The Hemingway Short Story: A Study in Craft for Writers and Readers

by Robert Paul Lamb

In The Hemingway Short A Study in Craft for Writers and Readers, Robert Paul Lamb delivers a dazzling analysis of the craft of this influential writer. Lamb scrutinizes a selection of Hemingway's exemplary stories to illuminate the author's methods of construction and to show how craft criticism complements and enhances cultural literary studies. The Hemingway Short Story, the highly anticipated sequel to Lamb's critically acclaimed Art Hemingway, Craft, and the Creation of the Modern Short Story, reconciles the creative writer's focus on art with the concerns of cultural critics, establishing the value that craft criticism holds for all readers.
Beautifully written in clear and engaging prose, Lamb's study presents close readings of representative Hemingway stories such as "Soldier's Home," "A Canary for One," "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen," and "Big Two-Hearted River." Lamb's examination of "Indian Camp," for instance, explores not only its biographical contexts -- showing how details, incidents, and characters developed in the writer's mind and notebook as he transmuted life into art -- but also its original, deleted opening and the final text of the story, uncovering otherwise unseen aspects of technique and new terrains of meaning. Lamb proves that a writer is not merely a site upon which cultural forces contend, but a professional in his or her craft who makes countless conscious decisions in creating a literary text.
Revealing how the short story operates as a distinct literary genre, Lamb provides the meticulous readings that the form demands -- showing Hemingway practicing his craft, offering new inclusive interpretations of much debated stories, reevaluating critically neglected stories, analyzing how craft is inextricably entwined with a story's cultural representations, and demonstrating the many ways in which careful examinations of stories reward us.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Leonard Gaya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert Paul Lamb, an American academic, published two books on Hemingway, Art Matters and The Hemingway Short Story. The latter often references the former but can be read independently. In this volume, Lamb examines Hemingway’s craft through a handful of stories:
- “Indian Camp” (and the closely related “Three Shots” and “Fathers and Sons”), a story showing young Nick Adams’ first encounter with death,
- “Soldier’s Home”, about the anxieties of a soldier coming home from war,
- “A Canary for One”, a very subtle story about the end of a relationship,
- “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”, an intense anecdote on castration and prejudice,
- “Big Two-Hearted River”, with Nick Adams again, on another fishing expedition.

Robert Paul Lamb’s ultra-fine analyses demonstrate how these stories are designed to convey meaning, sometimes in very subtle ways, through the sequencing of action and the techniques of impressionism and omission (causing readers to “feel something more than they understand”), the use of external focalisation, voice, word choices, etc.

In doing so, Lamb often refers to the works of French structuralist critics such as Roland Barthes and Gérard Genette and makes frequent use of such concepts as proairetic code, hermeneutic code, fabula/narration, etc. which can be a bit perplexing for readers unfamiliar with this terminology.

Most of Lamb’s interpretations are compelling, although sometimes a bit far-fetched— e.g., the last two stories read as metacriticism and metafiction, respectively. All in all, an illuminating essay on Hemingway’s craft and very helpful in understanding some of his more elusive stories.

[Elizabeth Boyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading and re-reading Lamb's first book, Art Matters: Hemingway, Craft, and the Creation of the Modern Short Story, I was very excited to purchase the sequel, in which Lamb promised to apply his many ideas and concepts to whole stories. He did not disappoint. The Hemingway Short Story: A Study in Craft for Writers and Readers is breathtakingly brilliant. In the long first chapter on "Indian Camp," Lamb effortlessly weaves together craft, theme, biography, and his masterful knowledge of how Hemingway's art works to create a tour de force of criticism. The next two chapters, on "Soldier's Home" and the highly underrated "A Canary for One," use the craft analysis Lamb developed in his first book to open up dimensions of these stories that no one has ever noticed, and to show how a focus on craft both settles longstanding critical debates and also deepens our understanding of a story's endless layers of meaning. The final two chapters, on another much admired but critically neglected Hemingway masterpiece, "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen," which readers have never understood, and on the much discussed "Big Two-Hearted River," are remarkable, and bring Lamb's definitive two-volume study of Hemingway's art to an appropriate close. The former looks at "metacritical" Hemingway, how the author himself anticipates and analyzes in this very story the ways in which critics and readers process a story and come up with different meanings. The latter examines "Big Two-Hearted River" as a story about the writing of stories, that is, a text that works on many levels, one of which is metafictional. Throughout, Lamb's analyses are fully persuasive, and you feel as though you are in the hands of a master critic, one who takes you in hand and gives you an inside view of the writer and his creation. As in his first volume, Lamb writes so very beautifully, in an elegant, clear prose that can be read and appreciated by anyone, whether a regular reader or a professional scholar. This seems particularly apt for a book on Hemingway. Between them, these volumes finally show, in detail and with enormous insight, how the art of the most influential craftsman of the past century actually works. This is literary study at its absolute finest. This book is nearly as good as reading Hemingway himself, and I would enthusiastically recommend it to anyone interested in Hemingway, the art of fiction, or the short story genre. Or to anyone who simply wants a great read.

[April Antoniou · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true must-have for any fan of Hemingway, or anyone who wants to understand the ART of literary theory and criticism. Lamb has an acumen for delving into these stories and surfacing, sharing more meaning, insight, and technical meaning than I ever thought possible. A true study in craft. I will be rereading this for many many years to come.

[Rita Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a remarkable book.
Clearly written by someone who loves his craft and his subject.
The research that must have gone into this is astounding.
For anyone interested in Hemingway it is a must read, you won't need to read another.
I absolutely loved it.