blame myself. Still, this style of writing does sound self-indulgent to me:

"Hemingway’s voice distilled itself with miraculous speed, a fusion of telegrammatic urgency and high modernist impersonality, with counterpoint learned from Bach and rhythms located profoundly in his own neurology"

etc.

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Good God. I write Lovecraft pastiche for fun and even I think that's way too purple.

The next sentence is "In the most beautiful way, it was anti-writing". That's somewhat revealing.

Yeah, I have no idea what the writer is saying. The only part of that I “get” is telegrammatic speed. What the hell is “high modernist impersonality”?

I’m a native speaker and have read 3 Hemingway books.

I assume they mean modernism, the prevailing artistic style of the first half of the 20th century.

I thought that was post-modernism?

I have a mnemonic short story in my head that places modernists and post-modernists roughly in first and second half.

> Post-modernism reacted to the modernists high ideals and empty promises. After all, it was their era (the modernists) that sparked the Great War which introduced the world to the new era industrialized warfare. Not once, but twice. Post-modernists arrived into this new Cold world that was left.

Awesome. Thank you for sharing that.

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