.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

Fictile, capable of being molded.

So it looks like it was Furthman and not Faulkner who wrote the “was you ever stung by a dead bee” theme in To Have and Have not. Not what I’d have guessed.

Gen, a word Hemingway uses in his correspondence — “information.” In bird watching, it is specifically info about the location of a bird.

vor die Hunde gehen, to go to the dogs

… She pats soddenly, with the flat of her hand, a patty of sand.

… An inner tube overturned in the wave: it knows what’s happened sooner than the rider does.

… The girl extends her thumb far to the right and her pinky far to the left to indicate the length of the biggest fish she’s seen.

… Inner tubes: the first one rises, the second one rises, the first one falls, the third one rises.

… The wave, rising, gathers sun in its concavity.

… The cave, the cave in, the miners diving in and out of it.

… The swagger of mom, the stagger of mom’s sister.

… The wave breaks first to its right, then to its left, and finally down the center — well, what about it? It’s just one of those things that happens with waves.

… Woman’s shoulders snapping back, her chest jutting forward, as her butt is slapped hard by a wave.

… You can’t make out what the boy screams in a thrilled tone above the sound of the surf, but it’s a statement of the obvious, you’re sure, or of what seems to him to be obvious.

… I had never seen quite that smile on my relative’s face before: he is remembering having been a young parent.

… A roll of wave as knotted and complex as the trunk of an old oak tree, its whole life passing in a few seconds. The ocean is nothing but one vast logging camp depositing many such as these onto the flatbed.

… And we are as a crowded shoreline of waves; we bunch up, we outstrip and trip each other up, we collide and form things, ducking and weaving, and disappearing.

Old Corndrinking Mellifluous Hemingway called Faulkner.

Came across Busan today, which I’d have called Pusan — which was changed a couple decades ago at least.

I’m not sure how much of this to attribute to Baker and how much to attribute to Hemingway, or to some other cause, but the former’s biography of the latter is among the liveliest literary biographies I have read, full of adventure, accident, misfortune, comic locutions, fame, and bad behavior.

In the end, it’s only the writer’s writing that matters, but it does seem like Hemingway was also quite physically courageous, I’ve learnt from Baker, which makes an impression on me.

Note that this biography was written in the 1960’s and has probably been superseded in some respects by later scholars. I just happened to see it at a used book store and it looked good.

Promenoir: a covered walk.