Review: Hemingway in the Digital Age: Reflections on Teaching, Reading, and Understanding, edited by Laura Godfrey. By Paul M. Kendel
As an adjunct professor I have taught American and World History for nearly twenty years. I have not had the pleasure of teaching the works of Ernest Hemingway, but the approaches and strategies presented in Hemingway In the Digital Age: Reflections on Teaching, Reading and Understanding, applies to just about every subject within the social sciences. This collection is an invaluable teaching tool, not just for instructors and students, but for Hemingway fans like me. The Sun Also Rises encourages readers to appreciate and explore “the beauty of paying attention.” (2). But how? Hemingway himself said, “Most people never listen.” (7) and that was over half a century ago—long before the arrival of the digital age. How does today’s instructor teach students—many who view books as archaic—the novels and short stories of Ernest Hemingway? This collection attempts to answer that question in our “age of distraction” (5). Hemingway’s prose is deceptively simple, but that is an advantage for instructors in our fast paced digital world. His prose “can provide valuable training for contemporary students of all ages, students who need help learning to read slowly and with close attention to a literary text” (7). When I deployed to Baghdad in 2005 I had an Iraqi interpreter wanting to improve his English. I’d brought a copy of The Sun Also Rises and let him read it—he said Hemingway’s unique prose helped him greatly.
Hemingway’s rugged, down to earth writing style, and realistic portrayal of life is easy for students to relate to, but it can also distract from the writer’s art. In “Virtual Papa”, Lisa Tyler tackles the problem of Hemingway’s virtual presence on the internet, who’s often depicted in Google searches “…as a legendary figure to emulate, one whose exciting adventures people long to have” (16). It’s the hyper masculine, testosterone driven, hard drinking adventurer, that appeals to many students. As a consequence, “the quality of Hemingway’s writing is taken for granted” (Ibid). He wanted to be remembered for his art, but couldn’t help promoting his image, even when it became a caricature. There is a dearth of Hemingway’s works on-line due to copyright laws, leaving the internet open to websites with questionable histories and portrayals of the writer—especially quotes that are often “apocryphal or mangled” (Ibid). But academically reputable information exists on-line and Tyler recommends a number of sites for scholars and students, mostly from academic, government-sponsored, and various cultural institutions that provide the appropriate material in order to understand and appreciate Hemingway in the proper context.
In ”Beyond Photographs: What the Images of Hemingway’s Fish Don’t Tell Us”, Michael K. Steinberg and Jordan Cissell approach Hemingway scholarship from an unusual approach: photographs. By teaching students “to digitally search for, study, and use Hemingway photographs to learn about historical environmental conditions allows them to concentrate more on context than text” (23). Instructors today are challenged more than ever to find ways to engage their students. The iGeneration may be consumed by electronics, but it is also environmentally conscious and concerned with the affects of climate change on the natural world—an integral part of nearly all of Hemingway’s stories. His photos capture a time that is either lost or soon may be. “The size and number of fish Hemingway caught are largely unheard of today in the same waters,” (24) the essay points out. Photographs “demonstrate what existed during Hemingway’s Cuban years; illuminating their drastic decline in both size and number” (25). Such an approach is an excellent “hook” to interest students affected by overfishing and the polluting of the oceans. The essay encourages students to look beyond the macho Hemingway mystique and appreciate how his book’s “ecological information underpins many of [his] stories, and [how] the environment was critically important to Hemingway personally” (27). To truly appreciate Hemingway the writer, and the man, it is necessary for scholars and students to look at not just the written record, but the visual one as well.
