Hemingway, Cuba, and the Cuban Works ed. by Larry Grimes, Bickford Sylvester (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Hemingway, Cuba, and the Cuban Works ed. by Larry Grimes, Bickford Sylvester Hilary K. Justice Hemingway, Cuba, and the Cuban Works. Edited by Larry Grimes and Bickford Sylvester . Kent OH : Kent State UP , 2014 . 383 pp. Cloth $65 . This volume’s raison d’être is self-evident; its goals ambitious: to present an array of international voices on Hemingway, Cuba, Hemingway-in-Cuba, and the Cuban works. The work contains twenty-one pieces in diverse genres from past and present voices, resulting in a collective that deconstructs definitions of scholarly standards yet nonetheless stands as a fascinating testimonial on the past thirty years of Hemingway studies. Scholars interested in any of these topics will find much of interest in this collection and are encouraged to turn first to Yoichiro Miyamoto’s essay (“‘Papa’ and Fidel: Cold War, Cuba, and Two Interpretive Communities” [180–93]) for an invaluable perspective whose thesis—that “. . . The Old Man and the Sea enables (and disables) both the U.S. and Cuban readings, thus allowing us to see the ways in which the colonial and the postcolonial are . . . not so much polarized as mutually reinforcing” (181)–applies by analogy to the volume as a whole. Like the Havana skyline, where Baroque Spanish imperial style abuts Soviet-era apartment blocks between 1950s-modern and buildings so decayed [End Page 99] as to offer inhabitants neither roof nor windows, this collection offers a set of juxtaposed, discrete stand-alones whose interstitial dialogue the editors usually leave to the reader (exceptions occurring when the status of an individual entry requires editorial commentary). Of particular note are the essays from Cuban scholars, primary historical documents, and works on Cuban history. The interwoven timeline of Hemingway-era Cuban history/Hemingway biography with which the work ends holds much potential for U.S. scholars for whom the Cold War proved (and still proves) an impediment to the kind of thorough research long underway on other periods in the writer’s life. As importantly, the volume offers the best critical work to date on To Have and Have Not (Mary Cruz’s essay, presented in translation) and Islands in the Stream. The entire section devoted to Islands, comprised of essays by Kim Moreland, Lawrence R. Broer, James Nagel, and Joseph M. DeFalco, is outstanding and astonishing in its uniform excellence. (After Miyamoto’s, run, do not walk, to those five.) The volume opens with a set piece by Gladys Rodriguez Fererro, former director of the Museo Ernest Hemingway in San Francisco de Paula, who describes the reputation of Hemingway amongst Cubans in general and the intelligentsia in particular. It begins with the statement “No”; jarring for a collection that, for better or worse, opens a new act in U.S./Cuban scholarly exchange. Rodriguez’s essay seeks to counter U.S. assumptions regarding Hemingway and Cuban scholars thereof; her own assumptions are occasionally strange (ascribing the supposed dismissal of Hemingway’s Cuba years by U.S. scholars not to the political realities of the Cold War [which is all but erased throughout the volume] but to hurt nationalistic pride regarding his choice of residence). Her assumptions of monolithic U.S. patriotism aside (assumptions interesting in themselves), Rodriguez’s descriptive analysis of Hemingway’s stature in Cuba provides a strong and welcome counterpoint to that he enjoys (?) in the U.S. academy, wherein Hemingway studies are often disenfranchised for reasons stemming from myth, not merit. Scott O. McClintock’s “The ‘Matter of Being Expatriots’” (102–22) and Ned Quevedo Arnaiz’s bibliographical essay “Hemingway: His Impact in the Cuban Press Today” (327–54) also engage the importance and impact of cultural narrative, a problematic which achieves fullest critical expression in Miyamoto’s essay. Miyamoto unpacks both national biases via insightful critical analysis of The Old Man and the Sea and its readings by Cuban and U.S. scholars, noting cogently and dispassionately that scholars on both sides of the embargo have [End Page 100] been (understandably) blinkered and thus blinded to Hemingway’s cross-cultural critique in his Cuban works. The point is extremely well made and, indeed, is the central object lesson of the collection in toto. Locating Miyamoto’s essay...