New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

by Jackson J Benson

  Finally, it is fitting that the present collection, in its first section and elsewhere, offers a sample of critical essays from the last five years or so representing contemporary literary theory. These essays—citing names like Lacan and Bakhtin, Todorov and Barthes, unfamiliar in Hemingway criticism a decade ago—are remarkable in their tolerance, offering theoretical models to be tested with the stories and then modestly suggesting that they more often confirm than contradict conclusions reached with more traditional models. Or simply with a careful reading: Pamela Smiley’s essay employing recent research in linguistics may not tell sensitive readers much they did not know about Jig and her feckless fellow in “Hills Like White Elephants,” but it will tell them why they know it—and, incidentally, how they can tell others they are wrong (1988; in this collection).

  In 1980 David Lodge introduced concepts of narratology and narrative grammar, the poetics of fiction, and modern rhetorical analysis—no mean feat in itself—to determine whether it is possible, and then useful, to train a battery of structuralist theory on a single text (“Cat in the Rain”), and showed it was. Odd var Holmesland has more recently reviewed and modified some of that early work (1986; in this collection). Freudian psychology supports Gerry Brenner’s review of the epistemological cruxes in a wide array of stories, ending with an original reading of “The Mother of a Queen” (1990; in this collection); and Lacanian theory, reviewed with unusual clarity in Ben Stoltzfus’s essay, serves to raise “After the Storm” close to the rank of a major story, or at least to suggest why stories like it both trouble and transfix our gaze (1990; in this collection).

  I end with Robert Scholes’ two books, Semiotics and Interpretation (1982) and Textual Power (1985), to make a teacherly point. His semiotic analyses of cultural codes, in “A Very Short Story” (1982; in this collection) and in “The Revolutionist” in the latter book, offer new entries into the drama of the two sketches and promise others into the longer stories. When his reading of the codes in “A Very Short Story” meets with the best work on its biographical origins and the manuscript record of its writing, the illumination is bright. But perhaps the last and best thing to say of this critic is that he is less concerned with yet another critical discovery, however bright, than he is with the ways we can teach the power of Hemingway’s texts. Textual Power makes explicit the sort and sequence of questions we should be asking our students, the next critical generation, and the difference between these questions and those we ask too often to impress ourselves.

  In the summer of 1980 some forty Hemingway readers and critics gathered on Thompson Island and formed the Hemingway Society. Through the decade they met at other conferences—in Madrid and Boston, in Traverse City and Lignano Sabbiadoro, in Schruns and Boise. Now they number some four hundred; their society, unique among its kind, has recently assumed the rights and responsibilities of the Hemingway Foundation and has been entrusted with its legacy of the manuscript collection.

  Ten years ago they gathered on that island first to convince themselves and then to encourage others to bring the best theory and practice to bear on what would become a new canon for the criticism and teaching of Hemingway. Their hopes may have been high then, but now, ten years later, they seem quite reasonable.

  V

  A Comprehensive Checklist of Hemingway Short Fiction Criticism, Explication, and Commentary, 1975–1989

  Preface to the Comprehensive Checklist

  This checklist is a supplement to the one which appeared in The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Critical Essays, which listed the criticism of the short stories into 1975. The current list covers from 1975 to February 1990. It differs from the earlier list in several ways. The section arrangement has been changed, combining categories and reducing the number from six to three: Section I contains a list of books on Hemingway’s work containing discussion of the short stories; Section II contains a list of articles, parts of general books (those not devoted exclusively to Hemingway), parts of Hemingway books, and dissertations containing discussion of several Hemingway short stories; Section III is a listing of criticism, explication, and commentary on individual stories, listed by story—including specific articles, segments from books on Hemingway’s works, and segments from general books.

  For those books of Hemingway criticism listed in Section I, discussions of several stories or groups of stories have been listed separately, by page numbers, in Section II and discussions of individual stories have been listed separately, by page numbers, in Section III. In an effort to make the listings in Section II (items dealing with several stories) more useful, we have indicated which story collections and which individual stories are referred to in each listed item. The individual stories are noted by the listing numbers used in Section III, so that if one were interested in reading all the criticism published in English during the period covered in the checklist on the Hemingway story, “Cross Country Snow,” one would first consult the listings under (29) in Section III and then look for any items in Section II which refer to (29). The numbers assigned to stories in the first volume have been kept for this volume.

