Hemingway: So Far from Simple

Bouchard, a retired professor of English at McGill U., Canada, reevaluates the first two decades of the writing career of Ernest Hemingway by drawing on the postmodernist writings of Foucault, Deleuze, and Said and arguing that Hemingway was a serious writer and that his simplicity was the conscious product of a complex and evolving practice. He discusses how he transformed his writing from its early modernist style to one that was more socially involved and more political, as well as the ways he addressed critical responses to his works, including his last two novels. He refers to Hemingway's correspondence to show key points in his career, addresses the tendency to reduce his works to biographical, and shows how his innovations were results of different factors, such as his preoccupation with writing practice. Annotation 穢2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)