{"id":12705,"date":"2026-04-03T21:43:34","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T01:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/hemingways-advice-on-writing-ambition-and-his-reading-list-of-essential-books-for-aspiring-writers-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T21:43:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T01:43:34","slug":"hemingways-advice-on-writing-ambition-and-his-reading-list-of-essential-books-for-aspiring-writers-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/hemingways-advice-on-writing-ambition-and-his-reading-list-of-essential-books-for-aspiring-writers-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Hemingway\u2019s Advice on Writing, Ambition, and His Reading List of Essential Books for Aspiring Writers \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

\"Hemingway\u2019s<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAs a writer you should not judge. You should understand,\u201d<\/em> Ernest Hemingway<\/strong> (July 21, 1899\u2013July 2, 1961) counseled in his 1935 Esquire<\/em> compendium of writing advice<\/a>, addressed to an archetypal young correspondent but based on a real-life encounter that had taken place a year earlier.<\/p>\n

In 1934, a 22-year-old aspiring writer named Arnold Samuelson set out to meet his literary hero, hoping to steal a few moments with Hemingway to talk about writing. The son of Norwegian immigrant wheat farmers, he had just completed his coursework in journalism at the University of Minnesota, but had refused to pay the $5 diploma fee. Convinced that his literary education would be best served by apprenticing himself to Hemingway, however briefly, he hitchhiked atop a coal car from Minnesota to Key West. \u201cIt seemed a damn fool thing to do,\u201d<\/em> Samuelson later recalled, \u201cbut a twenty-two-year-old tramp during the Great Depression didn\u2019t have to have much reason for what he did.\u201d<\/em> Unreasonable though the quest may have been, he ended up staying with Hemingway for almost an entire year, over the course of which he became the literary titan\u2019s only true prot\u00e9g\u00e9. <\/p>\n

Samuelson recorded the experience and its multitude of learnings in a manuscript that was only discovered by his daughter after his death in 1981. It was eventually published as With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 the closest thing to a psychological profile of the great writer.<\/p>\n

\"Hemingway<\/a>
Hemingway (left) and Samuelson fishing and talking in Key West.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shortly after the young man\u2019s arrival in Key West, Hemingway got right down to granting him what he had traveled there seeking. In one of their first exchanges, he hands Samuelson a handwritten list and instructs him:<\/p>\n

\n

Here\u2019s a list of books any writer should have read as a part of his education\u2026 If you haven\u2019t read these, you just aren\u2019t educated. They represent different types of writing. Some may bore you, others might inspire you and others are so beautifully written they\u2019ll make you feel it\u2019s hopeless for you to try to write.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is the list of heartening and hopeless-making masterworks that Hemingway handed to young Samuelson:<\/p>\n

\"hemingway_readinglist\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Blue Hotel<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) by Stephen Crane<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. The Open Boat<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) by Stephen Crane<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Madame Bovary<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (free ebook<\/em><\/a> | public library<\/em><\/a>) by Gustave Flaubert<\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. Dubliners<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) by James Joyce<\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. The Red and the Black<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) by Stendhal<\/strong><\/li>\n
  6. Of Human Bondage<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (free ebook<\/em><\/a> | public library<\/em><\/a>) by W. Somerset Maugham<\/strong><\/li>\n
  7. Anna Karenina<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (free ebook<\/em><\/a> | public library<\/em><\/a>) by Leo Tolstoy<\/strong><\/li>\n
  8. War and Peace<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (free ebook<\/em><\/a> | public library<\/em><\/a>) by Leo Tolstoy<\/strong><\/li>\n
  9. Buddenbrooks<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) by Thomas Mann<\/strong><\/li>\n
  10. Hail and Farewell<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) by George Moore<\/strong><\/li>\n
  11. The Brothers Karamazov<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky<\/strong><\/li>\n
  12. The Oxford Book of English Verse<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>)<\/li>\n
  13. The Enormous Room<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) by E.E. Cummings<\/strong><\/li>\n
  14. Wuthering Heights<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (free ebook<\/em><\/a> | public library<\/em><\/a>) by Emily Bront\u00eb<\/strong><\/li>\n
  15. Far Away and Long Ago<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (free ebook<\/em><\/a> | public library<\/em><\/a>) by W.H. Hudson<\/strong><\/li>\n
  16. The American<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (free ebook<\/em><\/a> | public library<\/em><\/a>) by Henry James<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Not on the handwritten list but offered in the conversation surrounding the exchange is what Hemingway considered \u201cthe best book an American ever wrote,\u201d the one that \u201cmarks the beginning of American literature\u201d \u2014 Mark Twain\u2019s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

    \"Art
    Art by Norman Rockwell for a rare edition<\/a> of Mark Twain\u2019s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Alongside these edifying essentials, Hemingway offered young Samuelson some concrete writing advice. Advocating for staying with what psychologists now call flow<\/a>, he begins with the psychological discipline of the writing process:<\/p>\n

    \n

    The most important thing I\u2019ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time\u2026 Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don\u2019t wait till you\u2019ve written yourself out. When you\u2019re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what\u2019s going to happen next, that\u2019s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don\u2019t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Then, echoing Lewis Carroll\u2019s advice on overcoming creative block in problem-solving<\/a>, Hemingway considers the practical tactics of this psychological strategy:<\/p>\n

    \n

    The next morning, when you\u2019ve had a good sleep and you\u2019re feeling fresh, rewrite what you wrote the day before. When you come to the interesting place and you know what is going to happen next, go on from there and stop at another high point of interest. That way, when you get through, your stuff is full of interesting places and when you write a novel you never get stuck and you make it interesting as you go along. Every day go back to the beginning and rewrite the whole thing and when it gets too long, read at least two or three chapters before you start to write and at least once a week go back to the start. That way you make it one piece. And when you go over it, cut out everything you can. The main thing is to know what to leave out. The way you tell whether you\u2019re going good is by what you can throw away. If you can throw away stuff that would make a high point of interest in somebody else\u2019s story, you know you\u2019re going good.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    He then returns to the psychological payoff of this trying practice:<\/p>\n

    \n

    Don\u2019t get discouraged because there\u2019s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can\u2019t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms<\/em> at least fifty times. You\u2019ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it\u2019s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. That\u2019s the true test of writing. When you can do that, the reader gets the kick and you don\u2019t get any. You just get hard work and the better you write the harder it is because every story has to be better than the last one. It\u2019s the hardest work there is. I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don\u2019t write I feel like shit. I\u2019ve got the talent and I feel that I\u2019m wasting it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    When Samuelson asks how one can know whether one has any talent, Hemingway replies:<\/p>\n

    \n

    You can\u2019t. Sometimes you can go on writing for years before it shows. If a man\u2019s got it in him, it will come out sometime. The only thing I can advise you is to keep on writing but it\u2019s a damned tough racket. The only reason I make any money at it is I\u2019m a sort of literary pirate. Out of every ten stories I write, only one is any good and I throw the other nine away.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Hemingway tempers this with a word of advice on ambition, self-comparison, and originality:<\/p>\n

    \n

    Never compete with living writers. You don\u2019t know whether they\u2019re good or not. Compete with the dead ones you know are good. Then when you can pass them up you know you\u2019re going good. You should have read all the good stuff so that you know what has been done, because if you have a story like one somebody else has written, yours isn\u2019t any good unless you can write a better one. In any art you\u2019re allowed to steal anything if you can make it better, but the tendency should always be upward instead of down. And don\u2019t ever imitate anybody. All style is, is the awkwardness of a writer in stating a fact. If you have a way of your own, you are fortunate, but if you try to write like somebody else, you\u2019ll have the awkwardness of the other writer as well as your own.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    \"Hemingway<\/a>
    Hemingway shows off a 324-pound blue marlin as Samuelson (far left) admires it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    In a sentiment that calls to mind Neil Gaiman\u2019s magnificent commencement address on the only adequate response to criticism<\/a>, Hemingway cautions Samuelson about the petty jealousies that arise with success:<\/p>\n

    \n

    When you start to write everybody is wishing you luck, but when you\u2019re going good, they try to kill you. The only way you can ever stay on top is by writing good stuff.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba<\/em><\/strong><\/a> brims with the celebrated writer\u2019s wisdom on literature, life, and the creative experience. Complement it with Hemingway on knowledge and the dangers of ego<\/a>, and his short, spectacular Nobel Prize acceptance speech<\/a>, then revisit the essential reading lists of Joan Didion<\/a>, Leo Tolstoy<\/a>, Susan Sontag<\/a>, Alan Turing<\/a>, Brian Eno<\/a>, David Byrne<\/a>, Neil deGrasse Tyson<\/a>, and Patti Smith<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

    \"Profit<\/a>
    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cAs a writer you should not judge. You should understand,\u201d Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899\u2013July 2, 1961) counseled in his 1935 Esquire compendium of writing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}