Hemingway’s Silmarillion?

My apologies for more than three weeks of dead air here at Lingwë. The culprit was a half-day presentation I gave on Tolkien, Gothic, Old Norse, and Old English at Texas A&M University at Commerce a couple weeks ago (first, the preparation for it kept me away; then, catching up on the rest of my to-do list). But an opinion piece I recently read — the latest chapter in an ongoing debate — prompts my return today.

As long-time readers will know, I’m a big fan of Ernest Hemingway. For example, I began (but haven’t managed to finish) a series of posts on Hemingway’s short stories. In the July 19 issue of the New York Times, A.E. Hotchner, long-time friend and later biographer of Hemingway, writes about a new edition of Hemingway’s posthumous memoir, A Moveable Feast. As Hotchner describes it, this is:

a significantly changed edition of Ernest Hemingway’s masterpiece, “A Moveable Feast,” first published posthumously by Scribner in 1964. This new edition, also published by Scribner, has been extensively reworked by a grandson who doesn’t like what the original said about his grandmother, Hemingway’s second wife.

The grandson has removed several sections of the book’s final chapter and replaced them with other writing of Hemingway’s that the grandson feels paints his grandma in a more sympathetic light. Ten other chapters that roused the grandson’s displeasure have been relegated to an appendix, thereby, according to the grandson, creating “a truer representation of the book my grandfather intended to publish.”

Hotchner then recounts his own friendship with Hemingway and personal involvement with the book during the late 1950’s, and he dismisses any claims by Seán Hemingway — whom Hotchner will not even name (he is simply “a grandson” with an axe to grind) — that Mary Hemingway “cobbled the manuscript together from shards of an unfinished work”, or that she herself invented the final chapter. Hotchner asserts that Hemingway “certainly intended it for publication”, and says moreover that the book as published is in fact “essentially” what Hemingway left behind. And he seems to be in a position to know. It was, in fact, Hotchner who suggested the title, “A Moveable Feast” (Hemingway’s own erstwhile description of Paris, he says).

And Hotchner’s indignation goes further. “Someone who inherits an author’s copyright is not entitled to amend his work,” he says. “With this reworking as a precedent, what will Scribner do, for instance, if a descendant of F. Scott Fitzgerald demands the removal of the chapter in ‘A Moveable Feast’ about the size of Fitzgerald’s penis, or if Ford Madox Ford’s grandson wants to delete references to his ancestor’s body odor.”

I think this is a legitimate cause for concern, but it bears pointing out that Seán Hemingway obviously sees things differently. Clearly, there are two sides to the story here.

In his review of the new edition, Christopher Hitchens describes the edition’s additions: ten additional sketches, followed by a selection of “fragments”. While readers may be glad to have them, one can (and probably should) ask whether Hemingway wanted them to be published at all, or published as part of this book. A question like this is often unanswerable; however, in this case Hemingway himself wrote that “for reasons sufficient to the writer [i.e., himself], many places, people, observations and impressions have been left out of this book.” By what right are they inserted back into it by a later editor, even if related by blood? Ah, but are these really Hemingway’s words at all? Seán Hemingway contends that the author’s preface was a fabrication!

If we believe Hotchner, the book was finished by Hemingway himself, who gave Hotchner “the completed manuscript of the Paris book to give to Scribner’s president.” It was certainly not entirely complete — it evidently had no title as yet, for example — but Hotchner says it was essentially a finished work. Why then is there such debate, why do so many contend it was “cobbled” or “pasted together” by Mary Hemingway? I admit I am no expert on the provenance of the manuscript(s). I wonder, though, whether the typescript Hotchner transported to the offices of Charles Scribner’s Sons in New York survives. If so, one should be able to turn to it for Hemingway’s own vision of the work, no? And if that were so, I can’t see what the fuss is all about. The fact that there is such a fuss, then, suggests there probably is no (surviving) typescript.

