I Can Write Like Hemingway! (Part 2)

In a 2015 blogpost, I showed how Hemingway’s style could be imitated. Hemingway has a very terse, a perhaps overly terse and rugged, style and in his writing relies sometimes on certain, well, certain gimmicks. Granted, they are gimmicks he probably invented and are still used to this day, but Hemingway's writing, though absolutely astounding and gorgeous, can be a bit gimmicky sometimes.

Nevertheless, I thought I would have a go again at trying to write in the Hemingway style. I’m currently rereading "A Farewell to Arms," or, for all my German readers, “In Einem Anderen Land,” and I thought, for giggles, I would recount a trip I recently made to the Alster and an interaction I had there in Hemingway style. Enjoy.

***

When I got home after my first appointment this morning, I wanted badly just to take a nap. However, the dog needed to go out. So instead of lying in my bed and closing my eyes, which I had wanted badly to do, I got the leash and the harness and fastened the harness around the dog and headed outside.

It was cooler outside and I let the dog off the leash the moment I walked off the grounds of my apartment house. Filou frolicked on the banks of the waterway that led to the Alster. There were no swans or other waterfowl eating from the hanging leaves of the trees that line the banks, so it was a peaceful walk.

At the Alster, I took Filou off the leash and allowed her to run. I had brought only my book with me and had decided to read as she ran alongside the lake. It was cloudy and slightly humid and there were not many people at the Alster. This was fine because I was more easily able to read and walk at the same time, much more easily than on days when many people are out because of the sun.

My intention initially had been to walk with Filou to a bridge about three-fourths of a mile from where I had let her off the leash, but a little bit before I arrived at the bridge, perhaps 200 feet before, I felt tired and hungry and the humidity was getting to me so I decided to turn back. I was reading and walking and walking and reading and reading and walking when I felt something hard and wet at my ankle. Filou had dropped a stick at my foot. She wanted me to play with her. I looked at her, the stick, her again and then I looked at the water. I picked up the stick and threw it in the water. Filou jumped in after it with a huge splash and I watched her. It was very peaceful watching her. It was early and it was very quiet and I was able to hear the lapping sound of the water as she swam toward the stick. It was very quiet and the water sounded very nice and it wasn’t too hot and I watched as Filou brought the stick up on land, dropped it and then shook herself off. I threw the stick in again, and again, she jumped in after it, this time jumping before the stick even left my hand.

As she was swimming, I wondered whether blue algae might be a problem. Last summer there were many cases of blue algae due to the heat and there had been warnings not to let dogs in the water but I couldn’t remember having read anything in the papers this year and no other dog owners had said anything to me so far, so I continued throwing the stick and she continued fetching it.

The book I had brought with me was very good and very interesting and I was thankful that I had brought it and I had even begun to forget about my hunger. Filou was at peace and happy getting exercise and I had begun to feel all right when a woman addressed me. I turned around to confirm that the woman was in fact talking to me.

“Ist das eine gute Idee?” she said. She was pointing to Filou, who had just come up on land with the stick. I immediately knew what she was talking about.

“Was meinen Sie?” “What exactly are you talking about?” I asked, out of respect.

“Kommen Sie aus England oder sprechen Sie Englisch?” she replied. I said yes.

“Well,” she said, “I think there is blue algae in the water. That may not be good for them.”

“Really?” I said. “Because I was thinking that. I had been thinking to myself, ‘Is it safe this year?’ and I hadn’t heard any reports about blue algae, so I just let her--”

“Yeah, there have been reports,” she said. The woman’s dog was standing right beside her. It looked like a poodle.

“Ah, OK,” I said. “Then...it’s out of the water, Filou.” Filou was looking up at me. “Sorry,” I said.

“I’m not 100 percent sure, but there have been reports on the radio. You know what you should do? The Elbe. At the Elbe they can swim.”

“Ah, OK.”

“Yeah, you know where? You know--have you ever heard of this place called ‘Strandperle’?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of it.”

“It’s at Ovel--”

“Ovelgönn--”

“Ovelgönne,” she said. “There. It’s a great place; they can swim there and it’s very nice. You can go right there.”

“And it’s fine for them because there’s a current, right?”

“Right.”

“Great...well...thank you.”

The woman’s dog had climbed onto the roots of a tree whose roots were growing sideways.

“...She likes to climb.”

“What kind of breed of dog is she?”

“A Lagotoo Romagnolo,” the woman said with immense pride, almost singing the name. “An Italian water dog.”

“Great,” I said, “very pretty.”

“Yeah, she loves to climb. But yours...” she gestured toward Filou. “...Those eyes.”

“I know,” I said and then put my finger over one of my eyebrows and moved my eyebrow with it to draw attention to Filou’s cuteness and her ability to use her eyebrows to persuade.

The woman laughed. “Yes, of course,” she said.

“All right, then. No more swimming for Filou, I guess. But it’s better that way. Better safe than sorry.”

“Yes, but Ovelgönne...it’s perfect.”

“Thank you,” I said, and after we exchanged a few more words, we took our leave from each other. Filou still had the stick she had been fetching in her mouth, but I knew that I would no longer be throwing it in the water. I didn’t know exactly what blue algae did to dogs or why it was so bad, but I knew that it was bad and in the papers they had made a big deal about not allowing dogs into the Alster when blue algae was there.