Aficionado

Hemingway is described as having a spare style. And it's true that although his novels and stories flow, it is with simplicity. His descriptions rich with imagery in language that has none of the complexity that other authors might interject. His dialogue repetitive, the story not slowed or hastened because it's just an encounter, a passing, and yet without it, it wouldn't be Hemingway.
Each time you visit, or revisit, his writing, the tone and style of these conversations strikes you as juvenile but also how real they are to those that occur naturally in life. We do in actual fact talk like that: echo back what another's said as a question or phrase it differently, respond to confirm we're listening, and comment upon past or forthcoming events made reference to, adding our own concurrence or variance on the matter. We conceal what we don't want known and divulge all that we do, in spite of subtle clues we inadvertently give which are telling.
Our topics of conversation and the small talk we engage in might be different now, but it's still delivered in a ping-pong style: batted back and forth, and Hemingway somehow captures that winningly, like it was a screenplay or an adaptation from life which in his case it probably was. Really, when you think about it most of the conversations we have are frivolous, though we might at the time kid ourselves otherwise, and even in those which do convey sentiments that are important or real, once said they pass. Fade as does the time and place they were said in just like a scene in a play. A new backdrop appears with the same faces or new ones and the action continues.
Real-life situations rarely contain monologues, and so neither does Hemingway; even the telling of a anecdote is peppered with interruptions from hecklers, who are more often than not tight friends. Tight as in getting drunk, till they are falling down or addle headed. And gad, did they seem able to drink in those days! Perpetually swimming in the stuff, so that alcohol becomes the dominate feature with events and friendships circling it, which today we would say is unhealthy, but drink then was a collective sport.
Relationships too, between men and women, are not much healthier in Hemingway's fiction. Some of the women, such as Brett Ashley in Fiesta, come across as impulsive, manipulative and at times uncaring, as well as wanting to be and considered as one of the chaps. Men are played off one another, or else the dialogue, in some instances, seems babyish or sickening; inebriation often the cause of that. The women, however, can seem one-dimensional: their characters not fully fleshed out, yet it doesn't really matter because the narrative is distinctly male. A perspective that female readers might find refreshing, even if modern ideas about 'correct' behaviour oppose that view, because the same passions and jealousies abound in the 21^st century.
Hemingway novels have a fluid-like structure, which though hard to achieve means they could be seen as light reads; they're not. There are deeper undercurrents to plots and characterisations, with much left to guess at, and the atmospheres he creates are disquieting. It's literature that lingers in spite of its lack of lyricism (in my opinion) which other writers successfully convey in prose so that there's a rhythm or song-like quality. Hemingway, at least for me, is more sharp and journalistic, and far more visual, so visual that I can see the scenes he paints unfold as if they were on a Chinese scroll and not just captured in dry words on a page.
He typifies America, yet when I'm immersed in his works I almost forget because Hemingway travels well: the man and his autobiographical fiction. Likewise, although I recognise the alpha male, in him and his chums, it doesn't dissuade me from reading, rather it exhorts me to continue in much the same way a bullfighter works the crowd with his tricks as well as the bull to its untimely demise.