What troubles me more than the addition of the new material — which, honestly, I would like to read — is the removal of much of the final chapter, supposedly (but definitely? can we be so sure?) invented by Mary Hemingway. The scholarly approach would be to search the Paris notebooks for this material, but even if it weren’t found, that wouldn’t rule out Hemingway’s having written it from scratch in the late 1950’s in Cuba. Was this final “wistful paean to Hadley Richardson” a “removeable” feast? Alas, the jury is apparently still out.

All of this naturally reminds one of analogous situations with other deceased authors, their posthumous publications, and their Estates. Comparison to Tolkien’s unfinished “Silmarillion”, edited and published by his son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, is perhaps natural — though there are some major differences.

For one, Christopher Tolkien was much closer to his father than Seán Hemingway could be to Ernest — for the very obvious reason that Seán Hemingway was born after his grandfather’s 1961 suicide. He never met the man. Christopher Tolkien was therefore in a far superior position to know his father’s wishes for his book than Seán Hemingway could have been. Also, the state of the respective authors’ manuscripts is not really comparable, from what I know. Too, there is nobody analogous to Hotchner in Tolkien’s milieu. And while for their final books both Tolkien and Hemingway drew at their end of their lives on raw material written many decades earlier, an important distinction is that Tolkien was writing and revising this material almost the entire time; whereas, Hemingway hadn’t even seen the Paris notebooks in thirty years! (And there are plenty of other differences as well.)

Nevertheless, the problems and decisions confronting the editor of any posthumous publication are often very similar. And for two such beloved authors as Tolkien and Hemingway, the stakes in “getting it right” are high. Here, Seán Hemingway discusses specific differences between the Paris notebooks and the first published edition of A Moveable Feast. If you’ve read Doug Kane’s Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion, the rhetorical habiliments of Seán Hemingway’s argument may sound very familiar — from “snippets of text” to the “intentional and carefully conceived narrative device” to the “order of the chapters” to judgments that “this kind of editorial decision [...] seems completely unwarranted”. Any one of these phrases could have equally come from Kane. And Doug, if you’re reading, I don’t mean that to sound condescending or dismissive. You’re in good company. :)

So, was A Moveable Feast Hemingway’s “Silmarillion”, a work he sketched out, even substantially, but never quite completely finished? And Seán Hemingway and Christopher Tolkien, both scholars in their own right (Classics and Old Norse, respectively), quite independent of their work on their relatives’ unfinished books — how much common experience do they share? Both have champions as well as critics. In the case of A Moveable Feast, much (to me) depends on this finished typescript to which A.E. Hotchner refers. On the other side of the Atlantic, there is certainly no such thing — a single complete manuscript with genuine author/ity — for The Silmarillion.

For what it’s worth, if I have to render a personal judgment, I find myself siding with Seán Hemingway (and Christopher Tolkien, mutatis mutandis). He can, after all, present evidence on the basis of extant documents as to the nature and extent of changes made to the final book. What he cannot do, it seems to me, is answer whether there might have been intermediate steps, now lost, in which those changes came into being by Hemingway’s own hand. (As such, “restored edition” is perhaps a misnomer.) Likewise, many claims of editorial intercession on Christopher Tolkien’s part may be answered in the very same words. Hotchner’s claims, on the other hand, require documentary evidence which I am not sure exists. If it did, the debate would be, would have been, easily resolved, and yet it rages on. Unless Hotchner can demonstrate, rather than merely assert, that the final chapter, the author’s preface, and other textual “discrepancies” (from the point of view of the Paris notebooks) came indeed from Ernest Hemingway and not from Mary or Scribner’s editor(s), then his accusations must be treated as opinion, not fact.

The newest thing: book trailers

Have you heard about the relatively recent new trend of book trailers? More and more publishers are starting to actively market their new offerings through video trailers, just like the ones you see for new movies. Well, maybe not just like them — most of the ones I’ve seen are just atrocious!

