Ernest Hemingway by Samuel Shaw (review)

116Reviews history of psychiatry. Therefore she virtually ignores it in favor of a metaphor of her own creation: these fictions of the possessive will, she argues, are cases of "psychic vampirism" (p. 85). Such a metaphor obscures the cultural background of James's work rather than illuminates it; the historical person it offers to us is not Mesmer, whose career contains a number of significant analogies to the fiction of the possessive will, but the almost totally irrelevant Count Dracula. The connections between James and the cultural background are very badly managed, then, and unhappily these connections provide the book with its thesis. Yet it remains a valuable book for its perceptive and often witty critical insights, which deserve to survive the inappropriate cultural background which has been imposed on them. University of MinnesotaChadwick Hansen Shaw, Samuel. Ernest Hemingway. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1973. 136 pp. Cloth: $5.00. Samuel Shaw begins this short book with a general chapter, "Nihilism and the American Dream," in which he says that although Hemingway was reacting to 19th century American idealism and that the spirit of 20th century nihilism "constitutes the background for Hemingway's vision" (p. 3), still Hemingway believed in the American dream and "upheld political, moral, and spiritual values requiring self-sacrifice and commitment to high ideals" (p. 10). While Hemingway's style as a cultural influence is a great achievement, Shaw says, it is Hemingway's vision of reality and his humanism that should take precedence over his stylistic achievements, and not the other way around. The nine chapters that follow take up most of Hemingway's work in a more-or-less chronological order, beginning with some of the early short stories and ending with A Moveable Feast. (Islands in the Stream and some other posthumous publications are not discussed.) The emphasis is on the content and meaning of the works and Hemingway the changing man, not the form or style of the works. "Oak Park to Paris" is largely biographical and a thorough summary of Hemingway's formative years. It is based on secondary accounts and autobiographical stories (or at least stories that are read autobiographically) , notably "Indian Camp" and "Big Two-Hearted River." The fiction is used as explanation of parts of Hemingway's life; we are told, for instance, that Agnes von Kurowsky was the "starting point" for Catherine Barkley, that Captain Serena "grew into Lieutenant Rinaldi," that Count Greppi "was transformed into Count Greffi" (p. 20). After a recapitulation of the background for and publication of The Torrents of Spring, in Chapter 3 Shaw begins the chronological discussion of the novels with a summary of the plot and critical reception of The Sun Also Rises, interlarded with interpretive observations (such as to the significance of the epigraphs and the meaning of love and nature) and biographical parallels (such as to Jake's and Hemingway's Catholicism). "Romeo and Juliet" alternates extension of the Hemingway biography in the late Twenties with summary of and comment upon A FareweU to Arms, which displays both "tragic intensity" (p. 60) and a fully mature style. But the most important value of the novel is its courageous affirmation of life "in an essentially hopeless world" (p. 62). Death in the Aternoon and Green HiIk of Africa aie given a short chapter, the former being judged "more than a book on the bullfight. It is also cultural history, a solid travel book, and something of a love song to Spain" (p. 71) . The latter book is examined largely in terms of Hemingway's avowed purpose "to write an absolutely true book," and Shaw Studies in American Fiction117 concludes that while the effort was honest, it "does not quite come up to the level of Hemingway's imaginative fiction" (p. 73) . "Artistry in the Short Story" tells us that the later Nick Adams stories are really about "the vague longing of the human heart for understanding" (p. 80), but only three stories are summarized and commented upon: "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" ("Hemingway at his best" in spite of the probable weakness of the parody of the Lord's Prayer [p. 81] ); "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber...