WEBVTT

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Arrogant,

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racist,

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misogynist,

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narcissist,

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self-absorbed,

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self-centered.

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Who's being described
in these deeply unflattering terms?

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Ernest Hemingway.

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Yes, Ernest Hemingway,
the most famous American writer.

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As an English teacher,

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every year I think about,
Why do we still teach Hemingway?

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I've published three
scholarly books on Hemingway,

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and I've published, most recently,
three books on teaching Hemingway,

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on the topics of war,
modernism and gender.

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And yet every day,

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I'm asked, "How can you
still be teaching Hemingway?"

NOTE Paragraph

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Who was Hemingway?

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Born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois,

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he was brought up
in an upper middle-class family

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with a physician father
and an opera-singer mother.

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He pursued fishing, hunting,

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journalism, boxing and football.

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He enlisted in the Italian
Ambulance Corps,

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and in 1918, he was the first American
wounded on the Italian Front.

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He was twice decorated for valor.

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He wrote about Paris and Spain
in "The Sun Also Rises."

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He wrote about the Great War
in "A Farewell to Arms."

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He wrote the first English-language
guidebook to the bullfights

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in "Death in the Afternoon."

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He wrote about hunting
in "Green Hills of Africa,"

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and covered the Spanish Civil War
and wrote "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

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After buying his boat, Pilar, he had
four world records in big-game fishing

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and wrote "The Old Man and the Sea."

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He was married four times
and had numerous girlfriends.

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He covered the D-Day invasion,

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the Battle of the Bulge,

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and he died by suicide

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after winning
the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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Yet Hemingway comes to us
as a conflicted figure,

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somebody who performed masculinity

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at a time when gender roles
were shifting in American culture

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and women were taking on
a more dominant role

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and men felt the need
to strengthen their role.

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So Hemingway established his reputation

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in many ways through
the manufacturing of different images.

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Here we see Hemingway
as the wounded soldier.

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He had 54 pieces of shrapnel in his knee.

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He looks heroic,

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but he was blown up while
passing out chocolate and cigarettes.

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Here's Hemingway on safari in Africa.

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You can now buy kudu horns
like that for $20 on eBay.

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Here's Hemingway pursuing his passion
for big-game fishing on the Gulf Stream.

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The meat from that 486-pound marlin

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went to waste.

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He passionately pursued
the bullfights in Spain.

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For many, the bullfights
are needless cruelty

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and not a cultural celebration.

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He covered the wars -
in Spain, in Italy and in France -

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and afterwards suffered
post-traumatic stress disorder.

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He had many encounters with women
and was married four times.

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He was not a good father.

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And, of course, there was the drinking.

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His alcoholism contributed
to his manic depression

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and perhaps to his suicide.

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So, Hemingway learned
to perform masculinity.

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He created a manufactured image

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that told the viewer
that he was living life to the fullest;

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that he was living an authentic life,

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and you, sitting at home,
perhaps, were not.

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And this image was sold in the media.

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Hemingway's face appeared on magazines

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that were aimed
towards educated audiences,

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such as Time and Life.

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But more significantly,

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Hemingway's image
was sold to mass audiences

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in these glossy, slick magazines.

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For many, he became a representative man,

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again, at a time when what it meant
to be a man was being contested,

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as women were emerging in the work force

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and there were transitions
in home and in the workplace.

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Thus, with all that is so problematic
about Hemingway,

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why do we still teach him today?

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I turn to "A Farewell to Arms," 
in many ways, as the best example

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of why we still teach Hemingway
to today's students.

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It has the literary themes and the style

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to help students best understand
Hemingway's world.

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For students - right? -

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to read Hemingway is a sign
of something that is cool, cynical,

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perhaps self-destructive -

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something that they're attracted to

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for reasons they may not quite
be able to articulate.

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But once they are dropped into
the rainy, war-torn landscape of Italy

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and understand the troubled world
of Frederic and Catherine,

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they recognize that
a "Farewell to Arms" is a great novel.

