Hemingway and James

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Hemingway and James

Author(s): George HemphillSource: The Kenyon Review, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Winter, 1949), pp. 50-60Published by: Kenyon CollegeStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4333008

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George HemphillHEMINGWAYAND JAMES

Y way of introducinghese remarks n the valueof In OurTime I want to make a broad and somewhat crude observa-tion which I hope will fix the reader'sattention on my presentfocus of interest. I think of Hemingway as the writer to whomeverythinghappens. And fortunatelyfor us he has had sufficientskill to write up the stories of the people to whom everythinghappens. He is genially candid on this point: "I would like tolive long enough to write three more novels and twenty-fivemorestories. I know some pretty good ones." Now if this is a fairview of Hemingway, it might be no less fair to comparehim in thisrespect to Henry James. Hemingway is the writer everythinghappens to and should therefore end up as a non-writer,exceptthat he has a complex sense of duty. ("Now it is necessary o getto the grindstone again.") And vulgarly speaking, Henry Jamesis the man to whom nothing ever happens. Things could beworse for a writer. (One recalls James's peevishness at havinghis sacredmornings for work interruptedby high-minded adies inNew York.) I suggest there is a broadrift in the possibilitiesoffiction today and that Hemingway and James are representativeof the factions. James extended magnificently the possibilities offiction in the direction of poetic drama, gnoring the kind of social,economic, and historicverisimilitudethat EdmundWilson requiresfrom fiction; Hemingway, with his journalistictraining,his wideand not shallow experience, and his gift for colloquial language,rendered for his contemporaries he life of their own times. Putmore philosophically, the distinctionis this: It takes more of anact of will to put pictorialeffect into a novel (and to receive it)than to put it on the stage- it's there already. Hence the novelist


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GEORGE EMPHILL 51and the playwright are two different varieties of Nietzsche'sAugenmensch the playwrighthas more of the Ohrenmensch nhim. James put his poetic dramas into the form of novels andsacrificedthereby much of the moral persuasive force possible inprose narrative;Hemingway, as purer, appetitive Augenmensch,writes moral tracts for our times. I maybe dead wrong, but I feel,the world being what it is nowadays, that the novelist needs moreof the Augenmenischn him and less of the Ohrenmensch.In Our Time has its share of crudities,which would no doubtdisgust a sensibilitynurturedon James. But consider the harassedsensibility of the man who, within a week, reads or rereads insequenceIn Our Time, The Ambassadors,Antony and Cleopatra,and Lycidas. Would he finish each work with a measured sense ofdisgust at the limitations of its predecessor?He should not, ofcourse: he should reflect,Here are four reputablecraftsmen work-ing in differentmediumsand unto differentends - the ends seemlegitimate.

I could have chosen a better work of Hemingway's for mydiscussion either The Sun Also Rises or A Farewell to Arms- except that I believe In Our Time shows moreplainly than thesenovels the excellences and limitations of Hemingway's non-Jamesianmoralvision. The faults of In OurTinze are glaring, butthey throw the good parts into high relief. The book is ofanomalous form; one hesitates as much to call it a novel as acollection of short stories. Even in the Modern LibraryEditionofThe Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, although thetitle is left out, the chapternumberingsand the epigraphsprintedin italics are retained. I think we can find evidence that the bookshould be judged neither as a novel nor as a collection of shortstories, but as something halfway between; and the limitations ofthis peculiar form- if it can be called a form at all - are notthe same as the limitations of In -Our Time. I feel, for example,that if all the stories about Nick Adams were collected and en-titled "In Our Time" they would not have the structurewhich In


