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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on Apr 7, 2008 20:31:09 GMT -6
Here is the second lecture, a trifle early. I'll try to continue putting things up late on the night before class, so you can get a jump on it if you would like. The handout in which you might be interested, and which I mention in the lecture, is in the Handouts thread. Let's be sure to have some substantive discussion; we did pretty well last week, so let's keep it on a roll.
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Sir X. Pol Briga
Talossan since 11-10-2005 Knight since 12-26-2009
59 is an important number - keep it prime in the thoughts of Talossa
Posts: 1,227
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Post by Sir X. Pol Briga on Apr 8, 2008 18:43:56 GMT -6
Does the discussion start today? I am on a business trip, but have an internet connection.
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Post by Róibeard Laira on Apr 8, 2008 19:57:00 GMT -6
The Hemmingway stories I read before now, mostly in school I think, they gave me the impression of what's the point of this story? It's like he's writing, "Here's some stuff that happened, the end." It's interesting to find out that all his stories are written in that style. But it's probably significant that he's writing about things that would normally be very emotionally charged, but he's writing in such a deadpan style.
I'll answer the questions from the lecture in separate posts.
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Post by Róibeard Laira on Apr 8, 2008 20:03:23 GMT -6
The ending to a very short story is very abrupt. The other parts were described with a little more narrative.
It seems like after his relationship with Luz didn't work out things fell apart very quickly and the boy just gave up.
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Post by Róibeard Laira on Apr 8, 2008 20:05:26 GMT -6
At the end of Soldier's home it seems like Krebs is deluding himself. He want's to be totally detached from everything, but he can't, but he pretends he can.
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Post by Róibeard Laira on Apr 8, 2008 20:12:02 GMT -6
I don't think going to see his sister play baseball is holding on to his last simple pleasure. I think he doesn't want to go. Earlier in the story his sister pesters him to go and he won't commit. He just says maybe. I think going to the baseball game is another example of giving up, not being able to maintain his detachment.
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King John
King of Talossa
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Post by King John on Apr 8, 2008 20:36:10 GMT -6
Well. That was something.
I can't say I didn't like these stories. The writing is good, and they definitely leave an impression. What I didn't like was the author. I'll try to say why, and why it seems to matter.
As Alexander pointed out, "A Very Short Story" ends with an awfully nasty paragraph. My impression is that Hemingway is writing this for the woman who Dear-Johned him — I'd bet he mailed her a copy of it. Anonymously. "The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to her letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park." This comes across as a combination of "You'll get yours, you won't be happy either" and "I don't need you, I can get other women" and "See how trashy contact with you has made me". Or if it wasn't in fact directed at the woman, what's he saying? That his disappointment is so horrible that he's given up on romance and decency and even hygiene, that *she* has made him into this heartless diseased object. (And what's with the sneering "sales girl" reference? It's like the worst kind of middle-class snobbery, like of course a sales girl is going to give you gonorrhea.)
OK, then, "Soldier's Home". Here (to my ear) we have an author trying to appear to be tragic and alienated, working really hard on being alienated, struggling to seem wiser and more sensitive than the pedestrian souls around him. (Like his own mother. And think what a terrible thing it would have been for the artistic, creative mother Alexander told us about, to read this piece.) We're supposed to believe that Krebs's lying has robbed him of the "cool, valuable quality" of all his heroic acts — "the times so long back when he had done the one thing, the only thing for a man to do, easily and naturally, when he might have done something else". All right, I certainly believe that self-aggrandizement and posing could very well rob someone of the fruits of his good actions; and I believe that Hemingway may well have learned this fact from bitter experience; but then he lumps in, together with self-serving lies, the self-deprecating humility of men "who had really been" soldiers, and claims that the "easy pose" that they had been horribly frightened the whole time had the same morally deadening effect as his self-inflating deceptions. To me, this rings false; it comes across as the poseur Hemingway's imagining what a really brave man might feel like, based on his own insufficiencies and guilt.
Maybe I've overstated things a bit here. But I'm reminded of Francis Parkman's delicious comment about the reliability of Fr. Hennepin as a historical source, that "when neither his vanity nor his interests are at stake, he sometimes tells the truth".
