The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Critical Essays ed. by Jackson J. Benson

Abstract

Reviews 339 The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Critical Essays, edited with an overview and checklist by Jackson J. Benson. (Durham: Duke University Press, April 1975. 375 pp. cloth, $11.75, paper, $4.75.) The Hemingway industry despite exaggerated reports of its death by Philip Young, who washed hishands of the whole business for the third time at last count, is alive and well. An intelligent and useful work like Benson’s attests to present health and very rosy future for scholarly Hemingway production. The author of Hemingway: The Writer’s Art of Self-Defense (1969) and co-editor, with Richard Astro, of Hemingway In Our Time (1974), leads a revitalized interest in Hemingway’s work, particularly the short stories, for their literary not biographical value.Benson’s monograph appropriately returns our attention upon Hemingway’s work itself, and away from personal reminiscences and far-reaching influence studies. The author’s short story focus is not without justification. Since the appearance of Philip Young’s The Nick Adams Stories (1972), Francis Macomber, Mr. Frazer, Harry, and Nick Adams have been getting critical attention earlier reserved for Jake Barnes, Frederick Henry, Robert Jordan, and Santiago. Benson’s challenge to find “eight or ten stories” by another modem American besides Hemingway which have had as much influence “on the whole of modern literature and language” is well founded. The author succeeds admirably in his goal to gather quality essays with a wide range of commentary. The result is a book useful to both seasoned Hemingway scholar and novice student reader. The essays are divided into three parts: “Story Groupings,” “Story Technique,” and “Story Interpreta­ tions,” with the author’s “Overview” providing a summary section. Glancing through these thirty essays we encounter classic discussions of popular stories like Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn-Warren’s piece on “The Killers,” as well as more recent studies of revived stories such as Martin Light’s “Of Wasteful Deaths: Hemingway’s Stories about the Spanish War.” Benson’s own thirty-eight page “Overview,” called “Ernest Hemingway as Short Story Writer,” unfortunately does not offer many fresh insights. There is a conceptual problem in attempting to analyze a forty year career and over fifty short stories in a single essay. Moreover, this essay offers few firsthand ideas concerning themes and techniques in the stories. Hemingway’s newspaper apprenticeship, the influence of Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein, and the incorporation of personal experience into fiction are hardly original observations about Ernest Hemingway. Heming­ way’s prose as a product of Ezra Pound’s Imagistic influences is the most original concept in the essay. Benson’s “Comprehensive Checklist” is a useful list of Hemingway short story scholarship through 1974, and his individual story list displays the critical history and popularity of any single short story. The large recent number of essays on the Nick Adams stories reflects their current popularity. 340 Western American Literature While the publications on old favorites like “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” reveal a constant critical admiration. The “monster” checklist does not “overcome its creator” as Benson fears. The result is a victory for both author and his subject as Ernest Hemingway’s literary reputation not only endures but prevails four­ teen years after his death. GREGORY S. SOJKA, Indiana University A Glimpse of Nothingness: Experiences in an American Zen Community. By Janwillem van de Wetering. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975. 184 pp. $6.95.) Like the best-seller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, this book deals with transcending the Western mentality. As Frank Waters, Gary Snyder, Carlos Castaneda, and other writers have been telling us, we seem to be guilty of an unbalanced way of viewing the world. We whiteWestem -European-urban people don’t trust our feelings or our intuition. We revere rationalism so much as to become caricatures — all head. We have tried to force other people and the world of nature, which we consider the “outside” world, to act in agreement with our projected vision. All the wisdom of religion and the insight of love, and all the facts of nature go against this Faustian, imperialistic mentality, but we have struggled to maintain...