A philosopher in our time should try to reach the teenager in Mongolia. Since the world is connected today — more than in earlier epochs — a philosopher in our time may well have global influence, may well be the first philosopher with global influence in his own lifetime. It’s now possible for a Western philosopher to have influence in Mongolia. If the philosopher is read by a 30-year-old in Mongolia, his influence may be limited, the 30-year-old may already have a worldview. So the philosopher will hope to reach the 20-year-old, who’s still open to a new conception of the universe.
Mongolia once had the world’s largest empire (under Genghis Khan), and it may impact the world in the future, so we should try to influence Mongolians in a positive direction. Mongolia isn’t in the headlines today, but it’s difficult to predict what the future holds. Who would have thought, in 1900, that someone from Saudi Arabia (Osama bin Laden) would have a big impact on the world in our time — perhaps a bigger impact than anyone else?
Every nation once had an empire, once had a period of imperial glory. Iran, for example, was once the seat of the vast Persian empire. Turkey was once the seat of the vast Ottoman Empire. Even little Armenia was once the extensive “sea to sea Armenia,” stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. Doubtless many Iranians, Turks, and Armenians remember their days of empire.
Russians want to rebuild their empire by seizing Ukraine, and Chinese want to rebuild their empire by seizing Taiwan. One might ask the Russians and the Chinese, “If everyone tried to rebuild their empire, what would the world be like?”
Osama bin Laden had a philosophy, an explanation of the universe, a vision of a glorious past, a vision of an equally-glorious future. His strongest weapon was his philosophy, his vision; he was able to persuade people to live for this philosophy, and to die for this philosophy.
Likewise, Lenin had an explanation of the universe and of history; Lenin had a compelling vision of the future. Like bin Laden, Lenin’s strongest weapon was his philosophy, his vision, and like bin Laden, Lenin had considerable influence on the world.
The foundation of Lenin’s philosophy was materialism — the idea that nothing exists but matter, there is no spirit, there is no God. Bin Laden’s philosophy was monotheism — the idea that the essence of the universe is spirit, God, the non-material. These are philosophical topics, philosophy has long dealt with questions like, Does God exist? What’s the essence of the universe? These are still important questions in philosophy, and these questions still have considerable impact on the world. Philosophies like Lenin’s and bin Laden’s gain adherents when Western civilization fails to present a compelling philosophy, a compelling vision; if Western philosophy is bankrupt, the Koran becomes popular.
Hitler had as much impact on history as Lenin and bin Laden. Hitler had a philosophy, a vision of a glorious past, a vision for the future. Hitler’s philosophy wasn’t materialistic, like Lenin’s, and it wasn’t religious like bin Laden’s. Hitler seemed to believe in will and destiny, in non-material forces, occult forces; if he believed in God, he probably viewed God as a non-material force, a vague energy.
Darwin may have influenced Hitler, Darwin’s ideas were “in the air” during Hitler’s formative years. Hitler viewed history as a Darwinian struggle, a struggle-for-survival between races. Darwin made it difficult to believe in traditional Christianity, traditional monotheism; Hitler’s God (if Hitler believed in God) wasn’t a traditional Christian God, but rather a vague energy, an occult force.
Like Lenin and bin Laden, Hitler believed in his philosophy deeply and sincerely, and this enabled him to persuade others. It would be a mistake to view people like Hitler and Lenin as merely power-hungry salesmen, trying to hoodwink the people. Their power comes from their philosophy, so we can overcome them by developing a philosophy of our own, a philosophy that we believe in as deeply and sincerely as they believed in theirs.
We need to develop a philosophy that’s more compelling — intellectually and emotionally — than other philosophies. We need to develop a philosophy that can influence the Hitlers and Lenins of tomorrow, influence them when they’re 20 years old, when their minds are open, when they’re looking for a belief-system. We need to reach the teenager in Mongolia, in Saudi Arabia, in every country. We don’t need to reach the man on the street; if we can reach a few leading intellectuals, a few “influencers,” then we can have an impact, we can steer people away from unhealthy philosophies like those of Lenin, Hitler, and bin Laden.
We don’t know where the next challenge will come from, it may well come from within our own nations. The need for a philosophy is as urgent inside our nation as outside.
Philosophy isn’t optional, it’s necessary like oxygen — necessary for all mankind, necessary for Black and White, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor. If I can use the language of computers, philosophy is the operating-system of civilization. A computer’s operating-system is often overlooked and forgotten, but it plays an important role nonetheless; the computer can’t work without it. A computer’s operating-system must be continually updated, and philosophy must be updated.
Philosophy should be both poetic and scientific. Philosophy is a matter of rhetoric/persuasion, and also a matter of evidence/proof. Philosophy should be a comprehensive explanation of the universe, starting from subatomic particles, and it should be relevant to the average person’s life. The reader of philosophy should be able to prove it from his own experience. My attempt to set forth such a philosophy can be found here.
In May 2023, six months before he died, Kissinger said, “I think the offer to put Ukraine into NATO was a grave mistake and led to this war. But [the war’s] scale, and its nature, is a Russian peculiarity, and we were absolutely right to resist.” In Ukraine, Russia has followed the traditional Russian approach of raping, torturing, shooting civilians, acting like animals.
American soldiers sometimes violate rules and norms — sometimes torture, sometimes kill civilians, etc. But we hold perpetrators accountable, we don’t condone war crimes. The perpetrators of the Abu Ghraib abuses were punished; the perpetrators of the My Lai Massacre (during the Vietnam War) were put on trial, and one was convicted and punished. What makes Russian conduct appalling is not that they commit war crimes, but that they condone them. And because they condone them, Russian soldiers commit war crimes on a massive scale.
Pete Hegseth persuaded Trump to pardon soldiers who committed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Phil Klay, who fought in Iraq, recently argued that Hegseth shouldn’t have defended this conduct, and Trump shouldn’t have pardoned those who were guilty of it. Trump even praised them as “great warriors.”
We need to have standards of conduct, Klay says, and we need to enforce those standards. How can we criticize the Russians for condoning war crimes if we condone them also? “By and large, the men and women I served with,” Klay writes, “really did want to make the world a better, safer and more democratic place.” This aspiration helps to justify our efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. Those who commit war crimes, or condone war crimes, insult those who have higher aims, and drag us down to the level of the Russians, drag us down to the level of those who act like animals.
By pardoning war criminals, Trump mis-used the pardon power. He also mis-used the pardon power by pardoning people who defrauded Medicare and committed other financial crimes. Trump doesn’t seem to have any standards except his own interest and his own pleasure. He doesn’t seem to be appalled by war crimes or by financial crimes.
