I haven't, until now, when the American wife, wife, girl sat before the mirror, had the experience I look for in a good story: a feeling of deep recognition, an empathy for the internal struggle of the character that makes me feel as if I have dropped into a deep and wide place of understanding. My mother was a girl at about the same time this character was written onto these pages. My mother did not say those exact words: "I want it to be spring, and I want to brush my hair...and I want a kitty and I want new clothes." But she could have and, indeed, if she had I would have been pleased because at least she would be trying to put language to the stirrings of desire inside her. Women of that era were so lost, so discouraged from having desire, ambition, big dreams. Women of that era could only dream small dreams: kitties and silver and candles. She's cut her hair short, like a boy's: a wish to be in the body of boy who is allowed bigger dreams, to escape the constraints of womanhood? Then she doubts her choice. Is she still pretty? She wishes to feel something: the bun on the back of her neck, the cat ( no longer kitty but something larger, more substantial.) Betty Friedan called the depression many women in the fifties experienced as "the disease that has no name." My mother's inability to name her longing to have a life where she could follow her own desire and ambition was shared by most women of this era. My mother, the valedictorian of her High School class, eventually gave up wanting anything for herself, but, bless her, she encouraged me to have dreams, to find language for those dreams that went beyond kitties and candles and new clothes. I cheer when our girl gets a little fierce. "I want a cat. I want it now." Go girl/wife/American wife!! Stamp your foot! Want something. Start with a cat. Then tell that sleepy dud of a husband to wake up and pay some attention to you!
A quote I highlighted from A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: "Reading 'Master and Man,' we begin living it; the words disappear and we find ourselves thinking not about word choice but about the decisions the characters are making and decisions we have made, or might have to make someday, in our actual lives." It's happening here for many of us.
That was by far my favorite experience in that book. I wept while reading the story and the analysis was humanistic and spiritual at once. I’m a sucker for the kindness and love of humankind that is in that story but also how political it is without beating you over the head. One of the things I appreciate so much in short stories is when they are funny and filled with pathos at once. That’s how I experienced Master and Man and many Saunders stories. They make me happy to be human and then also devastated to be human if that makes any sense.
yes, I agree, I had similar connection to the girl/woman but there is a but -- the locus of all the action is the static man on the bed - and given some of the comments, it is his vision of the girl/woman that is making an impact - the author has us wound up (as well he should). The self-regarding woman with unmet needs is being told to shut up. I have a hard time believing that the sympathy of the author lies with the woman looking at herself in the mirror. Our generation of women can bring this to the story - which gives it timelessness -- but I think it is still very much of its time. Let's see what the light coming on will bring. There are balls in the air - the Tchin moment of the cat not being under the table, the waiter in the doorway, the to-ing and fro-ing of the opening sequence ....
Oh! yes, Deborah, what of the static man on the bed, whose gaze barely lifts from his book towards this woman, now before him in the mirror on the dressing table, the hand mirror, and in the flesh. What happens if I shift my awakened empathy for the woman’s truncated desires, to pondering her husband's ideas about his wife’s desires and his own ambitions for himself as a man in 1925? I think, oh poor fellow, there’s no way we can expect him to understand this moment as anything but annoying and silly. He wants to swat this moment away like a fly. He is the provider, the man whose cash got them this room in a hotel in Italy. What is he supposed to do with all these foolish requests she makes of him? Nor do I think that Hemingway could possibly have this kind of understanding and empathy for the wife. The husband, like Hemingway, is himself trapped by the impossible expectation of the time that men should be not smaller but larger, strong, heroic. But here I am, almost a hundred years after the story was written, finding great resonance in this scene, as if the pages of a hundred years of my history have been turned, quickly, in five paragraphs. Amazing.
Thank you, Kathleen! You made one of my grid influences just rear up, “Diary of a Mad Housewife.” I was young, scared and felt trapped in a marriage. But it’s hard for me to believe that 23 year old EH understood the inner feelings of a frustrated woman so well. Maybe George, too, is young and is enjoying his wife’s drama and doesn’t realize the intensity of it. But we have made progress in these 100 years!
maybe it's Hemingway's power of observation--of real women and of his written characters both--rather than any personal empathy he may or may not have had for them, that makes these complexities in the character visible to us.
So pleased to see that movie mentioned here, being in a similar situation (sans kids) when it was released in 1970–but not for long, I'd never forgotten it. Plus, I think I bought an MGBGT from Snodgrass around then.
I agree- "almost a hundred years after the story was written, finding great resonance in this scene." As a woman, I have the feeling that there is something major that is denied to me because of my gender, but what that something is, I can never precisely articulate. And yet - we've come so far so we should "shut up" and be happy with what we have. I often find myself grasping for the words to explain this to my husband.
If you can't articulate it, could it be that it doesn't exist? You might feel a certain way because society tells you you should be feeling that way, that you _should_ have, as Betty Friedan put it, the "disease with no name."
On the other hand, if there is something there for sure, what would it take to figure out how to name it?
I find myself thinking her hair is cut short not because she wants it short--she desires to be like a boy--but because George has demanded that it be cut short, and that is why he shows impatience when she expresses a desire to grow it out.
It’s a recurring thing for Hemingway, to have female character with short hair as some sort of gender play (crops up again in his final book, published posthumously, The Garden of Eden).
interesting. Still, I'm not sure it was gender play at the time. Bobbed hair was modern, even rebellious. Per Smithsonian magazine, "In the beginning of the 20th century, that’s how serious it was to cut off your locks. At that time, long tresses epitomized a pristine kind of femininity exemplified by the Gibson girl. Hair may have been worn up, but it was always, always long.
Part and parcel with the rebellious flapper mentality, the decision to cut it all off was a liberating reaction to that stodgier time, a cosmetic shift toward androgyny that helped define an era. "
Yes I understand the historical fashion and trends at the time. What I'm suggesting is that Hemingway was drawn to short hair on women and there are recurring references to this in his work, in a way that is distinct from the current modes of fashion at the time. That it's not insignificant (as nothing is in Hemingway's work, as nothing in is any good writer's work) that there is an exchange about the wife's short hair. It's clear it's not about fashion. It's about him preferring her hair short (she mentions growing it, he says she looks 'pretty darn nice'; he shifts on the bed, to me he is becoming aroused, it's not a shift to see her better, we are told he hasn't looked away since she started talking) and there is something sexual connected additionally, as the exchange about the hair is embedded in all the cat/kitty/lap/stroking talk, and that it makes her 'look like a boy' (mentioned twice) and for me, knowing about the gender play in Garden of Eden, it makes me wonder if this is an early appearance of those preoccupations, whatever they were truly about.
This is not a rebellious woman, and she's not even a woman now, we're told she's a girl. She has not cut her hair because of the trend of the times. She has done it because he likes it. She is sick of it being short and wants to grow it out. He disapproves of that and shows it by telling her to shut up and find something to read.
I find the wife more annoying ,I get this urge to say to her, " why don't you do something then, read a book ,go to the cafe with the lonely waiter ,go to a museum , why do you keep demanding everybody else to fulfill your wishes and needs "
I understand your annoyance. However, like the girl in this story, I had no idea of my own strength, power, agency when I was young. When you are raised only to marry and have children, and when thoughts of any other future for you are forcibly dashed, you become frozen in place. Eventually, the idea of doing something disappears altogether. I mean that--the very idea of 'doing something' does not exist. The only way for anything to happen, is for something to happen TO you. You have wishes and desires, certainly. But the idea of going out and making them happen--ha! That is why i'm happy that the girl at least goes looking for the cat that she wants. That is a start. What she will do with that, I don't know. But I'm hoping for her to become her own agent of growth and change. (I am no longer that girl, by the way. Though every so often, I still feel her inside of me.)
Hi Mary , yes I totally agree that that was , and still is , the reality for many women around the world. I think that the annoyance I feel is what Hemingway wants me ( the reader ) to feel , and I am looking very much forward to see what happens next.
Hi Mary, yes this is what is hard for some to imagine. In the United States a woman couldn't go into a bar alone until...when? Maybe it was that way in Italy, too back in the 20s. Where is she going to go then? Plus maybe there's no money left.
Demanding other people help you is a defense mechanism sometimes against the terror of realizing that ultimately the salvation from your boredom lies entirely within your grasp. This is Sartre's "existential horror," knowing that in the final calculation, only your own actions can define your essence and your freedom. But Sartre and his compatriots point out how hard it is to accept that, and how much easier to wait for the world to point the way forward.
Now that I am responding like this, it gives this Hemingway story a whole new meaning to me, as a member of the existentialist genre, a sort of meditation on actions and their consequences. The woman charges out of the room, determined to take action, but finds herself thwarted easily, first by a missing cat, then by a perhaps-peevish maid. She is like the rest of us, filled by a desire to act and be greater than one's given circumstances, but also easily distracted and depressed.
She could have perhaps braved the rain, gotten wet, looked among the trees for the cat, followed the man in the cape - and yet, here she is, stuck with her own vanity, looking for solace from an unresponsive partner (who merely reads, so what can _he_ know of action!).
Kathleen, I too was thinking a locked up desire here, specifically a woman's desire of that time period. I think back to the movie, The Hours and see Julianne Moore's character so vividly in my mind. A 1950s woman who lives a life of quiet desperation, a love she cannot have, trying to hold on. A clip is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ7l5ugGWy0
Thanks so much for this very thoughtful comment and for sharing your mother's experiences, Kathleen. My mother married about 20 years after this story was written. Although the war years gave her a glimpse of what she could do (she was a nurse in a stateside hospital for a moment in time), the window quickly closed as one child after another arrived. As women, we've come a long way, but for me the insecurity and lack of empowerment betrayed by the American...girl...is easy to understand. I also felt the immense sting of George's "Oh, shut up." Such a powerful line, one that communicates so much. What a sad fate to be linked to someone like him at that time of life!
My talented mother too, born in 1916: "boy who is allowed bigger dreams, to escape the constraints of womanhood." Notice that the husband is most attentive when she's concerned about her looks. Your comment knocks me out, especially since I thought the story was over when he first ignored her at the window.
Yes, very good point. The husband isn't interested in what the wife is doing until she starts preening in front of the mirror. Then, she has his attention--although he doesn't care about her "petty" expressed desires.
so well articulated Kathleen. We empathize now with this character, and an entire new layer of power (or powerlessness), and raw emotion emerges from her. We begin to sense her at a deeper level and are led to further wonderings about her and her life journey.
Thank you Kathleen for such a thoughtful reply and for bringing in the historical element of what young women experienced at that time. Much appreciated.
Just popping in to say how wonderful this exercise is. Both here and in A Swim, George sometimes says something like "bear with me, I know that reading this way can be annoying," but DAMN do I disagree with that. This method of close-reading is so, so valuable to me, and I look forward to every new post. Please keep them coming, you have my rapt attention, and I am learning oodles.
Yes, it's not annoying at all. But I wonder if that's because many of us are seasoned teachers who have been reading all our lives, not young college students who are just trying to ace a class and move on?
I love it too, and it's definitely not annoying. Not a teacher here, but an avid reader and writer who doesn't get much time to closely analyze anything these days, so this is refreshing. My brain remembers that it doesn't have to be forever-scrolling through hundreds of feeds and voices. I think it likes this pace.
Story Club takes its time. It is the opposite of everything on social media and I love it.
Yes! I love it too. The mindfulness and intentionality to it. Similar to the slow-food movement, I think we are starting a slow... page movement!? Here's to mindful reading!
Yes, April, what a beautifully stated sentiment. This is exactly what I love about George's course. The pace. Such a luxurious expanse of time in which to savor these lines. Just what my old brain needs, too. I just wish I could recreate the pace in my lit courses, but we're on the quarter system, and the weeks fly by. I would so love to facilitate some kind of writers salon instead. Wouldn't this just be the best reiteration of an English course? Ah.....
Oh yes, this. As a journalist always on some kind of deadline I dream of having more time to spend thinking about my writing. But it's good, at least, to take some time for someone else's.
Another interesting comment, as I find myself relating this StoryCLub work solely to reading, not to anything on social media that 'approximates' real reading. As a reference, any comments I make here about reading refer to book-in-hand novels or stories. I couldn't begin to relate the valuable insights we're getting here to anything involving scrolling, feeds and voices. entirely different media. The wisdom and lessons and insights here at storyclub are, for me, about ink on paper pages.
This is my first experience with close-reading and I'm loving it as well. As a former journalist I was taught the "who, what, when" form of writing, with a deadline and a word limit, which left little time for introspection or delving into the personalities and motivations of the people I was writing about. It took me a long time to un-learn all this when trying to write fiction. I can mimic a style, well enough, but I run into a wall trying to breath life and contradiction into a character. I'm seeing now I never took the time to look deeply into my characters so they could speak for themselves through the most subtle movements and choice of (or lack of) words. Story Club is a wonderful new learning experience, and I'm blown away because it's so much fun.
