Hemingway via Churchill

The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.
‘And we could have all this,’ she said. ‘And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said we could have everything.’

"I think about what we could have, about all we could possess," spoke the girl who stood framed against the fields and forest-obscured river, "And we could. All of this is within the realm of our grasp and possession, and yet we ourselves, as every day wakes and rises and night sets, push it away and create an impossibility out of this possible reality." At the end of the station, to where she had walked, was a view of the tree-lined banks of the rivers of Ebro, bordered by fields of grain., and far beyond this river rose the mountains.
The man did not, or feigned to have not heard the girl, and therefore spoke as such. The girl did not revisit the entirety of her previous statement, but once again spoke the sum of it for the man.

Hills Like White Elephants

Earnest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” starts off with a hyper-observed scene. The geography of the setting is precise. The narrator is even aware of the exact train schedule:

“It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went to Madrid.”

The descriptions of the actions, when acknowledged, do not cut corners and completely commit to that action.

“The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glass on the table and looked at the man and the girl.”

Hemingway did not settle for telling us that the beers were served, or that the woman brought them, but goes all the way to the little felt coaster pads and has the woman looking at the couple. However, we don’t see her leave again, and later on the dialogue speaks alone. When that happens, the passage of time and actions are assumed, and we are now not sure of the forty minutes as we were before.

We are made to feel even more unsure as we continue to eavesdrop on the couple’s conversation. We are obviously missing something, and not just having them tell us what the operation is. Like Howard’s diary in “On Beauty”, this couple has their ‘in’ jokes that aren’t really jokes but annoyances and catchphrases, like when the girl remarks that, “Everything tastes of liquorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe” or that “That’s all we do, isn’t it – look at things and try new drinks?”

I read this story a few times this weekend, and I believe that this is necessary. On the first reading, I admired the style, but didn’t really have a clue as to what just happened. It took repeated readings to start seeing the subtext or where the plainly written dialogue was sarcastic, for instance, because Hemingway gives no clues. On first reading, I took these lines at face value, not questioning whether the procedure really did leave people all that happy:

‘I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it.’

‘So have I,’ said the girl. ‘And afterwards they were all so happy.’

When the man tells the girl that he knows it is simple, and she rather witheringly comes back with “Yes, you know it’s perfectly simple”, we are listening to a tense couple that knows and can attack every little word the other utters. Not so perfectly simple.

In my opinion, this is a very good depiction of a stressed out, conflicted woman. The itchy, creepy, annoyed, gnawing feeling you get when someone you love is bugging you, not loving you enough and at the same time too much, is as palpable as the heat.

Faulkner's "Dry September"

"Changed your mind, did you?" he said. "Damn good thing; by God, tomorrow when this town hears about how you talked tonight-"
"Now, now," the other ex-soldier said. "Hawkshaw's all right. Come on, Hawk; jump in."
"Will Mayes never done it, boys," the barber said. "If anybody done it. Why, you all know well as I do there aint any town where they got better niggers than us. And you know how a lady will kind of think things about men when there aint any reason to, and Miss Minnie anyway-"
"Sure, sure," the soldier said. "We're just going to talk to him a little; that's all."
"Talk hell!" Butch said. "When we're through with the-"
"Shut up, for God's sake!" the soldier said. "Do you want everybody in town-"
"Tell them, by God!" McLendon said. "Tell every one of the sons that'll let a white woman-"
"Let's go; let's go: here's the other car." The second car slid squealing out of a cloud of dust at the alley mouth. McLendon started his car and took the lead. Dust lay like fog in the street. The street lights hung nimbused as in water. They drove on out of town.
A rutted lane turned at right angles. Dust hung above it too, and above all the land. The dark bulk of the ice plant, where the Negro Mayes was night watchman, rose against the sky. "Better stop here, hadn't we?" the soldier said. McLendon did not reply. He hurled the car up and slammed to a stop, the headlights glaring on the blank wall.
"Listen here, boys," the barber said; "if he's here, dont that prove he never done it? Dont it? If it was him, he would run. Dont you see he would?" The second car came up and stopped. McLendon got down; Butch sprang down beside him. "Listen, boys," the barber said.