But are the Democrats any better? Biden pardoned his son, who had traveled the world collecting bribes, then didn’t pay taxes on the bribes. Biden also commuted the sentences of 37 people on death row, while not commuting the sentences of 3 people whose crimes were especially politically-sensitive. This represents an appalling extreme of partisanship; it suggests that even capital punishment has been politicized; it suggests that, for Democrats, party politics takes precedence over life itself. As Tom Cotton put it,
| Once again, Democrats side with depraved criminals over their victims, public order, and common decency. Democrats can’t even defend Biden’s outrageous decision as some kind of principled, across-the-board opposition to the death penalty since he didn’t commute the three most politically toxic cases. Democrats are the party of politically convenient justice. |
A. I recommend The Two Popes (2019), which deals with the current Pope (a liberal) and his predecessor (a conservative). It’s popular with critics and with the public. It’s very convincing; when I began watching it, I thought it might be a documentary, I thought that the actors were real Popes.
The dialogue is full of wit and wisdom. Early in the movie, before either of the two Popes has become Pope, Bergoglio (the current Pope) says that his supporters should vote for someone else for Pope. One of his supporters says that Bergoglio is the best man for the job because he doesn’t want it. This supporter quotes Plato: “The most important qualification for any leader is not wanting to be leader.”
The film shows how Bergoglio struggled, as a young man, to guide Jesuits during Argentina’s military dictatorship.
B. Conclave (2024) also deals with electing a new Pope. But Conclave deals with the seamy side of the process — bribes, sexual scandals, etc. — so it angered some Catholics. There’s nothing uplifting about Conclave, no depth of feeling or thought, and it ends lamely; I don’t recommend it.
C. Blow-Up (sometimes spelled Blowup) is a 1966 movie that’s set in England. It’s a murder mystery that’s more intent on clowning around than on discovering the killer. It captures the nihilistic spirit of the 1960s, and is considered a classic movie. I don’t recommend it.
The Hemingway Society publishes a journal and also releases podcasts. In 2024, they made a series of 18 podcasts, one for each chapter of Hemingway’s in our time, which was published in 1924. This version of in our time is sometimes called the lowercase version, or the Paris version, to distinguish it from the 1925 version, published in New York, and called In Our Time.
The 18 chapters of in our time are called “vignettes,” they describe a scene, often a violent scene, of war or bull-fighting or crime. Each vignette is only a few sentences long, so the whole book can be read in half-an-hour. The podcasts are useful, though they might need pruning.
The 1925 version, In Our Time, added longer pieces to the original 18 vignettes. These longer pieces can be called short stories. Both the 1924 version and the 1925 version are considered to be among Hemingway’s best works, though he was only about 24 when he wrote them.
Perhaps the most autobiographical vignette is the tenth, which deals with Agnes von Kurowsky, an American nurse whom Hemingway met in a Milan hospital. Hemingway later expanded this vignette into the novel Farewell to Arms. Agnes was seven years older than Hemingway. They were in love with each other, and when Hemingway returned to the U.S., they planned to re-unite and marry. But Agnes decided that Hemingway was too young, that their relationship was a ‘boy-girl thing.’ Hemingway was deeply disappointed by the collapse of this first love. One might say that the two pivotal events in Hemingway’s early life were being wounded in war, and being wounded in love.1
As Agnes was seven years older than Hemingway, so too Hemingway’s first wife (Hadley) was seven years older than he was. In an earlier issue, I said that writers often connect with older women. Hemingway’s relationships never worked out; he seemed unable to live with women, and unable to live without them.
Hadley Richardson, Hemingway’s first wife
Apparently Hemingway’s mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, bought five copies of in our time, then promptly returned them, horrified by their gritty realism. Hemingway was annoyed, and asked if his family wanted a sentimental varnish on reality — the reality he had seen on the battlefields of Europe.
Grace Hemingway was a talented, strong-willed woman. Her first field was singing, and she was offered a contract by the Metropolitan Opera. In the early years of her marriage, she made more money giving singing lessons than her husband made as a doctor. Later she took up painting, and gave painting lessons in addition to singing lessons.
Grace had strong opinions on what her children should do, and she dominated her husband. Her husband, Clarence Edmonds “Ed” Hemingway, often absented himself from the family; his physical and mental health declined, and he shot himself at 57. Hemingway probably blamed his mother for his father’s death. Charles Lanham, a friend of Hemingway’s, said that he was the only man he knew who really hated his mother. When Hemingway was asked about the best preparation for a literary career, he said “an unhappy childhood.”
During Hemingway’s early years, he had a good relationship with his father; as he wrote of Nick Adams, “Nick had loved [his father] very much and for a long time.”2 Hemingway’s biographer says, “Though they gradually grew apart, they were the best of companions during Nick’s boyhood.”3 As Ed Hemingway’s marriage declined and his mood soured, he became “irritable” with his children.
What exactly did Hemingway do in World War I, and how was he injured? He couldn’t join the army because his left eye was problematic. In early 1918, he volunteered for the ambulance service, took an ocean-liner to Europe, and was sent to northern Italy, where the Italians were fighting the Austrians and the Germans. The Italians had been routed at the Battle of Caporetto in late 1917, and had fallen back (retreated westward) to the Piave River (the west bank of the Piave River).
Hemingway was shifted from ambulance duty to canteen duty, and he was told to distribute chocolate, cigarettes, and postcards to the Italian troops. His post was behind the front line, but he went up to the front line to reach the troops, and distribute the supplies. While he was at the front line, a shell exploded nearby. He felt his soul leave his body, hover in the air, then return to his body. For months afterward, he slept with a light on, afraid that, if he slept in the dark, his soul might leave his body, and he’d die. “All his life, he would be frightened of sleeping alone.”4
Hemingway in 1918
The exploding shell was “like a hurricane of such force that it tore the eardrums and snatched away the breath. ‘I tried to breathe,’ wrote Ernest afterwards, ‘but my breath would not come.... I tried to move but I could not move.’”5
The shell sent some 200 pieces of shrapnel into his leg. He heard a man moaning nearby, and somehow managed to hoist the man onto his shoulders, and begin carrying him back. After about fifty yards, Hemingway was hit in the knee and foot by machine-gun fire, and fell. “He never afterwards remembered how he had covered the final hundred yards. But he made it, delivered his man, and lost consciousness.”6 He received a medal from Italy for his valor. Below is a drawing that Hemingway appended to a letter to his family.
After Hemingway and Hadley had been married for about four years, Hemingway began an affair with Pauline Pfeiffer. When Hadley discovered the affair, she said,
Don’t see each other for 100 days; after 100 days, if you still love each other, and you want to get married, I’ll agree to a divorce.
But separation made Hemingway and Pauline want each other more. Hadley later said,
I should have let them be together for a time, so their desire for each other would burn itself out.
Hemingway and Hadley had one child, Jack, who became the father of the actresses Margaux and Mariel. Hemingway and Pauline had two children, Patrick and Gregory (Gregory transitioned to female, and took the name Gloria). Of Hemingway’s three children, only Patrick is still alive (he’s 96).