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What makes it great?

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Well, for many of us,

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it is because Hemingway incorporates
the aesthetic principles of Paul Cezanne

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into his aesthetic code.

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In 1924, Hemingway first saw
Cezanne's paintings

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at the salon of Gertrude Stein, in Paris,

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at a time when he was forming
his own aesthetic philosophy,

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when he was trying to decide

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what he wanted to do
with his own brand of art.

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He wrote, "He wanted to write
like Cezanne painted.

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Cezanne started with all the the tricks.

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Then he broke the whole thing down
and built the real thing.

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It was hell to do ...

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He wanted to write about country

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so that it would be there
like Cezanne had done it in painting.

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You had to do it from inside yourself.

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There wasn't any trick.

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Nobody had ever written
about country like that.

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He felt almost holy about it.

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It was deadly serious.

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You could do it if you would fight it out.

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If you'd lived right with your eyes."

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Cezanne was a French
Post-Impressionist painter,

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and in his paintings,

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he's using short, repetitive,
concentrated brushstrokes

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to break down the plane of the painting.

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It's a lesson that Hemingway
was to learn from him.

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We could turn first to the opening pages
of "A Farewell to Arms."

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"In the late summer of that year
we lived in a house in a village

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that looked across the river
and the plain to the mountains.

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In the bed of the river
there were pebbles and boulders,

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dry and white in the sun,

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and the water was clear and swiftly moving
and blue in the channels.

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Troops went by the house and down the road

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and the dust they raised
powdered the leaves of the trees.

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The trunks of the trees too were dusty

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and the leaves fell early that year

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and we saw the troops
marching along the road

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and the dust rising

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and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling

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and the soldiers marching

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and afterward the road bare and white
except for the leaves."

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Notice the repetition
of Hemingway's language:

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he's repeating words
like Cezanne is using brushstrokes.

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We have the word "water" twice,

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"dust" three times,

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"leaves" four,

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"white" twice.

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Notice, too, we have things that rise
and are raised, fall and are falling.

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Hemingway is showing

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the interconnectedness
of the natural world:

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because of the way that the dust rises,
the leaves fall early that year -

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showing us how the war
has disrupted the natural cycles;

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nature is damaged by war.

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Notice, too, how Hemingway uses motion.

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This is part of the trick of Cezanne:

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to capture life in motion on a canvas.

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We have the soldiers marching,

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we have the water flowing,

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we have the dust rising,

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and we have the leaves falling.

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And afterward, everything bare and white.

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Hemingway is trying to capture
a dominant idea of nature,

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to show how everything
is elementally connected.

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From Cezanne,

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Hemingway learned that these short,
concentrated brushstrokes - right? -

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would just, in the same way,
be employed in his writing.

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As you look at a Cezanne canvas,

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you can see how his brushstrokes
give us a house,

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perhaps a roof, perhaps a tree

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in the same way
that Hemingway's words -

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dust, leaves, wind -

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give us that same sense of motion
as we get in a Cezanne canvas.

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So, as we think about
why we still teach Hemingway's fiction,

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we see, with students,

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that they embrace
Hemingway's realism as their own;

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they hear it and it echoes.

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As they navigate the cold world of adults

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and the treacherous world of teenagers,

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they find lessons in Hemingway.

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In the words of a legendary English
teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy,

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Harvard Knowles:

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"In giving us stories that root us
in our own experiences,

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Hemingway shows us not only who we are

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but also forces us to consider
what we may become.

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What greater teacher
could we possibly want for our young?"

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Bully,

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racist,

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narcissist,

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misogynist, obnoxious and self-centered.

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Yes, we have to reconcile the tension

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between an image that is so ugly
and an art that is so beautiful,

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and the role of regressive masculinity
in American culture.

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Yet Hemingway endures - right? -

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his best writing endures
because he teaches us lessons

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about how to live according to our values

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and what it means to be human today.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)