In this passage, Faulkner evokes the “bloody twilight” before the nightmarish night. Description is limited, as through the entire story, but we can still make out the dusty fog in the street and the air. Dialogue is cut off and brief, leaving us snatching at phrases to figure out what’s happening. The hurried, panicked interruptions make it clear that nothing logical and reasoned will be able to be said or heard. The barber makes an effort, but his continual “listen here”’s and don’t its and don’t you’s show that no one is listening to him and he is trying to get something through their heads.

In fact, from all quarters, not just from the barber, the repeated phrases add to the anxious, tense tone. The air lays still and the lights hang suspended. Their whole environment holds its breath, but verbs used for the gang are violent and active. The car squeals, McLendon takes the lead, hurls and slams his car around, Butch springs from the running board, people are incited to jump in. We can see these movements in the fading light, later on all we hear are voices in the dark. Most of the story feels blindfolded like this, the exceptions are the scenes with Minnie Cooper and the last scene when McLendon proves us wrong in thinking he couldn’t be a bigger asshole. These three scenes are written cinematically. We view the remembered action, which is presented without rank or judgement.

The choral repetitions that stuck out the most to me where the bright, fevered, glittering eyes, the dead air, and the air as absorbent or enveloping, feeling like “molten lead”. The last example clues us in to Will’s fate, since with our blindfolds on it goes unsaid and unseen. The descriptions of dead air and the fevered quality of the townspeople’s eyes makes us feel the lack of control, sanity, and reason in the town.

Zadie Smith

When Zadie Smith’s piece switched from emails to the Belsey’s home life, it was easy to see the false binary that she had set up. We expect Jerome’s world to be stuffy and reserved, as it is in England, and populated with religion and church charities, virgins, internships, and polite and considerate families.

The Belseys, on the other hand, are a cool, hip-ly academic family in America, with (admittedly assumed) Brooklyn accents, busy schedules, children coming and going, a passionate and troubled husband and wife, and curse words. Yet Jerome’s world is the one that is written conversationally, confrontationally, colorfully. Though we have no extraneous information from his correspondence, and don’t know what he looks like or where and who he is other than what is slowly let on, we are allowed to read his emails, and therefore we feel close to him. When we arrive at his parents house the tone changes to formal storytelling, detached from its characters minds. We are told their moods, characteristics, histories, but it is the narrator who must let us in to these secrets, not the characters. This contrast of setting and tone makes us question our initial expectations of situational style.

Stranger in the Village

Julio describes James Baldwin’s attitude toward this village as anthropological. I find not only his attitude to the village, but his explanation for his own rage to be so. By comparing the first impressions of black and white populations upon first encountering the other, he tries to remain fair. The section where he talks about language, and its effect on attitudes, seemed especially trying for a kind of scientific method argument. We call hell black as night, we have ‘black moods’ and ‘black thoughts’, leading to the impression that “black men remain… beyond the disciplines of salvation” (Baldwin 163). Since “the function of language is to control the universe by describing it” (163), it is very hard to argue with language as evidence. Its roots and hidden meanings disappear into the back corners of our minds. We punish ourselves for not thinking before we speak. Writer like Orwell admonish us for not choosing our words more precisely to match and refine our meaning. Baldwin is careful and exact when controlling and describing his universe through noun heavy, tightly constructed sentences.

sentences... that are suspensive?

It was the third page of this week’s Free Press upon which was printed an article on a dorm break-in. The reporting of the intrusion, an incident occurring at the 12^th street dorms in which a girl found an unknown man in her shower, came a few weeks after I heard about it from a friend in the same dorm. Himself another possible victim of the lapse in security, his computer was stolen from his dorm room the same day. The amount of media coverage, national concern and attention, community shock, and call for greater security and awareness following the brutal on-campus murder of a beautiful Yale grad student makes the contrast of grapevine news and a third-page article relatively long after the event, which occurred within the same short school year, surprising. The casual attitude seemingly taken in response to a situation that could have turned out much worse, may reflect upon the school just as badly as if it had indeed turned out that way. The disconcerting and surprising juxtaposition of these two matters grows even greater when, it is very easily noticed, the school’s own security in protecting itself against its students has been increased in the past year, largely due to widespread unrest and discontent with officials and policies.