THIS is the fourth part of a six-part essay called ‘Caveat lector’. If you have landed here before reading the other parts, it might make more sense to read the parts in sequence. Here are links to all six parts:
CARLOS BAKER discovers symbolism everywhere in the Hemingway’s fiction. Inconveniently, though, Hemingway himself was decidedly ambiguous on the matter: was there symbolism in his work, were his stories as Baker suggests ‘built with a different kind of precision — that of the poet-symbolist’?
Seven years after Baker first published his book, Hemingway was ‘interviewed’ for the Paris Review by its co-founder and editor George Plimpton (right). In fact, the ‘interview’ consisted of Hemingway providing written responses compiled over a number of months to a list of questions Plimpton had sent him. In the ‘interview’ and revisiting the matter of mooted symbolism in his work, Hemingway says
Then there’s a particularly telling title, A Never-Before-Published Essay About Growing Up With Hemingway, Written By His Unrequited High School Crush. (Dear reader, she was Frances Elizabeth Coates (right) and was reluctant to talk about Hemingway with his first biographer, Carlos Baker, because she was ‘seeing’ another guy while at high school and didn’t want to complicate things. But it seems she and Hemingway were corresponding intermittently until the mid-1930s and he partially immortalised the girl by adopting her name for his heroine Liz Coates in Up In Michigan.)
Those academics publishing less fluffy pieces might assume their ‘readers’ are most probably academic colleagues and fellow initiates, but the assumption does seem to promote a tendency to ‘over-intellectualise’ (a practice that might well further intimidate many a layperson who comes across such pieces and is already in awe of the ‘exalted, inspired, infallible’ experts).
I suppose there are symbols since critics keep finding them . . . If five or six or more good explainers can keep going why should I interfere with them? Read anything I write for the pleasure of reading it. Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading.This is a rather clever response by the ‘self-promoter’ Hemingway — I use that description in keeping with the ‘narrative unity and ideological consistency’ of these essays — and he seems to be playing both ends against the middle.
He neither kills off the suggestion that his work contains symbolism, nor does he confirm that was what it habitually contained, and thus stokes the fire a little more, presumably to ensure he remained centre-stage.
A few years earlier, commenting on analyses and interpretations in reviews of his 1953 novella The Old Man And The Sea in which many detected decidedly Christian symbolism, Hemingway observes, again ambiguously, that
A few years earlier, commenting on analyses and interpretations in reviews of his 1953 novella The Old Man And The Sea in which many detected decidedly Christian symbolism, Hemingway observes, again ambiguously, that
No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. That kind of symbol sticks out like raisins in raisin bread. Raisin bread is all right, but plain bread is better.Adopting Baker’s practice of ‘close reading’, there’s far less to what Hemingway says than meets the eye. He simply sets up his own aunt sally in order to be able to knock it down again.
It is certainly likely that a writer, when creating her or his fiction, might come to believe that including this or that symbol or set of symbols could prove to be technically and artistically useful to her or his theme. Thus, according to Hemingway, the symbols will have been ‘arrived at beforehand’.
Conversely, in the somewhat murky, mysterious and poorly understood act of creation, the writer might not have have realised that certain ‘elements’ in what has so far been written — it is impossible and would be misleading to try to define those ‘elements’ — somehow stand out and underscore this or that theme in the story. Though they came about ad hoc — and were not ‘arrived at beforehand’ — she or he might perhaps bear them in mind when carrying on with the composition; when later revising and editing the work, she or he might choose to highlight or underscore that ‘symbolism’ a little more in some way or other.
It is even possible that the writer was simply unaware of any symbols in her or his work which readers think they detect. Were those symbols ‘arrived at beforehand and stuck in’? Bearing in mind how analysing the process of creation is rarely straightforward, the question is impossible to answer: in a café a lait what is the milk and what is the coffee?
But note, Hemingway is only commenting on ‘symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in’, and that, presumably, would distinguish them from ‘symbols’ created during the act of creation. He is certainly right when he says
A related, often intractable, problem when dealing with academic work is that it is sometimes impossible to understand what the analyst is hoping to convey. Admittedly, this might be the reader’s fault, but it would be unwise always to opt for that explanation. At one point Baker comes up with the following ‘insight’: he has just remarked that in writing both The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell To Arms, Hemingway had somehow ‘purged’ himself and adds
that kind of symbol sticks out like raisins in raisin breadbecause the Christian symbolism in The Old Man And The Sea is ham-fisted in the extreme and does stick out noticeably. As for his observation that
raisin bread is all right, but plain bread is betterit begs the question — to adopt his own metaphor — as to why Hemingway didn’t stick to producing plain bread when he wrote his novella?
. . .