In ”A Meme-able Feast: Teaching Modernist Citationality and Hemingway Iconography through the Internet’s Most Infectious Replicator”, Kirk Curnutt examines the benefits of utilizing Hemingway memes in the classroom, primarily through the use of PowerPoint. “I have always had to convince supervisors and students that I “engage” classes in the material…what that means is I must prove I am not boring” (32). I like to think I’m relatively amusing in class, but every instructor needs help. “Whenever I taught Ernest Hemingway,” says Curnutt, “I liked to decorate a slide with the 1935 photo of him wielding the submachine gun” in Bimini, and “the one of him aiming the Tommy gun directly at the camera and the one of him apparently passed out with it, drink in his other hand,” his eldest son at his feet (34). Curnutt sees the unintended humor behind these photos as an opportunity to lighten up a subject that some students may see as overly serious. These type of memes help introduce Hemingway the man and not just the legend. The internet is awash with Hemingway’s public image. Unfortunately, these memes often “visualize the outsized masculinity that can stereotype his reputation (37), but they do help engage the student’s interest. Quotations are another useful tool that memes provide to express “timeless truths [that] exist beyond the contemporary rubble of meaning (ibid). A Hemingway example: “There is no nobility in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility lies in being superior to your former self” (ibid), is a common one. The source for these quotes can be difficult to find, but their inspirational benefits can aid an instructor and student. One meme features Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead with the famous quote: A man can be defeated but not destroyed—this is an excellent way to utilize the popularity of a T.V. show as a means to spark interest in an American literary icon in a digital age.
In ”How to Not Read Hemingway”, Brian Croxall believes “theories are, too much of the time, answers simply looking for confirmations” (58). Hemingway himself “despised all theories about his work” (ibid), but Croxall likes to think that Hemingway would approve of his theoretical approach using digital technology to study his work critically. Voyant’s Summary tool “allowed students to explore another critical division in Hemingway’s books: those published while he was alive and those published posthumously” (71). According to Croxall’s data, “more of his non-fiction as measured by total number of words had been published posthumously than when he was alive” (Ibid). For scholars and students, this data may reflect—or not—Hemingway’s decline as a writer. Did he become verbose with age? “This change “amounted to a 12.4 percent increase in sentence length in the posthumous fiction but a 19.5 percent decrease in sentence length in the posthumous nonfiction” (ibid). “Voyant provided us with insights about Hemingway’s style,” Croxall explains, “that we would have never reached even if we had read everything he had written” (73).
Another tool is Trends, “which displays the frequency of one or more words across the corpus you have loaded…Trends will display graphs for the most frequent terms (73). For feminist scholars interested in Hemingway this tool could be useful. “Trend helps confirm that Hemingway tends to call his adult male characters “men” and his adult females “girls” (80). But what use is all this data if it doesn’t make a student interested in actually reading Hemingway? Croxall’s answer: “My students have asked questions Hemingway scholars have never thought of, and they have been able, without too much trouble, to obtain what appear to be some convincing answers” (84). What more could an instructor in the digital age ask for? As his essay concludes, “what not reading Hemingway in a digital age does is give us new reasons to return to his books” (86). This of course is the ultimate goal of every literature professor who wants their students to appreciate Hemingway as they might have done before the advent of color television.
In “‘Concrete Particulars’: The Suggestive Power of Physical World Details in Across the River and Into the Trees”, Mark Ebel’s main argument is taken from Glen Adamson who believes that “as a culture, we are in danger of falling out of touch, not only with objects, but with the intelligence they embody: the empathy that is bound up in tangible things” (94). In the section titled “The “Patch”: Material Objects and Their Meaning,” Ebel deconstructs the meaning behind Colonel Cantwell’s old combat jacket “with a patch on the left shoulder that no one understood, and with light places on the straps, where stars had been removed” (100). Here Hemingway obscures information that is key to understanding the tension between The Shooter (Cantwell) and the Boatman during the duck hunting scenes. In WWII combat patches were authorized to be worn on the right shoulder of an army uniform. Hemingway’s reference to the patch on his left shoulder refers to Cantwell’s unit patch, the one he belonged to during his period of combat. The Boatman was not triggered by a combat patch as Ebel states, but his unit patch—the same one worn by the Moroccan soldiers that raped some of the Boatman’s female relatives.