Oh, yes, journalism. I served as managing editor for a small business newspaper in an earlier version of myself and am well acquainted with that "who, what, when, where" stuff, Bill. I get what you're saying about un-learning habits, and it's actually something I ask my students to do as well, get reading to do some "un-learning." They may be dubious at first, but they generally love the freedom soon. But this pace we're experiencing here goes much further. I just wish I had the time in my classes to introduce them to this format. I'm trying to negotiate some kind of compromise, though. Like you, I never took the time to really luxuriate in the sentence-by-sentence experience. It's like a long bubble bath with candles. Thanks for the response!
Yes to all of this. My attention is so divided all the time, and splitting the story and discussion up like this makes me take the time to stop, set everything aside and savor it. And then read everyone's comments, because they're all so thoughtful and smart. This is the best thing I've spent money on this year.
Now that's VERY interesting to me, as I know I would find this far less annoying (yes, sorry, it is to some of us) were I a young college student. I had far more patience for extended analysis in that part of my life. I still value it now, but I would've found it far less annoying (if at all) in my college years. Very interesting to me how we see that dynamic so differently.
Thanks for this perspective, Fred. You're right of course; each of us is having our own experience of this particular process. And depending on where we are in life, one may find it rewarding while someone else may find it tedious. I get that. One thing that is slightly challenging (more so) for me, is the frustration in not being able to access or read everyone's responses. I think this is a function of the group's size, but I'd just love to see everyone's ideas displayed before I respond, and it's just hard to do that.
to reiterate, though, I do not find it tedious in any way, and I see and feel and absorb all the value and insight. My main point was that the trade-off for me, is that I don't get a true experience of the story as I would if I'd read it straight through and then returned to analyze.
Yeah, it's the idea of continuity. I wonder if the best of all possible worlds is to read it straight through once, and then go through again as we are doing here. But you do lose the element of surprise, which I think George wanted us to experience. So, I'm not sure?
You've crystalized it for me, thank you: I realize after your comment that in reading in this fashion the element of surprise is changed; some pieces of it are drastically diminished, some possibly eliminated, and most just different because I'm not getting them from a direct and continuous reading of the story.
I absolutely agree with a complete reading then revisiting in this analytical fashion, but also see the value of doing this once. Still, in so doing, the story is sacrificed in a manner of speaking, to the deconstruction. What I mean is I can never read this story again, and get the experience I would've gotten on a first and continuous read. That's barely a price to pay, but it is worth noting, to me.
I agree Erica! It makes me want to read more short-stories because they lend themselves more to a close reading. So much longer-form reading feels rooted in 'consumption' rather than 'savoring'. Definitely something I appreciated a great deal in A Swim...
A welcome consequence of this exercise is that I find myself suspending judgment a little more. There are a number of points in the story where I’ve felt strongly, usually negatively, towards one of the characters. If I were reading it in one go and without taking the time to reflect on my reaction to the text, those feelings might easily have become enduring and overriding assessments of the characters.
Working through this exercise, I’m aware of my feelings about the characters changing from pulse to pulse and that awareness, coupled with more time spent thinking about why I’m reacting in the way that I am and reading through so many thoughtful and incisive responses to the text, means I’m slightly less likely to let my feelings at any particular pulse carry the day.
I’m also noticing a readiness to leave the question of what the story is ‘about’ unanswered for just a little while longer. It’s refreshing.
This has been my feeling with this exercise as well. It’s been eye opening to realize how quickly my mind wants to identify who is the “good guy” and who is the “bad guy” and what lesson there is to be learned — instead of just sitting with the experience of the story itself.
I commend you all. I see the merit of this exercise, but it's very difficult, nearly impossible, for me to get a sense of the story and it's flow (this or any story) when dissected piecemeal like this. I get the value of the dissection, and it's quite remarkable and instructive and insightful, but it's not the way I read. Most important is that it divorces me from, and is probably actually prohibitive to, the way I ( and I believe most people) read and process stories. So it becomes like trying to understand driving a car by looking at its parts and how wonderfully they fit together; it's interesting and insightful, but it isn't driving a car. Or maybe it's like trying to taste a finished dish by just tasting the ingredients; useful in understanding how the final flavor of the dish will be created, but definitely not like eating the finished meal.
Thinking back, I did like this method in the first chapter of SwimPond, but I had been told it was only for the first story, so I was more patient, holding the actual book in my hands. I know we will not be doing this on future stories (I hope, at least) but I guess I am just impatient to get there. For me, the ideal approach, and most like where we're going with his, as with SwimPond, is reading the entire story, absorbing it fully; driving the car, eating the meal. And then going back and looking at how the part made the car drive way and the ingredients made the meal taste that way.
So what am I saying? I think I'm saying my responses to this story don't exist; only responses to the pieces. And, as with the initial story in SwimPond, I am intrigued, educated by it, but ultimately very impatient to get to "whole" stories.
And this explains my lack of comment for the past couple sections of the tale.
I had a solfège teacher at the conservatory who taught us two different methods for approaching our sight reading. One was called “go method” and the other “stop method”. In “go” you could make as many mistakes as were possible with the pitches, but you could not stop (in other words, you could not violate the rhythm). In “stop” you could stop as often as you liked, for as long as you liked, but were not aloud to sing an incorrect pitch.
Each of these methods rehearsed a different skill.
Would I want to use one or other of these methods all the time? No. In fact when I’m actually having to sight read under pressure I’ll often use a hybrid of both. But understanding the limits and advantages of each approach gives me valuable information about what I know, and don’t know, and helps me to construct a pathway toward mastery.
I’m sure I’ve bored you with all of this- but wanted to express some solidarity with your frustration. I’ve always been better at “go” method than “stop” method! In music and in reading and in life.
At the time I was at the conservatory, my solfège teacher was getting his PhD at Harvard School of Education under Howard Gardner, who came up with a theory of multiple intelligences…interesting stuff…
This is a great interview, thanks for sharing. A friend created a great 4-EP mini-series podcast called My Year in Mensa that is about fixed intelligence and the pervasive racism in the Mensa community. She joined as a joke and it became much more. It’s really interesting and funny too.
I can’t remember if she gets into Gardner’s theory in it. I would imagine she does.
That aside, I had never heard of a “magnetic boutique” before but understood the concept. “The magnetic boutique is when you do something very special very well, and people hear about it, are inspired, and want to try to do it themselves.” I really like this theory of learning and growing a community. Digging into Gardner more now…
Agree. Hadn't thought to correlate this to the many the days and days spent rewriting drafts of screenplays back when I did that. I was always so consciously aware when revising of how utterly different that work was (inner and outer) from when I was burning through first drafts, no holds barred. Ah, the memories.
Not at all uninteresting, actually fascinating and thank you. But it does draw me to the fundamental difference of being the Performer in singing and playing music, and the Audience in reading. Interestingly as you so beautifully articulate, both require the processing (and honoring) of someone else compositional work.
Yes! To sing Lieder you must read Goethe and Heine, Eichendorff and Mörike. To sing mélodie you must read Rilke and Verlaine! So many beautiful rabbitholes
Like you, I never read like this. I tend to gobble down the story as quick as I can.
And that’s exactly why I find this exercise so valuable - it’s forcing me to slow right down. Do I want to read like this forever? - definitely not. But I think I would benefit by reading a few more stories at this pace, or revisiting the process in the future.
I completely understand what you are saying, and I find it difficult as well. Or maybe not difficult… more like uncomfortable. But then I think about how I referred to it as an exercise, and similar to doing physical exercise the discomfort will hopefully lead to more strength and flexibility!
I don’t think I would have been able to separate the story from its “aboutness” if I had read it straight through at the beginning. And even then, it took me five segments of this story before my mind even began to glimpse that as a possibility.
Still, trying see how the story was written vs what the story is about is nearly impossible for me. It’s like looking at those 3-d pictures where you need to adjust your eyes *just so* to see what’s there, but the second you glance away it’s gone.
As a working pro artist, I find that by slowing down I can observe more closely, and thus perceive and appreciate details that I'd have missed otherwise.
Fair enough Fred, your writing 'it's not the way I read'; what struck me is that I'm in Story Club not just to read and process stories more analytically but aiming to put apply the fruits of such reading and processing to tasking myself to enhance my ability to write richer stories.
To do this, I'm thinking, is going to require me to close read to revise and edit pieces of whatever story I might set to writing through each and every drafting cycle. 'Cat in the Hat' is, as I see it, a starting point not an end in itself. I'll know whether and how participation in Story Club has proved 'transformative', in whatever ways, for me when I'm going at a fresh, new, original short story of mine in the same manner as we are working on 'Cat in the Hat'.
When we are readers we can be drivers, open the first page and away we can go. When we are writers we know we can't expect to take a bright idea and turn out a well crafted ready to read story in short order. Story making, like car making is multi-faceted activity that takes time.
Thanks for your post Fred; makes me think a little more about why I'm here in Story Club. .
I hope I didn't seem critical and made clear how valuable this process is. It's just something that, done once (maybe twice) suffices (for me anyway) to carry these lessons into my reading and my own writing. I certainly didn't wish to sound critical; just confessional, as this group already feels quite close-knit and respectful. Hopefully no offenses were taken.
Agree - I was more interested in 'writing better' and 'teaching better' rather than 'reading better' - but really, I can't achieve either of the first two without the third. And wow - how my appreciation of well written short fiction has burgeoned since 'Pond in the Rain'! Thank you, George S, for the lesson in discipline.
Yeah, I can't argue with anything you've said, nor do I wish to. I've just, for myself, gone through this process once with Swim/Pond, and I'm impatient at this point to get to the stage where we're reading full stories and then doing the analytical work I respect your thoughts 100%.
That is a precise description of how any work of fiction should be read. In my freshman composition course, the analysis of a short story assignment starts with instructions that readers should not be deciphering an object lesson or a theme of the story, but how the writer is using details to lead readers to a logical conclusion. Some were able to stick with that all the way through the assignment, while some tried to deduce the lesson to be learned, which was more a reflection on their experiences outside of reading the story than their experience of reading the story.
I find myself unconcerned with good guys. etc,. or themes. I just want to experience the story, and then dissect and discuss after taking the whole thing in. I also don't agree that there is any one way that a work of fiction should be read, but I'd surely posit that most people read it through without consciously stopping to analyze or dissect. I have no idea at this point how I would respond to this particular story were I to read it straight through.
The trade off is I now have tons of very interesting and valid insights and perspective on it's moving parts. But I believe that can be done in retrospect. I'm fairly certain George's intention, as it was at the initial story in SwimPond, is to get us to think about how we read. It's a worthy and valuable exercise, but to me it absolutely sacrifices a true reading and experience of the story. It's worth it, but I definitely wouldn't want to continue it. I'm much happier and fulfilled by the analysis paradigm in the remainder of SwimPond after "In the Cart".
This exercise reminds me of a time in college when I went out to the Galiuros Mountain Range on a 2-week backpacking trip. I was leading the group on this chunk of the trail, reading the map, shooting coordinates and doing a really good job of it too! On the map was a ranch. That was our destination. Ahead, I saw a ranch. On the map it was further back. The instructor, who was trusting me to lead in this moment, became frustrated with me for focusing so much on the map when in front of our eyes was the ranch. Right there! Hello!
I was trying so hard to do a good job, to follow the map, to get it Right. I didn’t let go of the map and just go “ah, there it is.”
This exercise challenges that part of me. The controller or perfectionist? Or just that part that thinks, there is a right way and a wrong way. Someone else knows the right way and I must follow it if I want to be Right and Good.
That letting go of control is very hard. That stepping back and appreciating that we’re already there. That joy in, we got here! Who the fuck cares if the map says we still have a ways to go.
You’re at the destination (for now). Enjoy it. For fucks sake, enjoy it.
“George shifted his position in the bed. He hadn’t looked away from her since she started to speak.”
George is getting turned on, that’s what I think, and furthermore I think this is his whole raison d’etre for the marriage.
Then she starts talking about sensual stuff like feeling her hair in a knot and stroking a kitty.
“‘Yeah?’ George said from the bed.”
George is really asking, “Is this going to be sex?”
Nope!
“‘And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.’”
I hear:
“I want to be somewhere that is home, I want to be myself, and I want things to be good.”
A materialistic kind of good, okay, but I think she hasn’t run into other, deeper kinds of goodness very much yet in her life.
George hears:
“This isn’t going to be sex and I’m the annoying but hot but not intellectual wife you really have.”
And he goes back to his own main life, inside his book, after telling her to be somebody else.
“Anyway, I want a cat,” she said, “I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can’t have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat.”
It’s hopeless and weird to fixate on a cat. The cat’s not going to help! Your problems aren’t going to be solved by a cat! Argh! But I sympathize with her anyway. A person has to have something.
Holy gods, is it satisfying when the light comes on in the square. Shockingly satisfying. The story could almost stop there for me, but we wouldn’t know if there’s hope or no hope in this marriage yet. I need another drop of something to help me place my bet.
I'm noticing more and more each time I pass through the pulse. I felt the sexual tension instantly - his full gaze on her, his "look pretty darn nice" comment (he's trying to be flirtatious, for an intellectual) and shift in position. But give him some credit for having a libido - she just spoke about pulling hair tight, purring, sitting in laps and stroking! It's nearly pornographic!
