A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway ed. by Linda Wagner-Martin (review)

nodding at a familiar face, reading a sort ofself-righteous drama ofthe soul that might cause a person to break down and yell, "Enough ofwar." The story begins with a question. Can you imagine such a scene? Imagine what it might be like to rummage through the detritus of graphic inhumanity and hysteria, longing for peace and democracy. These are the tangled sentiments of the duty-bound War Poets. Above all else, thewords ofthe soldier poets make beautiful and ghastlysounds; warriors are dying under slowly shifting stars. The crouching oftheir bodies, die pounding of the drum, the blind salute and die blind suffering—the war poets say they have seen horror and politics and they are not tongue-tied. Regardless of die film's static use ofghosdy tombstones and melodramatic readings, the poets diemselves look to the sky and speak. Some of their voices uphold die mighty tradition—this is always true. More importandy, odiers give us a living obituary ofwar. And this is enough to make the film itselfworth the trouble. ^ Linda Wagner-Martin, ed. A Historical Guide to ErnestHemingway. NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. 248p. MiMi R. Gladstein University of Texas at El Paso The goal ofthe Historical Guides series is to place American authors in the context ofwhat is called on the bookjacket the "vibrant relationship between literature and society." Most ofthe material in this volume accomplishes just that, reminding readers, both general and academic, ofthe contemporary issues, historical events, fashions, and reading materials that contributed to Hemingway's formation as man and writer. Ably edited by Linda Wagner-Martin, whose credentials as bodi scholar and editor are everywhere evident, diis andiologyalso achieves her stated aim of adding to the variety of critical perspectives for approaching Hemingway's work and thereby providing the reader with "new ways ofreading, seeing, and visualizing the art" (8). The chapters range fromJamie Barlow's explication of Hemingway as "a valuable site" for studying die gendered social and historical forces that were at play in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to Kelli Larson's brief but provocative bibliographical essay subtitled "Lies, Damned Lies, and Hemingway Criticism." Two items that are part ofthe series format are a capsule biography and an illustrated chronology. Michael Reynolds' "A BriefBiography" begins the volume and it is a model of its kind. Reynolds succincdy unfolds die key elements of a drama-filled life in a manner satisfactory to both scholars and the lay reader. He is 106 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW + FALL 2002 Reviews ever informative and always clear.The illustrated chronologyjuxtaposes the events ofHemingway's lifewith historical and/orliteraryevents ofthe time. For example: 1905, theyear Hemingway began the first grade is also the date ofthe publication of Edith Wharton's The House ofMirth; 1927, the date of the first Hemingway divorce, the date that Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. The illustrations are everywhere interesting, though one does need a magnifying glass to see the faces in some ofthe reproduced photographs. Susan Beegel's "Eye and Heart: Hemingway's Education as a Naturalist" launches the critical essay section of the book. Having co-edited a volume on Steinbeck and the Environment, she is well versed in eco-criticism. Beegel charts Hemingway's boyhood experiences as hewas taken into the field for nature study, concluding that it was where he "learned to describe the natural world with a scientist's unwavering gaze, respect for truth, interests in detail and objective language " (54). Two essays contribute to the ongoing critical attention to Hemingway's constructions ofgender. Marilyn Elkins, in "The Fashion of Machismo," explicates the conscious creation ofthe Hemingway look, a look still visible in the J. Peterman catalogs and aisles ofBanana Republic. Elkins theorizes that the clothingwas part ofa number ofHemingway's protective devices against the terror ofloss, one that helped the man "retain maleness when women insist on invading the world of the Papa at almost every social, economic, and artistic site" (111). Hers is a provocative argument. Jamie Barlowe's essay on the author's gender training is detailed and instructive though she can occasionally overstate her case as when she asserts that it was Hemingway's need to prove to himselfa set ofideas about gender...