The first one I saw, strangely, was for J.R.R. Tolkien’s “new” book, The Children of Húrin — and this one’s actually very well made. It helps that most of the visuals come from the illustrated editions of Tolkien’s books and that the music is very good. Watch it here.

Then, for comparison, stop by the Book Trailers blog and watch a few of those. If you can stand it. Every now and then, you’ll come across a trailer that might actually make you interested in reading the book (almost by accident, as it seems) — but most are bad, bad, bad. Dreadful voiceovers, awful choices for images and logos, and even horrible actors putting on scenes from the books. My favorite of the latter (the worst of the worst, if you will; so bad it almost flips the scale over and becomes good, or at least entertaining, hahae) is the trailer for the hackneyed thriller, Power Play, by Joseph Finder. You just have to watch it to appreciate how truly awful (and inadvertently funny) it is. My favorite line is the over-the-top voiceover: “Now, it’s up to one man ... who wasn’t even supposed to be there.” What is this, a suspense novel or Clerks?!

Another strange one is the trailer for 13 Bullets, by David Wellington, an FBI-versus-vampire potboiler. The trailer consists of time-lapse footage of a guy getting made up as a vampire. At the end, he hisses at us, and then we see the hilarious (unwittingly, I’m sure) tagline: “Vampires that don’t suck.” Get it? ’Cause vampires do suck. Only we’re supposed to think this book doesn’t. So clever. But I’m afraid the trailer that’s supposed to be getting you interested in the book is going to have you wishing for 13 bullets of your own.

And lest you think the books are as amateurish as the trailers, these are real books from real publishers, like Random House and Simon & Shuster. Or at least, some are reputable; others appear to be self- or vanity-published. But if you ever write that great American novel, be sure to visit Jillett Productions, who can custom-tailor a book trailer of your very own at bargain basement prices. No, no; I’m sure they’re very good. Hmm, let me just take a look at one of their samples ... “If you’re like most people, you probably always wondered how to slaughter a wild boar and then feed its head to some flesh-eating beetles.” (Not kidding.)

Oh the humanity! *smirk*

Hemingway short stories — Part 3

Read Part 1, Part 2. Once again: these posts will contain SPOILERS. You have been warned. :)

“The Three-Day Blow”
Picking up in the aftermath of Nick’s breakup with Marjorie, he visits Bill (who makes a brief appearance at the conclusion of “The End of Something”) at his father’s homestead. They talk about the weather, literally, about baseball, about literature (with high praise for G.K. Chesterton, of all people). But when Bill brings up Marjorie, it’s clear that Nick really regrets the breakup. He “holds it in reserve” that he might get back together with her, but once they go outside, the gale blows all Nick’s worries and “feelings” out of his head (or heart). It’s a classic Hemingway situation where men aren’t supposed to have real feelings — or aren’t supposed to voice them, anyway. Are Nick’s regrets really gone, or will they be back as soon as the “three-day blow” is over? (The accompanying chapterlet is also set in the rain.)

“The Battler”
Nick is train-hopping across the country in this story, asserting a growing independence, it would seem. After getting thrown off a train, he meets Ad Francis, a famous (but now washed-up) prizefighter: the battler of the story’s title. Nick and Ad chat around a camp fire, and a little later, Nick meets Bugs, the “negro” who takes care of Ad, now that Ad can’t quite take care of himself. They met in jail, and Bugs took a liking to him. They eat a sort of “hobo feast” around the fire, after which Ad gets a bit riled up at Nick (earlier, Ad admits of himself that he’s gone a little crazy), and Bugs has to club him over the head with a blackjack to calm him down! He explains Ad’s situation: too many fights and a tragic, failed marriage to his “sister” (the story leaves ambiguous the question of whether it’s really his literal sister). Bugs is really a very kind caretaker, reminding me a little of Jim from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (and there the similiarity ends, as Ad is nothing like Huck).

“Chapter VI”
In this chapterlet, it seems to be revealed that these may all be Nick’s war reflections. At least, this one appears to be.