Aside from that, I have felt signals of class. She could have said she wanted a set of silver. Instead, she said "my own". Made me feel like someone else was footing the bill, that perhaps her husband has allocations of wealth that allow him to pursue an intellectual life (read and check into Italy in the off-season), and the family has the silver. Her lack of familiarity with hotel staff - feeling at once small and superior - gives one the sense that the money and class position is brand new to her. She's obviously very cute, has the cute modern haircut to match, and was chosen by this trust fund baby of a husband, but she's still young and unworldly. She only knows how to express her longings in material and tactile form (silver, a new wardrobe, hair-brushing), perhaps because that's how she got into this relationship - a craving for money to make up for some other missingness. I don't get the sense she knows how to identify her own dissatisfaction.
She goes from wife to girl because we're getting closer to seeing her - she is a naive girl feeling around for the source of her ambiguous longing. The feline goes from being named kitty to cat - the opposite direction of maturity - because she has no idea how to transform her vague desires into something concrete. Calling it "cat" is the nearest fix.
Ah, good eye on the silver and the class implications. I didn’t catch that.
Thinking about George as a trust fund baby who maybe hasn’t known certain sorts of want, and thinking about the baked-in languidness of the rich, whose material needs have always been covered. It’s more embarrassing to live as a person constantly tuned to desire from a history of lack.
That's how I read it too but I thought when she says she wants her own silver, what she's really saying is that she wants to go home. She doesn't want to be in Italy, she doesn't want to travel, she doesn't want to stay in hotels, she wants to be settled down in her own house, with her own silver, and a pet.
Hopeless and weird, yes! Ever since she began talking about rescuing the cat, I was thinking, how are you going to adopt a cat while living out of a hotel room in a foreign city? How would that work exactly? Also, when she says, "I want a cat. I want a cat now," she really sounds like Veruca Salt.
Even today it is an expensive potentially nightmarish adventure. I brought a 3 month old kitten home from Greece & got held over for 10 hours because my carrier was soft & had to wait for cousins to come and bring me a hard carrier. Just imagine in Hemingway's time. US Customs was the only breeze but that was because the cat has a "Cat Passport" that had been cleared by the airlines before we entered the country.
The fact that she sounds like Veruca Salt is just one side of the story, though. She may sound whiny and childish, but I will be very surprised if she ends up simply being a privileged spoiled brat. I think she is probably very immature, but she is also, in a sense, taking a stand. The fact that she wants a cat while living in a hotel is not necessarily realistic, but it is her way of saying, "I need something to make me happy, and I will have it." Maybe even something she can call her own instead of doing everything that George wants (staying in a hotel room, wearing her hair short, etc.).
Agree. There was a distinct opportunity for sex he responded to as I read it. She grabbed it like a straw out of thin air, habitually and deliberately as a last resort and then having had her suspicions confirmed (I’m a toy or an object for him) expresses her frustration about having cut her hair the way he likes it because it’s not enough. She needs more!
If I can’t have long hair or any FUN (caps mine), I can have a cat.” I can almost see her stomping her foot. We've all surmised her relationship with George, at least in the hotel, is boring. She's telling us it is. Here they are in an Italian resort on the sea and she's not having any fun. He's just reading.
He does seem somewhat interested, and even complimentary when she asks about changing her hair length. But I don't think George is asking "is there going to be sex?" That she's not having fun suggests they aren't, but if they are George isn't cutting it.
And, yes, the light going on in the courtyard. Hope for the proper end remains.
For me, if every detail is doing important work, George’s shifting his position on the bed has to mean something. He could have just stayed how he was, otherwise. An itch wouldn’t qualify for story status. An ache in his knee might be something if physical pain on his part were germane to the doings here, but I don’t see that.
A young wife, though—who hasn’t displayed a whole lot of sparkling qualities that would appeal to a guy who reads and rests from reading, exclusively, at least as far as we can see in this slice of their world—is probably as sexually attractive as she is annoying, if not more so. I haven’t seen any other basis for their attachment yet and we’re running out of time.
That’s what’s giving me the confidence to make this call. That, and intuition, and my own experience with men in the early stages of getting an idea, as it were.
Looking forward to seeing what unfolds! By this point I feel sure it will be something I didn’t expect, and that’s making me happy.
Tina, your observation "...is probably as sexually attractive as she is annoying, if not more so." Really strikes a chord, as it aptly seems to zero in on a crucial part of the dynamic in the relationship, in a way that I could not immediately articulate it. But it seems glaringly credible and even obvious in a way that makes me want to smack my forhead and say, yes, of course. How did I not see it before? Or not be able to name it.
Addendum: I credit this story as being so good because it, along with much of the discussion about it, aggravates me. If the characters, action, etc can get under my skin like this one does, my sense is it has some brilliance that cannot be denied.
Chris, I hear you on that aggravation. Same here, and that has to beat a blah feeling. Every time I’ve had my expectations upended during this slow march through the story it hasn’t exactly been fun. “Goddamn it, I’m an idiot. NOW what is she doing.” I love what I’m learning but I can’t say I have real affection for this story. A growing respect for its power, though, yes.
Hi, Chris. The aggravation is one of the more surprising aspects of this story for me. I am definitely getting teased along by this slow doling out of detail. But it all makes sense once I think that's all Hemingway wants to do: get me to read the next sentence or the next graf by any means possible. So aggravation is definitely fair play.
I agree with you, Tina. There is a reason for that shift and brief period of time where he hadn't looked away from her. He only looks at her when she is studying her appearance in the mirror. That part is sandwiched between him reading. I went back and observed all of the times when Hemingway points out that George was reading. There is very little other activity from George, which is interesting since he is the one with the name, and most of the action is happening in the life of the wife. (For some reason I keep picturing Audrey Hepburn when I see her in my mind.)
Audrey Hepburn! I love hearing how people mentally cast the stories they’re reading.
I have a vague blondness for her and not much else. I can never get a bead on the wife’s face and that feels important. I can see George and everyone else just fine, now that I think about it. Those shifting descriptors, the view of her from the back, the POV from the wife about the hotel owner. She doesn’t get to come into focus.
Now I’m hoping that the last pulse will have some satisfying dot about her identity. That’s my one hope now.
Wow -- that's so interesting! I only see her and have no real picture of George at all. Pretty brilliant writing on the part of Hemingway to be able to spur on so much dialogue and so many different reactions!
The view of her from the back is, to me, the view George has (a limited knowledge of who she really is/focusing on an aspect of her beauty that he is particular about) while she is looking in the mirror dreaming of the woman she would like to be but can't/or maybe is not allowed to. And maybe is about to become? (Or maybe not ...)
If the cat in the rain is the woman (now George's wife to us), and the cat she went out to rescue left the shelter of the table before she could get to it, I am hoping she will follow the her example, no matter what the maid or anyone else thinks about the idea!
I was sensing sexual tension as well (especially what she says about wanting to feel her hair pulled...). I wonder if she's intentionally (or unintentionally?) opened her monologue with this to get her husband's attention? (Maybe this has worked for her in the past?) Either way, Hemingway definitely caught my attention with that line about the husband keeping his eyes on her.
His sudden attentiveness and shifting on the bed also made me think he had something different on his mind than her interest in having that kitty.
After he tells her to shut up, she looks out the window where it is now dark AND raining. This is the transition where she switches from referring to the kitty (sounding like a girl) to referring to the cat. The light coming on happens right after this and leaves me thinking that something more is about to happen. Will the cat be sitting there in the rain? Will we hear more about the monument? Will she head over to the cafe, leaving her husband alone to read his book? Or will she close the curtains and read a book?
Agreed. That detail of the light coming on really pushes my attention forward, grasping for what is still yet to come. How could I possibly be content for the story end here?
I love your analysis, Tina. "I like it the way it is," could be spoken as a first step toward sex. And that's why he gets angry when she goes on about the stupid kitty.
Is the cat a distraction to what she wants that George is not providing in the way of material goods -- eating a meal with her own silver, new clothes?
Cat as abstraction distraction? I cheated one line (and one line ONLY) and it revealed there was a knock on the door.
Hemingway was not one for introducing new characters so there are few we can choose from. Could it be THE CAT? (I'm being facetious, but hope you can appreciate we have fewer avenues for resolution to this story.)
I think of them as products of the post World War I times. They do not necessarily need to be privileged or rich. They may have been disenchanted with life in America, and set out for a low-cost tour of beautiful places recuperating from the damage of war.
Not too much further, I suspect, Michael. Thanks for the cartoon image that your sharing that you have ‘cheated one line (and one line ONLY)’ pops up in my imagination.
Man is at writing desk, or perhaps in reading armchair, and says “Alexa; wake up; I’m reading Hemingway; short story, titled ‘Cat in the Hat’; last line I read was ‘XXX YYY ZZZ’; can you please go to it and give the What Happens Next: just the next line and ONLY the next line.”
“AAA BBB CCC” Alexa replies, just nanoseconds later.
LOVE the cartoon image, Rob. Wish it were true, but here's the scoop.
To be honest, Story Club is AFFECTING MY SLEEP. I was awake at 4am the other morning thinking of what ties this story up. Had lunch with a friend later and he asked, "How in hell can you not just read the rest of this story?" to which I responded, "Wanna see where this experiment leads, man." So, guess that's my superpower.
Ahead of George's Sunday wrap up of "Cat in the Rain" (assuming it IS this coming Sunday), here's my best guess:
*Knock at the door* "Who's there?" It's either:
1. Cat
2. Maid
3. Padrone (Hotel-keeper)
4. Unknown other.
Let's eliminate 1 and 4. I'm fairly sure Hemingway didn't work that way, either having super-sentient cats (but multi-pawed, that gets a pass) or previously unintroduced characters. That leaves 2 or 3. The maid would be surprising to me, so I'm going with the hotel-keeper. He's got some news on the cat. That will affect the couple in an instant.
What's the news? How does it affect their relationship?
Funny that it turned out to be NOT an either/or situation, but all FOUR! The cat, held by the maid, sent by the padrone, and it could be just a different cat! (Unknown other.) Wow. All that and a pizza too.
I get a lot of sexual energy from the husband. He hadn’t looked away from her since she started to speak.
“You look pretty darn nice,” he said.
The wife has other needs. A lot of other unmet needs. To which he responds "Yeah?" Followed by “Oh, shut up and get something to read.” They are both filled with desire and frustration, but they don't know how to say what they're wanting directly...even though the wife seems to have a long list of specific needs. What does she really want? What does he want beyond hoping she'll shut up? This abortive conversation creates a lot of tension for the reader. What are they really talking about under this conversation?
Yes, yes, that's exactly it. Brilliantly put. But now it's dark and still raining but the light comes on... is this the light of hope? Realisation? Or just something for the cat to show up in?
You say in there, on the brilliance of Barthelme's closing paragraphs: "And look what's happened: Suddenly, Barthelme can end this thing any way he pleases. The essential work has been done." That idea really struck me when I first read it: the notion that the work, when done well (in earlier parts), allows the story to end in any number of different ways and still mean something. And when I think about what would feel unaddressed by Hemingway if "Cat in the Rain" ended here (with the light coming on in the square), while I do feel we need a final moment, a final interaction or glimpse or something, I also think Hemingway has done much of the essential work and has a number of endings open to him, each in line with the "meaning" he has hinted toward.
Never read or heard of Barthelme before! The School is so fun. I’m amazed at the fun simplicity of it. It’s so serious and silly simultaneously. The normal speech of the narrator > complex language - you can def see the influence on Saunders work.
Thank you for sharing this! I love all these links people share … distracts me from my desperate need to read the ending of Cat in the Rain 😩
Kate, I’m a little jealous of you with all of Barthelme ahead to read. He and George Saunders are very much kindred spirits, although it would be fair to say Barthelme was more obviously a practitioner of metafiction, and much of his work was called experimental. Both he and George are super intelligent, hilarious, and humane. Though known mostly for his short stories, Barthelme also wrote a couple of short novels: Snow White, and The Dead Father. I highly recommend them both.
I am feeling tenderness for this wife/woman/girl. There is a restlessness to her that is relatable. She’s seeking something tangible: a cat/kitty to rescue, long hair in a bun to ground her in her womanhood, someone to acknowledge her in the ways she wants to be seen. And yet all she’s getting is rain, the absence of a cat, a distracted husband’s suggestion to read a book. She is teetering on the precipice of some kind of understanding of herself, which makes her both infuriating and fascinating.
"She is teetering on the precipice of some kind of understanding of herself, which makes her both infuriating and fascinating." I love that. I guess that's what a good story does, marches us to that same precipice and makes us teeter there too.
Yes, definitely. When I consider my own romantic past (not that anyone asked or cares) but I can recall thay wonderfully exasperating moment when a woman/girl that I was attracted to/intrigued by teetered on this very precipice -- infuriating and exasperating simulataneously -- and it quite literally drove me heart-mad in a way. And I both hated and loved it.
Thank you! I felt like in the last section, the narrator had contempt for her, and that actually made me feel bad for her, even as I know she was a bit peremptory with the hotel staff. And her husband clearly feels contempt for her. All that makes me want to look out for her and see her grow somehow.
