88
PARTISAN REVIEW
off the page in this book as well as it does in any. And I think we also
get an incredible sense of Hemingway-the artist-coming into being.
As I said earlier, this book should be considered Hemingway's
Portrait
of the Artist as
a YOUllg Mall
because we do see him dealing with peo–
ple like Gertrude Stein, like Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and others, and we
begin to understand how his mind works.
I'm going to read a passage from Hemingway and then I shall seat
myself and see what you all have made of it. Here Hemingway is sim–
ply talking about sitting and writing, and we get a sense of his process:
The waiter brought it
1
he ordered coffee
I,
and I rook out a note–
book from the pocket of the coat and the pencil, and started
to
write. I was writing about up in Michigan, and since it was a wild,
cold, blowing day, it was that sort of day in the story. I had already
seen the end of fall come through boyhood, youth, and young man–
hood, and in one place you could write about it better than in
another. That was called transplanting yourself, I thought. And it
could be as necessary with people as with other sorts of growing
things. But in the stor), the boys were drinking, and this made me
thirsty, and I ordered a rum St. .lames. This tasted wonderful on a
cold day, and I kept on writing, fee ling very well and fee ling the
good Martinique rum warm me all through my body and my spirit.
A girl came in the cafe and sat by herself at a table ncar the win–
dow. She was very pretty, with her face fresh as a newly minted
coin, if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin,
and her hair was black as a now's wing and cut sharply and diag–
onally across her cheek . I looked at her, and she just stared at me
and made me very excited. I wished I could put her in the story, or
anywhere, but she had placed herself so she could watch the street,
in the entry, and I knew she was waiting for someone, so I went on
writing. The story I was writing was writing itself, and I was hav–
ing a hard time keeping up with it. I ordered another rum St. James,
and I watched the girl whenever I looked up, or when I sharpened
the pencil with a pencil sharpener with the shavings curling into the
saucer under my drink. I've seen your beauty, and you belong to me
now, whoever you are waiting for, and if I never see you again, I
thought, you be long
to
me and all Paris belongs
to
me, and I be long
to this notebook and to this pencil.
Thank you.
Geoffrey Hartman:
We have
to
cut this discussion period fairly short,
because it is after five o'clock.