I’m now going to discuss each of the fifteen stories that make up In Our Time. If you plan to read the stories, you may want to read them before reading my commentary. On the other hand, if you aren’t sure whether you want to read the stories, you may want to start with my commentary, it may whet your appetite to read a story.
- In Our Time opens with a story called “Indian Camp,” which is often called one of Hemingway’s best. Nick Adams, who seems to represent Hemingway himself, is a young boy, accompanying his doctor-father on a “house call.” His father is helping an Indian woman who’s struggling to give birth. The story has the violence that one finds in the earlier vignettes, and in Hemingway’s later work, too.
“Indian Camp” originally included several paragraphs about firing three shots if you need help (if Nick needs help when his father and uncle are out on the lake). Hemingway deleted these paragraphs, believing that stories were strengthened by deleting anything inessential. Editors, however, like these paragraphs, and published them as a separate story, “Three Shots.”
- The second story is called “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife.” It depicts the relationship between Hemingway’s parents. The mother lectures (“Remember, that he who ruleth his spirit is
greater than he that taketh a city”). The father is “irritated,” and goes for a walk with Nick rather than remain in the house with his wife. Violence is again a prominent element — guns, fists, etc. The story depicts a world that Hemingway knew: upper Michigan, the lake, Native Americans, the logging industry. Nick makes a habit of reading; he reads in this story and in “Three Shots.”
- The third story is called “The End of Something,” and depicts the end of a lumber operation, and the end of a relationship between Nick and a young woman, Marjorie. The lumber business is declining because the trees have been cut.
- The fourth story is called “The Three Day Blow,” and continues the discussion of Nick’s relationship with Marjorie, who’s now called “Marge.” Nick talks with a friend, Bill, in a cabin near a Michigan lake. They get drunk by a fire, while the wind howls outside (a “three day blow.... the first of the autumn storms”). Bill thinks that Nick was right to break up with Marge:
“You came out of it damned well,” Bill said. “Now she can marry somebody of her own sort and settle down and be happy. You can’t mix oil and water and you can’t mix that sort of thing any more than if I’d marry Ida that works for Strattons.” We don’t know what Strattons is, but it’s clear that Bill sees himself and Nick as higher on the social ladder than Marge and Ida. Hemingway seems to be more class-conscious than we are today, though he may be egalitarian compared to an Englishman from 1875. It’s clear from the occupations of Hemingway’s parents that they were from the upper class.
It’s also clear from the reading of Nick and Bill that they aren’t from the working class. They discuss George Meredith, G. K. Chesterton, Hugh Walpole, etc. Nick and Bill seem well-educated, and they’re educating themselves, though they don’t seem college-bound (Hemingway didn’t attend college).
- The fifth story is “The Battler.” Nick Adams has hopped on a freight train, and is riding it toward Walloon Lake (where the Hemingways had a summer house), but a nasty brakeman knocks him off the train, and he’s forced to walk home along the tracks in the dark, cursing the brakeman and vowing revenge. Attracted to a fire near the tracks, he meets two tramps cooking their dinner. Another excellent story, enjoyable to read.
Hemingway is an entertaining writer. In “The Three Day Blow,” he entertains with humor, in “The Battler” he entertains with plot. But his specialty is neither humor nor plot, his specialty is truth — truth that is often indistinguishable from beauty. His words are simple because his mind isn’t on language, his mind is on the truth and beauty that he’s trying to convey. For Hemingway, describing the world was a quasi-religious act, “he felt almost holy about it. It was deadly serious.”7 “A writer must come to his work like a priest to the altar.”8 On a personal level, describing the world was his destiny, his mission, the purpose of his existence. “He wanted to be a great writer. He was pretty sure he would be.”9
As a philosopher expresses original theories, so the novelist expresses original observations. In “The Three Day Blow,” Nick is uncomfortable with the end of his relationship with Marge; part of him regrets breaking up with Marge; he’s confused, uncertain, unhappy. But when he goes outside with Bill, his mind clears:
“They stepped out the door. The wind was blowing a gale.... They struck down toward the orchard.... Outside now the Marge business was no longer so tragic. It was not even very important. The wind blew everything like that away.”
This strikes me as an original observation, I haven’t noticed it in another writer, I suspect Hemingway found it in his own experience.
We find another original observation at the end of “The Battler.” Nick is talking to one of the tramps, who offers him food for the road. As Nick walks off, “he found he had a ham sandwich in his hand and put it in his pocket.” This is an odd phrase, an original observation; we don’t usually speak of finding something that’s in our own hand. Hemingway noticed that we sometimes act absent-mindedly, aren’t aware of what we’re doing, aren’t aware of what’s in our own hand.
The term “understated” is often applied to Hemingway’s work. An example of his understated style is the last sentence in “The Battler.” Nick has left the two tramps, and resumed his walk along the tracks. “Looking back from the mounting grade before the track curved into the hills he could see the firelight in the clearing.” The language is precise, simple, dignified; the scene has both beauty and truth.
Hemingway’s understated style made a deep impression on critics who were accustomed to a very different style, accustomed to a more wordy, more ornate style. But many readers today can’t understand the attraction of the understated style. “What’s so great about this sentence? I don’t like Hemingway.” Hemingway is an acquired taste, and I’ve acquired it.
- The sixth story is called “A Very Short Story.” It was the tenth vignette in the 1924 version of in our time. The longest vignette has become one of the shortest stories.
- The seventh story is called “Soldier’s Home.” It’s about a soldier, Harold Krebs, who has returned from the war, and is living with his parents in his hometown in the Midwest. He finds it difficult to talk about the war. Like other Hemingway protagonists, Harold makes a habit of reading. But his parents want him to be working. His mother has a talk with him.
“Don’t you love your mother, dear boy?”
“No.... I don’t love anybody....”
“I’m your mother,” she said. “I held you next to my heart when you were a tiny baby.”
Krebs felt sick and vaguely nauseated.Harold doesn’t want more scenes, so he decides to “go to Kansas City and get a job,” as Hemingway himself went to Kansas City at age 18, and began working as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star.
- The eighth story is called “The Revolutionist.” It’s much the same as the eleventh vignette in the 1924 version. It’s about a Communist who fled the Hungarian fascists, spends time in Italy, then makes his way to Switzerland. The Communist seems young and naive. He says that everyone in Italy is kind, and Italy will be the “starting point” for world revolution. He looks at paintings, and decides he doesn’t like Mantegna, perhaps because Mantegna is known for depicting sacrifice and suffering (The Dead Christ, The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian). Perhaps Hemingway believes that we can’t hope for salvation from communism or democracy or divine justice; there’s much to be said for life, but suffering and conflict and death can’t be escaped. Many people in the 1920s were attracted to Communism, but Hemingway seems skeptical, wary.
