“Pursuit as Happiness”
by Ernest Hemingway
from the June 8 & 15, 2020 issue of The New Yorker
Welcome to the 2020 Summer Fiction issue of The New Yorker. This year we are getting a previously unpublished story from Ernest Hemingway, “Pursuit as Happiness.” The title was chosen by Hemingway’s son, Patrick, and comes from Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa. This story will be included in Scribner’s forthcoming edition of The Old Man and the Sea, as a kind of companion piece. In his interview with The New Yorker, Seán Hemingway admits that he doesn’t know why the story was never published; “it is a gem among the unpublished material in my grandfather’s personal papers.”
So here we are! It’s been a long time since I read any Hemingway. I read most of what I was interested in more than two decades ago, liked much of it, but have not returned. That’s typical of so many of these authors who are canonized and become part of high school curriculum. Maybe it’s for our good we encounter them then (though that’s debatable), but it is likely not good for the works themselves to be subjected to our nascent scrutiny and then checked off our to-read list. I’m looking forward to this.
We have a couple of weeks to go through these stories, which is good because all three are a bit long, and Emma Cline’s is almost double the length of the typical contemporary New Yorker story. I look forward to reading your thoughts!
I didn’t find a lot to get excited about here. I can see why it is being included in a new edition of The Old Man and the Sea. I mean, of course: it is a fishing story. But as I read it I did have flashes back to that night a few decades ago when I last read Hemingway’s novella; I’ve never been deep sea fishing, and so that was my only time ever thinking about the long line and the hours of toil. I like The Old Man and the Sea; I like the struggle, I like the themes, I like the style. This short story is more of a recounting for the sake of recounting. It’s enjoyable as a tale of the hunt for the big fish, but I don’t see much more here. And even as that it’s only kind of interesting to me.
It was kind of nice to re-enter into Hemingway’s very familiar style and worldview. Sort of like literary comfort food. But…I wouldn’t call this one of his better works. It’s a bit too self-aware, a problem that haunts much of his later work and his later life. The self-reflexive device of having the character called “Ernest” and “Hemingway” highlights this slef-conscious quality. But…there is also some fine writing and he creates suspense well and well what can you say, Hemingway does Hemingway better than anyone else.
A story that only works for a fishing audience, to be publised in some fishing magazine. It’s stuffed full of technical
fishing details that make the story totally incomprehensible to anyone with no knowledge of fishing. His writing style is
bad too — mannered and gimmicky. Looked at this typical Hemingway “sorrow” paragraph: “Carlos spoke only when spoken to and he was still in his sorrow.
I could not afford my sorrow because I ached too much and Mr. Josie was never much of a man for sorrow.”
I’ve seen him do exactly the same thing with the word “drunk”. He writes paragraphs like “Joe was a bad drunk.
Mark was a crazy drunk…” In the Hemingway work that I’ve read, the sentence structure is shorter and easier to read,
and this made his work widely accessible and he became part of the canon. I regret this. The quality of his work
doesn’t merit it; the macho ultra-masculine ethos has done nothing positive from a cultural, political or literary
perspective and it’s painful to think what could have happened if time allotted to his work could have been taken
up by a feminist author.
I take back what I said about the Hemingway trustees wanting to make money by publishing a mediocre story. It’s good. I enjoyed reading it. Maybe even more the second time, when I had the drift of the story and I could focus on details.
I had forgotten how well he writes. What is good about his writing is that he follows his own rule about taking out everything that is not needed. So that everything in the story works. And the narrative moves along with force.
Then, we need to talk about description. Two things: first, he does it well. His language is stripped down but not bland. Second, because his descriptive prose is infrequent, you notice it. So he can use it to highlight things.
At one place he describes how the water looks. At another place he describes the huge marlin: “it looked as big around as a wine barrel. Etc” “It looked like a purple canoe with great jutting wings.” Even the comparison is apt.
Also, about Carlos’s wail, “It was as though you took all despair and distilled it into a sound.”
Details: he knows about fishing for marlin and tells us about it in a way that we get the feeling of waiting for two months and then hooking it and then playing it for 4 hours. Like: “I got to the bow by holding onto handholds that we had built into the roof of the house.” And the loss of flexibility in the rod. And switching to the big rod. And losing it! Although I have never fished I can feel the loss.
About the title: it implies all those cliches like, Like is about the journey, not the destination. So that’s about fishing for blue marlin. And maybe something else. Later on that.
Also humor. When Capn Josie suggests that H leave off social life and write, H says, “Why don’t we trade?” And when H says to the two girls in passing, “NSL”, one says, “My God. They’re in politics and in a year like this.”
