Fitzgerald.
Hemingway.
Also, Hemingway.
If I had to choose, Fitzgerald. I’m reading the “Pat Hobby Stories” now - I haven’t read Hemingway in years.
I’ve never liked either of them much… and you didn’t give us an option for that.
Fitzgerald.
I know it’s very much a matter of personal taste, and that the poll numbers are still low, but I was surprised to see Hemingway beating out Fitzgerald two to one when I first checked this thread. (It was 6 for Hemingway and 3 for Fitzgerald then; now there are two more votes for Fitzgerald.)
I’m another one who hasn’t read Hemingway in quite a while, so I admit the comparison for me is partly from memory, but I think almost no one can craft a sentence the way Fitzgerald can: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Fitzgerald or Hemingway?
Yes.
Hemingway is one of my favorite authors of all. The poll could be pretty much anyone vs. Hemingway and I would choose Hemingway. I have read Fitzgerald and liked his works. I just like Hemingway better.
Hemingway, reluctantly, since I have no use for either author. I went with Hemingway because better movies have been made of his stuff than of Fitzgerald’s work (although The Last Tycoon was kind of a neat picture, sort of).
Hemingway!
Half of you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Whenever I try to read Hemingway, my snoring eventually wakes me up.
Hemingway. Adjectives should be shot.
Also adverbs. Two or three times.
In what, a bar fight?
Neither is any good as an author.
Ella’s a much better singer than Mariel.
I like Hemingway’s subject matter more but think Fitzgerald’s use of the english language was much better, it came off more educated, a bit tougher to read but more eleoquent. Sometimes reading Hemingway can be a jaring experience, he uses such short sentences and sparse language, unlike any author I’ve ever read.
Try reading another contemporary of Hemingways in Faulkner and then Ernest and it will be even more of a gap.
I prefer Steinbeck over all of them!
Hmm… Figured you’d like Hemingway with all the food and drink you enjoy.
In a bar fight, Hemingway would slaughter Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald. Beautiful, evocative sentences.
"This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight. "
I mean, damn.
But then, I like Bradbury too, and Whitman.
My favorite novel by the two of them is Gatsby
My favorite short story by the two of them is The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (by Hem; with Winter Dreams by Fitzgerald a close second)
A tie. Kind of like choosing between Talking Heads and The Ramones for best NYC punk band - same scene but different sounds.
I think at his peak Fitzgerald was the best author to write in English. Unfortunately he didn’t maintain that level for very long. Hemingway was never as good as the best of Fitzgerald, but he was close and more consistently good for his whole writing career. Got to give it to Hem.