Eaton Hamilton

“In 1923, realizing that “you could omit anything … and the omitted part would strengthen the story,” Ernest Hemingway conceived of his “iceberg theory.”  He would replay the facts, leaving it to readers to deduce the submerged symbolism and untold back stories themselves.  While his contemporaries, still finding their way out of the thickets of Victorianism, overwrote and overexplained, Hemingway cut through.  Delivered in tight bursts, his deceptively simple narratives hinted at offstage conflicts, concealed wounds and unspoken desires.  Later, another great storyteller, Miles Davis, similarly suggested that “it’s not the notes you play; it’s the notes you don’t play.”

Mark Braude, Power of Small, the Globe and Mail, July 16, 2012