[new page]
appear from his first novel that this
rumor of modernity must have sprung
from his subject matter and from his
treatment of it rather than from any
fundamental novelty in his conception
of the art of fiction. It is a bare, abrupt,
outspoken book. Life as people live it in
Paris in 1927 or even in 1928 is described
as we of this age do describe life (it is
here that we steal a march upon the
Victorians), openly, frankly, without
prudery, but also without surprise. The
immoralities and moralities of Paris are
described as we are apt to hear them
spoken of in private life. Such candor
is modern and it is admirable. Then,
for qualities grow together in art as in
life, we find attached to this admirable
frankness an equal bareness of style.
Nobody speaks for more than a line or
two. Half a line is mostly sufficient. If
a hill or a town is described (and there
is always some reason for its description)
there it is, exactly and literally built up
of little facts, literal enough, but chosen,
as the final sharpness of the outline
proves, with the utmost care. Therefore,
a few words like these: “The grain was
just beginning to ripen and the fields
were full of poppies. The pasture land
was green and there were fine trees, and
sometimes big rivers and chateaux off in
the trees”—which have a curious force.
Each word pulls its weight in the sen-
tence. And the prevailing atmosphere is
fine and sharp, like that of winter days
when the boughs are bare against the
sky. (But if we had to choose one sen-
tence with which to describe what Mr.
Hemingway attempts and sometimes
achieves, we should quote a passage from
a description of a bullfight: “Romero
never made any contortions, always it
was straight and pure and natural in
line. The others twisted themselves like
corkscrews, their elbows raised and leaned
against the flanks of the bull after his
horns had passed, to give a faked look of
danger. Afterwards, all that was faked
turned bad and gave an unpleasant feel-
ing. Romero's bullfighting gave real
emotion, because he kept the absolute
purity of line in his movements and al-
ways quietly and calmly let the horns
pass him close each time.”) Mr. Heming-
way's writing, one might paraphrase,
gives us now and then a real emotion,
because he keeps absolute purity of line
in his movements and lets the horns
(which are truth, fact, reality) pass him
close each time. But there is something
faked, too, which turns bad and gives
an unpleasant feeling—that also we must
face in course of time.
And here, indeed, we may conveniently
pause and sum up what point we have
reached in our critical progress. Mr.
Hemingway is not an advanced writer
in the sense that he is looking at life
from a new angle. What he sees is a
tolerably familiar sight. Common ob-
jects like beer bottles and journalists fig-
ure largely in the foreground. But he
is a skilled and conscientious writer. He
has an aim and makes for it without
fear or circumlocution. We have, there-
fore to take his measure against some-
body of substance, and not merely line
him, for form's sake, beside the indis-
tinct bulk of some ephemeral shape
largely stuffed with straw. Reluctantly
we reach this decision, for this process
of measurement is one of the most diffi-
cult of a critic's tasks. He has to decide
which are the most salient points of the
book he has just read; to distinguish ac-
curately to what kind they belong, and
then, holding them against whatever
model is chosen for comparison, to bring
out their deficiency or their adequacy.
Recalling “The Sun Also Rises,” cer-
tain scenes rise in memory: the bull-
fight, the character of the Englishman,
Harris; here a little landscape which
seems to grow behind the people natu-
rally; here a long, lean phrase which
[new column]
goes curling round a situation like the
lash of a whip. Now and again this
phrase evokes a character brilliantly,
more often a scene. Of character, there
is little that remains firmly and solidly
elucidated. Something indeed seems
wrong with the people. If we place them
(the comparison is bad) against Tchek-
ov's people, they are flat as cardboard.
If we place them (the comparison is
better) against Maupassant's people they
are crude as a photograph. If we place
them (the comparison may be illegiti-
mate) against real people, the people we
liken them to are of an unreal type.
They are people one may have seen
showing off at some cafe; talking a
rapid high-pitched slang, because slang
is the speech of the herd, seemingly
much at their ease, and yet if we look
at them a little from the shadow not
at their ease at all, and, indeed, terribly
afraid of being themselves, or they would
say things simply in their natural voices.
So it would seem that the thing that is
faked is character; Mr. Hemingway
leans against the flanks of that particu-
lar bull after the horns have passed.
After this preliminary study of Mr.
Hemingway's first book, we come to the
new book, “Men Without Women,” pos-
sessed of certain views or prejudices. His
talent plainly may develop along differ-
ent lines. It may broaden and fill out;
it may take a little more time and go
into things—human beings in particular
—rather more deeply. And even if this
meant the sacrifice of some energy and
point, the exchange would be to our pri-
vate liking. On the other hand, his is
a talent which may contract and harden
still further! It may come to depend
more and more upon the emphatic mo-
ment; make more and more use of dia-
logue, and cast narrative and descript-
tion overboard as an encumbrance.