— John R
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Post by Nic Casálmac'h on Apr 8, 2008 21:01:05 GMT -6
I think the two stories offered an interesting contrast because even though there were similarities between the two--the lack of a happy ending for one--the tone of the two was fairly different. I had a few thoughts about them, which occurred to me as I was reading, mostly because of the experience I have had critiquing stories.
"A Very Short Story" failed to capture my interest. It is difficult in such a short story to develop one's characters very much, but essential to get the reader to sympathize with the main character. He didn't do that. We don't even know the main character's name. At the end I was left thinking so what? Probably hundreds of variations on such a story have happened, so why should I care about this particular one?
Now what I wonder is whether that was a purposeful decision on Hemingway's part. Perhaps this was the very feeling he was trying to arouse.
The ending almost did not quite seem to fit with the rest of the tone of the story. It seemed perhaps as if he meant to say that thus all ends in misery and failure.
One possibility that occurrs to me about why he named Luz and not the main character is that he was trying to bring her to the forefront. Perhaps he meant to be pointing to her, showing her as the cause of it all, and thus passing judgment on her actions.
"Soldier's Home" has a lot more to it. From the beginning when he starts out by naming the main character, I realized this story was in many ways quite different. Krebs seemed a real person who was going through real struggles and I could sympathize with him.
That second paragraph struck me as rather odd because of the combination of sentences in that manner.
It seems to me that Krebs had to go without many things--especially family--for so long during the war that he thinks he can do without them. He thinks he doesn't need anybody. Partially too he seems angry at his own failure. I think that he thought none of it had touched him, but that he was fooling even himself. I think his going to watch his sister play baseball shows that he is not really as self-sufficient as he thinks he is.
Perhaps Krebs was lying for simplicity's sake, but which was really the lie? Was it where he tells his mother he does love her? Or is it when he says he doesn't? Hemingway doesn't give us enough of an insight into Krebs' mind to know which of these is true, but I would guess that deep down inside himself, whether he knew it or not, he did love her, and that he was lying because he wanted to be alone without attachment, and wanted to be miserable. The shock and suffering of war had perhaps reduced his mind to a point where he didn't really know how to be happy and didn't want to.
Those are my thoughts anyway, for what they're worth.
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Post by Aspra Roseta Laira on Apr 8, 2008 21:08:42 GMT -6
I found John's comments interesting, and likely there is some truth to Hemingway's motivation for writing "A Very Short Story." I guess I read with a literary eye, though. Perhaps I'm reading too much into things, but both stories' endings left me with the same impression: Reality is much more disappointing than one's fantasies of what reality should be.
In the "Soldier's Home" story, the boy resigns to growing up. He'd rather not, but it is so much simpler to give in to what his mother expects of him and become a responsible adult. In "A Very Short Story," life turns out bad for both the male and female characters. That story starts off with such hope. Perhaps Hemingway's childhood mirrors this. A beginning of hope (you write that his childhood was a happy one), then it all is shattered when adulthood sets on, especially with his father's suicide. To use your words, Professor, "This illusion [that he would marry the nurse] was shattered when he departed for America, and she remained." Shattered illusions. That's what I think anyway.
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on Apr 8, 2008 22:18:57 GMT -6
Does the discussion start today? I am on a business trip, but have an internet connection. Yes. So far we have a very good discussion, in fact. Please respond as soon as possible. The Hemmingway stories I read before now, mostly in school I think, they gave me the impression of what's the point of this story? It's like he's writing, "Here's some stuff that happened, the end." It's interesting to find out that all his stories are written in that style. But it's probably significant that he's writing about things that would normally be very emotionally charged, but he's writing in such a deadpan style. I'll answer the questions from the lecture in separate posts. The ending to a very short story is very abrupt. The other parts were described with a little more narrative. It seems like after his relationship with Luz didn't work out things fell apart very quickly and the boy just gave up. At the end of Soldier's home it seems like Krebs is deluding himself. He want's to be totally detached from everything, but he can't, but he pretends he can. What makes you think he's trying to fool himself, rather than actually being disconnected? Can you point to anything specific? I don't think going to see his sister play baseball is holding on to his last simple pleasure. I think he doesn't want to go. Earlier in the story his sister pesters him to go and he won't commit. He just says maybe. I think going to the baseball game is another example of giving up, not being able to maintain his detachment. So your essential feeling is that his alienation is a front or facade, and that he's trying deliberately to be aloof? What