Hemingway in Our Time by Richard Astro, Jackson J. Benson

Abstract

150 Western American Literature Journey with Genius (1951), or even more recently, Joseph Foster’s slight D. H. Lawrence in Taos (1972), continue to plague us with their unfulfilled promises of special access to Lawrence. And Sander’s book also saves us from the formalists who would divorce the novels from historical events, politics, society— in short, from the landscape to which they meaningfully relate. There is in Sanders’s approach the risk that the unique genius of a writer may be lost in the attempt to describe its origin and growth, but throughout his book, Lawrence’s passionate intensity is kept in focus and the felt impact of the works is heightened, not vitiated. D. H. Lawrence: The World of the Five Major Novels is not an exploitation of the current fad in some humanist circles for anything that sounds like social science. This new book, in fact, makes it easier to talk about Lawrence as James once insisted we must be able to talk about all literature — in terms of the web of life— and it thus warrants the serious attention of students of Lawrence and of modem literary criticism. JOSEPH BAIM, Carnegie-Mellon University Hemingway in Our Time. Edited by Richard Astro and Jackson J. Benson. With an Introduction by Jackson J. Benson. Corvallis: Oregon State Uni­ versity Press, 1973. v + 214 pp. $8.00. In the spring of 1973 a Hemingway conference was held at Oregon State University. Here is its published record: with an introduction, a baker’s dozen of articles on Hemingway. The volume’s contents being largely transcriptions of the talks as delivered, its style profits from an over-all liveliness and informality. The Preface announces not merely “another book of Hemingway criticism” but a concentration on Hemingway’s literary reputation, his late and posthumous works, and his influence on contemporary fiction. Only vaguely does performance match promise, but no matter. If there are no studies per se of Hemingway’s reputation or of the influence of his fiction (yet Peter Hays explores Hemingway’s debt to Fitzgerald, Faith Norris finds parallels with Proust, and Gerry Brenner’s reconsideration of To Have and Have Not is as classical tragedy), several of the essays that do not address any of the announced topics are among the best in the volume: Robert Lewis on Hemingway’s sense of place, John Griffith on Hemingway and ritual, and Richard Lehan on Hemingway in his time (and not on Hemingway’s “Reputation”). The volume’s heaviest concentration, there­ Reviews 151 fore — and its greatest single strength — is on Hemingway’s late and post­ humous fiction and memoirs, an area thoroughly and ably explored by Philip Young, George Wickes, Joseph DeFalco, and Delbert Wylder. Yet if Hemingway’s Roman Catholicism (John Pratt) and The Metaphysical Dimension of Hemingway’s Style (Michael Friedberg) qualify for inclusion only in another book of Hemingway criticism, Hemingway criticism will still be the richer therefor. I wish that Jackson Benson and George Wickes would, if not retract the insistence on Hemingway’s “Midwestern, middle-class Americanism” or repudiate Gertrude Stein’s quip that he was “ninety percent Rotarian,” at least add that the remaining ten percent — the aristocratic, hedonistic, literary craftsman, the death-haunted expatriate — is the Ernest Hemingway worthy of the conference that produced this book. But enough of this drutherism. Since Professor Astro hopes that Hemingway in Our Time will moti­ vate Hemingway criticism, not undermine it, that it will broaden future assessments of the Hemingway canon rather than constrict them, he is owed a prediction that he and Professor Benson will succeed. The tone of the contributions of these essays will certainly further such admirable ends. Not a trace of Papa’s malicious jealousy mars this volume’s contents. The many Hemingway critics whose contributions are cited herein surely must feel themselves fellow-guests at a feast of learning. EDWARD STONE, Ohio University The Overland Trail to California in 1852■ By Herbert Eaton. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974. 330 pages, $8.95). Herbert Eaton’s book is a valuable and ultimately satisfying one. Drawn from diaries, reminiscences, and newspapers, a narrative account of the arduous pilgrimage westward is...