There was much more to [The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell To Arms], of course, than an act of personal exorcism, however complicated. For to destroy by embodying is also to create by arranging. The artist’s special blessing exists in an impulse to destroy an aspect of the thing he creates, and to render permanent what for him, in another and internal dimension, must be permanently destroyed.Does Baker mean that Hemingway was ‘destroying’ what he wanted to exorcise from his life by ‘embodying’ it into his novel? Possibly, but is that the same as the rather vague ‘creating by arranging’? Well, yes, it could be, though it is not at all clear. Even less clear is what an artist might be doing when his
special blessing exists in an impulse to destroy an aspect of the thing he createsthus rendering
permanent what for him, in another and internal dimension, must be permanently destroyed.Like staring intently into thick fog and persuading yourself you can more or less make out the shape of something, you think you know what Baker means, but your are not quite sure; then you have to admit to yourself you really don’t have a clue — but there again . . .
It might simply be that Baker has expressed himself badly, although if that is the case, we should remind ourselves of the adage that ‘confused writing betrays confused thought’.
I have no doubt some reading that passage will tell themselves that ‘of course, they understand what Baker is saying’. Others who are a little less certain might decided to give Baker, a Princeton professor of English literature well suited to the virtual wigs and robes in which we see him, a pass; yielding to the power of human credulity identified by Virginia Woolf, they might feel it is their fault they don’t ‘get’ what Baker is saying and assume they must simply try harder to understand him.
Thus the benefit of doubt is invariably with ‘the experts’, the academics. If Baker, Young and Atkins tell us that Hemingway was ‘an artist’ — thus reinforcing his reputation as ‘one of America’s greatest writers’ — many will conclude, given their ‘exalted, inspired, infallible’ status, that Baker, Young and Atkins must certainly know what they are talking about, and that it is best to ignore the apostates and doubters. Academic attention certainly was the icing on the cake for Hemingway.
Academics are very likely to disagree with the unkind observation by one Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a statistician, mathematician, former ‘options trader’ and ‘risk engineer’ and a writer, that
Academics are very likely to disagree with the unkind observation by one Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a statistician, mathematician, former ‘options trader’ and ‘risk engineer’ and a writer, that
Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to lovebut those who have come across passages like the above from Baker and similar, or who have tried to read article after essay after book after dissertation of what often appeared to be incomprehensible waffle might give Taleb’s jibe a quiet cheer.
We should again remind ourselves of the respect (which often unwittingly shades off into reverence) we accord academics; and we might again distinguish between academics active in the sciences and those working in the arts, particularly in the field of English literature. One fundamental distinction is made clear by Declan Hiberd in his book on Joyce, Ulysses And Us when he writes
Too often the papers of academic experts are addressed only to their peers in a jargon that seeks to mimic the rigorous discourse of the sciences: such criticism is published only in the expensive volumes destined for purchase by libraries and not by the common reader.Arts academics are, of course, certainly entitled to use their own ‘jargon’, and there is, per se, nothing reprehensible in choosing to write papers which might ultimately prove intelligible only to the initiated. There is, though, something of a teenagers’ fan club about that arrangement, whose members eagerly exchange obscure and arcane details about their idol.
That point might be illuminated by a list of the titles of pieces that have appeared in the Hemingway Review over these past few years: The Elephant’s Eye And The Maji-Maji War — A Non-Anthropocentric Reading of David’s African Story In The Garden Of Eden; Hemingway’s Dialectic With American Whiteness: Oak Park, Edward Said, And The Location Of Authority; Hemingway’s ‘Now I Lay Me’, Prayer and The Fisher King; and Behind The Scenes With Pauline Pfeiffer, Hemingway And Jane Kendall Mason. (Mason was a rich young American living in Cuba with whom Hemingway began an affair in the early 1930s after Pfeiffer, a devout Roman Catholic, would for medical reasons only consent to sex if Hemingway practised coitus interruptus).
. . .
Those academics publishing less fluffy pieces might assume their ‘readers’ are most probably academic colleagues and fellow initiates, but the assumption does seem to promote a tendency to ‘over-intellectualise’ (a practice that might well further intimidate many a layperson who comes across such pieces and is already in awe of the ‘exalted, inspired, infallible’ experts).
A good example is an analysis of the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Emperor’s New Clothes by the academic Hollis Robbins (below), written for the publication New Literary History when she was still teaching at Princeton. In fact, describing her article, The Emperor’s New Critique, as ‘an analysis’ of
Andersen’s tale is misleading: Robbins is not so much analysing the tale itself as commenting on a commentary by the French philosopher and ‘deconstructionist’ Jacques Derrida who was himself commenting on a commentary by Sigmund Freud on Andersen’s tale.
Ostensibly — and most probably — Andersen intended his tale as a satire on vanity (that of the emperor for whom dressing well is more important than taking care of matters of state) and on pusillanimity (that of his counsellors and, according to Robbins, by extension of Denmark’s civil servants and their ilk in general). But Robbins insists there is far more to it than that: Andersen’s tale, she assures us, is a
Ostensibly — and most probably — Andersen intended his tale as a satire on vanity (that of the emperor for whom dressing well is more important than taking care of matters of state) and on pusillanimity (that of his counsellors and, according to Robbins, by extension of Denmark’s civil servants and their ilk in general). But Robbins insists there is far more to it than that: Andersen’s tale, she assures us, is a
critique of criticism . . . [a] tale, teller, interpreter and critical case study all in one . . . Yet if it is true that the tale’s very transparency is a critique of the desire to critique — or rather, the exhibitionistic desire to unveil publicly — Derrida’s privileging of the themes of analysis, truth, and unveiling in his (albeit brief) reading of The Emperor’s New Clothes provides evidence that the awareness of this desire does not reduce its influence. The desire to read The Emperor’s New Clothes as either a fantasy of critique or a new literary history critique of the fantasy of critique is symptomatic of our assumptions about what it means to be a reader-analyst.So there you have it (or not as the case might be). Individual phrases in the above might ‘be understood’ in themselves (or not), but in relation to one another and overall they do seem to conspire to defy comprehension.