- The ninth story is called “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot.” It depicts an American couple that has gone to live in France. They seem to be trying unsuccessfully to have a child, but a critic named Teodóra Dömötör argues that Mrs. Elliot isn’t attracted to men, and doesn’t want to get pregnant.10 Mrs. Elliot’s homosexuality is implied, not expressly stated, so it exemplifies Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory — the idea that the meaning of a story lies largely beneath the surface, as an iceberg is largely beneath the surface. Dömötör writes,
Mrs. Elliot’s “girl friend” is essentially a girlfriend in the sexual sense as well, which is supported by the connotative interpretation of their “many good cries together.” The word “cry” indicates sounds associated with sexual pleasure, and the fact that the two women “cry” together on several occasions means that, unlike Mr. Elliot, the “girl friend” is able to satisfy Mrs. Elliot more sexually.... Following the arrival of the new woman, the narrative no longer portrays Mrs. Elliot ill or tired. In essence, the “girl friend” heals Mrs. Elliot’s “sickness.” The concluding sentence moves swiftly: “In the evening they all sat at dinner together in the garden, under a plane tree, and the hot evening wind blew and Elliot drank white wine and Mrs. Elliot and the girl friend made conversation and they were all three quite happy.” This swift movement suggests (Dömötör says) that Mrs. Elliot’s life is on track, and is rolling along. Dömötör says that, if Mr. Elliot is happy, it’s not because of his family life, but because of his wine. “He finds satisfaction in alcohol. He eases his frustration and insecurities with the momentary help of intoxication. Alcohol stimulates a sense of power which assists its consumer to overcome low self-regard.”
Let’s assume that the average iceberg conceals 70% of its mass underwater. Some icebergs conceal more than 70%, others less. Likewise, some stories conceal more, some less. “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot” conceals more than the average story. I can enjoy such stories if I can find an essay that reveals what’s underwater. I find “revealing essays” more enjoyable than “concealing stories.” If I don’t have a “revealing essay,” then I don’t enjoy “concealing stories,” I prefer stories that conceal less.
How did Hemingway compose “concealing stories” like “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot”? In Moveable Feast, Hemingway says that, when he left his “writing studio,” he tried not to think about the story he was working on, he tried to turn his conscious mind to other things: “I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it.... I would read so that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it.” So he creates with his unconscious, and he communicates with the reader’s unconscious.
- The tenth story is “Cat in the Rain.” Here again, much of the meaning is implied, not stated; much of the meaning is “underwater.” Fortunately we have an excellent essay, which unpacks the story for us in just two or three pages.11
“Cat in the Rain” takes place in a hotel in Italy. The hotel-owner is a classic Hemingway character: respectful, grave, not given to frevel. Hemingway writes,
“The wife went downstairs and the hotel owner stood up and bowed to her as she passed the office.... The wife liked him. She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked his dignity. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper.”
The protagonist of The Old Man and the Sea is serious and respectful toward the sea and its creatures. Likewise, the hotel-owner in “Cat in the Rain” is serious and respectful toward the hotel and its patrons. Neither character is a freveler.
- The eleventh story is “Out of Season.” Like “Cat in the Rain,” it deals with the decline of Hemingway’s marriage to Hadley Richardson. The story is called “Out of Season” because the characters go fishing out of season, go fishing when it isn’t legal to do so.
I noted above that two of the stories in this 1925 version of In Our Time were published in the 1924 version, as “vignettes.” “Out of Season” was also published before, it was published in a slim volume called Three Stories and Ten Poems, which appeared in 1923. So Hemingway’s first three published books were
- Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923)
- in our time (1924)
- In Our Time (1925)
The three stories in Three Stories and Ten Poems were “Out of Season,” “My Old Man,” and “Up in Michigan.” “My Old Man” appears again in this 1925 version of In Our Time (it’s the thirteenth story). “Up in Michigan” was cut by the publisher, much to Hemingway’s annoyance; the publisher said it was too sexually explicit.
“Out of Season” shows how people can feel upbeat and downcast in the same day, in the same hour, perhaps even in the same minute. Early in the story, we read, “It was a wonderful day,” which describes how the fishing-guide feels as he begins the fishing-trip; it’s a wonderful day because he’s making money, going fishing, filling his wine-bottle, etc. A few minutes later, however, they realize they forgot to bring weights for their lines, so they can’t fish. The guide is downcast: “Peduzzi’s day was going to pieces before his eyes.” A minute later, however, Peduzzi is handed a bottle of wine. “He drank it all. The sun shone while he drank. It was wonderful. This was a great day, after all. A wonderful day.” He feels good about the future: “Days like this stretched out ahead.”
The idea that we can be upbeat and downcast in the same minute isn’t an original idea, but Hemingway makes it seem original, he makes it his own, he depicts it in a realistic way, and he’s probably drawing on his own experience. So we can list it among Hemingway’s original observations, even if it isn’t, strictly speaking, original.
We find the same idea in the work of Milan Kundera. In an earlier issue, I said that Kundera discusses
the idea that there is a border separating the meaningful from the meaningless, and we’re always close to that border, we’re always close to the feeling that life is meaningless: “The woman he had loved most... would tell him... that she held on to life by a thread. Yes, she did want to live, life gave her great joy, but she also knew that her ‘I want to live’ was spun from the threads of a spiderweb. It takes so little, so infinitely little, for someone to find himself on the other side of the border, where everything — love, convictions, faith, history — no longer has meaning. The whole mystery of human life resides in the fact that it is spent in the immediate proximity of, and even in direct contact with, that border, that it is separated from it not by kilometers but by barely a millimeter.” Is this idea of “borders” an original idea? Or did Kundera get it from another writer? We find the same idea in Sainte-Beuve: “Extreme happiness just barely separated, by a trembling leaf, from extreme despair — isn’t this life? (L’extrême félicité à peine séparée par une feuille tremblante de l’extrême désespoir, n’est-ce pas la vie?)”
We also find this idea in Kierkegaard: “I live continually on the border of the happy and the desert Arabia.” [This refers to the old Roman terms “Arabia Felix” and “Arabia Deserta.” “Arabia Felix” means Yemen — the fertile coast, while “Arabia Deserta” means the desert interior of Saudi Arabia.]
Hemingway gives us a detailed picture of reality; no detail is too small for him. When Peduzzi is desperate for weights to put on the lines, he not only checks his pockets, he sifts “through the cloth dirt in the linings of his inside military pockets.” Every other writer in the history of literature would have said Peduzzi checked all his pockets, none would have had Peduzzi sift through the “cloth dirt.” As one critic put it, Hemingway is bringing his camera in closer and closer.12
Hemingway isn’t the only writer from that era to give us a detailed picture of life. Consider, for example, the description of shaving at the start of Joyce’s Ulysses:
“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.... He propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.... He shaved warily over his chin.... He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.... Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.”
Hemingway and Joyce admired each other’s work.
