New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

by Jackson J Benson

  Organ, Dennis. “Hemingway’s ‘Hills Like White Elephants.’” Explicator 37, no. 4 (1979): 11.

  Presley, John. “Hawks Never Share: Women and Tragedy in Hemingway.” Hemingway Notes (Spring 1973): 10.

  Salem, Christine. “On Naming the Oppressor: What Woolf Avoids Saying in A Room of One’s Own.” In The Voices and Words of Men and Women, ed. Cheris Kramarae (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980). Pp. 209–17.

  Scott, Kathryn P. “The Perceptions of Communication Competence: What’s Good for the Goose is not Good for the Gander.” The Voices and Words of Men and Women, ed. Cheris Kramarae (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980). Pp. 199–207.

  Stein, Gertrude. Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1933).

  Stone, Elizabeth. “Are You a Talking Hog, a Shouter, or a Mumbler?” McCall’s (1986): 24ff.

  Tannen, Deborah. “Why Can’t He Hear What I’m Saying?” McCall’s (1986): 20–24ff.

  Jeffrey Meyers, “Hemingway’s Primitivism and ‘Indian Camp’”

  1 Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961, ed. Carlos Baker (New York: Scribner’s, 1981), p. 180.

  2 Samuel Shaw, Ernest Hemingway (New York: Ungar, 1973), p. 29.

  3 "Indian Camp," The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (New York: Scribner’s, 1953), p. 95.

  4 See Harry Levin, "Observations on the Style of Ernest Hemingway," Kenyon Review 13 (Autumn 1951): 606; Philip Young, Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration (1952), rev. ed. (New York, 1966), p. 32; Delmore Schwartz, "The Fiction of Ernest Hemingway," Perspectives USA 13 (Autumn 1955): 84; John Killinger, Hemingway and the Dead Gods: A Study in Existentialism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1960) (New York, 1965), p. 17; S. F. Sanderson, Ernest Hemingway (New York: Grove Press, 1961), p. 30; Joseph DeFalco, The Hero in Hemingway’s Short Stories (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963), p. 30; Alan Holder, "The Other Hemingway," Twentieth Century Literature 9 (Oct. 1963): 157; Julian MacLaren-Ross, review of A Moveable Feast, London Magazine 4 (August 1964), in Jeffrey Meyers, Hemingway: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1983), p. 490; Constance Cappel Montgomery, Hemingway in Michigan (New York: Fleet, 1966), pp. 63–64; Richard Bennett Hovey, Hemingway: The Inward Terrain (Seattle, 1968), p. 15; Nicholas Joost, Ernest Hemingway and the Little Magazines: The Paris Years (Barre, Mass.: Barre Publishers, 1968), p. 85; Tony Tanner, review of By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, London Magazine 8 (May 1968), in Meyers, Hemingway: The Critical Heritage, p. 527; Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (New York: Scribner’s, 1969), p. 125; Peter Hays, The Limping Hero (New York: New York University Press, 1971), p. 71; Arthur Waldhorn, A Reader’s Guide to Ernest Hemingway (New York: Farrar, 1972), p. 54; Louis Rubin, review of The Nick Adams Stories, Washington Sunday Star, April 23, 1972, in Meyers, Hemingway: The Critical Heritage, p. 586; Norman Grebstein, Hemingway’s Craft (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973), p. 17; Samuel Shaw, Ernest Hemingway, p. 29; Scott Donaldson, By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway (New York: Viking, 1977) (New York, 1978), p. 297; Wirt Williams, The Tragic Art of Hemingway (1977) (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), p. 36; David Seed, "The Picture of the Whole: In Our Time," Ernest Hemingway: New Critical Essays, ed. A. Robert Lee (London: Vision, 1983), p. 21.

  5 George Hemphill, "Hemingway and James," Kenyon Review 11 (Winter 1949): 56.

  6 Thomas Tanselle, "Hemingway’s ‘Indian Camp,’" Explicator 20 (February 1962), item 53.

  7 Kenneth Bernard, "Hemingway’s ‘Indian Camp,’" Studies in Short Fiction 2 (Spring 1965): 291.

  8 Larry Grimes, "Night Terror and Morning Calm: A Reading of Hemingway’s ‘Indian Camp’ as Sequel to ‘Three Shots,’" Studies in Short Fiction 12 (1975): 414.

  9 George Monteiro, "The Limits of Professionalism: A Sociological Approach to Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hemingway," Criticism 15 (Spring 1973): 153–54.

  10 Linda Wagner, "Juxtaposition in In Our Time," Studies in Short Fiction 12 (Summer 1975): 245.

  11 Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979), p. 46.

  12 Joseph Flora, Hemingway’s Nick Adams (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), pp. 31, 25, 30.

  13 Gerry Brenner, Concealments in Hemingway’s Works (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1983), p. 239, n15.

