Critical Reception Abstracts
English 491: Fitzgerald and HemingwayThe Last Tycoon/Michele Trezona
A Moveable Feast/Stephanie L. Holland
Scott and Ernest/Shawna Rouse
Men Without Women/Lisa Bell
This Side of Paradise/Carrie S. Williams
Winner Take Nothing/Jessica Gordon
The Sun Also Rises/Lauren Kenny
All The Sad Young Men/Rob Milesnick
F. Scott Fitzgerald had been working on The Last Tycoon since the spring of 1939. At the time of his death in 1940, he had drafted seventeen of its projected thirty episodes. It was edited by Fitzgerald’s college friend, Edmund Wilson, and published as The Last Tycoon in 1941. Although it was unfinished, and most critics rightfully treated it as a work in progress, the reviews were mostly favorable. In the Nov. 15, 1941 issue of the New Yorker, Clifton Fadiman says that The Last Tycoon shows that Fitzgerald "was on the point of becoming a major American novelist." He also says that The Last Tycoon "has a solidity and depth that make it an advance over The Great Gatsby. Most of the critics who gave it favorable reviews compared it to The Great Gatsby, and said if completed, The Last Tycoon may have been even better. However, there were some critics who did not think much of the book. One reviewer for the Nov. 8, 1941 issue of the Kansas City Star said that "Lack of originality is evident from the first of the novel to its end…and is underscored by the author’s notes". Most of the critics thought that The Last Tycoon was one of Fitzgerald’s best works, and if finished, could have been better than The Great Gatsby.
Michele Trezona
In the critical reviews I read about Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast thirteen were positive, seven were negative and four were in the middle. The positive outlook praised Hemingway’s ability to tell the story differently and better than others had. The negative felt that Hemingway should not have insulted his closest colleagues and others felt that it should not have been published without his permission. So, although the positive responses were high in number the negative had more weight.
Stephanie L. Holland
Scott and Ernest: The Authority of Failure and the Authority of Success
Scott and Ernest: The Authority of Failure and the Authority of Success was written by Matthew J. Bruccoli and was published in 1978. The book contains a summary of the friendship between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. There were several critical reviews on the book ranging from positive to negative.
In Publisher’s Weekly, Albert Johnston wrote a promising review of the book. He writes, "His quiet and impeccably scholarly analysis of the much-written-about relationship between Fitzgerald and Hemingway is particularly interesting for its evocation of the subtleties and ambiguities of the two men’s behavior toward each other. He presents firm evidence as he describes the friendship and its disintegration, and exposes the patterns and conflicts that ran beneath it--the authority of failure versus the authority of success. His profiles of the two writers, the years of their friendship, make engrossing reading, and Bruccoli’s myth-busting investigative work provides a particularly engaging secondary theme".
Another positive review was provided by Burke Wilkinson in the magazine Choice. He writes, "Bruccoli, author/editor of 16 previous books on the two writers, has put together more than a pastiche in showing all that Fitzgerald did to get Hemingway started on his career-long association with Scribner’s, how much the author of The Great Gatsby helped Hemingway, in a 10 page memo, edit the final draft The Sun Also Rises, and how the latter responded; This ‘documentary reconstruction of their friendship and estrangement’ sets the record straight for concerned readers, scholars, and critics no matter how much they may already have read...A necessary and convenient volume".
Malcolm Bradbury writes in the New Statesman, "The Hemingway-Fitzgerald friendship, if that is the right word, is a modern fable, interestingly re-analysed and set straight, given the many errors that have accumulated around it, in Matthew J. Bruccoli’s book. There are small lessons about friendship in it, and big ones about writing, including its options today".
A final word of praise was written by George Monteiro in New York Times Book Review. According to him, "In this valuable book...neither one of the author’s subjects emerges triumphant or unscathed...most authoritatively he surveys the various accounts of the famous boxing match between Hemingway and [Morley Callaghan]...With equal authority he takes up the significant question of just how much editing of Hemingway’s first two novels Fitzgerald did (and importantly, just when that editorial advice was given)...Scott and Ernest is a judicious book. It is that, mainly because its author is perhaps the first student of the Fitzgerald/Hemingway friendship to write out of disinterested loyalty to the truth about two literary giants he continues to admire unabashedly, no matter how the facts have fallen out".