The story of the fishing-trip is drawn from Hemingway’s own life. In life and in the story, the fishing-guide was also a gardener at the hotel where Hemingway was staying. The gardener/guide was prone to drink too much, and ask for money too frequently. Hemingway complained about him to the hotel-manager, he was fired, and then he hung himself.
In the first version of the story, Hemingway concluded with the guide’s suicide, then he deleted that ending, left it unsaid. As he wrote “Out of Season,” Hemingway developed the Iceberg Theory; Hemingway decided that by omitting things, he could strengthen a story; readers would “feel something more than they understood.”13
One could argue that Hemingway is too obscure, he leaves too much unsaid, he leaves too much “underwater.” Perhaps the Iceberg Theory led Hemingway astray. Baker says, “The theory worked badly in the case of ‘Out of Season.’ Peduzzi came through as an oaf but not as a potential suicide.” Did Hemingway weaken the story by deleting the suicide?
The Iceberg Theory also works badly in “The Revolutionist” (the eighth story). In two pages, Mantegna is mentioned three times, but why the young communist dislikes Mantegna is left unsaid, underwater. Most readers would find this baffling, but critics write numerous essays about “The Revolutionist.” The Iceberg Theory works well for critics, but not for the average reader; critics can speculate endlessly about what is unsaid.
Perhaps Hemingway’s generation was too fond of obscurity. Can anyone deny that Finnegans Wake is obscure? And Hemingway’s generation may have been too fond of form and structure; influenced by Pound and Eliot, Hemingway may have had too much respect for form and structure; too often Hemingway writes for the critic, not the average reader. But if Hemingway had vices, these vices shouldn’t blind us to his virtues. Every writer has vices.
- The twelfth story is called “Cross Country Snow.” It opens with a superb description of skiing:
“The rush and the sudden swoop as he dropped down a steep undulation in the mountain side plucked Nick’s mind out and left him only the wonderful flying, dropping sensation in his body. He rose to a slight up-run and then the snow seemed to drop out from under him as he went down, down, faster and faster in a rush down the last, long steep slope. Crouching so he was almost sitting back on his skis, trying to keep the center of gravity low, the snow driving like a sand-storm, he knew the pace was too much. But he held it. He would not let go and spill. Then a patch of soft snow, left in a hollow by the wind, spilled him and he went over and over in a clashing of skis, feeling like a shot rabbit, then stuck, his legs crossed, his skis sticking straight up and his nose and ears jammed full of snow.”
Hemingway describes the thrill of sport as well as it’s ever been described in English. Hemingway might be pessimistic in some of his works, but surely a world where such sports exist isn’t all bad. The phrase “plucked Nick’s mind out” is an original phrase, apt and effective, vintage Hemingway.
The two skiers, Nick and George, visit an inn to rest, warm up, and enjoy some wine. George has apparently heard that Nick’s wife is pregnant. Nick says he’s glad, but he doesn’t seem glad. One of Hemingway’s biographers, Jeffrey Meyers, says that Hemingway wasn’t happy when Hadley became pregnant, it was a “crisis” in their marriage. “[Hemingway] portrayed his sullen response in Nick’s series of mechanical replies in ‘Cross Country Snow.’”14 Meyers cites Gertrude Stein’s autobiography, in which she says how disappointed Hemingway was about his wife’s pregnancy.
The two skiers sit glumly in front of an empty bottle. George says mournfully, “Maybe we’ll never go skiing again.” Family responsibilities are already impinging on the freedom of the 24-year-old Hemingway. The friction in Hemingway’s marriage is evident in “Cross Country Snow,” as it was in “Cat in the Rain” and “Out of Season.”
- The thirteenth story is called “My Old Man.” It’s about an aging jockey and his son, Americans who move around among European race-tracks. Like “Cross Country Snow,” “My Old Man” contains vivid descriptions of sport. Hemingway writes,
“I was nuts about the horses, too. There’s something about it, when they come out and go up the track to the post. Sort of dancy and tight looking with the jock keeping a tight hold on them and maybe easing off a little and letting them run a little going up. Then once they were at the barrier it got me worse than anything. Especially at San Siro with that big green infield and the mountains way off and the fat wop starter with his big whip and the jocks fiddling them around and then the barrier snapping up and that bell going off and them all getting off in a bunch and then commencing to string out. You know the way a bunch of skins gets off. If you’re up in the stand with a pair of glasses all you see is them plunging off and then that bell goes off and it seems like it rings for a thousand years and then they come sweeping round the turn. There wasn’t ever anything like it for me.”
Like the protagonist of “The Old Man and the Sea,” Hemingway’s jockey is an aging sportsman who has a major success, but can’t hold onto it, and is eventually beaten. Hemingway’s jockey wins a big bet, but instead of retiring, he attempts a comeback, which ends in disaster.
Fitzgerald thought that “My Old Man” was the weakest story in the volume. It reminded him of stories by Sherwood Anderson, while Hemingway’s other stories went beyond Anderson.14B
The racing world in “My Old Man” is corrupt. The good horses are beautiful, but the weaker horses are sometimes drugged. Jockeys sometimes lose races intentionally. The young narrator doesn’t understand this corruption at the start of the story, but he later realizes that his father is mixed up in it. “I was scared and felt sick inside.” Jeffrey Meyers says that “My Old Man” is “the story of a boy’s disenchantment with his crooked jockey-father.”15
In late 1851, just when Moby Dick was coming off the press, a whaleship called the Ann Alexander was rammed by an angry whale and sunk. Melville was struck by the coincidence: “Ye Gods! What a commentator is this Ann Alexander whale. What he has to say is short and pithy and very much to the point. I wonder if my evil art has raised this monster.” Was it just a coincidence, or was it a synchronicity?
“My Old Man” has a similar coincidence/synchronicity. Hemingway wrote,
“The only writing that was any good was what you made up, what you imagined, that made everything come true. Like when he wrote ‘My Old Man’ he’d never seen a jockey killed and the next week Georges Parfrement was killed at that very jump and that was the way it looked.”16
- The fourteenth story is “Big Two-Hearted River, Part I.” It’s about a young man, a writer, Nick Adams, who’s going camping near a trout stream in Michigan. He’s happy to be leaving the world behind, leaving his work behind, and going into nature.
He’s familiar with the land, he’s been here before. He struggles under the weight of a heavy backpack, loaded with blankets, canvas, and canned goods — no lightweight camping gear in 1920. It’s a rather long walk from where he’s dropped off by the train to where he sets up his tent. He’s hot and tired and hungry, but he feels good when the tent is finally up:
“Across the open mouth of the tent Nick fixed cheese cloth to keep out mosquitoes. He crawled inside.... It smelled pleasantly of canvas. Already there was something mysterious and homelike. Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent. He had not been unhappy all day. This was different though. Now things were done. There had been this to do. Now it was done. It had been a hard trip. He was very tired. That was done. He had made his camp. He was settled. Nothing could touch him. It was a good place to camp. He was there, in the good place. He was in his home where he had made it.”
