Hemingway recap

Thanks to the many new faces who made it along to the group this week! We hope to see you again soon.

Simon Crowhurst brought along some wonderful pictures of a bearded, bull-fighting, and lion-slaying ‘Papa’ Hemingway.

He also introduced the session with a detailed biography of Hemingway, and demonstrated how many elements from his life could be traced in his writings - I particularly liked the extract from the Kansas City Star ‘style guide’ for reporters’ writings!

In our discussion we reflected on this craft of Hemingway's story-telling: his spare, lean style, a lightness of touch giving just enough information to evoke a certain sense of place. As in the last meeting, we reflected on whether these stories represented 'real' encounters between doctors and patients: a particular miscommunication over the units of temperature; a visit to a Native American encampment with his doctor father. And doctors and patients were just one of the many dualities we saw employed in the stories' prose: the hot and fevered boy and the cold, bright, icy day; the male group of visitors to the female in labour; the father and child; knowledge and misunderstanding or fear; childbirth and suicide.

When discussing 'A Day's Wait' we returned to questions of authority, mapping shiftings in the text between the empirical authority of the narrator, and the medico-scientific authority of the doctor. We thought about ideas of heroism and machismo in relation to the child's stoic response to his 'fatal' temperature, and his implicit comparison to characters in Pirates book from which his father reads, and also in the light of Hemingway's own activities, ideas, and identity.

We explored Hemingway's use of the bodies of his characters, particularly of pairs of hands and eyes in 'Indian Camp' (itself written through Nick's eyes), noting what is seen and unseen, touched and not touched, and discussing ideas about contact, exclusion and knowledge. We also thought about particularly Native American themes – from the Mayflower imagery of the opening journey to the significance of blankets and initiation rites.

As ever, our conversation ranged widely, from the imagery of surgical warfare (the 'strike')
to Stygian crossings, but, I have to say, my personal highlight was learning how best to tackle a hungry crocodile (offer it an arm)...

We hope you can join us next time for another stimulating meeting!