But will she grow? That’s what I’m waiting to find out. And I don’t feel the husband has contempt for her. He knew who he was marrying. He is entertained by her…does he really want her to grow!?
I see the husband’s contempt. As soon as she turns away from his sexual invitation (by walking over to the window) and expresses the things she wants (which evidently does not include him?!?!?) he snaps at her to shut up and read. The implication is that her thoughts aren’t up to his intellectual standards.
That's interesting--I didn't read George's responses as contempt. I saw them as weariness with someone you've grown used to (which also isn't a great basis for marriage, especially so early on). I get the feeling she acts out like this a lot, but with that light coming on in the square, something has changed. But what?!
I've been remembering all the little things that women couldn't do back then, back when this story takes place. In the Sophia Coppola movie, "Lost in Translation" the wife is trapped in a hotel, while her husband has all this exciting work to do, then she goes to a bar by herself and gets to hang out with Bill Murray.
The wife/American girl in this story is living in a time when chopping off hair was a big deal, a huge liberation, and she's chopped off her hair... but still lives, trapped, in how she feels about her looks, how she's looked at, if she's approved of. This last problem, where we feel so much about our external package, seeking approval, still exists. I feel more for her now that I've thought about all the restrictions women had in the past. I don't even think they could open their own bank accounts. Being a wife was like being a child in a way. You had to ask for money. The husband picked where you'd live, where his work took him, and if you got left behind you'd just have to bear the solitude. No Bill Murray hangouts.
"Lost in Translation" is one of my favorite films of all time. Perhaps Sofia Coppola read "Cat in the Rain"? Both Scarlett Johansson and the (American) girl/wife want what they can't have, and that desire for something more, something distant, is entangled with their gender. I don't think it's possible to make a film like "Lost in Translation" today. Scarlett Johansson's character would be too busy posting her trip on Instagram to feel alone.
Hahaha! Wow good point about social media. Well, maybe she'd be posting all the time, but still lonely and empty, and that would be a whole new film. Someone would come along and knock her head away from her phone. Remember the scenes when she was in the hotel, endlessly clicking around for a TV show, but never landing on one? It's like that with Covid and streaming shows, just seeing endless previews, never deciding. It's one of my favorite films, too.
I really appreciate what you said about being a wife was like being a child. The tension developed for me is largely about that. I see her more as a child than as a wife. You have put this conflict into some sort of historical context for what it was to be a wife at this time in history, for at least some women.
For the first time in our "serial" reading of the story I really want to read ahead --- to see how the story ends. And yes, I definitely need another brush stroke. In fact I want to know what happens next as much as I want to see how Hemingway finesses it. Between them, husband and wife, another character seems to be needed --- as if the marriage calls for it -- the hotel keeper or the maid, or, of course, the cat.
"She liked, she liked, she liked," now becomes "I want, I want, I want." She's a piece of work!!
George's comment about the subtle shifts in attitude toward her remind me of a phrase used by the film editor Ellen Hovde about the editing of "Grey Gardens." She talked about "structuring sympathy," building sequences so that sympathies shift as the story progresses.
It occurs to me now that what I think of our American wife matters less than how much vitality she's painted with --- I'm learning this from Hemingway.
That's deep (or at least vital)! Withdrawing provides a way for the writer to get the ambiguities of the story reverberating in the mind of the reader, forcing them to swap in and swap out different points of view or try them on.
We're having so much debate over whether we like this young woman or not. Well, now it seems, our discussions mimic Hemingways intention of keeping the reader unsure and off-balance and eager for resolution. He wants each reader to suffer these different perspectives and the ambiguity.
Excellent way of putting it -- structuring sympathy -- and also, as stated below, withdrawing it. It's this ping-ponging back and forth on how I "feel" about the character(s) that makes the story compelling for me. I like her/him, I don't. I sort of get it and don't appreciate the behavior at the same time. It is exasperating and exhilerating at the same time
Can I ask a related question about reading versus re-reading?
It's a little embarrassing to admit that I enjoyed your analytical chapters in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain more than some of the stories themselves (as a first-timer). Your years of experience with those texts opened my eyes... but also made me feel like a philistine by comparison ;)
I'm wondering what warrants persisting with a text, or going back to it again, when our internal reading meter is not pointing to P? I ask this knowing there is more great literature in the world than we could ever have time to read.
Using "Cat in the Rain" as an example is perfect. I try to pretend that I've never heard of Hemingway, that I've never read this story, and set aside the context that he's a master of simplicity. I turn on the meter and take it line by line, just as you've suggested.
"There were only two Americans stopping at the hotel." OK, so what? As openings go, this one leaves me pretty indifferent.
"They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from their room." I'm not captivated by this. Why would we expect them to know other guests?
"Their room was on the second floor facing the sea." I don't see the escalation here. Do I need to know what floor they're on? Okay, there must be a payoff coming... but I'm also wondering if my attention is being taken for granted at this point. If I didn't know it was Hemingway, I can't say if I would detect enough writerly charm to keep going here.
Am I misapplying the principles you've shared? Because if I'm the bouncer at Story Club here, I'm on the verge of turning away one of the greatest writers in history, purely based on first impressions. I feel like a philistine just writing that because the story is a masterpiece and I agree with everything you've said about it.
But do you see what I'm getting at? At a time when our attention is being pulled in countless directions, how can we override that internal meter and trust that our efforts at re-reading something will be rewarded?
Thank you.
(By contrast, in case I sound crazy, here is what I would consider an opening that practically *dares* you to stop reading:
"I wake up afraid. My wife is sitting on the edge of my bed, shaking me. ‘They’re at it again,’ she says." - Tobias Wolff, Next Door
or
“Two years ago, Kazushige Nishida, a Tokyo businessman in his sixties, started renting a part-time wife and daughter.” - Elif Batuman, The New Yorker)
This is a great question. My thing is to pull forward what I'd term "considerable examples" of the form. I always tell my students that I'm not making any claims about the quality of the stories we're studying..except that they have lasted. And, at one point, were considered powerful. Earlier I mentioned that I thought of calling this Story Morgue....and that's sort of right. A dead guy comes in. Once, he was a alive; he has a particular body, it served him well. We just...examine it. 1) How did this thing work? and then we can ask 2) Do I like it? That is, if we try to understand it on its own terms, then we get the right to reject it because its esthetic is somehow off from ours. And we do this is in the hopes that something in the story under consideration will teach us something about our approach. So we are VERY free to not like any of these stories in the ultimate sense, once we've consented to them, to their rules. I think it's a bit like music - we listen to the songs, we maybe learn the changes, and then, having tried our best, we can say, "Not for me." But we leave feeling that we've honored the form by our attention. Something like that?
Thanks to both for the question and the reply. This post made me look closely at the opening lines and try to find the escalation in this 'homeopathic way of reading' we are practicing here.
Looking back at these three lines from where we are now I think there is indeed an escalation. And it is about Isolation. And it has to do both with place and language.
‘There were only two Americans stopping at the hotel’. So, if these two Americans don’t speak Italian well they are condemned to talk to each other. If one is not prepared to listen, the other will feel pretty isolated.
‘They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from their room’. So, if there were going to be other guests who spoke their language, they would not speak to them anyway as not knowing them would somehow impede it.
‘The room was on the second floor facing the sea’ So, as it is going to be raining, no one will be in the sea. Rain = Further isolation.
Then there is the language barrier isolation. The 'padrone' speaks English to the AW (makes her feel important- connexion makes her feel seen) but later on ignores her.
The maid only uses English to mock her 'A cat in the rain!' (and this mocking utterance is what EH decides to use as tittle making us perhaps join in the mocking?)
Then George, who first does not listen and then tells her to 'shut up'. So, the isolation is now complete. The only person she could communicate with is not interested.
And I am still thinking about this nameless thing. Isn’t this what we do to ostrasize others? To call them by a generic term? So. perhaps this feeling of being ‘uncomfortable’ I get when reading this story is not because it belongs to its time but because this is precisely what EH wanted us to feel like. We cannot name her ether because he has not given us her name, so we are somehow forced to be on the side of the 'bullies'...
Just wondering if maybe when I kept leaving Hemingway stories half read because I felt uncomfortable reading them, I was missing the point…Or maybe not.
Something like that, absolutely. This gets at something I struggled with while reading A Swim, and struggle with while slow-reading A Cat: Insofar as I've always read, to some degree, as a writer--or a future writer, or a would-be writer--I find myself more interested in dissecting work that's closer to what I aspire to. I could never, nor would I want to, write like Chekhov, Tolstoy, or Hemingway. And while I'm finding many of the comments extremely valuable in terms of how to be a better reader--from George and most everyone else--my thoughts keep returning to how Denis Johnson, for example, manages to affect me the way he does. (I'm reading/rereading him a lot lately.) I mean, he's self-evidently a brilliantly poetic novelist/wordsmith, so there's that. But his stories tend not to be rigorously told, at least not in the way we're discussing here. In any case, I guess I'm associating myself with Cian's comments in that some part of me rebels slightly against the effort to pore over old Hemingway's story's bones, as opposed to, say, Barry Hannah's (or George Saunders'). I still remember the first time I read "Even Greenland," or, yes, anything by Donald Barthelme. It's less a question of whether a writer is "for me" than it is whether or not I can, in fact, properly honor the form by my attention. (This is obviously a matter of degrees, and may simply speak to my own attention deficit disorder, or my need to Be More Zen.) Anyway I do appreciate this class enormously, as I did A Swim. Thanks.
Yes, I've never seen what it is about Hemmingway - but haven't read him in maybe 40 years. Now I think I'm seeing the power in the timing, the rhythm of those sentences. I read an essay by Joan Didion (who I'm sure y'all know just died, one of the greats). It was on Hemingway, October 1996, the New Yorker. The opening paras do the same close analysis of the beginning of A Farewell to Arms that we are doing here - and the sentences - that rhythm. She also mentions the plain word choice, sentence structure. it's a lot like the opening of A Cat in the Rain, and she points out what removing one "the" does to the rhythm. (It does a lot.). So - currently that's my way in, the rhythm, the careful placements - here's the URL. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/11/09/last-words-6
I also would be really interested in something exploring these questions! I felt the same way about A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, and I have the same anxiety about being a philistine poser, lol.
No, truly. Not liking something is really just having the experience of one's true artistic feelings asserting themselves. The only thing I'd say is, that's a stronger stance after we've done the work. As we are, here.
We don’t have to like everything George does/says/writes just because we love most of his writing. I really didn’t like that story about the nose in that book. I felt it obvious and a bit dim. I was unabashed in my dislike and still a huge fan of George. No philistines just people with sometimes opposing views. But I’m pretty old. When I was younger I’d pretend to like things I didn’t. Like Phish and most of Henry James.
I'd never read any Russian literature before 'Swim in a Pond'. I railed against the way it made me feel - so glum! Then I had to read more about the time it was written and realised just how glum it made me feel. Really very glum indeed. It made me feel the flavours of the time very intensely, which was the point, right?
I felt the nose story to be comedic by comparison, but surely must have something missing in the translation. As a comedy it was a little like looking at a handkerchief that had been mistaken for a clay pigeon.
I second this post. I'm trying to learn from George S. while simultaneously being reinforced in my "meh" opinion of Hemingway--and despite the assertion that there are no wrong answers or feelings, I suspect I'm chronically, stubbornly missing the point.
Well put! Thank you. To be clear, I do love the story. It's just that strictly speaking, my internal meter could have denied me the layers of meaning to be found here... right from the start. And if I could do that with Hemingway, I could do it with my own writing.
Hey, I just wanted to pop in here before the year switches over and wish everyone in Story Club a fine farewell to ‘21 and a ‘22 with as much health, joy and fascination as life allows. This amazing crew makes me want to stretch myself as much as possible and grow in wisdom to keep up.
George, you’ve done so much to boost that joy and fascination for us already and I hope everything you wish for rains upon you in response. Having the serious pleasure of Story Club to look forward to - a major win on the books for 2022, and before midnight, even - that’s gold. Thank you for this massive act of generosity. Let us know how we can keep this experience a happy one for you, as you’re giving so much.
When the writer called the AW a “girl” a feeling coalesced that I didn’t trust the writer…
Now I feel - the husband believes he is living the life of the mind, the life of an artist. Her short hair signifies their life in the avante garde of the time.
However, perhaps she had given up a lot for that identity and maybe she’s ambivalent about it. Long hair (at the time, a signifier of married secure womanhood) and a cat, a comfortable domestic life.
What does she get from being the boyish fun cool girl appendage of an artist?
Lee this is how I was thinking about her, too. The hair, her identity, and what limited choices now that she's married. The role of a woman/wife/girl non-artist back then, even in arty, forward-thinking circles was limited.
All this talk about her hair has me in mind of a couple of things. First, I am trying to recall the author of a collection of essays entitled Hair, I think, a woman, and that was the title of one of the essays. I think. My memory is often unreliable.
