Hemingway, race, and art : bloodlines and the color line / Marc K. Dudley.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A social historical reading of Hemingway through the lens of race

William Faulkner has long been considered the great racial interrogator of the early-twentieth-century South. In Hemingway, Race, and Art, author Marc Kevin Dudley suggests that Ernest Hemingway not only shared Faulkner's racial concerns but extended them beyond the South to encompass the entire nation. Though Hemingway wrote extensively about Native Americans and African Americans, always in the back of his mind was Africa. Dudley sees Hemingway's fascination with, and eventual push toward, the African continent as a grand experiment meant to both placate and comfort the white psyche, and to challenge and unsettle it, too.

Twentieth-century white America was plagued by guilt in its dealings with Native Americans; simultaneously, it faced an increasingly dissatisfied African American populace. Marc Kevin Dudley demonstrates how Hemingway's interest in race was closely aligned to a national anxiety over a changing racial topography. Affected by his American pedigree, his masculinity, and his whiteness, Hemingway's treatment of race is characteristically complex, at once both a perpetuation of type and a questioning of white self-identity.

Hemingway, Race, and Art expands our understanding of Hemingway and his work and shows how race consciousness pervades the texts of one of America's most important and influential writers.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Toward the end of this book, Dudley (North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh) states: "To be fair, by and large, Hemingway's classic novels--those read by students and casual readers alike--are not novels about race" (p. 159). It is rhetorically and strategically unfortunate that the author did not make this admission from the beginning. Had he done so by stating clearly that he was going to read only some of Hemingway through the filter of race, the book would have been more effective. As it is, though, for most of the study the author writes as if there is only one way to read Hemingway: as an exploration of how Hemingway defines himself and American whites by reference to their relations with American Indian, African American, and sub-Saharan races and persons. This said, this book does forward interesting, convincing points and arguments about some of the Michigan, boxing, and safari narratives. What it does not do is integrate those readings into a complete view of the Hemingway "read by students and casual readers alike." This is a pity because the author knows Hemingway well and brings valuable new perspectives to understanding his reading habits and work. Summing Up: Optional. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. S. Miller Texas A&M University