During the invasion of Iraq the 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles” inflicted numerous casualties—both military and civilian—on an area that I patrolled two years later. Nicknamed “the Chickens” by the Iraqis—when worn out their unit patch looked more like a “Screaming Chicken” than an eagle—they returned in 2005. The result was over thirty soldiers killed in the first month. Like the Boatman in Hemingway’s novel, it wasn’t the patch—but a memory of a violent and painful past—that created animosity and resentment. “When teaching Hemingway to students in the digital age,” Ebel says, “teachers should consider focusing on [a] small frame section of [a] novel” (104). This connects students to the prose’s “concrete particulars” and the story beneath the story in Across the River and Into the Trees, such as “intrigue, sustaining interest, inferential thinking, and problem solving” (Ibid). The theme of war will resonate with most students familiar with Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as war’s impact on individuals [in this case Cantwell/the Boatman] and contemporary soldiers suffering from PTSD.
In “Putting the Medium and the Message in Perspective: Teaching The Sun Also Rises in the Digital Age”, Nicole J. Camastra warns: “In rushing to add technology to our classrooms, we might overlook ways it undermines a different outgrowth of thought, one that demands slow, careful, consideration over quick, results-driven processes and emotionally charged responses” (106). In an education age where technology is being perceived as a quick fix and the ticket to improving education, millions of American youth have become “addicted to feedback from the virtual world” (Ibid) of Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. Camastra believes “our digital selves offer up different ways of seeing our lives, and we mistake this vision for insight” (Ibid). The Sun Also Rises is focused thematically “on vision and the lack thereof” (Ibid) employing several literary devices that illustrate blindness and sight. Robert Cohn, “lacks the ability to see many things clearly throughout the story” (Ibid), while Jakes Barnes “actually composes his story, which helps to translate his experience, to render it in such a way that he understands what was previously unclear to him” (107). Jake “searches for missing context” (108) and Cohen does not. To better understand Jake’s story, Camastra suggests students engaging in a similar activity. “Ken Macrorie’s I-Search project outlines the search for a particular truth. It begins with identifying a question, something that students want “intensely to know or possess” (110). This search creates a narrative that helps students understand themselves before understanding literary characters such as Jake Barnes.
In “Using Digital Mapping to Locate Students in Hemingway’s World”, Richard Hancuff believes one of the greatest challenges facing literature professors and literary historians in the digital age “is to present a complex picture of a text’s meaning that opens the text to generations of students for whom the writer, the text, and the setting are all remote, abstract entities” (120). Hemingway’s characters and their geography “are bound up not only in their physical features, but also in the individual’s experience and memory” (120) all within an “understandings of space” (125). For Hancuff, it’s Hemingway’s posthumous book A Moveable Feast. Paris is “a social space,” based on the “material and geographical” (Ibid) providing students “with a deeper understanding of their own negotiations with the spaces through which they move” (Ibid). In Iraq, a friend’s sector or “space” was urban Baghdad, while mine was southwest of the capital and mostly rural—we both served, but had a very different sense of our “space” within the war, as did Hemingway’s understanding of the different social etiquette and cultures of the Left and Right banks of the Seine. By “researching and recreating the Paris of the 1920’s through visual tools such as Google Maps [along] with proper attention to the historic specificity of 1920’s Paris,” (128) Hancuff hopes to make today’s readers more intimate with Hemingway’s world.
In “Stories in the Land: Digital ‘Deep Maps’ of Hemingway Country”, Laura Godfrey and Bruce R. Godfrey describe Hemingway’s obsession with collecting and recording representations of place—his single-minded desire to get the “true gen” of any particular place (129). The digital age allows the scholar or student to experience this outside of just his novels and stories. Hemingway “embodied the intensive documentation of an environment” (129), known today as “deep mapping.” This approach will “often surface as narratives, in short stories about people’s lives, the places they know, and their memories of those places” (130). Deep mapping allows places to “become more than mere locations or settings or backgrounds. They emerge as complex totalities of composite experiences” (Ibid). The Godfreys ask: “Can new digital visualizations of ‘Hemingway country’ help illuminate his love of place, as well as his appreciation for the stories hidden within the landscapes he visited and in which he lived? And in what way is a digital deep map of just one Hemingway region—central Idaho—useful for twenty-first century students?” (131). One answer is the use of an interactive digital ArcGiS Story Map, known as Mapping Hemingway in Idaho, “a kind of living map, digitized and accessible from any type of device—from desktop computer to laptop to smart phone—letting users explore the hidden Hemingway stories behind the landscape” (136). One can literally walk in Hemingway’s footsteps accompanied by photographs, quotes by Jack Hemingway and Mary Welsh Hemingway, and audio clips describing walks with the writer in the same location on the map. The Godfrey’s want “students to see those stories in their “mind’s eye” (141) as if they had once walked with Ernest Hemingway himself.
