Hemingway's Short Stories: Reflections on Teaching, Reading, and Understanding ed. by Frederic J. Svoboda (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Hemingway's Short Stories: Reflections on Teaching, Reading, and Understanding ed. by Frederic J. Svoboda Joy Landeira Frederic J. Svoboda, ed. Hemingway's Short Stories: Reflections on Teaching, Reading, and Understanding. Kent State UP, 2019. 136p. "All you have to do is write one true sentence; write the truest sentence that you know," counselled Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, his memories of 1920s Paris. Heeding his advice for truth telling, the truest sentence I can write about Kent State's "Teaching Hemingway" series is that it will make you want to teach and read Hemingway in new ways and in old ways, again and again. Boasting over nine volumes, the collection, edited by Mark P. [End Page 85] Ott and Susan F. Beegel, has been featured in our recent Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature book review sections of issues 73.2 and 74.1. This fitting testimony to the impact of the series and the significance of Hemingway for many RMMLA scholars also has an ulterior motive to pique your interest in preparation for our upcoming 2020 convention in October in Boulder, Colorado. The featured Keynote speaker will be Hemingway's great-granddaughter, Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, author of Ernest's Way: An International Journey through Hemingway's Life. The biography and travel guide explores the influence of the places where he lived and worked upon his life and writing. To encourage you and your students on your own journey through Hemingway's short stories, I enthusiastically recommend Editor Frederic J. Svoboda's newest volume in the series, Hemingway's Short Stories: Reflections on Teaching, Reading, and Understanding. Whether you are a veteran teacher who includes Hemingway in every syllabus or a reader who hasn't studied him since high school, these thirteen approachable essays by master teachers from secondary, post-secondary, and post-graduate levels will inspire you to return to the master storyteller once again. Several essays walk teachers through a typical—or not so typical—lesson and illustrate how to guide students through dialogue and details to elicit and incite their participation and critical thinking. For example, Peter Hays's lead essay "First Things, Teaching 'Indian Camp'" travels through the classic initiation tale of how a young Nick Adams watches his father Dr. Adams perform a cesarean operation late at night. Here, the importance of questioning techniques—not just what to ask, but when and how to pose them, and how to raise more questions, demonstrates how discussion unfolds and prompts continued debate. Careful, deep reading and attention to thematic and technical components address both touchy and touching subjects. Commentary and reflections about "The Battler" spark contemporary approaches to race relations in two timely articles by Marc Dudley and John Beall. Beall's suggestions for group free writing and Donald A. Daikor's use of pre-writing model teaching strategies that entice students to discover for themselves the importance of "story showing," not just story telling. Kinetic learners will literally jump out of their seats to heft [End Page 86] Frederic J. Svoboda's 60-plus-pound backpack filled with the list of supplies that Nick mentions in "Big Two-Hearted River." This clever realia and reality approach resonates with his students who are familiar with fishing and camping in upper Michigan. Another form of reality—Reality TV and the Discovery Channel—serves Patrick Bonds well for teaching "The Last Good Country" virtually and for stimulating students to write their own conclusions to the unfinished novella. Verna Kale solves real-time conundrums by having students perform texts. They experience palpable tension by reading the scene about a couple contemplating an abortion in "Hills Like White Elephants" out loud, acting out the motions, and duplicating the awkward pauses and prolonged silences of a 5-minute dialogue spread across a 35-minute wait for the train to arrive. Likewise, acting out the waiters' dialogue in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," illustrates the much-contested question about which one is speaking. An emphasis on writing—not just Hemingway's style, but on developing the student's own prowess—resurfaces throughout most of the essays, including up-to-date usage of digital resources and electronic databases to...