Criticism of Ernest Hemingway's Article "Old Constan"

The Toronto Daily Star's October 28, 1922 article featuring "Old Constan" penned by the late Ernest Hemingway, an author from the "Lost Generation," was designed with the intention of acquainting the reader with the sights, smells, tastes, and sounds of early twentieth-century Turkey. Hemingway described the always-bustling city of Constantinople(now the modern-day capital Istanbul) with such particulars that made even the most commonplace sights something of a foreign enigma to be eagerly decoded by the interested reader. Of the East, he depicted both the charm, as well as the harsh realities that were familiar to the area post-World War I.

"In the morning when you wake and see a mist over the Golden Horn with the minarets rising out of it slim and clean towards the sun and muezzin calling the faithful to prayer in a voice that soars and dips like an aria from a Russian opera, you have the magic of the East...," began his vibrant report on "Constan," as the locals fondly then referred to Constantinople. This journalistic piece's descriptions have kept my attention and also have inspired me to one day see some of the awesome sights that Hemingway glimpsed during his time in Turkey.

Hemingway wrote this piece in the first-person form(in present times this is usually discouraged), filling it with vivid imagery of Turkey during the early 1920s. If only there were more reports with such descriptions as these in the newspapers today--perhaps the reader would then feel as if he were actually alongside the reporter, encountering the sights and sounds of the destinations that are novel to his present experiences thus far, instead of simply dismissing the current events happening across the globe as matters that should not concern him; since, he does not, at present, reside there.

While enjoying a number of his lovely descriptions of "Constan," I noted that certain sadness seemed to linger on even after I was finished consuming all of the information in this piece. It seems that he, in my opinion, although justly describing the harsh realities of life post-World War I, continued to paint to a superfluous degree a rather hopeless, pessimistic view of everyday life in Turkey and of life in general.

While I do not argue that his writing career had some fine points in it, I, being an ardent reader, was disappointed by his overall gloomy approach to the topic. While this article was indeed a form of journalism, I would refrain from calling it truly "great."