Reports from a Small Press Burnout: Hemingway’s Icebergs

Photo by Spitfire Photography on Unsplash

Hemingway said a short story should be like the tip of an iceberg, with the great expanse and weight below only felt or hinted at, but still filling the story with significance and holding it up, thrusting it up. When Bukowski writes about sitting at a table at a café, watching a girl in a green dress walk by, he says it feels good “After all the rest”, meaning when the struggle and cold and hunger and ugliness have relented. The battle one has passed through makes the café, the table, the girl, the green dress so much more, their value and beauty are brought into relief, into contrast. But so many writers only want to step from their mother’s doorway to that café table. After they complain to the waitress that the table has not been cleaned properly, they order a to-be-nursed wine or a microbeer. They finger their hair to make sure it is falling just right over their forehead, always ready for that spontaneous phone photo. They sit scribbling words that are nothing but fuzzy ducklings quacking away and swimming in circles: tiny rippled “V”s that barely tickle the water and disappear in an internet-minute. There is no weight below them, behind them or within them. They are light as air. They are supremely insouciant. They are hollow. There is no iceberg, only a tip that breaks off like a pencil point. If there is anger in their words, it is a petty anger, a put-on anger, a…