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52 KENYON EVEWOur Time does have. "The Killers" and "Now I LayMe" mightfit, but "Fathersand Sons" and "A Way You'll Never Be" wouldnot.The unifying principle of In Our Time is the author'sthematicobsession; if we fail to discover this obsession we see only theghost or parody of a structure; i.e., alternating epigraphs andstoriesconcernedwitth randomcrueltyabroadin the contemporarylandscape. James, of course, would insist upon a more formalstructure,one whichwould standup whetherhe had any obsessionsor not. (We can be sure he had.) But this is not to say thatthematicunity is necessarily nferior to any formal sort of unity.On the contrary,I often feel that thematicstructure s best suitedto the medium of prose fiction, and that formal structure s whatwe expect in poetic drama. It was probablythis thematicprincipleof unity which EdmundWilson was tryingto uncoverin his Pref-ace to In Our Time:

Life is fine: the woods are enjoyable; ishingis enjoyable;being with one's friends s enjoyable; ven the War is enjoyable.But the brutality f life is always here,and it is somehowboundup with the enjoyment.Bullfights re especially njoyable.EvenNick'sfishing-trip, henhe is awayby himselfhappyandfree inthewoods,hasaspectswhichmustmaket unique monghefishing-tripsof literature for through ll Nick'stranquil xhilarationearemadeconsciousn a curiouswayof the crueltynvolved or thefish andnot only this, buteven of the martyrdomf the grass-hoppersused for bait. The conditionof life is still pain andeverycalm or contentedurface till vibrateswith its pangs.Mr. Wilson concludes his paraphraseby saying that "the resolu-tion of that discord in art makes the beauty of Hemingway'sstories";but we will have to be less general.The raw materials of In Our Time seem to be of two sorts:the autobiographical,and the socio-historic. I may seem to bemaking a naive and unrewardingobservation-since all writers'raw materials are probablytheir own lives and the life of theirtimes-but in Hemingway's case the observation is necessary;


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GEORGEHEMPHILL 53it bears on our problem of evaluation. You have to know moreabout Hemingway the man than James the man. This does notmake Hemingway necessarily inferior, but simply more prosaic.I suppose that the scale from anonymityto its opposite is roughlythe same as the scale from poetry to prose, but it is not the same(as I once fondly believed) as the scale from good to bad. Wehave in each case to examine the quality of what is anonymousand what is onymous. This means digging into the given text.The stories in In Our Time are variations on a single theme.We can say that the stories are good in proportionas they seem tobe fit correlativeobjectsfor that theme. This is not a subtlekind ofquestion-begging saying first, Here is the theme ordained andthen, This is bad because it does not fit the theme - so long aswe can be sure, by finding evidence in the text, that Hemingwayknew sometimes what his theme was and sometimes was onlygroping for it. When he is groping he seems to be giving us rawmaterial out of his own life or out of the social history of histimes. Thus "A Very Short Story" is a very bad story, I think,because it is only the raw materialwhich Hemingway later workedup as A Farewell to Arms. In the early story the only reason givenfor the breakup of the wartime love affair is quite an accident,excessively naturalistic, dramatically nert, and more cynical thanit need be under the circumstances:

He wentto America n a boat from Genoa. Luzwent back oPordononeo open a hospital. It was lonely and rainy here,andtherewasa battalion f arditiquarteredn the town. Living n themuddy,rainy own in the winter, he majorof the battalionmadelove to Luz, and she had neverknownItaliansbefore,and finallywrote o the States hat theirshad been only a boy and girl affair.

In transformingthis "scenario,"as Edmund Wilson calls it, intoA Farewell to Arms, Hemingway makes a meaningless accidentinto a social tragedy;he builds up the scene andopposes the loversto it, achieving the sort of dramayou find in The Duchess of Malfiand The Wild Palms. Another story, "The End of Something,"


