Calvinist Humor in American Literature

7. Ernest Hemingway: “Isn’t It Pretty to Think So?”

7 Ernest Hemingway “Isn’t It Pretty to Think So?” Even though he is usually assumed to embrace no orthodox religious af- filiation, Ernest Hemingway definitely belongs to the fraternity of Calvinist humorists. Hemingway’s biographer, James Mellow, says simply that “[a] routine piety prevailed in the Hall-Hemingway household” (2) in which Ernest spent his formative years. Julanne Isabelle adds—more in line with my thesis—that “Oak Park [Illinois, Hemingway’s birthplace] exhibited many of the traits typical of village life. The village was predominantly Protestant middle class, and extremely provincial” (22–23). What this might mean in terms of the Calvinist tradition should by now be clear. The influence of these typically Protestant forces may be evident in a 98 letter from Hemingway to his mother in which he tries to reassure her that he still holds to the old-time values despite the disturbing rumors of his recent “modern” behavior: “Don’t worry or cry or fret about my not being a good Christian. I am just as much as ever and pray every night and believe just as hard so cheer up!” (qtd. in Mellow 46–47). As with his predecessors, moreover, Hemingway’s absorption into the Calvinist tradition results usually in literature that is as likely to depress as to amuse the reader. As Philip Young explains, “Commencing with our first Puritan writers, and coursing down through Poe, Hawthorne and Melville, say, and spreading widely in our own time, this literature often testifies for gloom indeed, and often for sickness, failure and misery” (Ernest Hemingway, 250). As with these earlier writers, too, we may be moved to ask, what’s so funny about all of this? 28 As is the case with his more orthodox literary ancestors, the humor in Hemingway’s work usually involves some measure of irony as an assessing eye measures the distance from some imaginary condition to the actual state at hand. Thus Jake Barnes, the narrator of The Sun Also Rises, says about Robert Cohn, who is almost the antihero of the novel, “As he had been thinking for months about leaving his wife and had not done it because it would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her departure was a very healthful shock” (4). Later on in the same book, Mike Campbell tells a story about some authentic military medals that he had drunkenly lost: “Seems some chap had left them to be cleaned. Frightfully military cove. Set hell’s own store by them” (36). Cohn surely suffered from his wife’s departure, and the actual owner of the medals was probably sincerely distressed to lose them, but Hemingway expects us to share the more humorous perspectives of Jake and Mike so that we will laugh rather than cry at the way things turn out. In the same way, it is probable that the Christian Scientist wife in “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,”1 from Hemingway’s In Our Time, was truly under the weather in that story, but the story’s Calvinist humor depends on our willingness to share the husband’s perspective rather than hers, as when “[t]he doctor went out on the porch. The screen door slammed behind him. He heard his wife catch her breath when the door slammed” (26). Even in the later story “The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio” (933), which is so often mined for evidence of Hemingway’s deepest beliefs, Calvinist humor prevails. Mr. Fraser, who may stand in for the author, reflects on another character’s malapropism: Religion is the opium of the people. . . . Yes, and music is the opium of the people. . . . And now economics is the opium of the people; along with patriotism the opium of the people in Italy and Germany. What about sexual intercourse ; was that an opium of the people? Of some of the people. Of some of the best of the people. But drink was a sovereign opium of the people, oh, an excellent opium. Although some prefer the radio, another opium of the people, a cheap one he had been using. Along with these went gambling, an opium of the people if there ever was one, one of the oldest. Ambition was another, an opium of the people, along with a belief in any new form of government. (53) ERNEST HEMINGWAY 29 30 CALVINIST HUMOR IN AMERICAN LITERATURE...