In “Using Digital Tools to Immerse the iGeneration in Hemingway’s Geographies”, Rebecca Johnston’s goal is to dispel the misconceptions of many students—as well as society at large—that “Hemingway wrote solely from the script of his own experiences” (146). He did of course include many autobiographical elements into his characters—especially Thomas Hudson or Colonel Cantwell—but this limited autobiographical approach is misleading, where “students miss the complexity Hemingway’s geographical and historical settings add to his fiction” (ibid). In the digital age it’s easy for students and scholars to locate a variety of Hemingway related articles, but many websites can perpetuate “false ideas or images” (147) of the writer. Johnston suggests “avoiding internet sources with a heavily biographical focus…[where] instructors can separate the man from his works…[and] allow students to understand Hemingway’s novels more intimately and thoughtfully” (ibid). She suggests utilizing Google Earth or Google Maps in the classroom. “By adopting these digital tools instructors can help their students visualize the distances Hemingway’s characters pass through…such as Lieutenant Henry’s nomadic movements and his suffering” (150). By incorporating an array of “digital images, videos, and maps that clarify the work’s historical and geographical settings—geographies into which Hemingway poured so much time and thought” students are able “to more fully appreciate the realism and complexity of his writing” (156).
In “Teaching Hemingway through the Digital Archive”, Michelle E. Moore’s goal is to offer “strategies for teaching Hemingway through digital archival sources, his letters, photographs, and other contextual material” (157). This will reveal “a different kind of Hemingway through which [students] may now approach his novels and stories” (Ibid), even embracing a modernist approach to Hemingway studies. The Hemingway Letters project is publishing over 6,000 of the writer’s letters—although not available as a digital source— instructors could add them to class reading lists, and Google image searches provide an abundance of scans of Hemingway letters as digitized images. Moore suggests instructors “construct small assignments that ask students to think across archival materials and in some cases connect that material to Hemingway’s writing life” (162). Her hope is that the digital archive will help students to “think actively about literature…that prompts meaningful discussion…and the idea of a “real” Hemingway, leaving her class “with a palpable sense of what intertextuality is and an understanding of the labyrinthine structure of the archive, literary history, and Hemingway’s life” (Ibid).
New Comprehensive Guide to Hemingway's FTA
Kent State University Press’ Reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms: Glossary and Commentary is a gift to the Hemingway world. Robert W. Lewis and Michael Kim Roos meticulously researched and gathered together comprehensive information for a deeper understanding of the novel for all who teach Hemingway, from the new high school instructor to the weathered professor. The page references are all keyed to the Hemingway Library Edition of A Farewell to Arms (2012), and thus it makes an accessible companion to the novel. This glossary and commentary is a necessary addition for all students and scholars who study Hemingway. Click on the link below to read more or purchase a copy.
http://www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2018/reading-hemingways-a-farewell-to-arms-2/
FHS Hemingway Student Ambassador Represents Abroad, In His Own Words
Summer of Literary conferences
My travels to Europe this summer for the F Scott Fitzgerald conference in Toulouse, France and the TS Eliot Summer School in London, England were so surreal that I can scarcely believe that it wasn't just a dream. A year ago, I never would have imagined that I would have been in Europe, and furthermore, I never would have imagined that I would have been in Europe learning about what I am passionate about.
