Lessons in letter writing from Mr Ernest Hemingway.

The digital age has enabled us to be efficient correspondents, with suggested text technology the latest salvo in the war against having to write anything yourself. But while the bots do all the work, it can feel like your soul has exited the conversation entirely.

One writer you could not accuse of dispassion was Mr Ernest Hemingway, a novelist whose economy with words did not prevent him becoming a great of American literature (though we admit that the writer didn’t discover the procrastination potential of Twitter). Despite his proficiency at writing books, however, Mr Hemingway didn’t limit his legendary style to fiction. In his most personal letters, republished in a new book, Hemingway: Artifacts From A Life, the author pens notes to family, friends and professional associates with his signature robustness and charm.

While the dispatches further illuminate the man behind the literary legend, they also provide inspiration for those who are not ready to submit to the age of digital severity. Here are five ways in which Mr Hemingway’s letters demonstrate the art of correspondence.

The dreaded cover letter was no problem for Mr Hemingway, who plunged into the meat of the matter from the opening line. “No attempt will be made to write a trick letter in an effort to plunge you into such a paroxysm of laughter that you will weakly push over to me the position advertised in Sunday’s Tribune,” he began in reply to a 1920 job advert for an advertising writer. Instead, Mr Hemingway appealed to his potential employer’s ego, while hinting at his own. “You would probably rather have what facts there are,” he continues, “and judge the quality of the writing from the published signed articles that I can bring you.” Whether the letter elicited a response is unknown but it showcases an appealingly direct – and memorable – sell.

In November 1923, Mr Hemingway’s first book, Three Stories And Ten Poems, was privately published. In December, Mr Hemingway wrote to his friend Mr Ezra Pound lamenting the less than enthusiastic uptake. Perhaps inspired by the American modernist poet’s work, Mr Hemingway evoked a certain lyricism when describing those who have criticised or ignored his debut. These include but were not limited to: “literary shits, artistic shits… book review shits, ignorant shits…bright Vanity Fair shits”. The net widens to include lawyers, landlords, everyone in New York and Free Trade before Mr Hemingway signed off: “Shit on them all, love to Dorothy – Hem.”

The digital age demands brevity in correspondence. Mr Hemingway’s letters were equally efficient, if slightly less dependent on the cryface emoji. The origins of this vigorous approach lay in Mr Hemingway’s first job for The Kansas City Star, a newspaper whose reporting style demanded short sentences and paragraphs. It’s a charming skill that Mr Hemingway put to effect in his resignation letter from the paper. It reads, in full:

Mr Bone,

I regret very much the necessity of tendering my resignation from the local staff of The Star_. This resignation to take effect January 1st, 1924, if convenient to you._

Please believe there is no rudeness implied through the brevity of this memorandum.

Ernest

In 1925, Mr Hemingway attended the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain, a sexually explosive, alcohol-fuelled extravaganza that led to Mr Hemingway’s creative breakthrough.

In the heat of the bacchanalia, Mr Hemingway and his friend the American writer Mr Harold Loeb nearly came to blows over a woman. Mr Hemingway wrote Mr Loeb an apology the next day, July 12, 1925:

Dear Harold,

I was terribly tight and nasty to you last night and don’t want you to go away with that nasty insulting lousiness as the last thing of the fiestas… I’m thoroly ashamed of the way I acted and the stinking, unjust, uncalled for things I said.

Mr Hemingway proceeded to dramatise the events in his book The Sun Also Rises, published the following year. In it, he characterised Mr Loeb in a particularly unforgiving manner, shattering their friendship and taking the shine off Mr Hemingway’s earlier contrition. Moral dubiousness aside, though, we must admit that his apology shows a flair for writing convincing fiction.

Mr Hemingway wrote letters to his friends, who, because they were fellow literary giants, got a full blast of his talents. He here was in all his legendary manly glory, waxing lyrical about heaven to a certain Mr F Scott Fitzgerald:

“To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors…”

Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts From A Life (Simon & Schuster) edited by Mr Michael Katakis is out now