I came to Hemingway via Fitzgerald and my teenage heart was with the latter, but Hemingway has proved the bigger influence, I suspect. My frequent reaction to the classics these days is "they could do with an editor" and that's partly down to Hemingway's insistence on the spare, crisp line. It's interesting that he acknowledged the Russians as major influences, although he must have read them in translation. That's another thing with the global classics--we get them through a lens. And it's a shock to go back to dense description which is such a feature of 19th century fiction. Thanks for an excellent, thought-provoking essay.