reason can you think of that he might be doing so? [quote author=john board=hemingway thread=1207621869 post=1207708570]Well. That was something. I can't say I didn't like these stories. The writing is good, and they definitely leave an impression. What I didn't like was the author. I'll try to say why, and why it seems to matter. As Alexander pointed out, "A Very Short Story" ends with an awfully nasty paragraph. My impression is that Hemingway is writing this for the woman who Dear-Johned him — I'd bet he mailed her a copy of it. Anonymously. "The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to her letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park." This comes across as a combination of "You'll get yours, you won't be happy either" and "I don't need you, I can get other women" and "See how trashy contact with you has made me". Or if it wasn't in fact directed at the woman, what's he saying? That his disappointment is so horrible that he's given up on romance and decency and even hygiene, that *she* has made him into this heartless diseased object. (And what's with the sneering "sales girl" reference? It's like the worst kind of middle-class snobbery, like of course a sales girl is going to give you gonorrhea.) OK, then, "Soldier's Home". Here (to my ear) we have an author trying to appear to be tragic and alienated, working really hard on being alienated, struggling to seem wiser and more sensitive than the pedestrian souls around him. (Like his own mother. And think what a terrible thing it would have been for the artistic, creative mother Alexander told us about, to read this piece.) We're supposed to believe that Krebs's lying has robbed him of the "cool, valuable quality" of all his heroic acts — "the times so long back when he had done the one thing, the only thing for a man to do, easily and naturally, when he might have done something else". All right, I certainly believe that self-aggrandizement and posing could very well rob someone of the fruits of his good actions; and I believe that Hemingway may well have learned this fact from bitter experience; but then he lumps in, together with self-serving lies, the self-deprecating humility of men "who had really been" soldiers, and claims that the "easy pose" that they had been horribly frightened the whole time had the same morally deadening effect as his self-inflating deceptions. To me, this rings false; it comes across as the poseur Hemingway's imagining what a really brave man might feel like, based on his own insufficiencies and guilt. Maybe I've overstated things a bit here. But I'm reminded of Francis Parkman's delicious comment about the reliability of Fr. Hennepin as a historical source, that "when neither his vanity nor his interests are at stake, he sometimes tells the truth". — John R[/quote] Very good reply here today! You may be addressing Hemingway personally a little too much, I feel. For example, while he doubtless wrote "A Very Short Story" to assuage his feelings and perhaps to get back at Agnes von Kurowsky in some respect, it is also a legitimate story unto itself rather than nothing more than a revenge. Certainly, the end taints much of the rest of the story, but it's also saying, "After this long and bittersweet romance, with so many high hopes and such a tremulous time, all we are left with are petty liaisons in cabs." Your reference to middle-class snobbery is interesting, but I tend to think the source of her position comes more from a general perception at the time that sales girls might be "easier," rather than a classist statement. Hemingway himself was lower-middle-class at best, after all, and his entire life he tended to sneer at the rich and those who went to college, rather than the poor. Your interpretation of "Soldier's Home" is certainly very valid, but you seem to be developing a personal dislike for Hemingway. Remember that there is much more to the stories than simple messages or catharsis for the author. This one, for example, is a profound statement of an awkward boy who has missed the train at every turn in life. He even arrives home unfashionably late from the war; having done everything he was supposed to do, he has found it all ill-fitting. To be sure, Hemingway's bitterness towards his mother probably fueled the conversation in the story, and some version of it probably even happened (although it would have been very different). But Hemingway's great skill is to also assemble this cohesive narrative and put this conversation right on the knife-tip of the story. The earlier conversation with his sister has him interacting with one of the only safe individuals, but here he confronts one of the ill-fitting elements of his life - a mother who (he thinks) is indecently emotional and trying to get him involved with this life that is now so far away. The experience and description of the soldiering is something you might want to read again. Hemingway doesn't try to cheapen all soldiering with Kreb's stance. He is expressing how all the good things he had were taken away, in my opinion. Most soldiers have the comfort of telling the truth to others, but after his lies, to which he had to resort because he wanted to feel less alienated thanks to his vie mal fet, have tainted the good and decent that came from his experience. I don't want to discourage your reading and think you have made some very valuable comments today, though, so please reply and further support your interpretation if you think you're still correct. I think the two stories offered an interesting contrast because even though there were similarities between the two--the lack of a happy ending for one--the tone of the two was fairly different. I had a few