Next — H writes about something that we are focusing on today — police violence. Two incidents. Esp the second one, where Capn Josie got tangled up with a secret police guy — a machado — in a bar. When he left, the cop pistol-whipped an innocent bystander. As H says: “But that was an ugly and bad year ashore.” Sounds like now with the National Guard and police, only that was under Batista’s repressive dictatorship.
Pursuit also refers to writing, which is the second activity that H does, at Capn Josie’s urging. How can we tell it’s significant? Because H bestows two emotional sentences on it. First the Capn says: “You keep it up, and everybody is all right for always.” Later H says about writing: “It’s a hell of a habit to get into and it’s just about as hard to get out of.” Again, because he doesn’t use a lot of expressive language, he doesn’t have to strain when he wants to say something important
Here is a possibly portentous sentence, about the marlin: “It was an ugly bill, round and thick and short.” Made me think of the police club.
All of the previous I’m pretty comfortable with. Now we come to a speculation. Is it possible
that there is a third pursuit — a homosexual theme? Capn Josie is eager to keep H on his boat, even w/o pay. He forces him to adhere to NSL, keeping Ernest away from the two girls. “Josie” is a female name.
Most suggestive is when Capn Josie tells H about going to the bar. The police said he likes Josie’s face. Josie asks H, “What kind of face have I got?” H responds with perhaps the longest paragraph, and certainly the longest internal monologue, in the whole story. Once more the mostly factual narrative makes this expressive language pop out.
He talks about Josie’s eyes, something you would do about a lover.
Also he says that Josie’s face reflects “enterprises of great risk conceived and undertaken with cold and exact intelligence”. High praise from H.
I would say that there is a man-love between H and J. Whether it is physical is not clear. Nor is that distinction important.
In sum, one of the best stories that the NYer has published in a while.
For some reason, the formatting of my comments is messed up. I don’t know how to correct this, but I
hope that doesn’t put off any potential readers.
I couldn’t disagree more with William. One of my criticisms is that the story can’t be understood by
someone without experience of fishing. I’d like to iron out this issue with fans of the piece.
I will copy-paste a paragraph from the story. Please tell me if you believe it’s intelligible to those
with no specialist fishing knowledge.
BEGIN QUOTE
I got there by holding on to handholds we had built into the top of the house.
We had practiced this run and the scramble over the forward deck to where you
could brace against the stem of the boat with your feet. But we had never practiced
it with a fish that passed you like a subway express when you are at a local station,
and with one arm holding the rod, which was bucking and digging into the butt rest,
and the other hand and both bare feet braking on the deck as the fish hauled you forward.
END QUOTE
Paul —
No problem from the formatting.
It’s clear that we have a profound and probably irresolvable difference of opinion about this story and Hemingway generally. Yes, I find that passage both physically and emotionally intelligible — in fact, if you read my comments you saw that I cited it specifically as a place where H described things in as much detail as we need to know and comprehend what’s happening. And I have NEVER been fishing.
It also has a nice, clear even amusing simile: “a fish that passed you like a subway express when you are at a local station”.
I also take issue with your PC language about H’s ultra-macho “ethos”. You are not reading his writing with an open mind, but with a jaundiced perspective created during the transition from one form of literary criticism to another near the end of the last century. I don’t want to get into the culture wars. I will just say three things:
1) Hemingway gained his audience legitimately. He showed a new path for American fiction writing after it had been stultified for decades by the convoluted, Europe-oriented prose of Henry James.
2) What “feminist” author should we be reading instead?
3) Read “A Way You’ll never Be”.
I suspect this story remained unpublished by EH because it was “not good enough” and it never merited the time or energy to make it so. All writers have stuff in the drawer for similar reasons.
I enjoyed it.
Agree on both counts, MP.
I’m very glad to see your positive response, william, as well as yours MP Allen. A lot of what you say connects with me, william, even if I didn’t connect with the story itself. I would also agree that part of the fun of reading a story like this is feeling like your there even if you don’t necessarily know all of the terms being used particularly. I don’t know them either but definitely got a sense of the fight to reel in the fish, which was my favorite part of the story.
Trevor Berrett, even though you say that you’re specifically approving of what has been said by William
and MP Allen, I feel that your critique is very similar to my own. You “didn’t connect with the story” and, like me,
you didn’t “know all of the terms being used” — i.e. you couldn’t follow some of it. I, too, got a sense of the fight to
reel in the fish — thin grounds for praise, indeed.
Yes, in some ways our end feelings toward the story may be the same, but maybe our critiques are not.
