Papa's advice on writing and reading for writers

 Ernest Hemingway was undoubtedly one of the greats of US and world literature. His body of work and 'hard-boiled' style, along with his larger-than-life machismo, influenced and continues to influence generations of young men.
 One of which was 22 year-old  Arnold Samuelson. In the spring of 1934, the young man, who desperately wanted to be a writer, hitchhiked and rode freight trains to Florida to meet Hemingway and seek his advice. Samuelson was born in a mud house in North Dakota and completed a course in journalism at the University of Minnesota but refused to pay the $5 fee for a diploma.
 In April 1934 he packed a knapsack, gathered up his violin and set off on his journey south. The story of Samuelson's journey is a wonderful tale in itself. (Read the full story here.)
 Surpisingly, Hemmingway agreed to see him and offered some advice.
 Samuelson later wrote:
 “The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time,” Hemingway said, tapping my arm with his finger. “Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work. The next morning, when you’ve had a good sleep and you’re feeling fresh, rewrite what you wrote the day before. When you come to the interesting place and you know what is going to happen next, go on from there and stop at another high point of interest. That way, when you get through, your stuff is full of interesting places and when you write a novel you never get stuck and you make it interesting as you go along.”
 Hemingway advised Samuelson to avoid contemporary writers and compete only with the dead ones whose works have stood the test of time. “When you pass them up you know you’re going good.” He asked Samuelson what writers he liked. Samuelson said he enjoyed Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. “Ever read War and Peace?” Hemingway asked. Samuelson said he had not. “That’s a damned good book. You ought to read it. We’ll go up to my workshop and I’ll make out a list you ought to read.”

Hemingway's list:

• Blue Hotel - Stephen Crane
• The Open Boat - Stephen Crane
• Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
• Dubliners - James Joyce
• The Red And The Black - Stendhal
• Of Human Bondage - Somerset Maugham
• Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
• War And Peace - Leo Tolstoy
• Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann
• Hail And Farewell! - George Moore
• The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Oxford Book Of English Verse
• The Enormous Room - E.E. Cummings
• Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
• Far Away And Long Ago - W.H. Hudson
• The American - Henry James

Links to Hemingway's recommended books.