BADASS WHATEVERDAY: Ernest Hemingway

*Bonus: LIFE just posted some previously unpublished photos of Hemingway. Don't say we never gave ya nothin'.

Saturday was the 50th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway's death. He wrote. He was succinct. He was part of the Lost Generation. Regardless of what you think about his character, or what you believe about his ideologies, he made an impact. If you're not familiar with his work, you're missing out, so we suggest you get that way.

He was, of course, a writer not a sartorialist. But when I look at his writing style, I learn things about my dressing style. In his writing, he was a master of "economy and understatement." So, too, in his attire.

"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master," he famously said, talking about writing, not clothing. But I'd wager it's applicable. Clothes are the means, not the end.

Hemingway wrote while he was in love, and he wrote when those women stopped loving him. Some quotes:

• "I've been in love (truly) with five women, the Spanish Republic and the 4th Infantry Division." — in a letter to Marlene Dietrich (July 1, 1930).
• "All good books have one thing in common: They are truer than if they had really happened."
• "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."
• "Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it—don’t cheat with it.”

More bullets. There are a couple of things we like about Hemingway:

• The Kansas City connection. (True story: Hemingway and I both worked at the Kansas City Star.)
• The Chicago connection.
• His impact on American literature.

Fifty years dead. Let's remember by reading. We like people who read.

[Photos via Google Image Search.]