Innovation as Pugilism: Hemingway and the Reader after A Farewell to Arms

Book chapter

Michael M. Boardman

Narrative Innovation and Incoherence: Ideology in Defoe, Goldsmith, Austen, Eliot, and Hemingway, pp.146-188

1992

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Title: Innovation as Pugilism: Hemingway and the Reader after A Farewell to Arms
Author/Creator: Michael M. Boardman
Publication Details: Narrative Innovation and Incoherence: Ideology in Defoe, Goldsmith, Austen, Eliot, and Hemingway, pp.146-188
Annotation: Opens with an overview of Hemingway s early honeymoon period with readers ending with A Farewell to Arms. Discusses Hemingway s innovative but divisive writings of the 1930s, which attacked readers and critics for their failure to understand serious art. Argues that Death in the Afternoon, To Have and Have Not, and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber reflect the author s compositional anxiety and contempt for inept readers, resulting in schizophrenic fictional structures that defy critical comprehension. Contends that awkward and overwritten portions of The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber were included as a duplicitous move by Hemingway s to mislead an inattentive reader.
Academic Unit: Hemingway Bibliography
Language: English
Resource Type: Book chapter
Record Identifier: 991015131703803691