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 unfolded with Eaton supplying the prose bridges and other necessary information. The Overland Trail accom plishes what most single histories cannot hope to: it catches the essence of the hardships, sufferings, and occasional joys of the travelers. It is this sort of book that, save actually living through it, comes as close as possible to placing a reader in another time, another place. Most of the diaries are written in unadorned, matter-of-fact prose, and because of this simplicity both the sorrows and satisfactions are intensified. A young child’s death is reported: 152 Western American Literature About midnight our neighbor approached our campfire and told us that his only child had just died and he 'had come to solicit aid to bury it. We promised that in the morning his wants should be attended to. We had an empty cracker box which we made answer for a coffin, dug a grave in the middle of the road and deposited the dead child therein. The sun had just risen and was a spectator to that mother’s grief as she turned slowly but sadly away from that little grave to pursue the long journey before her. We filled the grave with stone and dirt, and when we rolled out drove over it. Perhaps we had cheated the wolf by so doing — perhaps not. (p. 41) As the journey progresses, human tendencies, stripped of their social trappings, are intensified: This much I have learned since I started across the continent, that if there is anything in the world that will bring to the surface a man’sbad traits, it is a trip across the continent with an ox team. In honor and justice to our little family, I must say that we have thus far gotten along together splendidly, without any display whatever, more especially since scenes as we have witnessed by the roadside today. And the school of experience which we are daily passing through, witnessing scenes so repulsive and disgust ing, would almost drive one to believe that the whole human race, with but few exceptions, were hypocrites, (p. 173) Yet with the cholera, dysentery, price-gouging at way stations, the loss of family and friends, and depression bred of thousands of miles of trails, there was still enough trust and mutual assistance to sustain the fittest to the end. Unlike the earlier stampede for gold, there were almost no wild-eyed treasure seekers in 1852. They were plain, if not ordinary, people heading west hoping for something...