Re: A Hemingway connection?

Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Tue, 13 Apr 1999 15:22:50 -0400

At 12:04 PM -0500 on 3/29/99, you wrote:

>     on the last trip to the
>     library I picked up the Nick Adams stories for myself and my sons
>     to read.

[a bit of a late reply]

Mattis, I would be interested in hearing what you and your sons think of
the last story in the book, "Fathers and Sons," which is a work that has
always haunted me.

>     though I wish that when the arranged them in chronological order by
>     Nick's age, they would have noted the date of writing/publication so
>     that I could get a better feel for the changing attitude of the author
>     towards his character.

That's an intriguing point!  Because EH does jump around a lot in time when
he uses the Nick Adams character.  I vaguely recall (though my EH
bibliography is packed away) that many of the stories were written in sync
with Nick's age -- so as EH grew older, so did Nick.  But there were some
exceptions, and on top of that, there were a number of the stories that
were either unpublished fragments or just plain unpublished or unfinished
works that were dug up for the anthology to give it a more "chronological"
feel.

>     Of course this is not the Hemingway list so I had better get the point.

Nah, we like digressions here!

>     When I came across the story "The Last Good Country", whose tone and
>     style seemed remarkably different from many of the preceding stories
>     (hence the  wish for publication data), I was struck by the fact
>     that Nick's relationship with his little sister, Littless (sp?), a
>     major part of the story, was so reminiscent of Holden and Phoebe.

Good catch!  This is something I've never thought about. Quite a few
commentators have remarked on the "incestuous" feeling between the brother
and sister, which has so often been observed of Holden and Phoebe.

According to an essay in NEW CRITICAL APPROACHES TO THE SHORT STORIES OF
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, "'The Last Good Country': Again the End of Something," by
David R. Johnson, the manuscript pages of this story indicate that it was
written in 1952, 1953, and 1954, and that it is the "last story about
[Hemingway's] first fictional hero."  The author of the essay speculates
that this is Hemingway's attempt to write "the Michigan novel, returning to
his own boyhood and young manhood."

>     Anyway, thanks for calling these stories to my attention. If anyone
>     has any thoughts on this connection, and on where this particular
>     story fits into Hemingway's work, I would be happy to hear it.

As his sister's protector (and as protected by Littless), Nick here is a
kind of return to the writer's past for Hemingway, who seems to have
abandoned the 60+ pages of "The Last Good Country" for A MOVEABLE FEAST,
which was its own type of revisit to the writer's past, in memoir form.
Although the abandoned story has many intriguing details, it is ultimately
an exercise in frustration for the reader, I think -- it heads down certain
brutal roads that Hemingway was unable or unwilling to take.

I regret the delay in replying, but I have to thank you, Mattis, for
raising a fascinating question that got me to pondering quite a bit today!

--tim