Hemingway Takes on a Blog

My first thought after reading both A Clean, Well-Lighted Place and the Smitten Kitchen blog was that the difference in time periods was very obvious.  Other than the very modern “canvas” of the Smitten Kitchen blog, the style just has a much more modern feel than Hemingway’s story.   One thing that really stuck out to me (and probably due to our recent reading) was the use of commas, parentheses and other punctuation. The blog uses these throughout the entire thing. It gives it that modern feel while also making it very light and conversational.  While the sentences were shorter and more broken up with punctuation, it made it extremely easy to read. I could hear the author speaking to me rather than just writing.

Hemingway is the complete opposite of the Smitten Kitchen blog.  While the content seems very simple, it’s still written in a much “heavier” way than the blog.  Unlike the author of the blog, Hemingway doesn't use a lot of punctuation. It’s not grammatically incorrect like some works by “big foot stylists”; Hemingway still uses commas. However, he doesn’t use them in the conversational way that the blog did.  Some sentences just feel long and draggy. The language itself has a slower feeling to it than the language used in the blog. The entire piece definitely feels much older and less colorful than the Smitten Kitchen blog.  Even so, this simplistic way of writing seems to work well for the piece.