- Title
- Periphery to Metropole: Malraux, Hemingway, and Gellhorn Write Bomber and Bombed in the Spanish Civil War
- Author/Creator
- Kimberly K. Dougherty
- Publication Details
- Airpower in Literature: Interrogating the Clean War, 1915-2015, pp.39-70
- Annotation
- Examines how the three writers provide complementary perspectives of the air war in Spain, challenging what we see from the skies and what we can know about the people below. André Malraux shows readers the unique view from the cockpit, while Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn explore the reactions of targeted populations on the ground. In his 1937 novel L'espoir (Man's Hope), Malraux questions the reliability of the aerial gaze, showing what flyers see and exposing the various barriers to clarity that both literally and figuratively blind the aviator. Hemingway, in For Whom the Bell Tolls, highlights the extreme imbalance of force airpower creates and the fear it inspires in the partisans, but he also shows their use of deception and direct fire as early adaptations to airpower employment. Finally, in The Face of War (1959), Gellhorn challenges airpower advocates' beliefs that they can know a targeted civilian population and accurately predict their responses to bombing. The critical conversations these writers interrogate--the reliability of the aerial gaze and the ability to know, and accurately represent, populations targeted for bombing—are still relevant today.
- Publisher
- Lexington Books; Lanham, MD
- Academic Unit
- Hemingway Bibliography
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Record Identifier
- 991015212020203691
Book chapter
Periphery to Metropole: Malraux, Hemingway, and Gellhorn Write Bomber and Bombed in the Spanish Civil War
Airpower in Literature: Interrogating the Clean War, 1915-2015, pp.39-70
Lexington Books
2022
Appears in Hemingway Bibliography
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