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54 KENYON EVIEWfails because no necessary connection (other than biographical,perhaps) between the end of the boy and girl affairbetween Nickand Marjorie and the end of the old lumberingdays in Michiganis suggested. The failure is somewhatmitigated, however, by thecomic relief of the sequel to the story, "The Three-Day Blow."There is a story possible in the material of "The End of Some-thing," but Hemingway has not written it up, and I dare say itwould not be his kind of story if it were written up. A littleAgrarian sentiment injected into the story would make it a finelittle tract with the message: The wages of acquisitivenessisdeath. Just as the lumberkings of Michiganat the end of the lastcenturydenuded the pine forests by overcutting,the young loverskilled their love by going ahead with it too fast. But in "TheThree-Day Blow" we find out it had been the girl's mother whoruinedthe affair. This is dramaticallyextraneousand absurd.I have said that In Our Time lacks formal structure;but oncewe discover the thematic structurewe shall see that this is notwholly true. The first half of the book is concernedwith whathas been called an "enveloping situation"; that is, we are madeaware, in variousways, of the conditionsof heroism. Life is cruel,some people stand up to it, others do not, and the reasonswhysome people cannotstand up are sometimesgood, sometimesbad,often contingent. When Hemingway is able to dramatizefor usthe conditionsof heroismhe is getting above his autobiographicaland socio-historicmaterial. He is being scenically persuasive.Thesecond half of the book, except probably "Big Two-HeartedRiver," is concerned with Insiders and Outsiders, those who areaware of the "envelopingsituation,"the conditionsof heroism,andthose who are outside it. Hemingway's writing is slightly offen-sive when we find that we must take him personally,and probablyNick too, as an Insider; it is highly moral in so far as we can takeNick Adams as a bewilderedand attractiveprojectionof Heming-way and not Hemingway himself. The last section of the book,the two parts of "Big Two-Hearted River," puts, quite neatly


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GEORGE EMPHILL 55in our terms, the Insider Outside, speculating on how far Outsidehe may dare go:

He wished he had brought something to read. He felt likereading. He did not feel like going on into the swamp. He lookeddown the river. A big cedarslantedall the way acrossthe stream.Beyond that the river went into the swamp.Nick did not want to go in there. He felt a reactionagainstdeep wading with the water deepening up under his armpits, tohookbig trouts n places mpossibleo landthem. In the swampthe bankswerebare, and big cedarscametogetheroverhead,hesun didnot come hrough, xcept n patches;n the fastdeepwater,in the half light, thefishingwouldbe tragic.In the swamp ishingwas a tragicadventure.Nick did notwant it. He did not wanttogo downthestream nyfurtheroday....Nick stoodup on the log, holdinghis rod, the landingnethangingheavy,then stepped nto the waterand splashedashore.He climbed he bankandcut up into the woods,toward he highground.He wasgoingback o camp. He lookedback. The riverjust showed hrough he trees. Therewereplentyof dayscomingwhenhe couldfish the swamp.In the parts of In Our Time that I can return to with interest,a local detailalwaysgives a contingentreasonfor a character'sinability o standup to theordinary rueltyof 20thCenturyife.In this respect find the epigraph o ChapterV at the thematiccenter of the book:

They shot the six cabinetministersat half-pastsix in themorning gainsthewallof ahospital.Therewerepoolsof water nthe courtyard.Therewerewet deadleaveson the paving of thecourtyard. t rainedhard. All the shutters f the hospitalwerenailed shut. One of the ministerswas sick with typhoid. Twosoldierscarriedhim downstairsnd out into the rain. Theytriedto hold him up against he wall but he sat down in a puddleofwater.Theother ivestoodveryquietlyagainst hewall. Finally heofficer old the soldiers t was no good tryingto makehim standup. When they fired the first volleyhe was sittingdown in thewaterwithhis headon hisknees.

In this passageeachdescriptive etail the pools of water,thewet dead leaves, etc.-contributes, if ratherindirectly, o theroughnotionwhichseems o beHemingway'sbsession:hatLife


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56 KENYON EVEWis cruel just as War is cruel. But Hemingway never speaks sogenerally: he selects and records certain details of speech, dress,custom, action, and landscape. The cabinet ministers were shotwhen it was raining. Rain water is cold, wet, and nasty. Heming-way wants us to know how Nick knew that Life is cruel so thatwe will know that Life is cruel. The passage is scenically per-suasive. But at the same time, something more importantis putbefore us, and it is put narratively and dramatically. Althoughthere were six cabinet ministers who were to be shot, one wasunfortunate enough to be sick with typhoid. It is an historicalaccident that cabinet ministers must be shot, but the accident thatgives one of the ministers typhoid makes the incident dramatic.Typhoid is the contingencywhich prevents the one cabinet ministerfrom dying heroically. He is neither an Insidernor an Outsider;it is impossibleto jeer at him or feel sorryfor him or, of course,topraise him. He is a representative Hemingway figure. He isclosely akin to the Indian in "Indian Camp"who cuts his throatwhile his wife suffers and lives through a caesarean section. Inthis case also the cause of his trouble is accidental:

"Yousee, Nick, babies resupposedo be bornhead irstbutsome-timesthey'renot. When theyarenot theymakea lot of troubleforeveryone.Maybe 'll have o operate n this lady."Unsympatheticreadersof Hemingway call this sort of accident,and the unpleasantnessthat results, "randombrutality." But thiscriticism involves one in extra-literarydiscussion: whether in theexhibit of random brutality we see the hand of Social Forces,God, whatnot, or Hemingway. Skirting this problem, we shouldonly remark hat Hemingway's choiceof violent subjectmatterhasits dangers, and that when he is not at his best his accidentsarearbitrary,giving Hemingway a chance to pose, and leading toeffects which are sentimental or precious. The death of CatherineBarkeleydoes not call forth these effects,I think, but the death ofRobertJordandoes. It is hard to tell how long the Hemingwaywritings will outlast the sort of world they report.


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GEORGE EMPHILL 57Cases of the ambiguouslyheroicand non-heroicstatureof theirmain charactersare always coming up in these stories. Thesecharacters tend to show the famous tight-lipped vision-of-evilHemingwayvisage. Thus in "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife"a siege of pneumonia is the accidental reason for the unpleasantsituation Nick's father has to face. The Indian Dick Boultonowes Doctor Adams "a lot of moneyfor pulling his squawthrough

pneumonia" and "wanted to start a row so he wouldn't have totake it out in work." Dick is a big man, and it would have beenfoolhardy rather than courageous for Nick's father to fight withhim; but Doctor Adams feels ignominy just the same, and further-more, poor man, cannot explain the matter to his wife, who is aChristianScientist."Dear, don't hink,I reallydon'tthink hatanyonewould doa thing like that.""No?"the doctor aid."No. I can'treallybelieve thatanyonewoulddo that sort ofthing intentionally."

Mrs. Adams has the last word here (her attitude toward evil re-sembles that of some of Hemingway's early audience) but thestory ends on the flat stoical note (is there an exclamation markanywhere in Hemingway?):"I knowwhere here'sblack quirrels,Daddy,"Nick said."All right," aid his father,"let'sgo there."

Doctor Adams is clearlythe spiritualfather of all the good peoplein Hemingway- the Insiders afraid of the Outside but above it.The most concise picture of this sort of figure is given in theepigraph of ChapterXIII:I heard hedrums omingdown he streetandthen the fifesandthe pipesand thenthey camearound he corner,all dancing. Thestreetswere full of them. Maerasaw him and then I saw him.Whenthey stopped he music or the crouchhe huncheddown inthestreetwiththemall andwhen heystartedt againhe jumpedupand wentdancingdown the streetwith them. He was drunkaFl

right.


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58 KENYON EVIEWYou go down after him, said Maera, he hates me.So I went down and caught up with them and grabbed himwhile he was crouched down waiting for the music to breakloose and said, Come on Luis. For Christ's sake you've got bullsthis afternoon. He didn't listen to me, he was listening so hardforthe music to start.I said, Don't be a damn fool Luis. Come on back to the hotel.Then the musicstartedup again and he jumped up and twistedaway from me and starteddancing. I grabbedhis armand he pulled