thoughts about them, which occurred to me as I was reading, mostly because of the experience I have had critiquing stories. "A Very Short Story" failed to capture my interest. It is difficult in such a short story to develop one's characters very much, but essential to get the reader to sympathize with the main character. He didn't do that. We don't even know the main character's name. At the end I was left thinking so what? Probably hundreds of variations on such a story have happened, so why should I care about this particular one? Now what I wonder is whether that was a purposeful decision on Hemingway's part. Perhaps this was the very feeling he was trying to arouse. The ending almost did not quite seem to fit with the rest of the tone of the story. It seemed perhaps as if he meant to say that thus all ends in misery and failure. One possibility that occurrs to me about why he named Luz and not the main character is that he was trying to bring her to the forefront. Perhaps he meant to be pointing to her, showing her as the cause of it all, and thus passing judgment on her actions. "Soldier's Home" has a lot more to it. From the beginning when he starts out by naming the main character, I realized this story was in many ways quite different. Krebs seemed a real person who was going through real struggles and I could sympathize with him. That second paragraph struck me as rather odd because of the combination of sentences in that manner. It seems to me that Krebs had to go without many things--especially family--for so long during the war that he thinks he can do without them. He thinks he doesn't need anybody. Partially too he seems angry at his own failure. I think that he thought none of it had touched him, but that he was fooling even himself. I think his going to watch his sister play baseball shows that he is not really as self-sufficient as he thinks he is. Perhaps Krebs was lying for simplicity's sake, but which was really the lie? Was it where he tells his mother he does love her? Or is it when he says he doesn't? Hemingway doesn't give us enough of an insight into Krebs' mind to know which of these is true, but I would guess that deep down inside himself, whether he knew it or not, he did love her, and that he was lying because he wanted to be alone without attachment, and wanted to be miserable. The shock and suffering of war had perhaps reduced his mind to a point where he didn't really know how to be happy and didn't want to. Those are my thoughts anyway, for what they're worth. Very very good, Nicola! Indeed, I think you have hit very hard into the heart of the matter of "A Very Short Story." This deeply emotional and very powerful story is written with exceeding brevity, lack of development, and then a deliberately nihilistic ending. In this way, it ties into the Hemingway theme of "they" always get you. The romance (if we call it such) and story is churned out as free from adornment as possible, and then even the retelling of it gets a bitter aftertaste on the palate from the grubby ending. I like your thoughts on Krebs, and your analysis of what he was thinking. There is a school of thought in literary circles which originated in psychoanalysis that is called trauma theory, that we may here find instructive. Mary Jacobus, trauma theorist, comments that, "only by exploring the preexisting constellation of object relations can the significance of the trauma to that individual be found." Perhaps Krebs is exploring through the previous stars of his life - sister, girls, library, mother - in order to try to find himself and regain his bearings. Maybe that is what his simplicity is about? I found John's comments interesting, and likely there is some truth to Hemingway's motivation for writing "A Very Short Story." I guess I read with a literary eye, though. Perhaps I'm reading too much into things, but both stories' endings left me with the same impression: Reality is much more disappointing than one's fantasies of what reality should be. In the "Soldier's Home" story, the boy resigns to growing up. He'd rather not, but it is so much simpler to give in to what his mother expects of him and become a responsible adult. In "A Very Short Story," life turns out bad for both the male and female characters. That story starts off with such hope. Perhaps Hemingway's childhood mirrors this. A beginning of hope (you write that his childhood was a happy one), then it all is shattered when adulthood sets on, especially with his father's suicide. To use your words, Professor, "This illusion [that he would marry the nurse] was shattered when he departed for America, and she remained." Shattered illusions. That's what I think anyway. Very good as well, Aspra! I like your conclusion about how the two stories had a similar overall theme, and think it hits spot-on. And your analysis supporting it is also excellent. Okay, class, very well done so far tonight! I am very proud of how we are going now, very well done!
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Sir X. Pol Briga
Talossan since 11-10-2005 Knight since 12-26-2009
59 is an important number - keep it prime in the thoughts of Talossa
Posts: 1,227
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Post by Sir X. Pol Briga on Apr 8, 2008 22:23:46 GMT -6
My impression of the end of "A Very Short Story" is the juxtaposition of siezing the moment versus something that is longer term. There is a building of a relationship in the early part of the story, only to have it crumble due to separation. The last part is a brief encounter, yet it also has a poor outcome. Perhaps the Hemingway is saying if your going to get hurt, do it quickly and move on, rather than prolonging the agony.
