A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway

THE CRITICS

ON HEMINGWAY'S REPUTATION AS A WRITER

The Hemingway tune was a new and original contribution to world literature. It is in the ears of all young people who set out to write. And the Hemingway code of courage, the Hemingway hero and his stoic holding on against odds, have exerted an influence beyond literature. Though the insufficiencies of the man eventually maimed his work, Hemingway at his best is a seminal force as considerable as that of Joyce or Faulkner or Scott Fitzgerald.

Anthony Burgess, Ernest Hemingway and His World, 1978

Hemingway made a difference. There are people who do not admire his work, but even these are perfectly ready to admit- if only that they deplore the fact- that he is "important." It is hard to think of a contemporary American who had more influence on modern writing,... or, in his own time, of a writer more widely publicized.

Philip Young, Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration, 1966

ON THE WORTH OF A FAREWELL TO ARMS AS A NOVEL

Among the American novels which deal with the First World War of 1914-18, A Farewell to Arms has stood up under the weathering of the years as well as any and far better than most.... Soldier's Pay by William Faulkner and Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos have long since begun to show signs of literary senility.... [Hemingway's book] manages to remain singularly undated at the same time that it perfectly embodies the Zeitgeist, the governing moral essence of that far-away time.

Carlos Baker, "Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms," in The American Novel from Cooper to Faulkner, 1965

A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF HEMINGWAY'S WOMEN

...There are, however, no women in his books! In his earlier fictions, Hemingway's descriptions of the sexual encounter are intentionally brutal, in his later ones unintentionally comic; for in no case, can he quite succeed in making his females human...

Hemingway is only really comfortable in dealing with "men without women." The relations of father to son, of battle-companions, friends on a fishing trip, fellow inmates in a hospital,... a boy and a gangster: these move him to simplicity and truth.

Leslie A. Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel, 1966

ON HEMINGWAY'S WRITING STYLE

[His words strike us] each one as if they were pebbles fetched fresh from a brook. They live and shine, each in its place. So one of his pages has the effect of a brook-bottom into which you look down through flowing water. The words form a tessellation, each in order beside the other. It is a very great quality.

Ford Madox Ford, "Introduction to A Farewell to Arms," 1932

...the Hemingway still mostly admired and argued over is the author of the early fictions- The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms.... Perhaps their staying power derives not from their exterior alone but also from their tender spots of sensibility carefully nurtured in a dehumanized world- those passages of muted lyricism that provide both a measure and a meaning for protective toughness. Rare and brief as they are, they achieve a special resonance by being sounded against the hard polished surface of his typical prose.

Charles R. Anderson, "Hemingway's Other Style," 1961

ON A FAREWELL TO ARMS, HEMINGWAY, AND THE MOVIES

A Farewell to Arms had its first filming in 1932.... This deferred to popular taste by ending the story with a living Catherine, to Hemingway's disgust, and it began a whole unsatisfactory saga of bad Hemingway movies. In 1958 there was a more skillful and less compromising adaptation..., but it could not match in visual language the distinction of Hemingway prose. No better proof is needed of the essentially "literary" nature of Hemingway's work than a long succession of cinematic mediocrities based on his work.

Anthony Burgess, Ernest Hemingway and His World, 1978

We wish to thank the following educators who helped us focus our Book Notes series to meet student needs and critiqued our manuscripts to provide quality materials.

Murray Bromberg, Principal
Wang High School of Queens, Holliswood, New York

Sandra Dunn, English Teacher
Hempstead High School, Hempstead, New York

Lawrence J. Epstein, Associate Professor of English
Suffolk County Community College, Selden, New York

Leonard Gardner, Lecturer, English Department
State University of New York at Stony Brook

Beverly A. Haley, Member, Advisory Committee
National Council of Teachers of English Student Guide Series
Fort Morgan, Colorado

Elaine C. Johnson, English Teacher
Tamalpais Union High School District
Mill Valley, California

Marvin J. LaHood, Professor of English
State University of New York College at Buffalo

Robert Lecker, Associate Professor of English
McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

David E. Manly, Professor of Educational Studies
State University of New York College at Geneseo

Bruce Miller, Associate Professor of Education
State University of New York at Buffalo

Frank O'Hare, Professor of English
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

Faith Z. Schullstrom, Member of Executive Committee
National Council of Teachers of English
Director of Curriculum and Instruction
Guilderland Central School District, New York

Mattie C. Williams, Director, Bureau of Language Arts
Chicago Public Schools, Chicago, Illinois

BIOGRAPHY

Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway, a Life Story. New York: Scribner, 1969. The definitive biography, written by a distinguished Hemingway scholar and professor of literature. It presents a balanced view of the man and his work.

Burgess, Anthony. Ernest Hemingway and His World. New York: Scribner, 1978. A sparkling short biography. The author, an English novelist, gives you a refreshingly honest appraisal of Hemingway the man seen against the background of his times. The biographer is obviously not dazzled by any Hemingway mystique, yet is fair in his treatment of the man as a writer.

Callaghan, Morley. That Summer in Paris. New York: Coward-McCann, 1963. Memories of a Canadian writer's friendship with Hemingway during the summer of 1929.

CRITICISM

Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: Critiques of Four Major Novels. New York: Scribner, 1962. A collection of five critiques of Farewell, the first publication of Hemingway's original ending to the novel, plus a handy guide to research for literary papers.

Baker, Sheridan. Ernest Hemingway. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

Bradbury, Malcom. The Modern American Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Fiedler, Leslie A. Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Stein and Day, 1966. Fairly heavy on writers other than Hemingway, but useful in its insights concerning Hemingway's creation of characters like Catherine Barkley.

Rovit, Earl. Ernest Hemingway. Boston: Twayne, 1963. A well-documented study of the work of Hemingway. Although Farewell is only part of what is covered, it does give a useful discussion of what constitutes the Hemingway hero.

Weeks, Robert, ed. Hemingway: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962.

Young, Philip. Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration. New York: Rinehart, 1952. Offers extensive commentary on Farewell. Clarifies the idea of the "hero" in Hemingway and offers insights into the making and meaning of Hemingway's individual style.

GENERAL

Altenbernd, Lynn, and Leslie L. Lewis. A Handbook for the Study of Fiction. New York: Macmillan, 1966. Just what its title states. Valuable for background that could be used in writing literary essays about Hemingway or any writer.

Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. Invaluable for an understanding of the very special effect World War I has had on the making of the modern world. AUTHOR'S OTHER WORKS

Listed are major works in the order of their publication.

In Our Time, 1925. Short stories and remarkable little sketches.
The Sun Also Rises, 1926. The novel of the "lost generation" footloose in Europe.
A Farewell to Arms, 1929.
For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940. A novel of the Spanish Civil War.
The Old Man and the Sea, 1952. The last major work of fiction published while Hemingway was still alive.
A Movable Feast, 1964. Reminiscences of Paris in the twenties.
By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, Selected Articles and Despatches of Four Decades, ed. William White, 1967.
Islands in the Stream, 1970. An unfinished novel about war in the Gulf Stream.

A STEP BEYOND

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