loose and said, Oh leave me alone. You're not my father.I went back to the hotel and Maerawas on the balcony ookingout to see if I'd be bringinghim back. He went insidewhen he sawme and came downstairsdisgusted.Well, I said, after all he's just an ignorantMexicansavage.Yes, Maera said, and who will kill his bulls after he gets acogida?We, I suppose, I said.Yes, we, said Maera. We kills the savages' bulls, and thedrunkards'bulls, and the riau-riaudancers' bulls. Yes. We killthem. We kill them all right. Yes. Yes. Yes.Maera dies, however, in the sequel, and is one of the authenticHemingway tragic heroes. It should not bother us much that he isjust a bullfighter ("Who were these bullfighters anyway?" thesubstitute bullfight critic of a Madrid newspaper asks: "Kids andbums") and not a king or a cultivated sensibility. The tragedy ofsituation rather than that of character is so common in modernliterature that it has to be judged each time in its own terms.Maera discovers what the son of the jockey in "My Old Man"discovers: that the race is not always to the swift.

The really unpleasant stories in In Our Time are concernedwith the absurdity of Outsiders. Hemingway's scorn for those whoseem to be unaware of moral uncertainty in our times, and theneed for heroic discipline, is at times almost masochistic. Thescorn at any rate produces some cheap satire. Mr. and Mrs. Elliot,who keep trying to have a baby, Mr. Elliot meanwhile writing"very long poems very rapidly," and Mrs. Elliot meanwhile find-ing a girl friend to sleep with and have many a good cry with,are not worth Hemingway's attention or anybody else's. Nur are


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GEORGE EMPHILL 59the rich Americansin "Out of Season"who do not take the localcustoms seriously. These people are contrastedtoo patly with theInsiders (they can ski well) Nick and George, and Villalta (whocan kill a bull handsomely).Robert Penn Warren has observed that Hemingway cannotcreate a large variety of characters. In this iniportant respect,Mr. Warren feels, Hemingway is clearly inferior to WilliamFaulkner, and also to Henry James. Whenever -Ilemingwayriesto write about the Elliots of this world, or the rich people in ToHave and Have Not, he does not give them half a chance. Jamestoo had his Insiders and as Hemingway's Insiders are remark-ably like Hemingway himself, James's Insiders also resembleJames but he treated his Outsiders as flat charactersnecessaryfor his structure, and never was scornful in any ungentlemanlyway toward them. Mr. Warren has put his finger on the mainlimitation Hemingway's books have, and he goes on to justifythis limitation: The communityof people fit for being either anaudience or a subject for reputablefictionhas greatly shrunk sincethe beginning of the present century. The shrinkage must havebeen always in the back of Henry James'smind as he proceededto write more and more fully about smaller and smaller actions, ashis "central intelligence" became more and more a refined andsensitive gentleman, as fewer people read him, and as more andmore businessmenlooked down from their office windows, as heremarks n The AmericanScene, on the spire of Trinity Church.Hemingway at his best meets this shrinkage. Nick Adams has asense of the past and what is lost, and does the best he can.The writings of Jameswill probablyoutlast those of Heming-way, but I feel that the Jamesvision is not to be rehad, while theHemingway vision should be examined and, if possible, clarified.After all, Hemingway was not thinking of Henry James, whomhe admired,when he wrote

that while decorumis an excellent thing some must be indecorousif the race is to be carriedon since the position prescribed or pro-


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60 KENYON EVIEWcreation s indecorous,highly indecorous,and it occurred o me thatperhaps that is what these people {the Humanists] are, or were:the children of decorouscohabitation. But regardlessof how theystartedI hope to see the finish of a few, and speculatehow wormswill try that long preserved sterility; with their quaint pamphletsgone to bust and into footnotesall their lust.

This passage shows as much the strength and weakness of ourtime as it shows the strengthand the weakness heavy and bitterand not quite adult irony of Hemingway. The Humanists areno more a worthy opponent of Hemingway's Insiders than are theElliot people. They are too much the straw men Hemingwayhim-self sets up to knock down: the "story" in which the passageoccurs is more nearly persuasive prose than fiction; i.e., even lessanonymousthan fiction.

The formula "HJ plus EH" will probably not go; but thisis no reason for despair. There can never again be a HenryJames world, and meanwhile it is good to have a Hemingwayaround.

Hemingway and James

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