Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference (review)

Abstract

The Hemingway Review 23.1 (2003) 111-116
The title of Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference, edited by Robert W. Trogdon, does not do justice to this remarkable work, an affordable version of Trogdon's 1999Ernest Hemingway: A Documentary Volume for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, a reference work that originally listed for $205. It sounds dry, a bit tedious—the kind of book that one might flip through but most frequently would use to "look up" certain elusive dates or data. What Trogdon has actually done is to create a fascinating biography of sorts, a chronological compilation of writing by and about Ernest Hemingway that certainly supplements and to a degree even competes with Michael Reynolds's definitive five-volume biography (Trogdon dedicates his book to Reynolds), Carlos Baker's seminal biography, Kenneth Lynn's psychobiography, and the slew of other biographies of Hemingway (notable among which are Scott Donaldson's, Jeffrey Meyers's and Peter Griffin's) and memoirs by Hemingway intimates (of greater or lesser degree). While a casual reader of Trogdon's work would be rewarded by dipping into one section or another, I suspect that most readers will be hooked, reading it cover to cover. Its seven chapters correspond with significant periods in Hemingway's life, each group of materials introduced first by a chronology of significant events during the time covered, and then by a brief essay from Trogdon. Aside from these introductory essays, captions, and the occasional footnote, Trogdon is a silent editorial presence. But in true Hemingway fashion, his omission signals a critical function. What he has selected and how he has organized his selections merit serious attention and make this book an exciting as well as instructive "read."An illustrative example comes from Chapter Three: 1930-1935. Trogdon first provides Hemingway's 19 August 1935 letter to Ivan Kashkin, the Soviet literary critic and translator who promoted Hemingway's work in the USSR, notably in a long essay in International Literature published in May 1935. Hemingway's detailed response to this essay is notable for its lack of combativeness, despite his expressed disagreement with some of Kashkin's analyses: "I write...to you because of the care and the accuracy you have used in studying what I write" (155). Given Hemingway's contempt for most literary critics (also detailed in this letter), not to mention his increasingly irascible attitude toward other writers, this letter reveals a more thoughtful and even humble Hemingway, one hungry for an understanding of his work and even willing to explain aspects of his identity as both man and writer that many, including Kashkin, found troubling. The significance of this letter is made even more clear by the next item, Kashkin's very long essay, "Ernest Hemingway: A Tragedy of Craftsmanship." While Kashkin's essay is often referenced and even cited by Hemingway critics, here it is reproduced in its entirety (156-168). Filled with astute analyses of Hemingway's works—he provides, for example, a coherent and persuasive interpretation of the meaning of the "Old Lady" in Death in the Afternoon —Kashkin argues that Hemingway has become a "half-healthy man," one for whom a "mental crisis is at hand" (167). The Marxist Kashkin attributes these problems to "the bourgeois machine [that] uses first-class human raw material to turn out perfectly manufactured and skilfully [sic] disguised human waste" (168)—a political argument that Hemingway countered in his letter by explaining why he, as an artist, could not be a "communist" (154). But it is still noteworthy that Hemingway could appreciate the intelligence of Kashkin's essay despite its assertion of "the void and desolation that have formed within him," and the damning conclusion that describes him as "a consummate literary craftsman, a perfect sportsman and globe trotter, a man reduced to stupor by having gazed too long at...Nada" (168). Hemingway later honors Kashkin, and his call for commitment to a greater cause, by giving his name to one of the Russian officers fighting on the side of the Spanish Republic in For Whom...