Literature has provided me with a sense of meaning that I would have been utterly devoid of otherwise, and this has saved my life in a variety of different ways that I cannot completely fathom. It is for this very reason that it was an immensely humbling and validating experience to be constantly surrounded by scholars and fellow students at both the conference and summer school who shared a similar passion. It was humbling in the sense that the extent of their knowledge on a wide range of subjects such as politics, philosophy, and of course, literature, revealed how much I still need to learn. It was validating, however, precisely because the experience afforded me a greater insight into how much there is to learn, and how a deeper appreciation for literature can be realized through the pursuit of knowledge.
The four hour train rides and eight hour flights could be quite daunting (though, admittedly, Delta Airlines won me over with their complimentary beverages and blues playlists), but it was worth every single second. Not only would I do it all again in a heartbeat, but I eagerly anticipate the next opportunity to travel again so that I may acquire a deeper love and understanding for the literature which has provided me with a purpose in my life for which I am eternally grateful for.
Alec Kissoondyal
Michelle E. Moore Book Review
This year Florida Hemingway Society member and professor of English at the College of Dupage, Michelle E. Moore, published her book, Chicago and the Making of American Modernism. Moore takes an important look at the influence the history of Chicago has had on the literary community. She digs deeply into the connection between religion and business in the rebuilding of Chicago after the fire of 1871 destroyed the city. Through archival research she explains the influence this connection had on several great American modernists.
Moore’s book is split into two sections. Part One is entitled “The Fire, the Colombian Exhibition, and the Boosters” and includes a look at Henry Blake Fuller, Harriet Monroe, Edgar Lee Masters and Sherwood Anderson. Part Two is entitled “Making Modernism Out of Chicago” and looks at Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
While each of the chapters has much to offer, the Hemingway chapter was, of course, the one to draw me in immediately. Moore’s chapter on Hemingway is insightful. She sheds interesting light on Hemingway’s relationship with Henry B. Fuller and Edwin Balmer, as well as his connection with Frank Lloyd Wright. Moore particularly brings attention to Balmer’s influence on Hemingway’s “The Woppian Way,” “The Ash Heel’s Tendon—A Story,” and “The Mercenaries.” She also gives some attention to Chicagoan interpretations of “The Killers” and “Fifty Grand.” Overall, the book has much to offer. You can pick up a copy at the link below. There is also a version available on Kindle for a slight savings.
Florida Hemingway Society Hosts Student Run Art Booth
On April 6th and 7th Gainesville hosted the 50th Santa Fe Spring Arts Festival. The festival features professional artists from around the nation who gather together to celebrate art and to sell their artwork. The festival also features a community section for local artists to gather and sell artwork. FHS Executive Director, Raul Villarreal, is also the director of the Spring Arts Festival. This year, for the first time, the FHS had a student art booth organized by FHS Student Ambassador Henry Johnston. The booth was decorated and arranged by Santa Fe student artists Mariana Ortiz (morticaz101@gmail.com) and Rodrigo Bianchi (rbianchileon@gmail.com). Several Santa Fe students submitted Hemingway related or inspired artwork. The booth was a success as students were able to interact with the local community about their artwork and Hemingway, while also selling some of their art submissions.
Florida Hemingway Society Panel at the College English Association's 50th Annual Conference
On March 30th the Florida Hemingway Society had its first panel at a CEA conference. The panel was titled Ernest Hemingway: Vision and Revision in the Sunshine State and Beyond and was moderated by Rebecca Johnston. FHS Student Ambassador Alec Kissoondayl opened the panel with his paper which looked at the connections between Hemingway’s life and works. Student Ambassador Henry Johnston followed Alec with his paper which looked at Hemingway, game wardens, and conservation in Michigan. Raul closed the panel with a phenomenal look at Hemingway and the Finca Vigia. We are looking forward to the next FHS panel.
