Iceberg theory

When he became a writer of short stories, he retained this minimalistic style, focusing on surface elements without explicitly discussing underlying themes.

After graduating from high school he went to work as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star,[1] where he quickly learned that truth often lurks below the surface of a story.

[2] He learned about corruption in city politics, and that in hospital emergency rooms and police stations a mask of cynicism was worn "like armour to shield whatever vulnerabilities remained".

As foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, while living in Paris in the early 1920s, he covered the Greco-Turkish War in more than a dozen articles.

As his biographer Jeffrey Meyers explains, "he objectively reported only the immediate events in order to achieve a concentration and intensity of focus—a spotlight rather than a stage".

In A Moveable Feast (1964), his posthumously published memoirs about his years as a young writer in Paris, he explains: "I omitted the real end [of "Out of Season"] which was that the old man hanged himself.

[7] In his essay "The Art of the Short Story", Hemingway is clear about his method: "A few things I have found to be true.

And that is what gives your story weight and gravitas.From reading Rudyard Kipling, Hemingway absorbed the practice of shortening prose as much as it could take.

"[10] His style added to the aesthetic: using "declarative sentences and direct representations of the visible world" with simple and plain language, Hemingway became "the most influential prose stylist in the twentieth century" according to biographer Meyers.

However, in "Indian Camp" the use of descriptive detail such as a screaming woman, men smoking tobacco, and an infected wound build a sense of veracity.

"[8] Hemingway intentionally left out something in "Indian Camp" and "Big Two-Hearted River"—two stories he considered to be good.

[12] Baker calls Hemingway's Across the River and into the Trees a "lyric-poetical novel" in which each scene has an underlying truth presented via symbolism.

[21] The prize was awarded to Hemingway "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.

"[22] A few days after the announcement, Hemingway spoke with a Time magazine correspondent while on his boat fishing off the coast of Cuba.