Hemingway said adjectives are the weak writer's crutch. Agree or disagree?

Question

He believed in verbs to the ommission of all other parts of speech. It's impossible, of course, but it was a mad dream he held close to all his days.

Answer 1

Well, it worked OK for Hemingway - but that was HIS style. Thomas Wolfe or William Faulkner, on the other hand, would have felt bereft without their adjectives.

Here's an interesting piece - sample given. site below.

"Those who write about the craft of writing have always treated adjectives with a certain derision, rising sometimes to hatred. "The adjective is the enemy of the noun," warned Voltaire, and Mark Twain advised, "When you catch an adjective, kill it." Can it be that bad? It's only a part of speech, and in fact an essential one.
But books about writing call it a burden we should avoid whenever possible. An online guide says, "Adjectives are frail; don't ask them to do more work than they should." William Strunk and E.B. White, in The Elements of Style, are blunter: "Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs." Of course, they use adjectives often, as in their advice to "Omit needless words" and "Be clear." . . . .
"Look Homeward, Angel appeared in 1929, the same year Ernest Hemingway, a great adjective hater, brought out A Farewell to Arms. The adjective was as essential to Wolfe as the elimination of it was to Hemingway. Both writers inspired imitators, with embarrassing results. A bad Wolfe imitator gives the impression of straining to be evocative; a bad Hemingway imitator seems to have nothing to say.

Hemingway's opinion prevailed among critics, because his restraint appeared virtuous and because everyone knew that badly used adjectives overwhelm a subject and deaden it. Jonathan Raban, in his book Passage to Juneau, found himself peering at the Pacific coastline through a screen of adjective-infested cliches: "Snow-capped peaks above, fathomless depths below and, in the middle of the picture, the usual gaunt cliffs, hoary crags, wild woods and crystal cascades." . . .

"Clifton Fadiman, a popular American critic of the mid-20th century, belonged to the anti-adjective party and expressed the common view in a line that now appears in quotations books: "The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech." True enough, so far as it goes. The wrong adjective will throw a careless sentence onto the ground and fracture its collar bone. But the felicitous adjective, chosen with thought and imagination, can make a sentence fly."

By the way, you used two adjectives ("weak" and "writer's" - a possessive adjective) in your question.
(Some might say three, but "the" is really an article.)

And, if the explanation you used is counted, you have
6 more ("all", "other", "impossible", "mad", "all", "his" - another possessive adjective.)

Answer 2

Agreed. Not that ALL adjectives should be removed from writing, but many writers do rely too heavily on them to "tell" the story. The best writing advice I have ever received was: "Show, don't tell." For example, if you wanted to convey that a man was very rich, you could say "He is a very rich man." How exciting. Instead, SHOW that he is rich. Include images of his lavish mansion and expensive car. Let the reader's mind work to make their own conclusions about whatever it may be you're trying to get across.

Answer 3

Not to be overused if you can get nouns and verbs to do the job.
Same with adverbs. There was a ghastly fantasy series that was full of 'He said grimly,' etc. But these pared down guys often leave the reader floundering in dialogue, asking 'Who said that? was it John or Mary?' and you have to go back to where you know who it was and then count forward. There are also those total wankers who write 'he hissed' after sentences that don't contain any s-sound, like "'Go away,' he hissed."
THOSE are some of the ways to recognise a weak writer.

Answer 4

Disagree

Answer 5

Hemingway also shot himself in the head.

Anyway, it was just some preoccupation with stereotypically male ways of talking. Men are straightforward and intense and don't mince words and bear their suffering in silence; women jabber on and on and never shut up, right. They want to talk about "silly" things like "relationships" and dramatize with adjectives.

Answer 6

The deal with adjectives (and adverbs too) is that they often 'tell' instead of 'show.' Good writing does more showing than telling.
Compare:

She was pretty and seductive. "Come on," she said.

to

She twirled a lock of golden hair around her slender finger and winked her left eye. "Come on,"she said.

You want to get rid of even golden? Her hair sparkled in the moonlight like spun gold. she twirled a lock... You get the point.

Adverbs are frequently redundant.

He threw the chair against the wall angrily. He shouted loudly.

Oh really? As opposed to throwing the chair lovingly and shouting quietly?

Answer 7

I agree to a point.

Adjectives are a necessary part of creative writing, but it is true that relying on them too heavily could be the sign of a weak writer. One must have a good balance of all eight parts of speech.

Answer 8

I have heard this but when you look at the examples of books that sell, that are well-known, count the adjectives. They dance all over the pages of the best-sellers.

Answer 9

Disagree. And he didn't even really stick to his own ideas very well. Just read his descriptions in a moveable feast. Nothing much happens, but he describes the food, the weather, and Stein's apartment and her fashion sense quite well.

Answer 10

Sounds as though Ernie was just being a little defensive of his own stripped-down style.

Quality writing comes in any number of forms; no one is better than any other. It just depends on who's wielding the tools, y'know?