Michigan Hemingway Society Offers Student Scholarship for Annual Conference
The Bill & Donna Coté
Scholarship Fund
The Bill and Donna Coté Scholarship to attend the annual fall Michigan Hemingway Society conference is open to graduate, undergraduate and high school students with an interest in the works and life of Ernest Hemingway. It includes full conference registration, overnight accommodations for Friday and Saturday, and meals. To apply the student must submit a short essay indicating why he or she would like to attend the conference, a letter of recommendation from an instructor under whom he or she has studied literature, and contact for both the applicant and instructor. These materials must be sent by September 1st to info@michiganhemingwaysociety.org.
Please consider donating online (below). You may donate using either a credit card or your PayPal account. You will receive an immediate confirmation and receipt on your screen and by email. It's simple and safe, with no forms to print and fill out, and no checks to write and mail. If you prefer you may send a check to the Michigan Hemingway Society, PO Box 922, Petoskey, MI 49770, specifying a donation to the Bill and Donna Coté Scholarship Fund.
If you have questions or would like to provide active personal support, contact Janice Byrne at info@michiganhemingwaysociety.org for details
Call for Papers – Florida Hemingway Society Panels at the 17th International Colloquium Ernest Hemingway, Finca Vigia, Cuba, 20-23 June, 2019
Call for Papers – Florida Hemingway Society Panels at the 17th International Colloquium Ernest Hemingway, Finca Vigia, Cuba, 20-23 June, 2019
In Ernest Hemingway Studies, the connection between Florida and Cuba is often discussed. This summer, members of the Florida Hemingway Society will have the opportunity to travel to Cuba and advance this discussion at the island nation’s 17th International Colloquium Ernest Hemingway.
Topics include;
- Ernest Hemingway: citizen of the world;
- Ernest Hemingway as a theme of study at Universities all over the World;
- Research works related with his life and work;
- Ernest Hemingway ́s Collections, Foundations, Associations, Projects and Museums around the
World.
In other words, the conference welcomes discussion on Hemingway from multiple and diverse angles, and our Florida Hemingway Society Board will organize panels based on topics and themes received.
To submit your abstract, you must be a member of the Florida Hemingway Society. Until payment options have been added online, which should happen this month, you can have temporary membership by responding to this email.
Abstracts should include a title and be no longer than 250 words.
All abstracts are due no later than 15 February, 2019 and should be submitted to this address: rebecca.johnston@sfcollege.edu
You will receive confirmation of your submission, and selected papers will be notified no later than 31 March.
There are travel options at all prices ranges. See the information below for a sample price breakdown.
*Note that you will be responsible for your own transportation and lodging.
For more information, see the attached flyers for conference overview and schedule/pricing, and please contact rebecca.johnston@sfcollege.edu with any questions.
For more on the Florida Hemingway Society, visit our web home at floridahemingwaysociety.org
Airfare to Havana ($175-350)
COLLOQUIUM CREDENTIALS
Speakers and Observers………….$150.00
Students……………………………….….$75.00
Companions…………………………..$100.00
Venue Transportation………….….$80.00
CREDENTIALS AFTER JUNE 1, 2019 $180.00
*Breakfast is provided at most Airbnb
*Late lunch provided at different venues (3:00 p.m.)
Optional
Taxi from airport to Havana $25-30
Airbnb $50-150 a night for single or double occupancy in Old Havana
Daily expenses
Students $50-75 a day for expenses not including souvenirs
Adults $100-(?) a day for expenses not including souvenirs
Also depends on how much rum and cigars you plan to consume
FHS Inaugural Meeting
In October of 2018 the founding members of the FHS met at the Spring Arts House of Santa Fe College to form the Florida Hemingway Society. Board positions were confirmed, bylaws were discussed, and friendships were forged. The FHS founding members began working on plans for 2019 including representation at CEA in New Orleans, in Cuba, and at the Fitzgerald conference in France. Plans were also made to include more members from the arts and other non literary fields.
The initial roots of the Florida Hemingway Society can be traced to the Hemingway Between Key West and Cuba conference held at Santa Fe College in the summer of 2017. The conference, which was organized by Raul Villarrael and Michael Curry, was a tremendous success and we look forward to the possiblity of future conferences organized by Raul and Michael.