Some of the land around the campsite has been burned and blackened. The grasshoppers have changed color to blend in with the blackened environment:
“As he watched the black hopper that was nibbling at the wool of his sock with its fourway lip, he realized that they had all turned black from living in the burned-over land. He realized that the fire must have come the year before, but the grasshoppers were all black now. He wondered how long they would stay that way.”
This is one of Hemingway’s keenest observations of the natural world. In an earlier issue, I said that, when an English city became polluted, and the trees darkened, the moths darkened in order to blend in with the trees.17
- The fifteenth and last story is “Big Two-Hearted River, Part II,” which describes trout-fishing in detail. Nick doesn’t have waders, or special shoes, he steps into the stream wearing his regular pants and regular shoes. To make his description of trout-fishing more vivid, Hemingway uses odd words, or perhaps I should say, he coins new words. For example, the word squlchy: “Nick climbed out onto the meadow and stood, water running down his trousers and out of his shoes, his shoes squlchy.” And the word marly: “Where it curved near the tree roots, the bed of the stream was marly.”
Nick might be glad to leave his writing behind, but he misses reading. “He wished he had brought something to read. He felt like reading.... He felt a reaction against deep wading with the water deepening up under his armpits.”
The story concludes, “There were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp.” But without books or company, will Nick enjoy these days? In reality, Hemingway took such trips with friends, not alone. Being alone in the wilderness could be a valuable experience, but there’s no indication that Nick wants this sort of experience, or will benefit from it. As one critic puts it, Nick is “sentient yet not self-aware, isolated yet incomplete.”18
Part I of “Big Two-Hearted River” is wonderful, but Part II stumbles. Hemingway’s description of setting-up camp is superb, but once the initial challenges are overcome, Hemingway doesn’t know what to do with Nick, except catch more trout than he’ll be able to consume.
Critics laud this story to the skies, so readers are apt to be disappointed, readers expect too much from it. Literary criticism, like politics, is about managing expectations. If critics would say that this story is mediocre, readers might expect less, and enjoy it more. I liked all the stories in this volume, and I would recommend the volume highly, but I didn’t think that “Big Two-Hearted River” was clearly superior to the other stories.19
“Up in Michigan” is a lively, compact story about an encounter between a young blacksmith (Jim) and a younger waitress (Liz). The story is based on Hemingway’s own “erotic baptism.” But in Hemingway’s case, the woman was slightly older.
Before their encounter, Jim and his friends go deer-hunting for several days, and Liz eagerly awaits their return. Finally the hunters return: “Jim said ‘Hello Liz,’ and grinned. Liz hadn’t known just what would happen when Jim got back but she was sure it would be something. Nothing had happened. The men were just home that was all.” This is another original observation by Hemingway, a good description of the disappointment that often follows eager anticipation.
“Hills Like White Elephants” was published in 1927, two years after the publication of In Our Time. It continues the themes of marital friction and unwanted pregnancy. A husband and wife are at a train station in Spain. The husband is urging the wife to get an abortion, though the word “abortion” isn’t used. Whether she gets an abortion or not, it seems that their love is doomed, they can never recover the relationship that they once had. The husband says, “We can have the whole world.... We can go everywhere.” The wife responds, “No, we can’t. It isn’t ours any more.”
Why is the story called “Hills Like White Elephants”? A “white elephant” is something costly, difficult-to-maintain, unwanted, like an unwanted baby.
My recent “Hemingway kick” was inspired by Ford Madox Ford, an English man-of-letters, best known today for his novel The Good Soldier. Ford knew Hemingway in Paris in the 1920s, had a high opinion of his work, and published it in The Transatlantic Review, a literary magazine that Ford edited. Ford’s remarks on Hemingway show what an impact Hemingway had in the 1920s, and how impressive Hemingway’s prose was to discerning critics like Ford, T. S. Eliot, and Edmund Wilson.
Ford wrote,
| The three impeccable writers of English prose that I have come across in fifty years or so of reading in search of English prose have been Joseph Conrad, W. H. Hudson, and Ernest Hemingway.... Hemingway’s words strike you, each one, as if they were pebbles fetched fresh from a brook. They live and shine, each in its place.... It is a very great quality.... The aim — the achievement — of the great prose writer is to use words so that they shall seem new and alive.... This gift Hemingway has supremely. Any sentence of his taken at random will hold your attention.20 |
Ezra Pound called Hemingway “the finest prose stylist in the world.”21 James Joyce said, “[Hemingway] has reduced the veil between literature and life, which is what every writer strives to do. Have you read ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’? It is masterly, [said] Joyce, in a glow of enthusiasm. Indeed, I think it is one of the best short stories ever written; there is bite there.”22
Ford was cool toward Hemingway’s first two longer works — The Sun Also Rises and The Torrents of Spring, both published in 1926 — but he was a fan of Farewell to Arms: “A Farewell to Arms... proves that Hemingway, the writer of short, perfect episodes, can keep up the pace through a volume.... Whilst you are reading [A Farewell to Arms] you forget to applaud its author. You do not know that you are having to do with an author. You are living.”
Ford praises the opening sentence of Farewell to Arms: “In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain towards the mountains.” He also praises the conclusion of Farewell to Arms: “After I had got them out and shut the door and turned out the light it wasn’t any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.” Ford says that this ending is incomparable “because that muted passage after great emotion still holds the mind after the book is finished.”
In the Hemingway documentary, we learn about the composition of Farewell to Arms. In the summer of 1928, Pauline Pfeiffer (Hemingway’s second wife) gave birth to Patrick, then lived for a time with her parents in Arkansas. “Hemingway headed west, alone, writing as he went.” Hemingway later wrote, “I remember living in the book, and making up what happened in it every day.... Each day I read the book through from the beginning to the point where I went on writing, and each day I stopped when I was still going good, and when I knew what would happen next.... I was happier than I’d ever been.”22B
Hemingway wrote in Farewell, “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” Doris Kearns Goodwin applied this to the Roosevelts — Teddy, Franklin, and Eleanor — and argued that all three Roosevelts overcame handicaps, and became stronger as a result.
Ford notes that Farewell appeals to both the learned and the un-learned: “A Farewell to Arms is a book that unites the critic to the simple. You could read it and be thrilled if you had never read a book — or if you had read and measured all the good books in the world. That is the real province of the art of writing.” Edmund Wilson said that Hemingway had “developed a special skill in using naive language to convey ‘profound emotions and complex states of mind.’”23
Is Hemingway’s prose distinctively American? Could an Englishman have written such prose? Hemingway was from the Midwest, and Ford was impressed by the literary culture of the Midwest.24 Edmund Wilson thought that Hemingway’s prose was akin to that of two other American writers, Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein. Stein probably influenced Hemingway’s prose; Ezra Pound and his Imagism probably influenced Hemingway, too. Among older writers, Conrad and Kipling were favorites of Hemingway.
