Zam has been an associate professor at Fordham College and New York University, as well as a writer for the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review and Details magazine. In the following essay, he examines Hemingway's sparse writing style, and compares that style to the early motion-picture technique of montage.

One of the most often-discussed aspects of Ernest Hemingway's writing is his distinctive style. Whereas many writers of his day were still heavily influenced by the verbose, extremely descriptive style of English and American authors of the nineteenth century such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Herman Melville, Hemingway was not. His literature is free of the extensive use of adjectives common in the work of many earlier writers, and of many of his immediate contemporaries. As a result, his work has often been described as sparse, objective, and journalistic. It's also been called original, so much so...