Literary taste

Every so often a document comes past my inbox listing responses by famous people to the question: Why did the chicken cross the road? You've probably seen it. (The list, not my inbox.)

For example, in response to, Why did the chicken cross the road?

Ernest Hemmingway says: To die. In the rain.

There is no response (that I've found) for the author Saul Bellow. If there were, I imagine it might go something like:

I am a Leghorn, Worcester born--Worcester, that somber city--and go at things, such as this tar-stain black of tarmac, as I have taught myself, free-style, one leg after the other, high on drumstick, and will make the record my own way: first to scratch, first to worm; sometimes an innocent scratch, sometimes a not so innocent. But a chicken's character is her fate, says old man Sanders… etc. etc.

You couldn't find a starker contrast of language use. Words for Hemmingway are pebbles in his hand, the smaller the better; words for Bellow are liquid, and each novel an ocean.

Very different. But you know what? Both authors are represented in Time's Best 100 Novels (1923-2005).

PS: Hemmingway worked hard to achieve his pared down style. In this he was helped by his wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, who, upon the request of her husband, packed all of his papers--everything she could find, including carbon copies--into a suitcase, which promptly disappeared from the station platform while Hadley was purchasing a bottle of Evian for the trip.

And this was before any of Hemmingway's fiction had been published.

I have a theory that it was Mrs. Bellow that mistakenly took the Hemmingway suitcase.