Ernest Hemingway wrote this masterpiece when he was 28 years old. It always amazes me when someone has such a great understanding of what makes a terrific story at such a young age. And short stories sometimes require more skill in this regard than novels. And this is a very short story.
A couple are at a train station in Spain, midway between Madrid and Barcelona. They are drinking a lot and gradually it emerges he is trying to talk her into have a procedure done. (Nothing specific is mentioned but what else could it be). They talk about the scenery, the hills in particular, how many alcohols taste like licorice. He talks a lot, trying to persuade her of something and she asks him (several times) to stop talking so much. We know he is an American and her name is Jig and not a lot more. We can tell they have been traveling together for some time by the stickers on their luggage. Now my interpretation may be different from yours. There are a million websites that discuss this story. Clearly Hemingway edited this down to the most minimal story he could tell. And it is great because of that. What do you think? Who wins the struggle?
10 comments:
When I was growing up, Hemingway was considered the best American writer. However, later in the 1960s his reputation started to slip. THE GREAT GATSBY and F. Scott Fitzgerald moved up. Today, I still admire Hemingway's short stories, but someone would have to pay me to reread his novels.
I agree, great story. He worked on these stories over and over until they were right, especially the early ones. I always assumed he'd bully her into doing what he wanted, then (eventually) they'd break up...much like Hemingway's own marriages. That's why he couldn't take Martha Gellhorn, the one wife who wouldn't take his crap.
I finished the early Jean Rhys stories and I
m nearly done with the David Alexander and the Ann Packer. I do like her writing. I've noticed in a lot of these women's writing, pregnancy and babies is often a subject, trying and failing to get pregnant and what they do about it. Frankly, I'v enever gotten it, the need by so many women (at least, it seems like a lot based on books and television shows) to have a baby, the attitude that adoption isn't "real" somehow and it has to be a baby oof their own. But I'm not a woman, obviously, and we don't have children, so perhaps not totally qualified to judge. "Lightening" is the relevant story here, with Henry & Julia unable to conceive. Then her sister in Seattle calls to tell her than her teenage babysitter is pregnant and wants to give it up for adoption...to them.
You know, I haven't read as many of Hemmingway's short stories as I should, Patti. For whatever reason, I've stuck to his novels. I ought to try the stories, too...
The Nick Adams stories are especially strong.
I think Hemingway is more read than Fitzgerald now. But very few 20th century writers at all. Once they began to include literature from other cultures, these voices faded, I think.
I suspect that Fitzgerald's relative skepticism has him read more often now than Hemingway's endorsement of Eseentialist Men and Women. I read THE GREAT GATSBY in both hs and college classes, and only "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" from Pops...though, of course, that was forty+ years ago now. Certainly Fitzgerald's embrace of fantasy hasn't hurt his latter-day marketability.
I suspect that women in decades past felt inculcated pressures more than innate ones to have babies more than adopt them, because until relatively recently not only were children about as likely as not to die young, but mothers were way too likely to do so, as well, not least in throes or aftermath of delivery. I suspect also that Rhys and her cohort, and probably also Packer and more recent writers, are wanting to examine that, or deal with what drives might be enforced or internal and to whatever degree both. No more than suspicions on my part as well. While, yes, Hems was not parental material, and that certainly might drive some of his approaches to the subject.
A lot of the best short fiction does seem to come relatively early on in their authors' careers...writers are certainly drawn to trying to figure out what makes others tick, and laying that out in relatively concise form perhaps lends itself to the certainties of youth.
Hemingway was at his best with his short stories.
Right now, I've been reading a lot of Joyce Carol Oates short stories. And there are a lot of them.
And a lot of everything else too. Even poetry and criticism.
Can't imagine how the new non-access to abortion will affect female writers. Although here is a man writing about it.
And, with any luck and justice, we'll see how long the lack of legal access in some states is allowed to stand. Of course, lack of legal access didn't stop them from happening...just too often less safely, as the truth went.
I just read the story, and then I read some analysis of it, which didn't change what I thought of it, but pointed out symbolism I would have missed.
It is a good story and a sad story, and of course I have more sympathy with the woman. But it seems obvious that neither of them will ever be happy together after this, no matter what happens. But, regardless, it is very well written and I should read more of his stories.
It is hard to recover from a disagreement like this and about this. We don't know how long they have been together or much about them at all. But I wouldn't give them much of a chance.
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