Also, of a woman I knew who had beautifully wild, dark hair when I met her. But she had gut it quite short upon fleeing her marriage with here two girls. She grew it out longer. And later, cut it short again, and then regularly colored it -- blonde, blue, green, red, deep black. Upon "falling in love" again, she went back to her original color and began letting it grow out again. Which is all just to say it was something I noticed.
Yeah— he’s saying “female presence, absorb the world the way I do— linear and on the page— two dimensionally and from a lens of emotionless absorption. All this dreamy emotion is seriously annoying”
Yes… I’m seeing this story more and more as George/EH projections about his wife at the time… how foolish she is! How un intellectual! She doesn’t get it!
So many more contradictions! I love the idea that a story is practice for a reader to feel comfy in her ever-contradictory reality/self.
I feel a little heartbroken by how human this character becomes in this section. She wants things! And she's failed to get this one thing that she thought she sort of wanted (but was actually just a proxy desire for the other, deeper, realer desires), and now she's so frustrated and dissatisfied and feeling important and small and impotent/helpless that her realer deeper desires are spewing out in a jumble. This feels like such a refreshing and true version of (or response to?) one kind of classic shape of a story that I feel familiar with: what does the protagonist want, and does she get it in the end?
The object, for this character, has definitely exceeded the desire (Is that a Lacan thing? I can't remember who wrote about that...) because the "kitty" has become bigger than its literal self in the woman's consciousness (and it ran away before she could catch it!). But then Hemingway pushes this farther, into more desperate territory (so satisfying for the reader!). Instead of having the woman say, "I want you, George, to tell me I'm beautiful and help me feel feminine and important and wealthy and purposeful, and I want you to let me be my true self, and I want help knowing what I actually want," (or whatever it is she really wants from him), she says something so much more inarticulate and human and specific and mysterious and vulnerable and revealing. She really lets herself sound "silly" (what *she* might think of as silly, or what she might worry her husband thinks of as silly). This is (to me) a more unexpected and satisfying ("surprising and inevitable"?) version of the more traditional story shape with a character who knows just what she wants, goes for it (or is forced by circumstance to go for it), and then gets it or fails. Hemingway's character is moving through the soup of desire (maybe that's all life is for many of us!) in a more interesting and complex way. ...And we still haven't seen how she feels about what she's said! Or how George reacts to what she's said! Or whether the rain will stop! Or whether the cat will reappear!
The way you describe the woman is so right. The proxy desires and her inarticulate "silly" pleas. I find it heartbreaking too, and I'm not very optimistic about the final pulse, as far as she's concerned.
“I love the idea that a story is practice for a reader to feel comfy in her ever-contradictory reality/self.” Yes, this! It gets at one of my biggest flaws as a writer, which is trying to balance the creation of a flawed character - since we all have contradictory feelings at once.
Waking up this morning to the power being out, a foot of new snow falling, I stay in bed and am happy to have the excuse to just lie there and just think about things.
I think about the Cat in the Rain story and the petulant young wife and her woes. Then I start in on my woes, and find myself for a few minutes in her same exact complaining attitude. I want the power to go on, I want it to go on now. I want to sit at my table with my hot coffee and I want to not hear my husband worrying on about the pipes and the roof and the snow to shovel.
I too want a nice kitty to pet, to hold, to keep warm with and I want to sit by a warm fire and never be cold. Ok. This sentiment does not last long, since for heavens sake I know how unlikely it is that the power will stay out for more than a few more hours, and we have every comfort and so forth and so on. We are the fortunate with a nice house, plenty of food, ability to use shovels and we don’t have to go anywhere.
I’ve been thinking lately about the injustices we see, and those we don’t. How injustice surrounds us in so many ways. How can I be spending my time reading an old Hemingway story and writing my little comments, when I could be —- could be what? I could be out helping the old person around the block with their snow shoveling, I could be donating to the many go fund me projects for people in my county and towns nearby who have been devastated by floods, and now are seeing pipes freeze under their houses and can’t afford to get things fixed. People who see their flooded fields now turn to frozen lakes. I could be writing essays and articles and even short stories about these injustices I see. And about the ones I don’t see, but maybe can imagine.
But no. Can’t do any of that. I’m going to just lie here in bed with covers pulled overhead and complain. I want my coffee since its now morning and I don’t want to get up and be cold.
are you in Fraser Valley Sylvia? I appreciate the way you connected our own longings to those suggested in the story. Its our naturally human longings I think we relate intuitively to if we are honest. ; )
I'm in Alberta Canada so very aware of flooding farmlands in B.C . sounds like similar situation just south into your area. I'm actually a dual citizen as mom was from New York and schooled in Boston. I've family in Washington state. Thanks for sharing. This opportunity is a rare gem, eh? said as a true Canadian. ; )
Our understanding of the woman’s intense interest in the cat (which is not a tomcat but a female cat) has exploded, with the cat representing so much more than a kitty to be cuddled. Our protagonist, like so many women before and after her, is diminished like a cat in the rain. But unlike the cat, she lacks freedom of movement and self-agency, as well as a sense of connection, including to place. Our American wife wants to sit at her own table with her own silver and candles, symbols of affluence, light, and romance. She sounds homesick and lovesick. Her husband denies her the simple luxury of her own hair. Why does he want her to look like a boy? Is he jealous of the potential attentions of other men? Or does he prefer men over women? Although George is not (yet) a monster, he is controlling, absorbed in his own agenda, and emotionally indifferent to his wife and her needs.
This section ends when a light comes on in the square, suggesting that darkness has descended but also that there is the possibility of a new vision in the light. If the story ended here, however, I wouldn’t be satisfied. I want our protagonist and/or the cat to own the last scene, not the husband. George (the character, not Saunders) shouldn’t have the last word, through silence or otherwise.
"She laid the mirror down on the dresser and went over to the window and looked out. It was getting dark."
This sentence is a bit haunting to me. The overstory has been occurring on the surface (to retrieve the cat from the rain) and we sense that the American wife has deeper inner stirrings, but this is the moment for me that the understory rears its head definitively, and it's quite a predicament.
Yes, she's a girl. She's got the superficial desires of a girl (a cat, long hair, pretty nice things), but the inner energy expressing those desires is much stronger and darker. This is the woman in her. It isn't what she is saying so much, it's how she is saying it. She's saying it rapidly, articulately, and passionately. This is the voice of a woman, not a girl.
Everyone seems to think that George doesn't care. I disagree. I think it isn't relevant if he cares or not. I think what is most important is that he doesn't know what to do.
"'Oh, shut up and get something to read.,' George said. He was reading again."
He is telling her to read as he is reading. I see it as him saying, "You aren't happy, you want all this and can't have it, well same here, and so I read." He might not be saying that he wishes it was different for her, but he seems at the very least to be saying that he reads to distract from feelings of this kind.
George in the story has served up to this point I believe to show that she is married and therefore should be a woman by now. His indifference towards her was first sensed as apathy, but maybe now we are starting to see that apathy is hiding something much more active. He is actively avoiding her predicament, and maybe his own predicaments as well in this same way.
It could end here, but this is a ripe moment for a breakthrough. Will she push harder till she breaks his avoidance? Or will she recede like the waves breaking on the beach? If she pushes, there might be destruction, but also there might be a moment of them meeting each other and seeing each other. If she abates, we will go back to stasis, and perhaps the point is that this type of marriage is very static and stuck. I do hope she fights.
I think (hope) there may be more to George than we've seen thus far, and that that may be why this can't be the end of the story. He, despite appearances, is on a precipice. I was just thinking that I'd like it if the AW finds out that George sent the maid to keep her from "getting wet." That would tie in, wouldn't it? And it would give this reader hope for the marriage.
Nice thought Teri; wishful I think; George would have to get up off the bed, either to reach the bedside telephone to call or actually go down to speak to reception and ask / instruct that his wife should be over-brollied-by-a-minion; frankly can't see him being arsed, not so much as to budge an inch; why take his nose out of the book it's - supposedly - buried in?
God forbid she, his wife - should have come back into the room dripping, onto the pristine leaves of his book - splat, spludge, smudge - that is his book, first edition of his first novel, a beautiful realisation of his fondest ambition, his name emblazoned as author, across the front cover and down the spine, on a hardback publication.
The flurry of his fists - smash, spludge, splat - mean that they'll be staying hold up in their room tonight, rather than stepping out into the light lit public square and striding across to the cafe to be greeted by the waiter and seated at the table where the guy in who was in the rubber cape is expecting them to join him, already knocking back his second martini.
My oh my. The thoughts that cross a person's mind while waiting for the next piece of this story's jigsaw to arrive. Nonsense I guess; this uninvited scenario that's just popped up in my mind's eye; though there's that less than one per cent chance that the American wife's desire for a kitty to comfort her is nervous displacement behaviour. She, just may, know that George is in for a beating: betting on a string of losing runners at the racetrack; then borrowing Mafia money to recover his losses; never likely to end well; and unlike that Cat in the Rain her darling George doesn't have nine lives.
My oh my, Rob. And now I must go off to learn about nervous displacement behavior. What I want, more than dinner at home, long hair, new clothes, fun, even a kitty, is for the AW's "of course" in "Of course, the hotel-keeper had sent her" to be wrong.
Why didn't EH write "Non devi bagnarti", which would have been what the maid would have said in speaking Italian? Why write "Of course, the hotel-keeper had sent her" when he could have written "Certo, l'albergatore l'aveva mandata"? Because EH would, in various ways, have given the end game away?
No chance - I'm thinking - that it wasn't the hotel-keeper who had sent the maid. The old man was, by unspoken order of the local Mafia Don, required on pain of his life and his family's longevity to cover every move of the American couple staying in the second floor sea view room of his hotel: "Guarda l'uomo nel mantello di gomma per raggiungere il caffè".
This American, Signor George, has form. He's not lost, borrowed, lost and run just once. George is a serial loser. Fact is he and the girl that travels with him have been on the run down the length of The Apennine spine of Italy; the reason why George is reading so intently is because he's paralysed by knowing that there is only one road in and out of this coastal place; he's cornered; has known so since the departing smile on the face of the taxi driver that had brought them to the hotel, a week past Friday; known so from the welcoming smile of The Padrone when they'd signed in; known day by day from resigned, slightly sad, smile of the helpful room maid.
This time, George knows, is different: nothing is going to turn out well.
It'll have to be someone else who'll finish my second novel, 'Death in the Rain', he is thinking when for the third time his reading is disturbed by another, weightier 'Knock, Knock' on the door of their room.
But is he really reading, or has he been staring at the same page this whole time, contemplating his next move or his fate? EH hasn't had him turn a page when we've been in his presence.
Could be he is transfixed in blind terror at his situation Teri. Or just maybe he is stoically accepting what he knows is to come, reading W B Yeats . . . the 16 line poem that opens . . . 'I know that I will meet my fate' . . . OK he's an American who may (possibly have reason to believe fought in WW1) rather than the protagonist of Yeats' 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death' . . . but being an aspirant writer, not so many years out of college with the vigorous ambition of youth merely pulsing but pounding through him, he's been seeking solace in the words of writers as contemporary as Yeats and as classical as Cicero?
Or, then again, maybe the words required to confirm George is a page turner were a few words too many for the taste of EH?
Wow Teri what fun straying, way out, beyond the (likely) Pale of our story in focus is proving to be. And all because we're indulging in distraction behaviour to take our minds off our mounting excitement to know What Happens Next - at least according to EH - in 'Cat in the Rain'.
Good God Man, at your age, excited? Grow-up!
KnoCK, KnOCK, KNOCK . . . that really isn't The Postman at George's door. He never knocks thrice, twice is normally quite sufficient!
I like the way you unpacked his suggestion that she read a book. I read it in a similar way. I feel like it gives us the sense that they are both trapped, and that raises the tension for me, too.
Thank you for your skillful writing and analysis. I am new to close reading and you (and many others in Story Club) are very helpful to my getting a better understanding of this practice. I am grateful to you and to everyone for their comments.
For all the judgement against Hemingway regarding women, I do find it interesting that he can so brilliantly capture the wife/girl's sense of isolation and her lack of agency. He obviously understood this place society put women in, and the lack of compassion given them by men like her husband. Clearly, so much of her sense, or lack, of being is driven by her husband who likes her boy cut and wants her to preoccupy herself and stop complaining.
I would not want the story to end here. I'm not satisfied yet. I want to know if she is redeemed or not, and what the factors are that allow or deny her that redemption.
