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Making Our Story Like The Manila Hotel

Elaine-Lehman

By: Elaine Lehman

 

Ernest Hemingway is one of my favorite authors. Cat In The Rain and Hills Like White Elephants. His social commentary subtle yet powerful, and use of words and language raised the American vernacular. My father had a colleague who was a Hemingway expert and at his suggestion, I spent a good year reading and comparing Hemingway’s works to British and German writers and Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I admit I bypassed William Faulkner but circled back to his works the following year.

When we lived in New York City, Ari surprised me with a copy of Portrait of Hemingway, by Lillian Ross of The New Yorker- published in the U.K. in 1962. I love this thin, worn book sitting on my bookshelf. In it, Ross, a distinguished journalist, described Hemingway’s two-day visit in Manhattan in 1949 and gave us a candid and affectionate glimpse of this American literary giant. His many faults and vulnerabilities added to his art.

Born in Oak Park, Illinois – just outside of Chicago – American novelist, short story writer, and journalist, Hemingway travelled and wrote about the world. He redefined 20th-century literature from the time his pen touched the paper, and his influence is nearly the standard today. From his work at the Kansas City Star, he learned to “Use Short Sentences. Use short paragraphs,” thus putting an emphasis on compression, simplicity, and clarity. Certainly, he used these ideas from that day forth, as he was later quoted in saying, “Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I’ve never forgotten them.” As illustrated in all of his works, Hemingway tossed aside the 19th-century Victorian prose and reshaped it into a clear, clean, and straight-to-the-point prose that focuses on action rather than emotion.

I hadn’t thought about the Manila Hotel for some time, but recently my Filipino American cousins visited the Philippines and stayed there before heading to our Island of affections. Shortly after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship, we returned home to the Philippines and we also stayed at this historic hotel. Built in 1912, it is touted as Manila’s “Grand Dame” and renowned for its elegant Filipiniana interiors and white glove service. To me, the Manila Hotel exudes timeless, disciplined sophistication and promise for the country.

I was excited. While preparing for the trip, I learned that Hemingway and his third wife, the journalist and maverick war correspondent, Martha Gelhorn, had stayed there. They had visited Manila in 1941 as part of a journalistic tour of Asia en route to his longer assignment in China. Flying to Hong Kong by Pan Am Clipper from San Francisco via Honolulu and Guam, Hemingway and Gelhorn were in Manila for five days and stayed at the Manila Hotel, and managed to meet with representatives of the Philippine Writers League, then led by Federico Mangahas.

On my last visit home, I carried with me a copy of his short stories and a critical analysis of his writings. I sat in the lobby of the Manila Hotel and read. The term “hard-boiled” is often used to describe Hemingway’s writing style, as it means “to be unfeeling, callous, coldhearted, cynical, rough, obdurate, unemotional, without sentiment.” But – to much of the reader’s amazement – Hemingway is able to pack an indescribable amount of power, originality, excitement, and even emotion into the concise, action-driven prose. Thus, as only Hemingway himself can tell, it is quite accurate to say that only one-eighth of the iceberg is above the surface. He believed that eliminating the content that is apparent and the meaning that is obvious only strengthens your iceberg. As a result, each reader is able to comprehend Hemingway’s prose as they see fit; for each reader, there can be a completely different meaning altogether. It is this principle which has guided literature in an “ideal fashion” that earned Ernest Hemingway the Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.'”

“It’s a good story if it’s like Manila Hotel,” Hemingway once said. I pencilled this in my little notebook. It is a challenge to me, to us Filipinos – to maintain the subtle beauty of our history while always striving to exceed the expectations of our communities, including broader. To keep our story worthwhile and tell it better with each day.

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(Image: A.V.H. Hartendorp’s Philippine Magazine)

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