Unfortunately, where there are positive reviews there are also negative reviews, and Bruccoli’s book was unable to escape them. In the Library Journal, Doris Grumbach gives her criticism about the book. She writes, "This volume, which describes in detail the four meetings in 11 years between the two writers and their correspondence during those years, is poorly written, uncritically edited and repetitious in material and language...Some of the letters or paraphrases, are mildly interesting. They manage to throw light on F.S.F.’s curious hero-worship of Ernest. At other times they are merely a re-telling, for the upteenth time, or the stories we know too well...This kind of double-dipping publishing does its subjects no good. By adding little that is new it makes the reading public sick of the whole thing".
An anonymous person gave his or her view on the novel in Carleton Miscellany, and it was not a very good one. This person writes, "This is an unnecessary one. I plowed through it hoping that somewhere in the marshes of this dreary prose I would gain an insight into the character or works of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Nothing came. Bruccoli seems to work with the method that bedevils second-rate social scientists--that if you amass enough facts some thesis will emerge. There seems no authentic motive for writing this book; no central theme gives it unity. There are some interesting photographs, and some of the letters will be of use to those who have a taste for literary bavardage, but in all the book is a negative lesson; if there is a way to use the biography of authors in an attempt to understand their works and their minds it will have to be different from the method Prof. Bruccoli uses here--else we are lost in no-man’s-land somewhere between the works and our own inventions of their author’s ‘personalities’".
Besides positive and negative comments, there was two articles that were in between. One was from the magazine Economist written by Colin McLeod, and the second one was from American Literature which was written by James Miller. The primary flaw in Bruccoli’s book they saw was that Bruccoli did not have access to Hemingway’s letters. He had to paraphrase from paraphrases he had access to.
Each of these critics noted different aspects of the book. They brought out both the positive and the negative points. Overall, the critics either liked the book or hated the book.
Shawna Rouse
Ernest Hemingway’s third work, the short story collection entitled Men Without Women, received similarly mixed reviews as his first published work, In Our Time. One possible reason for the less than enthusiastic reception of Men Without Women, according to Dorothy Parker’s review in The New Yorker, is that short fiction on the whole is not as favored as the novel form of writing. Although most critics granted the brilliance of Hemingway’s style, some reviews indicate a disappointment, if not outright dislike of the collection. Many reviewers claimed that despite Hemingway’s skill, the insignificant subjects and themes of his short stories nullify his mastery of technique. However, as Frank Ryan suggests, these criticisms, particularly the one in Hemingway’s own words, that Woolf turned against him, could not have been more antithetical to the committed and truthful writing in Hemingway’s following works.
Lisa Bell
F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, received a wide array of reviews from March through August of 1920, the year it was published. Out of forty-six responses, twenty were positive for the first novel, eight were negative, and thirteen were neutral, commenting on both positive and negative aspects of F. Scott Fitzgerald's, This Side of Paradise.
Harry Hansen of the Chicago Daily News, remarked, "And once in a while it comes - the book that moves you to enthusiasm. To-day we nominate for the distinction of a best seller 'This Side of Paradise' by F. Scott Fitzgerald...Fitzgerald has taken a real American type - the male flapper of our best colleges - and written him down with startling verisimilitude. He has taken a slice of American life, part of the piecrust. Only a man on the inside could have done it." Another rave review came from the New York Times Book Review. It stated, "The glorious spirit of abounding youth glows throughout this fascinating tale...As a picture of the daily existence of what we call loosely "college men," this book is as nearly perfect as such a work could be...It could have been written only by an artist who knows how to balance his values, plus a delightful literary style." H.L. Mencken gave a rousing vote of support for the novel when he said that This Side of Paradise was, "The best American novel that I have seen of late...In 'This Side of Paradise' he [Fitzgerald] offers a truly amazing first novel - original in structure, extremely sophisticated in manner, and adorned with a brilliancy that is as rare in American writing as honesty is in American statecraft."
Other reviewers were not so complimentary. Heywood Broun of the New York Tribune remarked, "There are occasional thrusts of shrewd observation and a few well turned sentences and phrases in 'This Side of Paradise'." It is only fair to add that the book has received enthusiastic praise from most American reviewers. Fitzgerald has been hailed as among the most promising of our own authors. And it may be so, but we dissent. We think he will go no great distance...It seems to us that his is a style larded with fine writing...we cannot but feel that we are not yet grown out of the self-conscious stage which makes writing nothing more than a stunt." A reviewer from Providence Sunday Journal said, "'This Side of Paradise' has an intriguing title; but the title is not fair to the prospective reader. Undoubtedly Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald understands the type of young man of whose moods he writes at such length. That understanding does not, however, entitle him to a hearing, because it is impossible to feel interest in Amory Blaine's shilly-shallying which the author bespeaks for it. We all of us know so many Amorys that we have no desire to widen our circle in that direction.