“A Very Short Story”
Short indeed! About the wishful, ephemeral connections made during war time and what follows in their wake after they’ve come apart.

“Chapter VII”
A nice ironic statement about the promises we make (to God, in this case) when face to face with our own mortality, and how we almost never make good on them when come through the experience alive.

“Solder’s Home”
A remarkable story. This one doesn’t revolve around Nick Adams. Rather, the protagonist is one Harold Krebs. The image of the photograph at the beginning — what a great detail, the kind that a successful short story can be built on! It shows just how impossible it is to capture a moment the way we feel it, and how likely we are to mythologize or romanticize it in our memory. And it prefigures how everything will be different when Krebs comes home from the war. The history books he reads about the war fascinate him, as if he weren’t there himself! As if he learned nothing first-hand — and he probably didn’t, because he was “badly, sickeningly frightened all the time.” His mother worries about what he’ll do with his life now that he’s come home — alive, at least, but not unchanged. She even convinces Kreb’s father to let him take out the car at night, hoping he might start to date, maybe resume a normal life. Kreb’s is emotionally regressing back toward a fumbling adolescence, aborted when he went to war. And now that he is back, he’s in the grips of an ennui so pervasive that he does nothing all day but watch the girls go by. Just watch them; he won’t ask one out. He just alternates between watching the girls go by and reading history books about the war. It’s very sad to see how emotionally devastated Krebs is. We want to hope he can recover, but we know that he probably won’t.

“Chapter VIII”
This is the first of the chapterlets that isn’t a picture of war. Rather, this one centers on an image of urban violence, crime, and racism. It’s still not completely clear (yet) what readers are to make of these interludes.

Hemingway short stories – Part 2

Read Part 1. Once again: these posts will contain SPOILERS.

The four stories I “reviewed” in the first part of this series were the last four, by date, of The First Forty-Nine, all written toward the end of the 1930s. In this installment, we’re going back to the beginning, starting with “Up In Michigan”, Hemingway’s first short story, written in Paris in 1921. Many of these early stories comprise the so-called Nick Adams stories, which, taken together, form something like a bildungsroman of one of the most classic “Hemingway heroes”. So, with that preamble, here are some thoughts on the next five stories.

“Up In Michigan”
Interesting that this was written in Paris in 1921, as the setting seems quite remote from that in both space and time. It’s set in rural Michigan at some point in the past – it feels like the 1880s, perhaps? It has the character of a Western vignette. It’s a rather sad, poignant tale about the loss of innocence and about how what we hope for or expect isn’t always what we actually get when we finally do get what we thought we wanted. In other words: it’s a retelling of that old saw, “be careful what you wish for ...”

“On the Quai at Smyrna”
This could be a companion piece to “Old Man at the Bridge”, though written much earlier. A short, strange, experimental story about the sometimes surreal horrors of war. This time it’s the Greeks verus the Turks. The story is filled with dead babies and horrbile cruelty to animals, all treated very cavalierly by the narrator. There is no conclusion per se. I’m not sure I get it. Following the story, there’s a strange little “chapterlet”, called CHAPTER I. Looking ahead, I find these little opuscules in between all the stories from here to “Big Two-Hearted River”. Strange. Is this a sort of Canterbury Tales?

“Indian Camp”
I remember this story from college. It’s the first Nick Adams story, though as we’ll see shortly, “Up In Michigan” is set in the same geographical locus. The story centers around the emergency delivery of an Indian baby by Caesarian section, something only a surgeon can do. Luckily, Nick’s father is just such a man. While he operates, saving the mother and baby, the father slits his own throat with a straight razor and bleeds to death in silence in the same room! Why? The reason is not explained. Is it because a white man has touched his wife “intimately”? And where did George disappear to?

“The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife”
Picks up after “Indian Camp”. It’s about the tense relationship between the Indian and the White Man. Each thinks the worst of the other. What does it mean that Dick Boulton is a “half-breed”? Enormous hypocrisy in Nick’s father over the matter of the stolen lumber. What exactly is the relationship betwen the stories and the “chapterlets”?