I haven't, until now, when the American wife, wife, girl sat before the mirror, had the experience I look for in a good story: a feeling of deep recognition, an empathy for the internal struggle of the character that makes me feel as if I have dropped into a deep and wide place of understanding. My mother was a girl at about the same time this character was written onto these pages. My mother did not say those exact words: "I want it to be spring, and I want to brush my hair...and I want a kitty and I want new clothes." But she could have and, indeed, if she had I would have been pleased because at least she would be trying to put language to the stirrings of desire inside her. Women of that era were so lost, so discouraged from having desire, ambition, big dreams. Women of that era could only dream small dreams: kitties and silver and candles. She's cut her hair short, like a boy's: a wish to be in the body of boy who is allowed bigger dreams, to escape the constraints of womanhood? Then she doubts her choice. Is she still pretty? She wishes to feel something: the bun on the back of her neck, the cat ( no longer kitty but something larger, more substantial.) Betty Friedan called the depression many women in the fifties experienced as "the disease that has no name." My mother's inability to name her longing to have a life where she could follow her own desire and ambition was shared by most women of this era. My mother, the valedictorian of her High School class, eventually gave up wanting anything for herself, but, bless her, she encouraged me to have dreams, to find language for those dreams that went beyond kitties and candles and new clothes. I cheer when our girl gets a little fierce. "I want a cat. I want it now." Go girl/wife/American wife!! Stamp your foot! Want something. Start with a cat. Then tell that sleepy dud of a husband to wake up and pay some attention to you!
Beautiful, yes. And yes, also re that feeling we look for, where we see some aspect of our own experience suddenly appearing in a story....
A quote I highlighted from A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: "Reading 'Master and Man,' we begin living it; the words disappear and we find ourselves thinking not about word choice but about the decisions the characters are making and decisions we have made, or might have to make someday, in our actual lives." It's happening here for many of us.
That was by far my favorite experience in that book. I wept while reading the story and the analysis was humanistic and spiritual at once. I’m a sucker for the kindness and love of humankind that is in that story but also how political it is without beating you over the head. One of the things I appreciate so much in short stories is when they are funny and filled with pathos at once. That’s how I experienced Master and Man and many Saunders stories. They make me happy to be human and then also devastated to be human if that makes any sense.
It does^^
yes, I agree, I had similar connection to the girl/woman but there is a but -- the locus of all the action is the static man on the bed - and given some of the comments, it is his vision of the girl/woman that is making an impact - the author has us wound up (as well he should). The self-regarding woman with unmet needs is being told to shut up. I have a hard time believing that the sympathy of the author lies with the woman looking at herself in the mirror. Our generation of women can bring this to the story - which gives it timelessness -- but I think it is still very much of its time. Let's see what the light coming on will bring. There are balls in the air - the Tchin moment of the cat not being under the table, the waiter in the doorway, the to-ing and fro-ing of the opening sequence ....
Oh! yes, Deborah, what of the static man on the bed, whose gaze barely lifts from his book towards this woman, now before him in the mirror on the dressing table, the hand mirror, and in the flesh. What happens if I shift my awakened empathy for the woman’s truncated desires, to pondering her husband's ideas about his wife’s desires and his own ambitions for himself as a man in 1925? I think, oh poor fellow, there’s no way we can expect him to understand this moment as anything but annoying and silly. He wants to swat this moment away like a fly. He is the provider, the man whose cash got them this room in a hotel in Italy. What is he supposed to do with all these foolish requests she makes of him? Nor do I think that Hemingway could possibly have this kind of understanding and empathy for the wife. The husband, like Hemingway, is himself trapped by the impossible expectation of the time that men should be not smaller but larger, strong, heroic. But here I am, almost a hundred years after the story was written, finding great resonance in this scene, as if the pages of a hundred years of my history have been turned, quickly, in five paragraphs. Amazing.
Thank you, Kathleen! You made one of my grid influences just rear up, “Diary of a Mad Housewife.” I was young, scared and felt trapped in a marriage. But it’s hard for me to believe that 23 year old EH understood the inner feelings of a frustrated woman so well. Maybe George, too, is young and is enjoying his wife’s drama and doesn’t realize the intensity of it. But we have made progress in these 100 years!
I think if a man is with a woman in a hotel and she says she wants to have some fun, only an idiot suggests she read a book.
an idiot or a writer :-)
Or a guy who pays attention to her only long enough to make sure she continues to style her hair in a way that leaves her “looking like a boy.”
You obviously have not been married (long enough.)
Hahahaha
maybe it's Hemingway's power of observation--of real women and of his written characters both--rather than any personal empathy he may or may not have had for them, that makes these complexities in the character visible to us.
Which comment springs Descartes, or at least a tweak on his “Cogito ergo sum”, to mind: “I observe therefore I write, dispassionately”.
So pleased to see that movie mentioned here, being in a similar situation (sans kids) when it was released in 1970–but not for long, I'd never forgotten it. Plus, I think I bought an MGBGT from Snodgrass around then.
I hsd a lot of fun in one of those.
I agree- "almost a hundred years after the story was written, finding great resonance in this scene." As a woman, I have the feeling that there is something major that is denied to me because of my gender, but what that something is, I can never precisely articulate. And yet - we've come so far so we should "shut up" and be happy with what we have. I often find myself grasping for the words to explain this to my husband.
If you can't articulate it, could it be that it doesn't exist? You might feel a certain way because society tells you you should be feeling that way, that you _should_ have, as Betty Friedan put it, the "disease with no name."
On the other hand, if there is something there for sure, what would it take to figure out how to name it?
I find myself thinking her hair is cut short not because she wants it short--she desires to be like a boy--but because George has demanded that it be cut short, and that is why he shows impatience when she expresses a desire to grow it out.
I don't think so. It was the fashion back then--and rather radical for women to cut their hair short.
It’s a recurring thing for Hemingway, to have female character with short hair as some sort of gender play (crops up again in his final book, published posthumously, The Garden of Eden).
interesting. Still, I'm not sure it was gender play at the time. Bobbed hair was modern, even rebellious. Per Smithsonian magazine, "In the beginning of the 20th century, that’s how serious it was to cut off your locks. At that time, long tresses epitomized a pristine kind of femininity exemplified by the Gibson girl. Hair may have been worn up, but it was always, always long.
Part and parcel with the rebellious flapper mentality, the decision to cut it all off was a liberating reaction to that stodgier time, a cosmetic shift toward androgyny that helped define an era. "
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-history-of-the-flapper-part-4-emboldened-by-the-bob-27361862/
Yes I understand the historical fashion and trends at the time. What I'm suggesting is that Hemingway was drawn to short hair on women and there are recurring references to this in his work, in a way that is distinct from the current modes of fashion at the time. That it's not insignificant (as nothing is in Hemingway's work, as nothing in is any good writer's work) that there is an exchange about the wife's short hair. It's clear it's not about fashion. It's about him preferring her hair short (she mentions growing it, he says she looks 'pretty darn nice'; he shifts on the bed, to me he is becoming aroused, it's not a shift to see her better, we are told he hasn't looked away since she started talking) and there is something sexual connected additionally, as the exchange about the hair is embedded in all the cat/kitty/lap/stroking talk, and that it makes her 'look like a boy' (mentioned twice) and for me, knowing about the gender play in Garden of Eden, it makes me wonder if this is an early appearance of those preoccupations, whatever they were truly about.
This is not a rebellious woman, and she's not even a woman now, we're told she's a girl. She has not cut her hair because of the trend of the times. She has done it because he likes it. She is sick of it being short and wants to grow it out. He disapproves of that and shows it by telling her to shut up and find something to read.
They touched on this a bit in the wonderful Ken Burns doc on Hemingway
A very interesting analysis. thank you!
I find the wife more annoying ,I get this urge to say to her, " why don't you do something then, read a book ,go to the cafe with the lonely waiter ,go to a museum , why do you keep demanding everybody else to fulfill your wishes and needs "
I understand your annoyance. However, like the girl in this story, I had no idea of my own strength, power, agency when I was young. When you are raised only to marry and have children, and when thoughts of any other future for you are forcibly dashed, you become frozen in place. Eventually, the idea of doing something disappears altogether. I mean that--the very idea of 'doing something' does not exist. The only way for anything to happen, is for something to happen TO you. You have wishes and desires, certainly. But the idea of going out and making them happen--ha! That is why i'm happy that the girl at least goes looking for the cat that she wants. That is a start. What she will do with that, I don't know. But I'm hoping for her to become her own agent of growth and change. (I am no longer that girl, by the way. Though every so often, I still feel her inside of me.)
Hi Mary , yes I totally agree that that was , and still is , the reality for many women around the world. I think that the annoyance I feel is what Hemingway wants me ( the reader ) to feel , and I am looking very much forward to see what happens next.
Or you become childlike
Hi Mary, yes this is what is hard for some to imagine. In the United States a woman couldn't go into a bar alone until...when? Maybe it was that way in Italy, too back in the 20s. Where is she going to go then? Plus maybe there's no money left.
Agree!
Demanding other people help you is a defense mechanism sometimes against the terror of realizing that ultimately the salvation from your boredom lies entirely within your grasp. This is Sartre's "existential horror," knowing that in the final calculation, only your own actions can define your essence and your freedom. But Sartre and his compatriots point out how hard it is to accept that, and how much easier to wait for the world to point the way forward.
Now that I am responding like this, it gives this Hemingway story a whole new meaning to me, as a member of the existentialist genre, a sort of meditation on actions and their consequences. The woman charges out of the room, determined to take action, but finds herself thwarted easily, first by a missing cat, then by a perhaps-peevish maid. She is like the rest of us, filled by a desire to act and be greater than one's given circumstances, but also easily distracted and depressed.
She could have perhaps braved the rain, gotten wet, looked among the trees for the cat, followed the man in the cape - and yet, here she is, stuck with her own vanity, looking for solace from an unresponsive partner (who merely reads, so what can _he_ know of action!).
We can all see a little bit of ourselves in her.
Another really incisive reading, Kathleen. Context is everything here and your comment has taken my understanding to a new level. Thank you so much
Kathleen, I too was thinking a locked up desire here, specifically a woman's desire of that time period. I think back to the movie, The Hours and see Julianne Moore's character so vividly in my mind. A 1950s woman who lives a life of quiet desperation, a love she cannot have, trying to hold on. A clip is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ7l5ugGWy0
Thank you for your post as it resonates deeply!
Thanks so much for this very thoughtful comment and for sharing your mother's experiences, Kathleen. My mother married about 20 years after this story was written. Although the war years gave her a glimpse of what she could do (she was a nurse in a stateside hospital for a moment in time), the window quickly closed as one child after another arrived. As women, we've come a long way, but for me the insecurity and lack of empowerment betrayed by the American...girl...is easy to understand. I also felt the immense sting of George's "Oh, shut up." Such a powerful line, one that communicates so much. What a sad fate to be linked to someone like him at that time of life!
My talented mother too, born in 1916: "boy who is allowed bigger dreams, to escape the constraints of womanhood." Notice that the husband is most attentive when she's concerned about her looks. Your comment knocks me out, especially since I thought the story was over when he first ignored her at the window.
Yes, very good point. The husband isn't interested in what the wife is doing until she starts preening in front of the mirror. Then, she has his attention--although he doesn't care about her "petty" expressed desires.
so well articulated Kathleen. We empathize now with this character, and an entire new layer of power (or powerlessness), and raw emotion emerges from her. We begin to sense her at a deeper level and are led to further wonderings about her and her life journey.
Very well said Kathleen!
Thank you Kathleen for such a thoughtful reply and for bringing in the historical element of what young women experienced at that time. Much appreciated.
Kathleen, the context you provide make the AG/AW considerably more sympathetic. Thanks.
Wonderful! And yes, stomp your foot! I felt it there when she said "...if I can't have long hair or any fun..." Her frustration is palpable.
Thank so much for this response.
Yay, Kathleen! This comment was relieving to read. You found something stirring for me that I couldn’t place.
ohhh-- so well put. Thank you, Kathleen Sullivan; it all makes more sense now.
Just popping in to say how wonderful this exercise is. Both here and in A Swim, George sometimes says something like "bear with me, I know that reading this way can be annoying," but DAMN do I disagree with that. This method of close-reading is so, so valuable to me, and I look forward to every new post. Please keep them coming, you have my rapt attention, and I am learning oodles.
Yes, it's not annoying at all. But I wonder if that's because many of us are seasoned teachers who have been reading all our lives, not young college students who are just trying to ace a class and move on?
I love it too, and it's definitely not annoying. Not a teacher here, but an avid reader and writer who doesn't get much time to closely analyze anything these days, so this is refreshing. My brain remembers that it doesn't have to be forever-scrolling through hundreds of feeds and voices. I think it likes this pace.
Story Club takes its time. It is the opposite of everything on social media and I love it.
Yes! I love it too. The mindfulness and intentionality to it. Similar to the slow-food movement, I think we are starting a slow... page movement!? Here's to mindful reading!
Yes, April, what a beautifully stated sentiment. This is exactly what I love about George's course. The pace. Such a luxurious expanse of time in which to savor these lines. Just what my old brain needs, too. I just wish I could recreate the pace in my lit courses, but we're on the quarter system, and the weeks fly by. I would so love to facilitate some kind of writers salon instead. Wouldn't this just be the best reiteration of an English course? Ah.....
Oh yes, this. As a journalist always on some kind of deadline I dream of having more time to spend thinking about my writing. But it's good, at least, to take some time for someone else's.
Another interesting comment, as I find myself relating this StoryCLub work solely to reading, not to anything on social media that 'approximates' real reading. As a reference, any comments I make here about reading refer to book-in-hand novels or stories. I couldn't begin to relate the valuable insights we're getting here to anything involving scrolling, feeds and voices. entirely different media. The wisdom and lessons and insights here at storyclub are, for me, about ink on paper pages.