  Dissertations have not been listed separately this time because we were unable to read, as we did before, every dissertation. It was simply too expensive to buy all the microfilms and too time-consuming to read them even if we could afford them. So we have depended on Dissertation Abstracts International, which means that listings for the contents are incomplete—we could only list those stories mentioned by title in the abstract. Reviews of Hemingway story collections have not been listed separately, since most of those were included in the first volume. A few additional reviews of In Our Time, however, have been uncovered and reprinted in Michael Reynold’s Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway’s “In Our Time,” and these have been listed in Section I.

  An explanation of the contents and format of each section precedes each section. The credit for the difficult and complex job of locating, arranging, and formatting the checklist that follows belongs to Anne Hunsinger and Jo Anne Zebroski. For their hard work Hemingway scholars everywhere should be grateful.

  Section I: Books on Hemingway’s Work Containing Discussion of the Short Stories

  Note: Discussions of individual stories and story collections in the following books are listed separately in Sections II and III (short story collections, groups of stories, and individual stories referred to as a part of a discussion of several stories are in Section II; individual stories [beyond mere mention of the title] in Section III). This practice of listing book contents in Sections II and III applies also to critical collections. Original essays and reprinted essays (providing the essay was originally published after mid-1975) which deal with groups of stories or individual stories will be listed first, as contents, in this section and then as individual items in the following sections. However, if the essay reprinted in an anthology was originally published prior to mid-1975, it will be listed, as part of the contents of the collection, only in Section I.

  Baker, Carlos. Hemingway: The Writer as Artist. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. [References from chapters I and II only, which the author states are “new” to this edition]

  Bakker, Jan. Fiction as Survival Strategy: A Comparative Study of the Major Works of Ernest Hemingway and Saul Bellow. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1983.

  Beegel, Susan F. Hemingway’s Craft of Omission: Four Manuscript Examples. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988.

  Beegel, Susan F. Hemingway’s Neglected Short Fiction: New Perspectives. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989.

  Pp. 1–18: “Introduction,” by Susan Beegel.

  Pp. 19–30: “‘The Mercenaries’: A Harbinger of Vintage Hemingway” by Mimi Reisel Gladstein.

  Pp. 31–42: “Uncle Charles in Michigan” by Susan Swartzlander.

  Pp. 43–60: “Ethical Narration in ‘My Old Man’” by Phillip Sipiora.

  Pp. 61–74: “‘Out of Season’ and Hemingway’s Neglected Discovery: Ordinary Actuality” by Jam
es Steinke.

  Pp. 75–98: “Hemingway’s Italian Waste Land: The Complex Unity of ‘Out of Season–” by Bickford Sylvester.

  Pp. 99–106: “‘A Very Short Story’ as Therapy” by Scott Donaldson.

  Pp. 107–22: “The Bullfight Story and Critical Theory” by Bruce Henricksen.

  Pp. 123–30: “From the Waste Land to the Garden with the Elliots” by Paul Smith.

  Pp. 131–40: “Hemingway’s ‘On Writing’: A Portrait of the Artist as Nick Adams” by Lawrence Broer.

  Pp. 141–48: “The Writer on Vocation: Hemingway’s ‘Banal Story’” by George Monteiro.

  Pp. 163–84: “‘An Alpine Idyll’: The Sun-Struck Mountain Vision and the Necessary Valley Journey” by Robert E. Gajdusek.

  Pp. 185–94: “Waiting for the End in Hemingway’s ‘A Pursuit Race’” by Ann Putnam.

  Pp. 195–208: “A Semiotic Inquiry into Hemingway’s ‘A Simple Enquiry’” by Gerry Brenner.

  Pp. 209–24: “‘Mais Je Reste Catholique’: Communion, Betrayal, and Aridity in ‘Wine of Wyoming’” by H. R. Stoneback.

  Pp. 225–46: “That’s Not Very Polite’: Sexual Identity in Hemingway’s The Sea Change’” by Warren Bennett.

  Pp. 247–54: “‘A Natural History of the Dead’ as Metafiction” by Charles Stetler and Gerald Locklin.

  Pp. 255–62: “‘Homage to Switzerland‘: Einstein’s Train Stops at Hemingway’s Station” by Michael S. Reynolds.

