by Harold Bloom<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Frank O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor, who disliked Hemingway as intensely as he liked Chekhov, remarks in The Lonely Voice <\/em>that Hemingway\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stories \u00e2\u20ac\u0153illustrate a technique in search of a subject,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and therefore become \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a minor art.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Let us see. Read the famous sketch called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hills Like White Elephants,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d five pages that are almost all dialogue, between the young man and her lover, while they wait for a train at a station in a provincial Spanish town. They are continuing a disagreement as to the abortion he wishes for her to undergo when they reach Madrid. The story captures the moment of her defeat, and very likely the death of their relationship. And that is all. The dialogue makes clear that the woman is vital and decent, while the man is a sensible emptiness, selfish and unloving. The reader is wholly with her when she responds to his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d do anything for you\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Would you please please please please please please please stop talking.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Seven pleases<\/em> are a lot, but as repetition they are precise and persuasive in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hills Like White Elephants\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. The story is beautifully prefigured in that simile of a title. Long and white, the hills across the valley of Ebro \u00e2\u20ac\u0153look like white elephants\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to the woman, not to the man. White elephants, proverbial Siamese royal gifts to courtiers who would be ruined by the expense of their upkeep, become a larger metaphor for unwanted babies, and even more for erotic relationships too spiritually costly when a man is inadequate.<\/p>\n From the book’s preface:<\/p>\n There is no single way to read well, though there is a prime reason why we should read. Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found? If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re fortunate, you encounter a particular teacher who can help, yet finally you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re alone, going on without further meditation. Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is, at least in my experience, the most healing of pleasures. It returns you to otherness, whether in yourself or in your friends, or in those who may become friends. Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness. We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Harold Bloom Frank O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor, who disliked Hemingway as intensely as he liked Chekhov, remarks in The Lonely Voice that Hemingway\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stories \u00e2\u20ac\u0153illustrate a technique in search of a subject,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and therefore become \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a minor art.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Let us see. … Continue reading