  14 Kenneth Schuyler Lynn, Hemingway (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 229.

  15 Philip Young, reply to Kenneth Bernard, Studies in Short Fiction 3 (Fall 1965), ii.

  16 Quoted in Wyndham Lewis, Rude Assignment (London, 1950), pp. 203–4.

  17 Wyndham Lewis, Paleface (London: Chatto & Windus, 1929), p. 202.

  18 Wyndham Lewis, "The Dumb Ox," Men without Art (London: Cassell, 1934), p. 29.

  19 Michael Bell, Primitivism (London: Methuen, 1972), p. 71.

  20 Robert Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), p. 251.

  21 Carol Gardner, quoted in Denis Brian, The True Gen: An Intimate Portrait of Ernest Hemingway by Those Who Knew Him Best (New York: Grove Press, 1987), p. 183.

  22 Ernest Hemingway, "Fathers and Sons," The Short Stories of Hemingway, p. 497.

  23 In his 1950 interview with Lillian Ross, he dropped his articles and spoke a kind of humorous Indian language. But after her malicious piece had appeared, he insisted that he had not "talked like a half-breed chocktaw" (Letters, p. 744). On his second African safari in 1954 Hemingway moved from primitivism to primitive. Though going native was especially frowned upon during the Mau-Mau emergency, he shaved his head, hunted with a spear, dyed his clothes the rusty Masai color, and began an elaborate courtship of his African "fiancée." His white hunter described her as "an evil-smelling bit of camp trash," but Hemingway associated her with Prudy Boulton. See Jeffrey Meyers, Hemingway: A Biography (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), p. 502.

  24 See James Brasch and Joseph Sigman, Hemingway’s Library: A Composite Record (New York: Garland, 1981).

  25 John B. Vickery, The Literary Impact of "The Golden Bough" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 81, 74–75.

  26 Irving Howe, Sherwood Anderson (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1951), pp. 57–58.

  27 T. S. Eliot, "A Prediction in Regard to Three English Authors," Vanity Fair 21 (February 1924): 29.

  28 Vickery, The Literary Impact of "The Golden Bough," p. 149.

  29 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Preface to Franz Steiner, Taboo (London, 1956), p. 20.

  30 James Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed. (London, 1911), 3:29.

  31 Vickery, The Literary Impact of "The Golden Bough," pp. 72–73.

  32 James Frazer, "Women Tabooed at Menstruation and Childbirth," Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, in The Golden Bough, 3:138, 147, 151.

  33 Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, "Taboos Relating to Confinements," Primitives and the Supernatural, trans. Lilian Clare (New York: Dutton, 1935), p. 331.

  34 Charles Winnick, Dictionary of Anthropology (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 137.

  35 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966), p. 1.

  36 Ernest Hemingway, "On Writing," The Nick Adams Stories (New York: Bantam, 1972), pp. 217–18.

  37 Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (New York: Scribner’s, 1969), p. 332.

  38 The Indian’s suicide provides a striking contrast to Leopold Bloom’s sympathetic and humane response to Mrs. Purefoy’s screaming three-day labor in "The Oxen of the Sun" chapter in Ulysses (New York: Random House, 1922).

  39 Interchapter 7, The Short Stories of Hemingway, p. 143.

  Robert E. Fleming, “Hemingway’s ‘The Killers’: The Map and the Territory”

  1 Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Fiction (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1943), pp. 316–25. For a minority argument—that Ole is the true protagonist—see Oliver Evans, "The Protagonist of Hemingway’s ‘The Killers,’" Modern Language Notes 73 (Dec
ember 1958): 589–91.

  2 Edward C. Sampson, "Hemingway’s ‘The Killers,’" The Explicator 11, no. 2 (October 1952), item 2.

  3 S. I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949), p. 32.

  4 First publication of the story was in Scribner’s Magazine 81, no. 3 (March 1927): 227–38.

  5 Box 25, File 535, Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Library.

  6 Box 25, File 536, Hemingway Collection.

  7 Box 25, File 536a, Hemingway Collection, contains a copy of the text. The original is in the Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  David R. Johnson, “‘The Last Good Country’: Again the End of Something”

  1 "‘Big World Out There’: The Nick Adams Stories," Novel 6 (1972): 5–19.

  2 Conversely, Stephen L. Tanner argues in "Hemingway: The Function of Nostalgia" (Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual 1974 [Englewood, Colo.: Microcard Edition Books, 1974], p. 167) that "It is very possible that the basis of his motivation to write and the satisfaction he got from writing was this special tendency to retain and cherish memories of past experience."

