What He Says about “the Cat”: Enrique Vila-Matas on Hemingway’s “Cat in the Rain”

Abstract

In his metafictional novel Never Any End to Paris , Enrique Vila-Matas invites an audience to help him understand Hemingway’s story “Cat in the Rain” so as to write his own story, “What They Said about the Cat.” The audience’s responses recapitulate the story’s critical history, which Vila-Matas augments by observing that the dialogue of the husband and wife in the story mirrors dialogue between Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast . Although the conversation with Fitzgerald cannot explain “Cat in the Rain,” as Vila-Matas imagines, the story may explain Hemingway’s later characterization of Fitzgerald.