The Minuet

The NY Times book review had a recent piece about racist language in Hemingway. Being a sometime defender of him, particularly his nature writing, my initial response was that using terrible words was just being faithful to the cultural milieu of the day. If his uncle said, "damn squaw bitch," that was what his uncle said, bloody finger and all. Racism is cultural. Those were the times he wrote of, and he wrote with realism and accuracy and a good ear.

But. Yes, there could well be something in Hemingway that speaks of a lack of empathy, sympathy to those less economically fortunate, for instance. Let's take the character of Peduzzi, from Out of Season, from the In Our Time collection. We're with a young couple, newly married, a day fishing trip from the hotel. We get it a bit thick that Peduzzi is a drunk, irresponsible with money. He's an element in the story of misadventure. He is what he is. Maybe there is nothing particularly harsh about his portrayal, just the truth that he is so. And remember, that not all the waiters and the like Hemingway gives us are shitty drunks. (One tends a garden on his day off. One, in Venice, is an old comrade.) However, a Chekhov, a Carver, would have been a little more circumspect, and perhaps even given the story from the point of view of a Peduzzi, bring us a quiet moment that shows a dimension we had not expected. (Or perhaps, maybe, subconsciously, this was what ol' Ernie was up to, in this story, if you're feeling generous toward him.)

Maybe there should be, in the story-teller's voice, an acknowledgment of one's own faulted nature. But then again, the young gentleman in the story mentioned above, seems to be doing the same, that the whole thing was a mistake, something his wife didn't need to go through.

Maybe it's just a stylistic matter. Certain things we now find offensive, maybe very much so. But where is the finger pointed, by someone who uses such a word, given the seriousness of the effort required in crafting a short story.