3 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2016
  2. Feb 2016
    1. If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows 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 movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. —Ernest Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon [4]

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    2. The Iceberg Theory (also known as the "theory of omission") is the writing style of American writer Ernest Hemingway. As a young journalist, Hemingway had to focus his newspaper reports on immediate events, with very little context or interpretation. When he became a writer of short stories, he retained this minimalistic style, focusing on surface elements without explicitly discussing underlying themes. Hemingway believed the deeper meaning of a story should not be evident on the surface, but should shine through implicitly. Critics such as Jackson Benson claim that the iceberg theory, along with Hemingway's distinctive clarity of style, functioned to distance himself from the characters he created.