The fact that “Men Without Women”
consists of short stories, makes it prob-
able that Mr. Hemingway has taken the
second line. But before we explore the
new book, a word should be said which
is generally left unsaid, about the im-
plications of the title. As the publisher
puts it . . . “the softening feminine
influence is absent—either through
training, discipline, death, or situa-
tion.” Whether we are to understand
by this that women are incapable of
training, discipline, death, or situation,
we do not know. But it is undoubtedly
true, if we are going to persevere in our
attempt to reveal the processes of the
critic's mind, that any emphasis laid
upon sex is dangerous. Tell a man that
this is a woman's book, or a woman
that this is a man's, and you have
brought into play sympathies and an-
tipathies which have nothing to do with
art. The greatest writers lay no stress
upon sex one way or the other. The
critic is not reminded as he reads them
that he belongs to the masculine or the
feminine gender. But in our time,
thanks to our sexual perturbations, sex
consciousness is strong, and shows itself
in literature by an exaggeration, a pro-
test of sexual characteristics which in
either case is disagreeable. Thus Mr.
Lawrence, Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Joyce
partly spoil their books for women read-
ers by their display of self-conscious
virility; and Mr. Hemingway, but much
less violently, follows suit. All we can
do, whether we are men or women, is
to admit the influence, look the fact
in the face, and so hope to stare it out
of countenance.
To proceed then—“Men Without
Women” consists of short stories in the
French rather than in the Russian man-
ner. The great French masters,
Mérimée and Maupassant, made their
stories as self-sufficient and compact as
possible. There is never a thread left
hanging; indeed so contracted are they,
that when the last sentence of the last
page flares up, as it so often does, we
see by its light the whole circumference
and significance of the story revealed.
The Tchekov method is, of course, the
very opposite of this. Everything is
[new column]
cloudy and vague, loosely trailing
rather than tightly furled. The stories
move slowly out of sight like clouds in
the summer air, leaving a wake of mean-
ing in our minds which gradually fades
away. Of the two methods, who shall
say which is the better? At any rate,
Mr. Hemingway, enlisting under the
French masters, carries out their teach-
ing up to a point with considerable success.
There are in “Men Without Women”
many stories which, if life were longer,
one would wish to read again. Most
of them indeed are so competent, so
efficient, and so bare of superfluity that
one wonders why they do not make a
deeper dent in the mind than they do.
Take the pathetic story of the Major
whose wife died—“In Another Country”;
or the sardonic story of a conversation
in a railway carriage—“A Canary for
One”; or stories like “The Undefeated,”
and “Fifty Grand” which are full of
the sordidness and heroism of bullfight-
ing and boxing—all of these are good
trenchant stories, quick, terse and
strong. If one had not summoned the
ghosts of Tchekov, Mérimée, and
Maupassant, no doubt one would be en-
thusiastic. As it is, one looks about for
something, fails to find something, and
so is brought again to the old familiar
business of ringing impressions on the
counter, and asking what is wrong?
For some reason the book of short
stories does not seem to us to go as deep
or to promise as much as the novel. Per-
haps it is the excessive use of dialogue,
for Mr. Hemingway's use of it is surely
excessive. A writer will always be chary
of dialogue because dialogue puts the
most violent pressure upon the reader's at-
tention. He has to hear, to see, to sup-
ply the right tone, and to fill in the
background from what the characters
say without any help from the author.
Therefore, when fictitious people are al-
lowed to speak it must be because they
have something so important to say that
it stimulates the reader to do rather
more than his share of the work of cre-
ation. But, although Mr. Hemingway
keeps us under the fire of dialogue con-
stantly, his people, half the time, are
only saying what the author could say
much more economically for them. At
last we are inclined to cry out with the
little girl in “Hills Like White Elephants”
“Would you please please please please
please please stop talking?”
And probably it is this superfluity of
dialogue which leads to that other fault
which is always lying in wait for the
writer of short stories; the lack of pro-
portion. A paragraph in excess will
make these little craft lopsided and will
bring about that blurred effect which,
when one is out for clarity and point,
so baffles the reader. And both these
faults, the tendency to flood the page
with unnecessary dialogue and the lack
of sharp, unmistakable points by which
we can take hold of the story, come from
the more fundamental fact that, though
Mr. Hemingway is brilliantly and enor-
mously skillful, he lets his dexterity, like
the bullfighter's cloak, get between him
and the fact. For in truth story writing
has much in common with bullfighting.
One may twist one's self like a corkscrew
and go through every sort of contortion
so that the public thinks one is running
every risk and displaying superb gal-
lantry. But the true writer stands close
up to the bull and lets the horns—call
them life, truth, reality, whatever you
like,—pass him close each time.
Mr. Hemingway, then, is courageous;
he is candid; he is highly skilled; he
plants words precisely where he wishes;
he has moments of bare and nervous
beauty; he is modern in manner but not
in vision; he is self-consciously virile;
his talent has contracted rather than
expanded; compared with his novel his
stories are a little dry and sterile. So
we sum him up. So we reveal some of
the prejudices, the instincts and the
fallacies out of which what it pleases us
to call criticism is made.
