The Spring 2016 issue celebrates the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Hemingway Review. We acknowledge this milestone with a special “anniversary features” section, which includes an interview with the founding editor of the Review, Charles M. “Tod” Oliver, and a creative piece by Kirk Curnutt that imagines how Hemingway felt on his thirty-fifth birthday through a series of imaginary letters to friends and family. Hemingway, for the first time since I am editor, graces the cover. In the image, he is, of course, thirty-five and looks out at us confidently from the deck of his recently acquired boat, Pilar.
Many of the essays in this Spring issue invite Hemingway aficionados and scholars to reconsider long-held critical beliefs. For example, David Wyatt re-evaluates Across the River and Into the Trees, reading it as a transitional work in which Hemingway moves away from his early style based on omission and into a more expressive style. Wyatt’s compassionate and moving study of the often-dismissed novel recasts what many have considered Hemingway’s indulgent use of Richard Cantwell’s “inner voice” as a vehicle for giving poignancy and presence to the narrative. Donald A. Daiker and Ellen Andrews Knodt provide fresh readings of two important short stories that question previous critical consensus. Daiker challenges past readings of Dr. Adams in Hemingway’s “Indian Camp,” arguing that Nick’s father is kinder, gentler, and more thoughtful than generally acknowledged in scholarship. Knodt uses historical, biographical, and scientific research to deepen readers’ appreciation for Nick Adams’s mental distress in “A Way You’ll Never Be.”
The other two essays in this issue add dimension to already explored areas of Hemingway scholarship. Clara Juncker examines Hemingway’s similarities with Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), a contemporary Hemingway admired but never met, and Stacey Guill tracks Hemingway’s feelings about General Francisco Franco’s attempts to re-brand himself in the late 1940s through an often-overlooked passage about duck hunting in Across the River and Into the Trees.
I am also extremely pleased to introduce a new feature to the Hemingway Review: a “Report from the Hemingway Letters Project.” This project, located at Penn State University, is producing the Cambridge Edition of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway in a projected seventeen volumes. This new “Report,” which will appear periodically, gives Review readers access to behind-the-scenes stories of the work going into the volumes from editors. In this first installment, General Editor Sandra Spanier provides a history of the project and, along with volume 3 editors Rena Sanderson and Robert Trogdon, offers anecdotes from the archives and beyond.
Now, as Spring arrives, I turn my thoughts to the Fall issue, which will hopefully be edited in a sunny garden (well, I hope for sun; it has been a rainy start to this spring in Philadelphia).