Laurence W. Mazzeno, The Critics and Hemingway, 1924–2014: Shaping an American Literary Icon

Abstract

Laurence W. Mazzeno, The Critics and Hemingway, 1924-2014: Shaping an American Literary Icon. Camden House, 2015, 302 pp., $85, cloth. It implies no criticism of the rest of the book to say that the most impressive section of The Critics and Hemingway is the Works Cited. These fifty pages may not list everything published on Hemingway since 1924, the date of the first of what became a tidal wave of publications set off by the man and his work; but Laurence Mazzeno has aspired to read everything of any significance that expressly takes Hemingway or his writing as a topic. He has further aspired to report on all this stuff, and to provide a summary, with at least one representative quotation, from most of the items cited, organized in a way that will bring out first the chronology of commentary on Hemingway, and second its themes. Regarding chronology, the book covers nine decades of Hemingway criticism in ten chapters, so that--with some variations--each chapter reports on a decade's worth of work. The interest of this macrostructure is that it permits readers to see how the nature of the subject changed over time. To a large extent, of course, it is his works that constitute Hemingway, and which ones mattered changed not only during when he was alive and publishing, but also posthumously, since no decade has yet passed without Hemingway material appearing. But to an equal extent the subject has been the person himself, and the things that have interested critics about his character, behavior, and relationships have changed drastically. Within chapters, Mazzeno has grouped responses by type (i.e., Midcentury Assessments) to provide some sense of organization and pattern in what might otherwise seem a numbing series of paraphrases of material on index cards--or whatever the equivalent may be in a digital era. In chapters on later decades, when Hemingway criticism became largely academicized, the groupings become thematic (i.e., Gender, Race, and Ethnic Studies). Regarding themes in Hemingway criticism, Mazzeno effectively demonstrates the trends in literary analysis, in particular the fascination exercised on the New Critics by the iceberg technique he used (basically of telling little but implying much). This style of narrative was perfect for the kind of close reading that became the academic standard during the second quarter of the twentieth century. Mazzeno also provides a good record of the numerous revisionist approaches that sustained Hemingway studies into new century (on which more below). But what stands out most strongly in this account is that almost from the beginning interest in the writings competed with the interest in Hemingway the man, the legend, and eventually the icon. Hemingway's celebrity might seem a ludicrous distraction from his literary achievements, yet it cannot be ignored. Much of each chapter in this book is taken up with Hemingway's public persona, the question of his decline (literary and personal), the cultural stereotypes associated with him, and, alas, gossip about his private life. Aside from anything else, Hemingway was and has remained a best-selling writer, and the role of money in relation to the continued circulation of his work becomes a significant topic in Mazzeno's account. Although this compendium is well done--even very well done--as far as it goes, the question arises as to what purpose it might serve. Mazzeno does not say much about this in his introduction, where one might expect an author to explain why he wrote a book (and why we should read it, or how we might use it). He does make clear several things that the book is not. For one thing, it is not an annotated bibliography, intended to guide novice readers among the primary and secondary documents: there already exist impressive works of this kind, which belong to the corpus Mazzeno surveys. Nor does The Critics and Hemingway constitute a fan's notes: Mazzeno calls himself an outsider to the community of Hemingway scholars (9), who has aimed to record the development of that community. …