So what can Hemingway tell us about what American writers owe to Hemingway? Whatever that debt is, it’s a lot, according to the various writers and literary scholars who appear as talking heads in the documentary, but they (Edna O’Brien, Tobias Wolff, Mario Vargas Llosa) are fairly long in the tooth, and few young fiction writers would now claim him as a star to steer by. In comparison, the influence of William Faulkner, transfigured in the crucible of Toni Morrison’s genius and legacy, can be detected everywhere. – Slate