It might be thought unfair to quote an extract from Robbins’s article out of context, though supplying that context would certainly not make the extract any more comprehensible.
Doubtless some of Robbins’s audience did understand — or, more probably, persuaded themselves they understood — what she was writing and trying to convey; but it is certainly fair to suggest Robbins and Derrida were ‘over-intellectualising’ to an alarming degree. It is equally fair to note that Robbins is, as Hiberd charges, certainly
[mimicking] the rigorous discourse of the sciences.Many academics working in English literature departments, adopting the role of ‘the expert’ whose experience and qualifications allows them greater insight, might here protest ‘sorry, but if you don’t have the intellectual wherewithal to comprehend what we are saying, you can’t blame us’. Again, if only it were that simple. Though many articles, essays and books do deserve and reward slow, careful reading, thoughtful attention and patient consideration, many do not. And it’s never clear which might and which might not.
It would also help if some English literature academics paid more attention to clarity: even a complex thought should allow the reader a sporting chance of eventually being comprehended (and here the observation that ‘confused writing betrays confused thought’ might again be appropriate).
The whole point of ‘setting down in writing’ is to communicate — to pass on a new theory, to suggest a different interpretation or a refutation of a previous analysis — and if the reader is left floundering, still puzzled by what she or he has read or even all at sea (and assuming the reader has given it her or his best shot), the attempt at communication has failed.
Furthermore, given the nature of the subjects scientists deal with — and we might note that ‘verifiability’ is a cornerstone of scientific work and research – it is reasonably straightforward for them to evaluate work by their peers. In English literature such ‘verifiability’ is nigh-on impossible, as the variety of different, often contradictory ‘readings’ show.
Furthermore, given the nature of the subjects scientists deal with — and we might note that ‘verifiability’ is a cornerstone of scientific work and research – it is reasonably straightforward for them to evaluate work by their peers. In English literature such ‘verifiability’ is nigh-on impossible, as the variety of different, often contradictory ‘readings’ show.
Furthermore, even slow, careful reading and thoughtful attention don’t guarantee that what is being stated — or better what is being claimed — is true. All too often what might be regarded as a ‘Rorschach effect’ occurs when academics read fiction and verse: they gaze intently at a passage and see what they want to see.
Debra Moddelmog might even concede that what they ‘see’ will be what best suits the ‘narrative unity and ideological consistency’ they favour. Thus Carlos Baker, who has decided to regard Hemingway as a ‘poet-symbolist’ detects symbols everywhere in Hemingway’s work; Philip Young insists that Hemingway’s fiction reveals the impact the great and small childhood and teenage wounds had on him; John Atkins highlights how Hemingway made a point of distinguishing between the ‘natural man’ and the ‘unnatural man’, and the ‘political’ and the ‘apolitical’ man.
Yet there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers in a Rorschach test: the very point of the test is for others to gain an insight into ‘the psyche’ of the subject being tested by noting what she or he ‘sees’. Nothing is definitively or not ‘shown’ by the inkblots. At best the findings and claims of Baker, Young and Atkins might provide an added dimension to, and another point view of, a piece of fiction and thereby enrich our reading. But such analyses and interpretations are not —and cannot be — in the same class of thinking as work in scientific disciplines and mathematics.
Arguably, it gets even less convincing: at the heart of many analyses by academics is what is I have elsewhere described as the ‘theology of dealing with Hemingway’. Thinking and writing about him and his work seems often to fall prey to a marked circularity of logic. The logic is that ‘Hemingway was a great writer and a consummate artist, so this seemingly straightforward — or, possibly, this rather confusing — passage must have a deeper meaning than is at first apparent’.
Arguably, it gets even less convincing: at the heart of many analyses by academics is what is I have elsewhere described as the ‘theology of dealing with Hemingway’. Thinking and writing about him and his work seems often to fall prey to a marked circularity of logic. The logic is that ‘Hemingway was a great writer and a consummate artist, so this seemingly straightforward — or, possibly, this rather confusing — passage must have a deeper meaning than is at first apparent’.
So the analytic sleuthing gets underway, and once the elusive ‘deeper’ meanings are eventually located (as of course they must and will be), the logic dictates: ‘Well! Here is even more proof of what a great and consummate artist Hemingway was!’ It was in this manner – taking the useful von Däniken route of ‘possibility, then probability, then fact’ — that Baker ‘established’ and informed readers of his book that Brett Ashley was
the reigning queen of a paganised wasteland with a wounded fisherman as her half-cynical squire.
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