  Pp. 263–82: “Repetition as Design and Intention: Hemingway’s ‘Homage to Switzerland’” by Erik Nakjavani.

  Pp. 283–90: “Myth or Reality: The Light of the World’ as Initiation Story” by Robert E. Fleming.

  Pp. 291–302: “Up and Down: Making Connections in ‘A Day’s Wait’” by Linda Gajdusek.

  Pp. 303–12: “Illusion and Reality: The Capital of the World’” by Stephen Cooper. Pp. 313–28: “Hemingway’s Spanish Civil War Stories, or the Spanish Civil War as Reality” by Allen Josephs.

  Pp. 339–50: “Hemingway’s Tales of ‘The Real Dark’” by Howard L. Hannum. Bloom, Harold, ed. Ernest Hemingway. New York: Chelsea House, 1985.

  Pp. 1–5: “Introduction” by Harold Bloom.

  Pp. 7–15: “Hemingway and His Critics” by Lionel Trilling, reprinted from the Partisan Review 6 (Winter 1939): 52–60.

  Pp. 17–33: “Hemingway: Gauge of Morale” by Edmund Wilson, reprinted from The Wound and the Bow. New York: Farrar, 1968: 214–42.

  Pp. 35–62: “Ernest Hemingway” by Robert Penn Warren, reprinted from Selected Essays. New York: Random House, 1958: 80–118.

  Pp. 63–84: “Observations on the Style of Ernest Hemingway” by Harry Levin, reprinted from Kenyon Review 13 (Autumn 1951): 581–608.

  Pp. 85–106: “The Way It Was” by Carlos Baker, reprinted from Hemingway: The Writer as Artist. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980: 48–74.

  Pp. 107–18: “The Death of Love in The Sun Also Rises”” by Mark Spilka, reprinted from Shapiro, Charles, ed. Twelve Original Essays On Great American Novels. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1958: 238–56.

  Pp. 119–36: “An Interview with Ernest Hemingway” by George Plimpton, reprinted from Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews (Second Series). New York: Viking, 1963: 213–39.

  Pp. 137–60: “For Ernest Hemingway” by Reynolds Price, reprinted from Things Themselves. New York: Atheneum, 1972: 176–213.

  Pp. 161–71: “Mr. Papa and the Parricides” by Malcolm Cowley, reprinted from And I Worked at the Writer’s Trade: Chapters of Literary History, 1918–1978. New York: Viking Penguin, 1978: 21–34.

  Pp. 173–92: “‘Nada’ and the Clean, Well-Lighted Place: The Unity of Hemingway’s Short Fiction” by Steven K. Hoffman, reprinted from Essays in Literature 6 (1979): 91–110.

  Pp. 193–209: “Hemingway the Painter” by Alfred Kazin, reprinted from An American Procession. New York: Knopf, 1984: 357–73.

  Pp. 211–16: “Hemingway’s Extraordinary Reality” by John Hollander.

  Brenner, Gerry. Concealments in Hemingway’s Works. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984. [See also Rovit]

  Brian, Denis. The True Gen: An Intimate Portrait of Ernest Hemingway by Those Who Knew Him. New York: Grove, 1988.

  Bruccoli, Matthew J. Scott and Ernest: The Authority of Failure and the Authority of Success. New York: Random House, 1978.

  Burgess, Anthony. Hemingway and His World. New York: Scribner’s, 1978.

  Capellan, Angel. Hemingway and the Hispanic World. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985.

  Cappel (Montgomery), Constance. Hemingway in Michigan. Waitsfield: Vermont Crossroads, 1977.

  Cooper, Stephen. The Politics of Ernest Hemingway. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985.

  Dahiya, Bhim S. The Hero in Hemingway: A Study in Development. New Delhi: Bahri, 1978.

  Donaldson, Scott. By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway. New York: Viking; Toronto: Macmillan, 1977.

  Flora, Joseph M. Ernest Hemingway: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1989. [124 pages of text by Flora, plus the articles listed below]

  Pp. 127–28: “Preface to The First Forty-nine” by Ernest Hemingway, reprinted from The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories. New York: Scribner’s, 1938: vi–vii.

  Pp. 129–44: “The Art of the Short Story” by Ernest Hemingway.

  Pp. 147–53: “Ernest Hemingway’s Unhurried Sensations” by Tony Tanner, reprinted from The Reign of Wonder: Naivety and Reality in American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965: 228–48.

  Pp. 153–56: “‘In Another Country’” by Earl Rovit and Gerry Brenner, reprinted from Ernest Hemingway: Revised Edition. Boston: Twayne, 1986: 45–48.

  Pp. 157–71: “Opportunity: Imagination Ex-Machina II” by Cecilia Tichi, reprinted from Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987: 216–29.

  Pp. 172–73: “The Young Hemingway” by Michael Reynolds, reprinted from The Young Hemingway. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986: 48–50.

  Pp. 174–78: “‘The Undefeated’: The Moment of Truth” by Kenneth G. Johnston, reprinted from The Tip of the Iceberg: Hemingway and the Short Story. Greenwood, Fla.: Penkevill, 1987: 85–89.

  Flora, Joseph M. Hemingway’s Nick Adams. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.

  Friedrich, Otto. Going Crazy: An Inquiry into Madness “in our time.” New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976.

  Fuentes, Norberto. Hemingway in Cuba. Secaucus, N.J.: Stuart, 1984.

  Gaggin, John. Hemingway and Nineteenth-Century Aestheticism. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1987.

  Giger, Romeo. The Creative Void: Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory. Bern: Francke, 1977.

  Gladstein, Mimi Reisel. The Indestructible Woman in Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1986.

  Griffin, Peter. Along With Youth: Hemingway, The Early Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

  Grimes, Larry E. The Religious Design of Hemingway’s Early Fiction. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985.

  Hardy, Richard E., and John G. Cull. Hemingway: A Psychological Portrait. Sherman Oaks, Calif.: Banner, 1977.

  Johnston, Kenneth G. The Tip of the Iceberg: Hemingway and the Short Story. Greenwood, Fla.: Penkevill, 1987.

  Kert, Bernice. The Hemingway Women. New York: Norton, 1983.

  Kobler, J. F. Ernest Hemingway: Journalist Artist. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985.

  Lee, Robert A., ed. Ernest Hemingway: New Critical Essays. London: Vision; Totowa, N.J.: Barnes, 1983.

  Pp. 13–35: “‘The Picture of the Whole’: In Our Time” by David Seed.

  Pp. 36–48: “The Short Stories After In Our Time: A Profile” by Colin E. Nicholson.

  Pp. 151–71: “Hemingway the Intellectual: A Version of Modernism” by Brian Way.

  Pp. 172–92: “Hemingway and the Secret Language of Hate” by Faith Pullin.

  Pp. 19
3–211: “Stalking Papa’s Ghost: Hemingway’s Presence in Contemporary American Writing” by Frank McConnell.

  Lynn, Kenneth S. Hemingway. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

  Meyers, Jeffrey, ed. Hemingway: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1982.

  Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Harper, 1985.

  Nagel, James, ed. Ernest Hemingway: The Writer in Context. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

  Pp. 19–27: “Reflections on Ernest Hemingway” by Tom Stoppard.

  Pp. 53–74: “The Tenth Indian and the Thing Left Out” by Paul Smith.

  Pp. 107–28: “A Farewell to Arms: Pseudoautobiography and Personal Metaphor” by Millicent Bell.

  Pp. 129–44: “Women and the Loss of Eden in Hemingway’s Mythology” by Carol H. Smith.

  Pp. 165–78: “Ernest and Henry: Hemingway’s Lover’s Quarrel with James” by Adeline R. Tintner.

  Pp. 179–200: “Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound” by Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin.

  Nelson, Raymond S. Ernest Hemingway: Life, Work, and Criticism. Fredericton, N.B., Canada: York Press, 1984.

  Nelson, Raymond S. Hemingway, Expressionist Artist. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1979.

  Noble, Donald R. ed. Hemingway: A Revaluation. Troy, N.Y.: Whitson, 1983.

  Pp. 17–47: “Hemingway Criticism: Getting at the Hard Questions” by Jackson J. Benson.

  Pp. 49–65: “Hemingway, Painting, and the Search for Serenity” by Alfred Kazin.

  Pp. 67–82: “Hemingway and the Magical Journey” by Leo Gurko.

  Pp. 83–97: “Hemingway’s British and American Reception: A Study in Values” by Robert O. Stephens.