One woman who knew Hemingway in Paris, Kitty Cannell, noticed that Hemingway’s remarks on fellow expatriates were “extremely devastating.” She thought that Hemingway had “a streak of vicious cruelty.”25 One sees this cruelty in Hemingway’s remarks on T. S. Eliot; these remarks prompted Ford to speak of Hemingway’s “bloodthirstiness.”26 After Conrad died, Hemingway wrote about Conrad in The Transatlantic Review: “If I knew that by grinding Mr. Eliot into a fine dry powder and sprinkling that powder over Mr. Conrad’s grave Mr. Conrad would shortly appear.... I would leave for London tomorrow morning with a sausage grinder.”27 It’s not surprising that Ford “hesitated a long time” before deciding to publish this savage comment.
Hemingway’s cruelty is also apparent in his remarks on Ford. In his memoir A Moveable Feast, Hemingway tells how, when he was sitting outside a café, someone approached him:
| It was Ford Madox Ford, as he called himself then, and he was breathing heavily through a heavy, stained mustache and holding himself as upright as an ambulatory, well clothed, up-ended hogshead.... I had always avoided looking at Ford when I could and I always held my breath when I was near him in a closed room, but this was the open air and the fallen leaves blew along the sidewalks from my side of the table past his, so I took a good look at him.... I took a drink to see if his coming had fouled it, but it still tasted good.... I was trying to remember what Ezra Pound had told me about Ford, that I must never be rude to him, that I must remember that he only lied when he was very tired, that he was really a good writer and that he had been through very bad domestic troubles. I tried hard to think of these things but the heavy, wheezing, ignoble presence of Ford himself, only touching-distance away, made it difficult. |
This is Hemingway at his worst — cruel without being enlightening, cruel to someone who had helped him and encouraged him, cruel in a personal way while saying nothing about Ford’s writings, which Hemingway probably hadn’t read. What made Hemingway cruel? His unhappy childhood? Would he have been warmer if he had grown up in a warmer environment?
Ford had a conception of the gentleman that Hemingway didn’t share. The notion of a gentleman was important for Englishmen of Ford’s generation (and earlier). The notion of a gentleman was much less important for Americans, especially those of Hemingway’s generation and later. In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway describes his conversation with Ford:
“Is Ezra [Pound] a gentleman?” I asked.
“Of course not,” Ford said. “He’s an American.”
“Are you a gentleman?”
“Naturally. I have held His Majesty’s commission” [i.e., I was an officer in the British Army].
“It’s very complicated,” I said. “Am I a gentleman?”
“Absolutely not,” Ford said.
“Then why are you drinking with me?”
“I’m drinking with you as a promising young writer. As a fellow writer in fact.”
“Good of you,” I said.
“You might be considered a gentleman in Italy,” Ford said magnanimously.
One might call Hemingway an un-intellectual writer. He was certainly a reader, but he didn’t rack his brains over Aristotle and Aquinas, as Joyce did. Joyce’s intellectual pursuits are reflected in the character of Stephen Dedalus. Hemingway’s favorite character in Ulysses was Leopold Bloom, he didn’t like the intellectual Stephen Dedalus, who was closer to Joyce himself.28
I did much of the research for my Hemingway essay at archive.org, which allows you to download texts that aren’t copyright-protected; in this respect, it resembles gutenberg.org, hathitrust.org, etc. But archive.org also allows you to “borrow” many books that are copyright-protected; you can read these books and search them; you can’t select text, or copy-and-paste, but with the help of screenshots, copy-and-paste is possible.
As an example, let’s look at Carlos Baker’s Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, which was published in 1969. If you look it up at hathitrust.org, you find
“This item is not available online due to copyright restrictions.”
If, however, you have “print disabilities,” Hathi Trust might show you the whole text.
At archive.org, Baker’s biography can be “borrowed,” viewed, read, and searched, even if you don’t have “print disabilities.” And it may be possible to download Baker’s biography, and read it with software such as Thorium Reader or Adobe Digital Editions, which enables the reading of a text for a specific period of time (the loan period, which might be 14 days).
Since archive.org is run by a non-profit organization, it doesn’t have advertising (in this respect, it resembles Wikipedia).
© L. James Hammond 2025
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| Footnotes | |
| 1. | Click here for a podcast on the tenth vignette. For more on this period of Hemingway’s life, see Hemingway In Love And War, by Henry Villard and James Nagel. Villard knew Hemingway during World War I. Click here for a podcast with James Nagel and Villard’s son, Dimitri. Another Hemingway memoir is My Brother, Ernest Hemingway, by Leicester Hemingway. A. E. Hotchner, who knew Hemingway in the 1950s, wrote Papa Hemingway. Many other friends and relatives of Hemingway wrote books about him. One of the most highly-regarded biographical works on Hemingway is Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost: 1934-1961, by Paul Hendrickson. back |
| 2. | “Fathers and Sons”. Ed Hemingway’s decline may have been caused by physical factors. “Ernest Hemingway’s father... may have had hereditary hemochromatosis, a condition that causes iron to build up in the body. This buildup can lead to physical and mental decline, including depression, memory loss, and liver disease.”(web search) back |
| 3. | Baker, Hemingway: The Writer As Artist, Ch. 6, p. 129 back |
| 4. | Ken Burns documentary on Hemingway, Part 1, 28:20 back |
| 5. | Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, Ch. 5, p. 44 back |
| 6. | The Hemingway documentary by Ken Burns implies that Hemingway didn’t really carry a wounded Italian. It’s very likely that Hemingway told some lies about his service. In “Soldier’s Home,” he writes, “Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie.... A distaste for everything that had happened to him in the war set in because of the lies he had told.” But I’m inclined to think that the story of carrying the wounded man is true. back |
| 7. | Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, Ch. 18, p. 132. These are Hemingway’s words. Baker is quoting a “coda” that Hemingway appended to “Big Two-Hearted River.” The coda was apparently not included in the published story.
