The Hill, the beltway publication on politics and other sundry occurrences in D.C., was one of the first to report on then-candidate Trump’s comparison to Ernest Hemingway.
Covering a Trump rally in South Carolina on Nov. 20, 2015, the publication captured this soundbite from Mr. Trump:
- “Somebody said I’m the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters.”
One could say he’s been on a Twitter roll ever since, cranking out over 37,000 tweets and counting.
But is he really the Ernest Hemingway of Twitter? Mr. Trump isn’t exactly a book worm, preferring cable TV to expand his intellectual horizons. It would have been more believable if he said, “I’m the Harold Robbins of Twitter.” Then again, I can understand why his PR machine didn’t suggest this.
Back to the question at hand, it’s a tough one to answer since Hemingway never had the “pleasure” of writing for social media. Still, as a public service, we turn the page — can’t resist a bad pun — to “The Old Man and the Sea.” We’ve taken the liberty of translating the opening paragraph of the classic novel into tweets as a means to compare the two on the social media platform.
Here come the bursts:
That’s what the first paragraph of “Old Man and the Sea” might look like tweeted.
Painful.
Disjointed.
Hmmmn, maybe Mr. Trump is the Hemingway of Twitter … minus the exclamation points and all-cap screams.