This is my first experience with close-reading and I'm loving it as well. As a former journalist I was taught the "who, what, when" form of writing, with a deadline and a word limit, which left little time for introspection or delving into the personalities and motivations of the people I was writing about. It took me a long time to un-learn all this when trying to write fiction. I can mimic a style, well enough, but I run into a wall trying to breath life and contradiction into a character. I'm seeing now I never took the time to look deeply into my characters so they could speak for themselves through the most subtle movements and choice of (or lack of) words. Story Club is a wonderful new learning experience, and I'm blown away because it's so much fun.
Oh, yes, journalism. I served as managing editor for a small business newspaper in an earlier version of myself and am well acquainted with that "who, what, when, where" stuff, Bill. I get what you're saying about un-learning habits, and it's actually something I ask my students to do as well, get reading to do some "un-learning." They may be dubious at first, but they generally love the freedom soon. But this pace we're experiencing here goes much further. I just wish I had the time in my classes to introduce them to this format. I'm trying to negotiate some kind of compromise, though. Like you, I never took the time to really luxuriate in the sentence-by-sentence experience. It's like a long bubble bath with candles. Thanks for the response!
Yes to all of this. My attention is so divided all the time, and splitting the story and discussion up like this makes me take the time to stop, set everything aside and savor it. And then read everyone's comments, because they're all so thoughtful and smart. This is the best thing I've spent money on this year.
No, I'm not a teacher and tend to be a go-type reader. But I do not find this exercise annoying, I love it.
Now that's VERY interesting to me, as I know I would find this far less annoying (yes, sorry, it is to some of us) were I a young college student. I had far more patience for extended analysis in that part of my life. I still value it now, but I would've found it far less annoying (if at all) in my college years. Very interesting to me how we see that dynamic so differently.
Thanks for this perspective, Fred. You're right of course; each of us is having our own experience of this particular process. And depending on where we are in life, one may find it rewarding while someone else may find it tedious. I get that. One thing that is slightly challenging (more so) for me, is the frustration in not being able to access or read everyone's responses. I think this is a function of the group's size, but I'd just love to see everyone's ideas displayed before I respond, and it's just hard to do that.
to reiterate, though, I do not find it tedious in any way, and I see and feel and absorb all the value and insight. My main point was that the trade-off for me, is that I don't get a true experience of the story as I would if I'd read it straight through and then returned to analyze.
Yeah, it's the idea of continuity. I wonder if the best of all possible worlds is to read it straight through once, and then go through again as we are doing here. But you do lose the element of surprise, which I think George wanted us to experience. So, I'm not sure?
You've crystalized it for me, thank you: I realize after your comment that in reading in this fashion the element of surprise is changed; some pieces of it are drastically diminished, some possibly eliminated, and most just different because I'm not getting them from a direct and continuous reading of the story.
I absolutely agree with a complete reading then revisiting in this analytical fashion, but also see the value of doing this once. Still, in so doing, the story is sacrificed in a manner of speaking, to the deconstruction. What I mean is I can never read this story again, and get the experience I would've gotten on a first and continuous read. That's barely a price to pay, but it is worth noting, to me.
Wow
Yes we absolutely like the close-reading. Thank you George.
I love this close-reading too!
I agree Erica! It makes me want to read more short-stories because they lend themselves more to a close reading. So much longer-form reading feels rooted in 'consumption' rather than 'savoring'. Definitely something I appreciated a great deal in A Swim...
I can't agree more to its value. But also can't agree more with George that it can be (is) annoying. :)
Not annoying!
A welcome consequence of this exercise is that I find myself suspending judgment a little more. There are a number of points in the story where I’ve felt strongly, usually negatively, towards one of the characters. If I were reading it in one go and without taking the time to reflect on my reaction to the text, those feelings might easily have become enduring and overriding assessments of the characters.
Working through this exercise, I’m aware of my feelings about the characters changing from pulse to pulse and that awareness, coupled with more time spent thinking about why I’m reacting in the way that I am and reading through so many thoughtful and incisive responses to the text, means I’m slightly less likely to let my feelings at any particular pulse carry the day.
I’m also noticing a readiness to leave the question of what the story is ‘about’ unanswered for just a little while longer. It’s refreshing.
Yes, lovely.
This has been my feeling with this exercise as well. It’s been eye opening to realize how quickly my mind wants to identify who is the “good guy” and who is the “bad guy” and what lesson there is to be learned — instead of just sitting with the experience of the story itself.
I commend you all. I see the merit of this exercise, but it's very difficult, nearly impossible, for me to get a sense of the story and it's flow (this or any story) when dissected piecemeal like this. I get the value of the dissection, and it's quite remarkable and instructive and insightful, but it's not the way I read. Most important is that it divorces me from, and is probably actually prohibitive to, the way I ( and I believe most people) read and process stories. So it becomes like trying to understand driving a car by looking at its parts and how wonderfully they fit together; it's interesting and insightful, but it isn't driving a car. Or maybe it's like trying to taste a finished dish by just tasting the ingredients; useful in understanding how the final flavor of the dish will be created, but definitely not like eating the finished meal.
Thinking back, I did like this method in the first chapter of SwimPond, but I had been told it was only for the first story, so I was more patient, holding the actual book in my hands. I know we will not be doing this on future stories (I hope, at least) but I guess I am just impatient to get there. For me, the ideal approach, and most like where we're going with his, as with SwimPond, is reading the entire story, absorbing it fully; driving the car, eating the meal. And then going back and looking at how the part made the car drive way and the ingredients made the meal taste that way.
So what am I saying? I think I'm saying my responses to this story don't exist; only responses to the pieces. And, as with the initial story in SwimPond, I am intrigued, educated by it, but ultimately very impatient to get to "whole" stories.
And this explains my lack of comment for the past couple sections of the tale.
I had a solfège teacher at the conservatory who taught us two different methods for approaching our sight reading. One was called “go method” and the other “stop method”. In “go” you could make as many mistakes as were possible with the pitches, but you could not stop (in other words, you could not violate the rhythm). In “stop” you could stop as often as you liked, for as long as you liked, but were not aloud to sing an incorrect pitch.
Each of these methods rehearsed a different skill.
Would I want to use one or other of these methods all the time? No. In fact when I’m actually having to sight read under pressure I’ll often use a hybrid of both. But understanding the limits and advantages of each approach gives me valuable information about what I know, and don’t know, and helps me to construct a pathway toward mastery.
I’m sure I’ve bored you with all of this- but wanted to express some solidarity with your frustration. I’ve always been better at “go” method than “stop” method! In music and in reading and in life.
So interesting, thanks. And that describes how I read when editing too - a mix of modalities that can turn on a dime.
At the time I was at the conservatory, my solfège teacher was getting his PhD at Harvard School of Education under Howard Gardner, who came up with a theory of multiple intelligences…interesting stuff…
https://brainworldmagazine.com/recognizing-multiple-intelligences-qa-howard-gardner/
This is a great interview, thanks for sharing. A friend created a great 4-EP mini-series podcast called My Year in Mensa that is about fixed intelligence and the pervasive racism in the Mensa community. She joined as a joke and it became much more. It’s really interesting and funny too.
I can’t remember if she gets into Gardner’s theory in it. I would imagine she does.
That aside, I had never heard of a “magnetic boutique” before but understood the concept. “The magnetic boutique is when you do something very special very well, and people hear about it, are inspired, and want to try to do it themselves.” I really like this theory of learning and growing a community. Digging into Gardner more now…
Agree. Hadn't thought to correlate this to the many the days and days spent rewriting drafts of screenplays back when I did that. I was always so consciously aware when revising of how utterly different that work was (inner and outer) from when I was burning through first drafts, no holds barred. Ah, the memories.
Not at all uninteresting, actually fascinating and thank you. But it does draw me to the fundamental difference of being the Performer in singing and playing music, and the Audience in reading. Interestingly as you so beautifully articulate, both require the processing (and honoring) of someone else compositional work.
Thank again, I loved this perspective.
Yes! To sing Lieder you must read Goethe and Heine, Eichendorff and Mörike. To sing mélodie you must read Rilke and Verlaine! So many beautiful rabbitholes
Like you, I never read like this. I tend to gobble down the story as quick as I can.
And that’s exactly why I find this exercise so valuable - it’s forcing me to slow right down. Do I want to read like this forever? - definitely not. But I think I would benefit by reading a few more stories at this pace, or revisiting the process in the future.
I completely understand what you are saying, and I find it difficult as well. Or maybe not difficult… more like uncomfortable. But then I think about how I referred to it as an exercise, and similar to doing physical exercise the discomfort will hopefully lead to more strength and flexibility!
I don’t think I would have been able to separate the story from its “aboutness” if I had read it straight through at the beginning. And even then, it took me five segments of this story before my mind even began to glimpse that as a possibility.
Still, trying see how the story was written vs what the story is about is nearly impossible for me. It’s like looking at those 3-d pictures where you need to adjust your eyes *just so* to see what’s there, but the second you glance away it’s gone.
As a working pro artist, I find that by slowing down I can observe more closely, and thus perceive and appreciate details that I'd have missed otherwise.
Fair enough Fred, your writing 'it's not the way I read'; what struck me is that I'm in Story Club not just to read and process stories more analytically but aiming to put apply the fruits of such reading and processing to tasking myself to enhance my ability to write richer stories.
To do this, I'm thinking, is going to require me to close read to revise and edit pieces of whatever story I might set to writing through each and every drafting cycle. 'Cat in the Hat' is, as I see it, a starting point not an end in itself. I'll know whether and how participation in Story Club has proved 'transformative', in whatever ways, for me when I'm going at a fresh, new, original short story of mine in the same manner as we are working on 'Cat in the Hat'.
When we are readers we can be drivers, open the first page and away we can go. When we are writers we know we can't expect to take a bright idea and turn out a well crafted ready to read story in short order. Story making, like car making is multi-faceted activity that takes time.
Thanks for your post Fred; makes me think a little more about why I'm here in Story Club. .
I hope I didn't seem critical and made clear how valuable this process is. It's just something that, done once (maybe twice) suffices (for me anyway) to carry these lessons into my reading and my own writing. I certainly didn't wish to sound critical; just confessional, as this group already feels quite close-knit and respectful. Hopefully no offenses were taken.
No offence here at all- this is such a great exchange of views and processes. Thank you.
Agree - I was more interested in 'writing better' and 'teaching better' rather than 'reading better' - but really, I can't achieve either of the first two without the third. And wow - how my appreciation of well written short fiction has burgeoned since 'Pond in the Rain'! Thank you, George S, for the lesson in discipline.
Yeah, I can't argue with anything you've said, nor do I wish to. I've just, for myself, gone through this process once with Swim/Pond, and I'm impatient at this point to get to the stage where we're reading full stories and then doing the analytical work I respect your thoughts 100%.
That is a precise description of how any work of fiction should be read. In my freshman composition course, the analysis of a short story assignment starts with instructions that readers should not be deciphering an object lesson or a theme of the story, but how the writer is using details to lead readers to a logical conclusion. Some were able to stick with that all the way through the assignment, while some tried to deduce the lesson to be learned, which was more a reflection on their experiences outside of reading the story than their experience of reading the story.
I find myself unconcerned with good guys. etc,. or themes. I just want to experience the story, and then dissect and discuss after taking the whole thing in. I also don't agree that there is any one way that a work of fiction should be read, but I'd surely posit that most people read it through without consciously stopping to analyze or dissect. I have no idea at this point how I would respond to this particular story were I to read it straight through.
The trade off is I now have tons of very interesting and valid insights and perspective on it's moving parts. But I believe that can be done in retrospect. I'm fairly certain George's intention, as it was at the initial story in SwimPond, is to get us to think about how we read. It's a worthy and valuable exercise, but to me it absolutely sacrifices a true reading and experience of the story. It's worth it, but I definitely wouldn't want to continue it. I'm much happier and fulfilled by the analysis paradigm in the remainder of SwimPond after "In the Cart".
This exercise reminds me of a time in college when I went out to the Galiuros Mountain Range on a 2-week backpacking trip. I was leading the group on this chunk of the trail, reading the map, shooting coordinates and doing a really good job of it too! On the map was a ranch. That was our destination. Ahead, I saw a ranch. On the map it was further back. The instructor, who was trusting me to lead in this moment, became frustrated with me for focusing so much on the map when in front of our eyes was the ranch. Right there! Hello!
I was trying so hard to do a good job, to follow the map, to get it Right. I didn’t let go of the map and just go “ah, there it is.”
This exercise challenges that part of me. The controller or perfectionist? Or just that part that thinks, there is a right way and a wrong way. Someone else knows the right way and I must follow it if I want to be Right and Good.
That letting go of control is very hard. That stepping back and appreciating that we’re already there. That joy in, we got here! Who the fuck cares if the map says we still have a ways to go.
You’re at the destination (for now). Enjoy it. For fucks sake, enjoy it.
“George shifted his position in the bed. He hadn’t looked away from her since she started to speak.”