“The End of Something”
A masterpiece of a short story! Set in Hortons Bay, the seting for “Up In Michigan”, only much later. Each of these stories leads right into the next with some shared image. For example, in the case of “Up In Michigan” to “On the Quai at Smyrna”, it’s the image of the creeping fog. In this case, it’s the image of the lumber, and the saw mill. The story is about the breakup of the relationship between Nick and Marjorie, but it’s beautifully foreshadowed by the death of the town, Hortons Bay, itself brought about by the end of the lumber. All that’s left is the and the “ruin” of the old saw mill, standing like a reminder of the ruin of their relationship. Also, the fish aren’t biting – itself strange – which allows the dialogue to subtly move from the first “what’s wrong?” (i.e., the fish aren’t biting) to the second “what’s wrong?” (i.e., with the relationship). Very nice! As I said, a tight, brilliant little masterpiece.

Hemingway short stories – Part 1

Back in college, I was a big fan of Ernest Hemingway. I read The Sun Also Rises several times, in several courses (actually, I first read it in high school), then took a senior seminar – i.e., an intensive, semester-long study of a single author – on Hemingway. I read quite a few of his short stories in that class, maybe 20-30 of them, and I’d read a few before it as well (most notably, the short story everybody has read, “Hills Like White Elephants”).

Well, as you may have noticed, I’m reading Hemingway’s short stories again now. And this time, my intention is to read them all – all 70 of the them. (That may sound like a lot, but consider that Anton Chekhov wrote something like 600!) I’m also keeping a little diary of my impressions of each one, so I thought it might be fun to share some of those thoughts here, a few stories at a time. Any interest? Assuming so – blogging really is, at least at the stage of composition, talking to oneself, isn’t it? – here are my first four from The First Forty-Nine:

* SPOILERS FOLLOW *

“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”
I especially like getting the lion’s perspective on being shot (terrible – that is, terribly convincing – though it is to read), because it shows a different reflection of Macomber’s fear. But the lion faces his fear (Macomber does not), earning Wilson’s respect – expressed tersely, in typical Hemingway fashion: “damned fine lion.” The dialogue in the story is terrific – subtle, snappy, and suggestive – and the characterization is masterful. The ambiguity of the ending (accident? murder?) is a real triumph of storytelling. Does it mean anything that the gun that kills Macomber is a Mannlicher?

“The Capital of the World”
The opening is terrific – there are so many Pacos, so many people in Madrid, but we’re going to hear about just one. To highlight that all the more, we keep hearing about all the fine details of a dozen other characters, all drifting in and out of the café where Paco works as a waiter – bit players in the brief, tragic life of the story’s central character. I love the attention to the details of what everybody else is doing at the moment Paco is dying, and on how their lives will go on, just as they always have, without him.

“The Snows of Kilimanjaro”
A story chiefly about regret. And about dealing with (or failing to deal with) memories of past horrors, mainly the horrors of war. Interrupted by lengthy stream-of-consciousness passages more typical of Faulkner than of Hemingway. These passages are quite remarkable (though printed entirely in italics, they’re a little hard on the eyes), full of the images and afterimages, the sounds and echoes accumulated over a lifetime (one now nearing its end). How do you record the essential truths – or admit the lies – of your life? Can you? “Now he would never write the things he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well.” Wow, heavy. The story has a sensational ending – quite surprising.

“Old Man at the Bridge”
One of the shortest stories I’ve ever read. It’s really more of a snapshot, a momentary character study, just a single pose really, of two people shocked by war. One, a soldier trying to help villagers across a bridge to safety; the other, a loving old man, lost with worry over the animals he had been taking care of in his village. The cat would probably be able to fend for itself, but what about the goats? What would happen to them? It’s tragic to see this generous spirit so uprooted, more tragic still when you realize it’s just a reflection in miniature of the larger destructiveness of war, repeated in countless villages, wrecking countless lives. The last line is so depressing!