That notwithstanding I like to thanks folks who voice an opinion here that is different from mine and most other commenters. I do not want the comment stream here to be an echo chamber, and I really am glad for those who express a dissenting opinion (particularly a positive dissent). Their comments give this place more air I think.
But, true, nothing has changed my opinion that this story is not one for me.
I wonder what Tessa Hadley thinks of it? ?
A new Hemingway joint, pulled from the archives and published in The New Yorker, that’s a pretty big a literary event.
Takes its time getting to the mid-section, but the character-building and dialogue are effective in the early-going. The tension increases during the descriptions of the hooking of the big marlin. Carlos cutting the wrong line is a good climax to the action. His reaction—“All my life fishing and I never saw such a fish and I did that. I’ve ruined your life and my life.”—is nicely rendered. EH’s response is just as good or maybe better: ““Hell,” I told him. “You mustn’t talk nonsense like that. We’ll catch plenty of bigger fish.” But we never did.” Just the recurrent use of the word “hell” throughout the piece in various contexts and permutations provides more literary depth than a lot of contemporary New Yorker stories.
The motif of EH’s morning writing, and these men of diverse backgrounds coming together in unity in a classical man vs. nature situation; it’s a refreshing throwback. The NSL joke with the girls is realistic for the period and situation. The sorrow riff’s nice as well. Even Mr. Josie’s self-doubt about why his face would be appealing to a drunken reprobate cop is well-detailed. The follow-up description of why EH likes Mr. Josie’s face is a little purple, one of the grafs on which I think the author’d want a do-over.
I’m always conflicted even just reading these types of posthumous things, wondering if the author wanted them to see the proverbial light of day or if he/she viewed them as unfinished and unworthy and in need of repairs. I know the whole “well if they didn’t want anybody to see them, they shoulda burned them” point of view, but it still feels rather invasive.
Is this high up the Hemingway canon of short fiction? No. But it’s not too shabby either, an entertaining and spry story.
I appreciate William’s Hemingway recommendation. I’m not sure whether I’ll get to it or not. I have read a fair amount
of Hemingway, including “The Sun Also Rises” and formed a negative view. So it’s hopefully understandable if I’m
not keen to read more of an author who I don’t like. But I don’t know. I may read it anyway.
Having said that, I thought “Hills Like White Elephants” was good and worth reading. I am not knowledgeable about
writing and literature at all, and I’m sure I’m the most ignorant one on this forum. My work is mainly related to
software development. My lack of knowledge limits what I can contribute, sometimes. I was making the obvious
and trite point that we all have limited time for reading so the choice of which authors to consider “canonical” is
a very important one. I believe that feminism is a more important subject and has inspired better and more valuable
literature then Hemingway’s musings on bullfighting and fishing etc. But can I recommend specifically any feminist
writers? No, because I’m too ignorant. I like Mary Gaitskill but she wouldn’t normally be called “great”. I hardly
ever read fiction other than short stories. There’s a pretty well-established convention that authorial greatness
is defined by novels and poetry rather than short stories, so I don’t have any recommendations for the canon. I don’t respect the process by which authors achieve canonical status. Everyone knows that Walter Scott’s novels are
unbelievably dull and tedious, for example. Frankenstein is also an ineptly written novel which doesn’t make any sense.
Paul —
Don’t berate yourself. It doesn’t matter that you are a software developer. I worked as a technical writer in the medical field. The important thing is that you have a desire to read fiction and are doing it. Greater facility will come with time. Also you may want to take an online course in reading the short story.
You will find writers that you like. No person can like all the writers who are held in high regard. Like, Trevor likes Tessa Hadley and I usually don’t. (Although I liked her last offering.) Do I get depressed about that? No. Just as he isn’t bothered by the fact that he doesn’t see the value of reading George Saunders, whose writing I really like. Chacun a son gout. And it’s always possible that Trevor’s taste will mature. (That was a joke, Trevor.)
Paul, you already show good taste in liking “Hills Like White Elephants”, one of H’s best. Don’t worry about the canon. It’s all arbitrary. At one time Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novels were considered great. Now they’re a catchword for bad writing. Just read and enjoy.
I have always really valued your comments, Paul. I find them insightful and enjoy your responses to what others say as well. Thanks for that!
Thanks for the encouragement, Trevor and William. My opinions on authors mentioned. I’m a big anti-fan of George Saunders, so I agree with his critics. I prefer Hemingway to Saunders in fact. I also like Tessa Hadley, but she wouldn’t be one of my absolute favourites. I like Carver a lot, although I don’t like Hemingway at all, and it’s a commonplace that Hemingway was a major influence on Carver. How can I love Carver but abhor Hemingway? Because I see Carver’s major themes as being depression, loneliness and alcoholism, and I see these themes as being very well worth exploring. I know it will be said that they’re present in Hemingway too, but not as vividly.
