Hemingway: The Writer's Art of Self-Defense (Ernest Hemingway)

213 Pages·1969·1.89 MB·English

by  Jackson J. Benson

HEMINGWAY * * *
The Writer's Art of Self-Defense
by
Jackson J. Benson
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS
Minneapolis
© Copyright 1969 by the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. Published in Great Britain,
India, and Pakistan by the Oxford University Press, London, Bombay,
and Karachi, and in Canada by the Copp Clark Publishing Co. Lim-
ited, Toronto. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 70-77139.
QUOTATIONS from the following works of Ernest Hemingway are fully pro-
tected by United States and International Copyright: Across the River and
Into the Trees, Death in the Afternoon, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom
the Bell Tolls, Green Hills of Africa, The Old Man and the Sea, The Short
Stories of Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, and To Have and Have
Not. Used by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons, the Executors of the
Ernest Hemingway Estate, and Jonathan Cape Ltd. The quotation from
"Desert Places" on page 138 is from Complete Poems of Robert Frost.
Copyright 1936 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1964 by Lesley Frost Bal-
lantine. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., and
Laurence Pollinger Ltd. Material from Sean O'Faolain, The Vanishing
Hero (Boston: Little, Brown, 1957), on page 80, is used by permission of
Little, Brown and Company.
Second printing 1969
for Sue Ellen,
Katrina Adele, and Belinda Sue
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
* * * OF THE MANY people who have given me help in pre-
paring the manuscript for this book, I should like to acknowledge
particularly the proofreading and criticism of the early manu-
script by Yvonne Mayer, and Charles R. Metzger's criticism and
advice concerning those portions of the present manuscript which
were included in my dissertation. For proofreading and help with
the various other manuscripts which led to the present book, I
should like to thank my wife, Sue Ellen Benson.
I should also like to thank several of my colleagues at San
Diego State: James Hinkle, for several ideas he has graciously al-
lowed me to use; Kermit Vanderbilt, who gave me needed en-
couragement and sound advice; and Karl Keller, who carefully
proofread the final manuscript and made a number of helpful sug-
gestions. I should also like to acknowledge the financial help pro-
vided by the San Diego State College Foundation which made the
final preparation of the manuscript possible. Finally, I should like
to express my gratitude to the University of Minnesota Press, and
particularly to the editor whose acumen and knowledge of Hem-
ingway's work made the publication process so painless.
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NOTE ON THE HEMINGWAY TEXTS
* * * SINCE I have been at some pains to note the page ref-
erences for almost all the Hemingway quotations included in the
following study, I was concerned in my choice of text with the
availability to the reader of the editions I cited most frequently.
For this reason, and because I have found nothing to impeach
their accuracy, I have chosen to use the widely available Scrib-
ner Library editions of the major novels and the College Edition
of The Old Man and the Sea. However, I have stayed with the
first edition of the collected stories since the Modern Library edi-
tion used (apparently) the same plates for the text. For the lesser
novels and nonfiction volumes, which I refer to much less fre-
quently, I have also used first editions.
On the following list of editions used, all books have been pub-
lished by Charles Scribner's Sons. Wherever possible, I have
noted on the list any editions, by Scribner's or some other pub-
lisher, which have similar pagination ("same" on the following
list should be interpreted as meaning "same textual pagination").
Occasionally in my text I abbreviate the title of one of Heming-
way's works; these abbreviations precede the following titles in
parentheses.
(S.A.R.) The Sun Also Rises (New York, 1960), The Scribner Li-
brary (the same as the "uniform edition" of 1953 and the Stu-
dent's edition of 1957).
(F.T.A.) A Farewell to Arms (New York, 1962), The Scribner Li-
brary (the same as the "uniform edition" of 1953).
(D.I.A.) Death in the Afternoon (New York, 1932), First Edition
(essentially the same as Halcyon House edition of 1937, the text
numbered the same as the Collier edition of 1942, and essen-
tially the same as the Scribner's reprint edition of 1953, reissued
in 1961).
(G.H.A.) Green Hills of Africa (New York, 1935), First Edition
(the same as the "uniform edition" of 1953 and The Scribner
Library edition of 1962).
(T.H.H.N.) To Have and Have Not (New York, 1937), First Edi-
tion (the same as the Grosset & Dunlap edition of 1939, the Col-
lier edition of 1942, and the "uniform edition" of 1953).
(1st 49) The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (New
York, 1938), First Edition (the same as the Collier edition of
1942 and The Modern Library edition of 1942).
(F.W.B.T.) For Whom the Bell Tolls (New York, 1960), The
Scribner Library (the same as the first edition of 1940, the Collier
edition of 1942, Modern Standard Authors edition of 1957, and
the "uniform edition" of 1962).
(A.R.I.T.) Across the River and into the Trees (New York, 1950),
First Edition (the same as the "uniform edition" of 1956).
(O.M.) The Old Man and the Sea (New York, 1960), College Edi-
tion (the text itself numbered the same in the School Edition of
1961).
A Moveable Feast (New York, 1964), First Edition.
In my text I refer to the sketches of the Paris edition of in our
time which should be distinguished from the later In Our Time.
(The latter includes the earlier sketches as interchapters within
a collection of short stories. Both sketches and stories are included
in 1st 49 cited above.) Although I do not quote from The Tor-
rents of Spring, I should note that the only recent reprinting of
this first novel is in Charles Poore's The Hemingway Reader
(New York, 1953).
For help in preparing the above list of editions I should like to
thank the staff of the Humanities Library at the University of
California at San Diego for making its special Hemingway col-
lection available to me, and to express my gratitude to Audre
Hanneman for her indispensable Ernest Hemingway: A Compre-
hensive Bibliography (Princeton, 1967).
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE TERMS OF THE STRUGGLE 3
ROLES AND THE MASCULINE WRITER 28
DARK LAUGHTER 47
GAME: A STRUCTURE FOR EMOTIONAL CONTROL 70
LEARNING TO PLAY THE GAME WELL 99
CONTROL AND LOSS OF CONTROL THROUGH IRONY 113
SUFFERING AND LOSS WITHOUT TEARS 129
THE ROAD FROM SELF 150
THE MASK OF HUMBLE PERFECTION 169
"LET BE BE FINALE OF SEEM" 186
INDEX 193