The iceberg theory associated with Hemingway’s writing may have originated with first wife Hadley: “a magnificent grip on the form back of the material no matter how strange it is, like the icebergs.” It was further developed alongside second wife Pauline who is regarded for her sharp editorial eye, lavish praise, and gift for tact. She encouraged him to perfect his “iceberg” style of writing. [Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow, by Ruth Hawkins, 2012, The University of Arkansas Press]
In retrospect I ought to have narrowed my focus when I moved to this literary town 24 summers ago. The study was too broad. My primary concern was simply—then and still—typography. But I remained and tapped in recreationally with program descendants of the fiction fame founded in 1936 while Hemingway was writing To Have and Have Not.
My first next-door neighbor—an MFA graduate of nonfiction, advocate of the craft, and now longtime faculty at a program located elsewhere—had lingered too long. I was new; she was ready to go. Neighbors for three years, we both left the same July. Our birthdays fall two years and one day apart. She celebrated her move with a visit to a regional “fortune teller.” A novel concept to me, I felt game and followed suit.
Several years later she chided me for following through with “fortune telling,” for taking it seriously, something she considered—and grabbed for a word—“Disney.” She is not alone. While not bold enough to chide, several other connections with MFA alum have trailed off, not knowing I am “into that.”
Through collaboration with 60+ scientists, 40 institutions, and 15 countries, a remarkable USO, unspecified seismic object, was eventually located to Dickson Fjord in Greenland. One year ago September, a “staggering” volume of rock and ice plunged into the fjord and produced a mega-tsunami. The wave sloshed back and forth “some 10,000 times.”
They call the phenomenon a | sā(t)SH | seiche.
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