In "Soldier's Home" the name Krebs is interesting as like a crab he seems to have a shell around him and this armor in turn makes his responses to the environment around him awkward. The protection is enhanced by his efforts to not even encourage any possible damage to the buffer around him.
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on Apr 8, 2008 22:25:43 GMT -6
My impression of the end of "A Very Short Story" is the juxtaposition of siezing the moment versus something that is longer term. There is a building of a relationship in the early part of the story, only to have it crumble due to separation. The last part is a brief encounter, yet it also has a poor outcome. Perhaps the Hemingway is saying if your going to get hurt, do it quickly and move on, rather than prolonging the agony. In "Soldier's Home" the name Krebs is interesting as like a crab he seems to have a shell around him and this armor in turn makes his responses to the environment around him awkward. The protection is enhanced by his efforts to not even encourage any possible damage to the buffer around him. Interesting approaches, Xhorxh, and I appreciate you managing to find the time to participate despite your business trip . Can I ask you to point to some passages where you feel Krebs has armour, or is it just a general feeling? EDIT: I can't recall where the name is from, incidentally, so I am looking it up. EDIT: The origin of the name is not clear, so it might be crab-related, after all. That would be unusual for Hemingway, though, who tended not to choose names on that basis.
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Post by Çelís del Þeracour on Apr 8, 2008 22:29:06 GMT -6
My take on the stories is somewhat different -
I would like to start with A Soldier's Story. I like this story for it's simplicity and it's truth. Not about the situation or the character or whether we agree with the protagonist, but the remnants that are left in a human after a "vision quest". At some point in most of our lives, we go away, and when we come back, everything is strangely the same and somehow utterly different. And the realization is that we are different having broadened our experiences. The small town is the same, the girls are the same but now he sees them differently. Krebs takes a while to figure out how he fits back into his old life. The fact that the towns people don't want to hear his war stories, is also an analogy for the fact that they don't care about the outside world, just what goes on in this little town. The importance of the local newspaper, the fashion, the value placed on the car, these are irritating to Krebs because he is trying to say to them "There is a larger world out there and I've seen it".
A Very Short Story - This is a glimpse, the page out of our lives that again we could all write, the one situation that could have changed our lives had it panned out differently. It is neither happy or sad, but factual. The way we remember those lost opportunities. We can't mourn them, they simply are what they are.
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on Apr 8, 2008 22:34:50 GMT -6
My take on the stories is somewhat different - I would like to start with A Soldier's Story. I like this story for it's simplicity and it's truth. Not about the situation or the character or whether we agree with the protagonist, but the remnants that are left in a human after a "vision quest". At some point in most of our lives, we go away, and when we come back, everything is strangely the same and somehow utterly different. And the realization is that we are different having broadened our experiences. The small town is the same, the girls are the same but now he sees them differently. Krebs takes a while to figure out how he fits back into his old life. The fact that the towns people don't want to hear his war stories, is also an analogy for the fact that they don't care about the outside world, just what goes on in this little town. The importance of the local newspaper, the fashion, the value placed on the car, these are irritating to Krebs because he is trying to say to them "There is a larger world out there and I've seen it". A Very Short Story - This is a glimpse, the page out of our lives that again we could all write, the one situation that could have changed our lives had it panned out differently. It is neither happy or sad, but factual. The way we remember those lost opportunities. We can't mourn them, they simply are what they are. Some very good thoughts. So in your interpretation, Krebs is more of a hero who has ventured out, and come back to a smaller world than he has seen? I think that's interesting, and perhaps supportable by the text. Your latter statement about a very short story, though, I think might necessitate reading it again, with particular attention to the ending. I can see how it can be read as a vignette independent of judgment, but I believe that the bitterness of the ending might bespeak of a larger purpose.
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Post by Çelís del Þeracour on Apr 8, 2008 22:37:38 GMT -6
I would like to add - on a Very Short Story - Hemmingway makes it personal in his last jab at the end regarding the STD. This makes it all the more ...poingnant..and it is probably what I will remember best about the story, and I think he knew that. The last jab, the vengeance. That - "you took my girl so I'm going to write your name and bad stuff about you on the bathroom wall" syndrome that is very childish.
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