  3 Ernest Hemingway, The Nick Adams Stories (New York: Scribner’s, 1972), p. 107.

  4 See, for instance, For Whom the Bell Tolls (New York: Scribner’s 1940), pp. 158–61.

  5 Life, December 20, 1968, pp. 32–50a.

  6 Life, p. 50a.

  7 Quoted in Philip Young, Three Bags Full (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), p. 27.

  Howard L. Hannum, “Nick Adams and the Search for Light”

  1 Matthew J. Bruccoli, "‘The Light of the World’: Stan Ketchel as ‘My Sweet Christ,’" Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual l (1969): 125–30; James J. Martine, "A Little Light on Hemingway’s ‘The Light of the World,’" Studies in Short Fiction 7 (Summer 1970): 465–67; James F. Barbour, "The Light of the World’: The Real Ketchel and the Real Light," Studies in Short Fiction 13 (Winter 1976): 17–23.

  2 Bruccoli, p. 129.

  3 Ernest Hemingway, The Nick Adams Stories (New York: Scribner’s, 1972), p. 41. Further references to the stories are to the same edition, in parentheses within the text.

  4 See Nat(haniel) Fleischer, The Ring Record Book and Boxing Encyclopedia, 1982 (New York: Ring Publishing/Atheneum, 1983), and "The Michigan Assassin" The Saga of Stanley Ketchel (New York: C. J. O’Brien, 1946); Alva Johnson, The Legendary Mizeners (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Young, 1952).

  5 John Lardner, "Ketchel Was a Wild Man," Boxing Annual (Greenwich, Connecticut: Whitestone, 1964), p. 65. Ketchel’s brother is supposed to have given him the nickname "Steve" as a boy; Stanley liked the name, and it stuck.

  6 Fleischer, The Ring Record Book and Boxing Encyclopedia, 1982, p. 764. For more than a quarter-century after Ketchel’s death, his surname was a drawing card in boxing arenas. In addition to the second Steve Ketchel cited here, Dan Ketchell fought Jack Dempsey in 1916 and 1918, Billy Ketchel fought Jersey Joe Walcott (Arnold R. Cream) four times in 1936, and a Stanley Ketchel fought Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber himself, in Buffalo in 1937. The name "Ketchel (1)" then became for a long time like the names taken by generations of black boxers, "Tiger Flowers" and "Joe Walcott4"; Arnold Cream was only one of a succession of fighters to use that name, adding "Jersey."

  7 Carlos Baker, Hemingway, The Writer as Artist (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952), p. 140.

  8 Sheridan Baker, Ernest Hemingway: An Introduction and Interpretation (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1957), p. 30.

  9 Barbour, pp. 20–21.

  10 Joseph M. Flora, Hemingway’s Nick Adams (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), p. 82.

  11 Curt Gowdy-Floyd Patterson, HBO (Home Box Office) Greatest Fights, "Middleweights," Zarate-Pintur Video Cassette. Johnson rises quickly to one knee, then waits for a count of seven before standing. As Ketchel attempts to "finish" him, Johnson hits him with a left and a right, which stiffens him, and an unnecessary second right.

  12 Fleischer, The Ring Record Book and Boxing Encyclopedia, 3982, p. 555.

  13 New York Times, Sunday, October 16, 1910, 1:1, and Monday, October 17, 1910, 7:3. At the farm of Colonel R. P. Dickerson, in Conway, Missouri, Walter A. Dipley (alias Hurtz), a deserter from the U.S. Navy, had a rifle trained on Ketchel before the boxer could see him. Ketchel at first thought it was a joke; Dipley, knowing Ketchel always carried a pistol, grew nervous and shot him in "self-defense." Dickerson hired a special train to carry Ketchel to Springfield for medical treatment, but he died shortly after arrival.

  14 Martine, pp. 465–66; Peter Thomas, "A Lost Leader: Hemingway’s ‘The Light of the World,’" Humanities Association Bulletin (Bulletin de L’Association canadienne des Humanities) 21 (Fall 1970): 14–19; Flora, pp. 70–78.

  15 Carlos Baker saw Hemingway’s story as comic, a view which subsequent readings have shared. In this reading the comedy seems a lesser element.

  16 Gregory Green, "A Matter of Color: Hemingway’s Criticism of Race Prejudice," Hemingway Review 1 (Fall 1981): 27–28.

  17 George Plimpton, Shadowbox (New York: Berkley Medallion, 1977), p. 35.

  18 Bruccoli, pp. 125–29.

  19 Thomas, p. 17.

  20 Thomas and Barbour.

  21 Guy deMaupassant, Short Stories of the Tragedy and Comedy of Life (New York: W. Walter Dunne, 1903), 1: 140–41.

  22 Bruccoli qualifies his introduction of the influence of Ketchel "as Christ"; so does Barbour, but Thomas, Sheridan Baker, and Flora seem to regard the Christian analogy as Hemingway’s major intention in writing the story.