Other critics were more mild. John Black of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle said, "The book possesses not one of the qualities that the literary critic is wont to enjoy - it offers him an alluring array of new ones. Independent in its success as it is in its failure, the story insists that it be praised in a different way, even as new epithets must be uncovered to catalogue its faults." Another critic, remarking of the promise he saw in Fitzgerald, stated in The Nation, "He (Amory) has not yet come into any self to know. Neither has Mr. Fitzgerald. But he is on the path of those who strive. His gifts have an unmistakable amplitude and much in his book is brave and beautiful."
The overall response to Fitzgerald's first novel was warm and many critics remarked that they looked forward to the literary career that stood before Fitzgerald. Because he was so young and so talented, many saw a great amount of promise in his work and said they awaited his next masterpiece.
Carrie S. Williams
Winner Take Nothing was reviewed thirteen times during 1933. Eleven reviews were printed, and two were simply mentioned. I determined that four were positive, four were negative, and three were neutral. Many of the reviews, however, were both positive and negative.
Several of the negative statements were as follows. In "A Letter to Mr. Hemingway," Clifton Fadiman stated in reference to the collection of stories that "They are all unsatisfactory. They contain strong echoes of earlier work. They mark time, whereas A Farewell to Arms was a magnificent leap forward." It is interesting that one would say that the stories mark time more so than A Farewell to Arms, the latter clearly depicting a specific number of years, a time of war. In "A Farewell to the Nineties," Henry Canby said "When you are bored by Hemingway, as I frankly am by one-half dozen of these new stories, which are repetitive with the slow pound, pound of a hammer upon a single mood, there is nothing to revive you." William Troy, in "Mr. Hemingway’s Opium," said "Mr. Hemingway’s latest collection of stories includes what is actually the poorest and least interesting writing he had ever placed on public view.
Several of the positive statements were as follows. Horace Gregory, in "Earnest Hemingway has put on Maturity," said "In dealing with his best work, I take for granted that his prose always reaches certain levels of excellence, that his art has always been deliberate." He goes onto say that "Wine of Wyoming" is "one of the few instances in contemporary literature where the short story may be regarded as a superlative work of art." In "Hemingway’s New Stories," Louis Kronenberg wrote "The reporting in almost all these stories is superlative; the dialogue is admirable, the rapidly sketched-in picture is vivid, whole."
The stories most often complimented in the reviews are "Wine of Wyoming," "The Gambler" and "The Nun and the Radio." Also, I noticed that several people remarked that his new stories could not possibly compare to The Sun Also Rises or A Farewell to ArmsJessica Gordon
Of the nineteen reports I studied, the majority of critics lent words of support and praise to both Hemingway and his work. Still, five of the essays condemned The Sun Also Rises, recognizing the story as superficial and pointing out its lack of structure. A nameless critic of Chicago Daily Tribune calls the novel "out of focus," saying that "it leaves you with the feeling that the artist has just done something to be smart." It is clear that opinions varied as to whether The Sun Also Rises was an intellectual masterpiece, a product of "the most exciting contemporary writer" as Conrad Aihen suggests in "Expatriates," in New York Herald Tribune Books, or whether it was a crafty portrayal of nothing. The overwhelming sense is that we must admit its superficiality in order to understand Hemingway’s purpose. Appreciation of this portrayal as art is subjective, as the critical receptions demonstrate.
Lauren Kenny
All The Sad Young Men was Fitzgerald's strongest collection of work, and contained four of his most famous stories, Winter Dreams, Absolution, The Rich Boy, and The Sensible Thing. One anonymous critic from Bookman Review said, "he is head and shoulders above any writer of his generation." Leon Whipple, in the June 1, 1926 edition of Road Maps For This Age, takes the opposite view when he said, "The stories are amusing, and their irony often gives one to think, but they do not cut deep into the author's own rare knowledge, which is what a sober man learns at a drunken party." I believe Fitzgerald's strongest quality is his disclosure of himself to his readers. This "opening up" separated him from the other authors of his generation.
Rob Milesnick