Hemingway is my hero.

"Once upon a time there was a lion that lived in Africa with all the other lions. The other lions were all bad lions and every day they ate zebras and wildebeasts and every kind of antelope. Sometimes, the bad lions ate people too. They ate Swahilis, Umbulus, and Wandorobos and they especially like to eat Hindu traders. All Hindu traders are very fat and delicious to a lion."

This is not offensive, this is the beginning to one of the best shorts by E. Hemingway I have ever read. Read it sometime, read some of his other stuff, you'll be amazed if not grateful (like I am) or offended. He did not write, in his time, to be offensive. He wrote from a very masculine place (he was a man after all) of devisiveness and utter unrelenting truth that I have always admired as a writer. My stories, I realize lately, very much follow in this path- a very straight forward yet not simple story of behaviors and their consequences, sometimes with a sense of humour and sometimes with a very sincere purpose.

If only more people would read Hemingway's novels, and shorts, perhaps they would get that the problems of the human soul have always been there. Not just now, after some tragedy or some elected officials' claim of triumph over tragedy, but that those "smaller" stories happen all the time- not always to some Hollywood ending.

Life is black and white at times, and that is what I love about Pappa Heminway- his stories don't mince the truth.