  23 William B. Stein, "Love and Lust in Hemingway’s Short Stories," Texas Studies in Literature and Language 3 (1961): 234–36.

  24 Ernest Hemingway, "The Art of the Short Story," Paris Review 23 (Spring 1981): 92.

  25 Reynolds, "Holman Hunt and The Light of the World,’" Studies in Short Fiction 20 (Winter 1983): 317–19.

  26 Sheridan Baker, p. 30.

  27 Martine, pp. 465–66.

  28 Flora, pp. 71–72, offers this suggestion, but sees Nick playing a cowboy in a saloon in the American West.

  29 Jack London, The Road (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Peregrine Smith, 1978), pp. 133–36.

  30 Carlos Baker, The Writer as Artist, p. 140.

  31 Barbara Maloy, "The Light of Alice’s World," Linguistics in Literature 1 (Spring 1976): 74–86.

  Larry Edgerton, “‘Nobody Ever Dies!’: Hemingway’s Fifth Story of the Spanish Civil War”

  1 "Nobody Ever Dies!" in Cosmopolitan, March 1939, pp. 28–31, 74–76; reprinted in Cosmopolitan, April 1959, pp. 78–83; trans. Gunnar Larsen into Norwegian, "Ingen dor forgjeves," Vinduet 6, no. 1 (1952): 63–71; trans. Pop Simion into Romanian, "Educaţia Revoluţionariă," Secolul 20, no. 2 (July 1962): 55—66.

  2 Ernest Hemingway, The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War (New York: Scribner’s, 1969). The stories are "The Denunciation," Esquire, November 1938; "The Butterfly and the Tank," Esquire, December 1938; "Night Before Battle," Esquire, February 1939; and "Under the Ridge," Cosmopolitan, October 1939. They have been treated most completely by Martin Light, "Of Wasteful Deaths: Hemingway’s Stories About the Spanish Civil War," Western Humanities Review 23 (1969): 29–42; and Julian Smith, "Christ Times Four: Hemingway’s Unknown Spanish Civil War Stories," Arizona Quarterly 25 (1969): 5–17.

  3 Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (New York: Scribner’s, 1969), p. 338.

  4 "Get a Seeing-Eye Dog," The Atlantic Monthly, November 1957, pp. 66–68, and "A Man of the World," Atlantic Monthly, November 1957, pp. 64–66.

  5 "A Divine Gesture," The Double Dealer 3 (1922): 267–68; "The Faithful Bull," Holiday, March 1951, p. 51; and "The Good Lion," Holiday, March 1951, pp. 50–51.

  6 Baker, p. 338.

  William Adair, ”Hemingway’s ‘Out of Season’: The End of the Line”

  1 A Moveable Feast (New York: Scribner’s, 1964), p. 75. Further references will be to this edition and will be included in the text.

/>   2 See Paul Smith’s "Some Misconceptions of ‘Out of Season,’" in Critical Essays on Hemingway’s ‘In Our Time,’ ed. Michael S. Reynolds (Boston: Hall, 1983), pp. 235–51.

  3 Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961, ed. Carlos Baker (New York: Scribner’s, 1981), pp. 180–81.

  4 Selected Letters, p. 79.

  5 George Kearns, Guide to Ezra Pound’s ‘Selected Cantos’ (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1980), p. 75.

  6 Kenneth G. Johnston’s "Hemingway’s ‘Out of Season’ and the Psychology of Errors" argues that the couple is quarreling over an abortion; this essay is collected in Critical Essays on Hemingway’s ‘In Our Time’ (cited above), pp. 227–34; Smith’s article provides a convincing reply. My suggestion is that the story is "about" Peduzzi, as Hemingway said in his letter to Fitzgerald; the topic of the couple’s quarrel—perhaps it is about the young man’s extended trips as a news correspondent, if he is one (Hemingway and wife quarreled on this subject some four months previous to the trip to Cortina, where "Out of Season" was written)—seems of no importance.

  7 The background information in this paragraph, and the next four paragraphs, comes from Carlos Baker’s Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (New York: Scribner’s, 1981), pp. 105–9.

  8 Cezanne’s "The House of the Hanged Man," which is simply a picture of a house by a road, was at the Louvre during the 1920s; it may have been an influence on "Out of Season."

  9 The function of the statue of the soldier (assuming there is one) on the war memorial has always seemed to me comparable to the function of Michael Furey in James Joyce’s "The Dead": a reminder in the wasteland of all the dead heroes, to be contrasted with the prone husband of "Cat in the Rain."

  10 Selected Letters, p. 180.

  11 Frederic and Catherine at Stresa and Col. Cantwell in Venice are staying at "out of season" hotels.