T. S. Eliot said he had “considerable respect” for Hemingway’s work because “he seems to me to tell the truth about his own feelings at the moment when they exist.” (See my Realms of Gold) back |
| 8. | Hemingway’s phrase, see Ken Burns documentary on Hemingway, Part 1, 56:40 back |
| 9. | Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, Ch. 18, p. 132. This is also from the coda to “Big Two-Hearted River.” The coda is made up of Nick’s reflections on writing and other matters. back |
| 10. | See “Anxious Masculinity and Silencing in Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Mr. and Mrs. Elliot,’” by Teodóra Dömötör, jstor.org/stable/43487853. Dömötör’s essay is often obscure, so I can’t recommend it with enthusiasm. Baker says “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot” satirizes Chard Powers Smith and his wife. Smith evidently agreed, he sent an angry letter to Hemingway.(Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, Ch. 26, p. 181)
Perhaps the best volume of criticism on In Our Time is Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time back |
| 11. | “Symmetry in ‘Cat in the Rain,’” by John Hagopian, jstor.org/stable/373291 back |
| 12. | Amanda Vaill in the Ken Burns documentary on Hemingway, Part 1, 1:03:34 back |
| 13. | This is a quote from Hemingway, not Baker. See Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, Ch. 14, p. 109 back |
| 14. | Hemingway: A Biography, Ch. 5, #7, p. 120 back |
| 14B. | On the whole, Fitzgerald had a high opinion of Anderson; Fitzgerald said that Anderson had “a brilliant and almost inimitable prose style.” (Baker, Hemingway: The Writer As Artist, Ch. 2, #3, p. 36) But Fitzgerald wasn’t a fan of Anderson’s later work, which Fitzgerald described as “[Anderson’s] respectability and also his decline.” (ibid) Hemingway’s “My Old Man” reminded Fitzgerald of Anderson’s later work, so Fitzgerald didn’t like “My Old Man.”
Hemingway’s attitude toward Anderson was probably similar to Fitzgerald’s. Hemingway said that Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio was his “first pattern,”(ibid, p. 25, Baker’s words) the model that he emulated. Anderson gave Hemingway letters of reference, and these letters helped Hemingway get started in Paris. Later Hemingway wrote Torrents of Spring, which parodied Anderson. Hemingway was apparently annoyed that he was always compared with Anderson, and viewed as an Anderson-disciple. back |
| 15. | Hemingway: A Biography, Ch. 6, #4, p. 141 back |
| 16. | From the coda at the end of “Big Two-Hearted River.” Hemingway deleted this coda and it was later published separately as “On Writing.” See Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, Ch. 13, p. 101. Sean Hemingway published the coda in The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway; this version ends with “that very jump,” it doesn’t include “and that was the way it looked.” For more on life imitating art, click here. back |
| 17. | What makes the first black grasshopper become black? Is the grasshopper adapting to his new environment, through some sort of will? The black grasshoppers, like the dark moths, raise the question, What drives evolution? Random mutation or willed adaptation? I wrote earlier,
“I mentioned that a Lamarckian like Kammerer can demonstrate his theory by experiments, but a Darwinian can’t. Donald Fleming argues that natural selection was demonstrated in England by experiments with moths. When a particular city became polluted, and the trees darkened, the moths would darken in order to blend in with the tree. “It’s worth remembering, however, that Darwinism isn’t just natural selection, it’s also random mutation. Does the moth experiment prove that the moth’s darker color was a random mutation? Or could it have been an adaptation, like the color-change that Kammerer demonstrated in salamanders?
“Could the adaptation, the acquired characteristic, have been passed to the next generation, as in Kammerer’s salamanders? Meanwhile, the lighter-colored moths, who failed to adapt, stood out against the dark trees, and were being eaten by birds. So there was natural selection, but perhaps not random mutation.” back |
| 18. | Thomas Strychacz in The Cambridge Companion to Hemingway, Ch. 4, p. 84 back |
| 19. | Thomas Strychacz writes,
“In Our Time culminates in ‘Big Two-Hearted River,’ a stunning tour de force.... The story, as critics have long argued, suggests the slow, silent recuperation of the human mind from the psychic trauma of... World War I. Nick’s refusal to think, his steadfast determination not to hurry, his attention to the minutiae of his camp and its natural setting — all of this bespeaks a mind fragile with shock as it attempts to construct new grounds for a sane existence.... [Nick] holds out for the perfect moment to eat his hot food.”(The Cambridge Companion to Hemingway, Ch. 4, p. 81) But if you didn’t know that the author had been wounded in World War I, if you hadn’t read the previous stories in this volume, I don’t think there’s anything in “Big Two-Hearted River” that indicates Nick is a former soldier. If you assume Nick works on Wall Street, and is stressed after a tough week, the story makes sense. Or if you assume that Nick is a devotee of Zen, and acts in a mindful, deliberate way, the story makes sense.
William Adair argues that “Big Two-Hearted River” is about an “interior” landscape, which comes from “the dreaming and remembering part of the mind of the protagonist and/or writer.” The same landscape features recur in Hemingway’s works, such as the stream where you wade in water above your waist. “Hemingway’s fictive world is not a matter of mimesis so much as continued expression.” back |
| 20. | Critical writings of Ford Madox Ford, edited by Frank MacShane back |
| 21. | Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, Ch. 17, p. 123 back |
| 22. | Arthur Power, Conversations With James Joyce, Ch. 15, p. 107 back |
| 22B. | Hemingway documentary, Part I, 1:41:30
This documentary has one flaw: it reveals the plot of Farewell to Arms, and perhaps of other Hemingway novels. Revealing plots is the literary equivalent of revealing state secrets. back |
| 23. | Wilson’s piece was called “Mr. Hemingway’s Dry-Points,” and it appeared in The Dial. I found Wilson’s remarks in Baker’s biography, Ch. 18, p. 134. back |
| 24. | Ford spoke of, “a whole Middle Western American group, as a rule from the University of Chicago, an educational institution differing from all the other universities of Europe and America in that it really has fostered imaginative writing and at least one movement — that of the Middle Western novelists and poets. That movement was remarkable not solely for the excellence of its products but because it assumed almost the aspect of a folk literature, so nearly without exception did the younger generation of the lonely farm houses and millions of acres turn its attention to writing in the early twenties of this century. It deserves this note because it is, as far as this writer is concerned, almost the only instance of a similar tendency anywhere discoverable in modem literary history... and because, with its later Southern extension, it has kept alive almost the last traces of a conscious literary art in a world everywhere so driven to distraction that the pen as a weapon has grown almost as obsolete as the stone arrowhead.” Ford continues in a footnote, “This writer would like to make the following statistical note. In 1924 he started in Paris a review [The Transatlantic Review] that was open to contributors from all over the world and in all European languages. Of the contributions that he received, at least eighty per cent came from the American Middle West, and these contributions were astonishingly level.... The actual level of a great number of the contributions that he did not print was astonishingly near that of those that he published, and a very large percentage of them would have been publishable by any review in the world. One may add that that writing current is by no means exhausted at the present day [1938].”(The March of Literature, Ch. 7, p. 756)
Should we credit Ford with an interesting and valid observation? Or should we criticize him for a tendency to get carried away in paeans of praise? back |
| 25. | These are Baker’s words, not Cannell’s. See Carlos Baker’s Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, Ch. 18, p. 133 back |
| 26. | Baker, Ch. 18, p. 136. With younger writers, Hemingway could be kind. Salinger met Hemingway during World War II, and had only positive comments about him. back |
| 27. | Quoted in Baker, Ch. 18, p. 135. I quoted these remarks in an earlier issue. back |
| 28. | Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, Ch. 18, p. 131 back |