Hey Paul,
I remember you from earlier comments about Joy Williams stories and other forums here on Mookse. I believe you talked about how you were a computer programmer and that you were autistic (Asperger’s and autism are no longer separated as of DSM-V, but if you prefer one term to the other, feel free to express a preference). Autism-spectrum learners tend to be a bit literal and need to really comprehend the coming and going of prose at a level of digesting the events (ie: the content) before interpreting or analyzing.
I’m kind of curious about the breadth of your Hemingway story reading experience. It makes sense that “Hills Like White Elephants” would appeal. It’s a very scrutable document re: POV and the actual events of the story. It’s a strong piece, though I would argue that “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” and “The Killers” are even better.
And yes, of course sexism played some part in women writers being excluded from the reviews in Hemingway’s day, but his friend (frenemy?) Gertrude Stein had no shortage of pages dedicated to her works. Virginia Woolf, who took a very condescending attitude toward Hemingway, wasn’t exactly ignored either. And loads of feminist writers from Carson McCullers to Joan Didion have been influenced by his work.
I’d also think you would like analyzing Hemingway at the level of form, specifically his use of commas and conjunctions. Have you read and liked/disliked any of the Hemingway novels?
Not trying to move the thread away from general discussion of this story, apologies if anyone thinks I’m hijacking the conversation.
No problems Sean. Interesting thoughts. And anyone who favors “Short Happy Life” is on the plus side of my ledger. To those recognized female writers I would add Katherine Anne Porter and Flannery O’Connor.
Paul,
William is so right about how the choice of which are good or not very good short stories is always really arbitrary. I have thought that your commentary is well-observed, making some really good points. I haven’t read as much or as widely as many of the ladies and guys on the Mookse but they often point out stuff I miss and they can tell what it was in the story that really worked or didn’t and why. I don’t have a professional background in anything so I read looking at what’s there and how does it function and does it make me feel. Also what are the elements of the story (this being if it captures my interest)? I approach it as a kind of fictional anatomy. Study the skeleton and the vital organs for how the body works if it isn’t to much of a train wreck to look at. Taking an online course on short stories I see as a hassle but that’s just me (even though it would probably greatly reward one’s efforts). So I purchased an old school book on the basics aspects of the short story as an anatomy lesson called “On Writing The Short Story” by Hallie Burnett. A bonus is “The Proof of the Pudding” which is 6 short stories includes ones by Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Erskine Caldwell. This all may seem basic to people who enjoy more complex, sophisticated, complicated short stories. But if in doubt, go back to the basics. Styles and preferences change but they always first emerge out of the basics. Keep reading and commenting. You may run across something we haven’t seen or see something in a New Yorker short story that we hadn’t noticed.
Larry
You guys don’t disappoint :-) Needless to say, I didn’t like the story and gave up halfway through, although I’m tempted to read a book of his wartime correspondence that I have somewhere. I suspect the subject matter will be more interesting than deep sea fishing and the buddy theme. As for feminist writers, where to start….feminist or not, Alice Munro is the queen of New Yorker fiction for me, has been in the 30+ years I’ve been subscribing.
Pauline –
Nice to read that someone else didn’t finish this one. It’s rare for that to happen with me, so rare that I can’t remember the last time it happened..
I liked this story, much to my surprise. I’d loved some of his short stories but was not really a fan of his later, longer work except for A Moveable Feast. I found the language here simple and spare, almost restful, not parodic as his later work can sometimes be. The camaraderie between the writer and the charter boat captain/friend was evident.
I speak Spanish and sometimes feel as I read that these conversations, that the diction used, highlights that the speakers are speaking Spanish (in Cuban or Spanish settings) but like flies in ghe wall, we’re privy to their conversation in our own language English. At least that’s how it strikes me and I recognize that it’s a highly personal response – it’s a very pleasing and atmospheric effect created by his style. The mundaneness and simplicity of the language certainly threw in great relief the beautiful descriptions when they surfaced – the great marlin’s first appearance, the dark clear waters of the Gulf Stream, Josie’s weatherbeaten face.
Finally, I wasn’t thrown off at all by the descriptions of the fishing techniques, physical actions on the boat and the physical pain involved in trying to bring in a huge fish. They were understandable enough to me and I don’t fish. In fact the whole plot and tension of the hours of effort pulled me along with it.
Diana —
Some nice observations, especially about Spanish rhythms. Not something that I could have picked up.!