George is getting turned on, that’s what I think, and furthermore I think this is his whole raison d’etre for the marriage.
Then she starts talking about sensual stuff like feeling her hair in a knot and stroking a kitty.
“‘Yeah?’ George said from the bed.”
George is really asking, “Is this going to be sex?”
Nope!
“‘And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.’”
I hear:
“I want to be somewhere that is home, I want to be myself, and I want things to be good.”
A materialistic kind of good, okay, but I think she hasn’t run into other, deeper kinds of goodness very much yet in her life.
George hears:
“This isn’t going to be sex and I’m the annoying but hot but not intellectual wife you really have.”
And he goes back to his own main life, inside his book, after telling her to be somebody else.
“Anyway, I want a cat,” she said, “I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can’t have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat.”
It’s hopeless and weird to fixate on a cat. The cat’s not going to help! Your problems aren’t going to be solved by a cat! Argh! But I sympathize with her anyway. A person has to have something.
Holy gods, is it satisfying when the light comes on in the square. Shockingly satisfying. The story could almost stop there for me, but we wouldn’t know if there’s hope or no hope in this marriage yet. I need another drop of something to help me place my bet.
I'm noticing more and more each time I pass through the pulse. I felt the sexual tension instantly - his full gaze on her, his "look pretty darn nice" comment (he's trying to be flirtatious, for an intellectual) and shift in position. But give him some credit for having a libido - she just spoke about pulling hair tight, purring, sitting in laps and stroking! It's nearly pornographic!
Aside from that, I have felt signals of class. She could have said she wanted a set of silver. Instead, she said "my own". Made me feel like someone else was footing the bill, that perhaps her husband has allocations of wealth that allow him to pursue an intellectual life (read and check into Italy in the off-season), and the family has the silver. Her lack of familiarity with hotel staff - feeling at once small and superior - gives one the sense that the money and class position is brand new to her. She's obviously very cute, has the cute modern haircut to match, and was chosen by this trust fund baby of a husband, but she's still young and unworldly. She only knows how to express her longings in material and tactile form (silver, a new wardrobe, hair-brushing), perhaps because that's how she got into this relationship - a craving for money to make up for some other missingness. I don't get the sense she knows how to identify her own dissatisfaction.
She goes from wife to girl because we're getting closer to seeing her - she is a naive girl feeling around for the source of her ambiguous longing. The feline goes from being named kitty to cat - the opposite direction of maturity - because she has no idea how to transform her vague desires into something concrete. Calling it "cat" is the nearest fix.
Ah, good eye on the silver and the class implications. I didn’t catch that.
Thinking about George as a trust fund baby who maybe hasn’t known certain sorts of want, and thinking about the baked-in languidness of the rich, whose material needs have always been covered. It’s more embarrassing to live as a person constantly tuned to desire from a history of lack.
That's how I read it too but I thought when she says she wants her own silver, what she's really saying is that she wants to go home. She doesn't want to be in Italy, she doesn't want to travel, she doesn't want to stay in hotels, she wants to be settled down in her own house, with her own silver, and a pet.
She’s a guest in the good hotel. Well, the wife of a guest.
This is beautiful.
Hopeless and weird, yes! Ever since she began talking about rescuing the cat, I was thinking, how are you going to adopt a cat while living out of a hotel room in a foreign city? How would that work exactly? Also, when she says, "I want a cat. I want a cat now," she really sounds like Veruca Salt.
Even today it is an expensive potentially nightmarish adventure. I brought a 3 month old kitten home from Greece & got held over for 10 hours because my carrier was soft & had to wait for cousins to come and bring me a hard carrier. Just imagine in Hemingway's time. US Customs was the only breeze but that was because the cat has a "Cat Passport" that had been cleared by the airlines before we entered the country.
First thing I thought, too. Veruca Salt. Dahl seared that behavior into my brain.
The fact that she sounds like Veruca Salt is just one side of the story, though. She may sound whiny and childish, but I will be very surprised if she ends up simply being a privileged spoiled brat. I think she is probably very immature, but she is also, in a sense, taking a stand. The fact that she wants a cat while living in a hotel is not necessarily realistic, but it is her way of saying, "I need something to make me happy, and I will have it." Maybe even something she can call her own instead of doing everything that George wants (staying in a hotel room, wearing her hair short, etc.).
Definitely a Veruca phrase!
Veruca!!
Agree. There was a distinct opportunity for sex he responded to as I read it. She grabbed it like a straw out of thin air, habitually and deliberately as a last resort and then having had her suspicions confirmed (I’m a toy or an object for him) expresses her frustration about having cut her hair the way he likes it because it’s not enough. She needs more!
Yes! That's a great way of putting it.
If I can’t have long hair or any FUN (caps mine), I can have a cat.” I can almost see her stomping her foot. We've all surmised her relationship with George, at least in the hotel, is boring. She's telling us it is. Here they are in an Italian resort on the sea and she's not having any fun. He's just reading.
He does seem somewhat interested, and even complimentary when she asks about changing her hair length. But I don't think George is asking "is there going to be sex?" That she's not having fun suggests they aren't, but if they are George isn't cutting it.
And, yes, the light going on in the courtyard. Hope for the proper end remains.
For me, if every detail is doing important work, George’s shifting his position on the bed has to mean something. He could have just stayed how he was, otherwise. An itch wouldn’t qualify for story status. An ache in his knee might be something if physical pain on his part were germane to the doings here, but I don’t see that.
A young wife, though—who hasn’t displayed a whole lot of sparkling qualities that would appeal to a guy who reads and rests from reading, exclusively, at least as far as we can see in this slice of their world—is probably as sexually attractive as she is annoying, if not more so. I haven’t seen any other basis for their attachment yet and we’re running out of time.
That’s what’s giving me the confidence to make this call. That, and intuition, and my own experience with men in the early stages of getting an idea, as it were.
Looking forward to seeing what unfolds! By this point I feel sure it will be something I didn’t expect, and that’s making me happy.
Tina, your observation "...is probably as sexually attractive as she is annoying, if not more so." Really strikes a chord, as it aptly seems to zero in on a crucial part of the dynamic in the relationship, in a way that I could not immediately articulate it. But it seems glaringly credible and even obvious in a way that makes me want to smack my forhead and say, yes, of course. How did I not see it before? Or not be able to name it.
Addendum: I credit this story as being so good because it, along with much of the discussion about it, aggravates me. If the characters, action, etc can get under my skin like this one does, my sense is it has some brilliance that cannot be denied.
Chris, I hear you on that aggravation. Same here, and that has to beat a blah feeling. Every time I’ve had my expectations upended during this slow march through the story it hasn’t exactly been fun. “Goddamn it, I’m an idiot. NOW what is she doing.” I love what I’m learning but I can’t say I have real affection for this story. A growing respect for its power, though, yes.
Respect and real affection for piece of fiction are indeed two different things
I will say that the “Here’s that cat you wanted, good luck!” ending jumped my affection right up there to my respect levels.
💯
Hi, Chris. The aggravation is one of the more surprising aspects of this story for me. I am definitely getting teased along by this slow doling out of detail. But it all makes sense once I think that's all Hemingway wants to do: get me to read the next sentence or the next graf by any means possible. So aggravation is definitely fair play.
Everything is so, so, so.... metered!
I agree with you, Tina. There is a reason for that shift and brief period of time where he hadn't looked away from her. He only looks at her when she is studying her appearance in the mirror. That part is sandwiched between him reading. I went back and observed all of the times when Hemingway points out that George was reading. There is very little other activity from George, which is interesting since he is the one with the name, and most of the action is happening in the life of the wife. (For some reason I keep picturing Audrey Hepburn when I see her in my mind.)
Audrey Hepburn! I love hearing how people mentally cast the stories they’re reading.
I have a vague blondness for her and not much else. I can never get a bead on the wife’s face and that feels important. I can see George and everyone else just fine, now that I think about it. Those shifting descriptors, the view of her from the back, the POV from the wife about the hotel owner. She doesn’t get to come into focus.
Now I’m hoping that the last pulse will have some satisfying dot about her identity. That’s my one hope now.
Wow -- that's so interesting! I only see her and have no real picture of George at all. Pretty brilliant writing on the part of Hemingway to be able to spur on so much dialogue and so many different reactions!
The view of her from the back is, to me, the view George has (a limited knowledge of who she really is/focusing on an aspect of her beauty that he is particular about) while she is looking in the mirror dreaming of the woman she would like to be but can't/or maybe is not allowed to. And maybe is about to become? (Or maybe not ...)
If the cat in the rain is the woman (now George's wife to us), and the cat she went out to rescue left the shelter of the table before she could get to it, I am hoping she will follow the her example, no matter what the maid or anyone else thinks about the idea!
Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the cat in the rain: “Cat, cat,” she cries into the alley.
As sexually attractive as she is annoying is completely how I’ve seen her too. Winces.
Now I can’t unsee what you just said. How’d I miss that sexual tension?
You're not alone. I missed it, too!
I was sensing sexual tension as well (especially what she says about wanting to feel her hair pulled...). I wonder if she's intentionally (or unintentionally?) opened her monologue with this to get her husband's attention? (Maybe this has worked for her in the past?) Either way, Hemingway definitely caught my attention with that line about the husband keeping his eyes on her.
His sudden attentiveness and shifting on the bed also made me think he had something different on his mind than her interest in having that kitty.
After he tells her to shut up, she looks out the window where it is now dark AND raining. This is the transition where she switches from referring to the kitty (sounding like a girl) to referring to the cat. The light coming on happens right after this and leaves me thinking that something more is about to happen. Will the cat be sitting there in the rain? Will we hear more about the monument? Will she head over to the cafe, leaving her husband alone to read his book? Or will she close the curtains and read a book?
Agreed. That detail of the light coming on really pushes my attention forward, grasping for what is still yet to come. How could I possibly be content for the story end here?
I love your analysis, Tina. "I like it the way it is," could be spoken as a first step toward sex. And that's why he gets angry when she goes on about the stupid kitty.
Agreed! I didn't see this at all. Great catch!
I'm digging this perspective. They're both escaping each other.
Funny how we tracked this section similarly, Tina. This is fun.
Super fun. :)
You are right! It does read like that.
Is the cat a distraction to what she wants that George is not providing in the way of material goods -- eating a meal with her own silver, new clothes?
Cat as abstraction distraction? I cheated one line (and one line ONLY) and it revealed there was a knock on the door.
Hemingway was not one for introducing new characters so there are few we can choose from. Could it be THE CAT? (I'm being facetious, but hope you can appreciate we have fewer avenues for resolution to this story.)
Where is this couple going?
I think of them as products of the post World War I times. They do not necessarily need to be privileged or rich. They may have been disenchanted with life in America, and set out for a low-cost tour of beautiful places recuperating from the damage of war.
Not too much further, I suspect, Michael. Thanks for the cartoon image that your sharing that you have ‘cheated one line (and one line ONLY)’ pops up in my imagination.
Man is at writing desk, or perhaps in reading armchair, and says “Alexa; wake up; I’m reading Hemingway; short story, titled ‘Cat in the Hat’; last line I read was ‘XXX YYY ZZZ’; can you please go to it and give the What Happens Next: just the next line and ONLY the next line.”
“AAA BBB CCC” Alexa replies, just nanoseconds later.
“Wow!”
“Can I be of further assistance?”
“No; thanks; switch off Alexa.”
Life in the real world?
LOVE the cartoon image, Rob. Wish it were true, but here's the scoop.
To be honest, Story Club is AFFECTING MY SLEEP. I was awake at 4am the other morning thinking of what ties this story up. Had lunch with a friend later and he asked, "How in hell can you not just read the rest of this story?" to which I responded, "Wanna see where this experiment leads, man." So, guess that's my superpower.
Ahead of George's Sunday wrap up of "Cat in the Rain" (assuming it IS this coming Sunday), here's my best guess:
*Knock at the door* "Who's there?" It's either:
1. Cat
2. Maid
3. Padrone (Hotel-keeper)
4. Unknown other.
Let's eliminate 1 and 4. I'm fairly sure Hemingway didn't work that way, either having super-sentient cats (but multi-pawed, that gets a pass) or previously unintroduced characters. That leaves 2 or 3. The maid would be surprising to me, so I'm going with the hotel-keeper. He's got some news on the cat. That will affect the couple in an instant.
What's the news? How does it affect their relationship?
I have no idea.
Stay tuned until Sunday, pal. Cheers, Mike
Funny that it turned out to be NOT an either/or situation, but all FOUR! The cat, held by the maid, sent by the padrone, and it could be just a different cat! (Unknown other.) Wow. All that and a pizza too.
I get a lot of sexual energy from the husband. He hadn’t looked away from her since she started to speak.
“You look pretty darn nice,” he said.
The wife has other needs. A lot of other unmet needs. To which he responds "Yeah?" Followed by “Oh, shut up and get something to read.” They are both filled with desire and frustration, but they don't know how to say what they're wanting directly...even though the wife seems to have a long list of specific needs. What does she really want? What does he want beyond hoping she'll shut up? This abortive conversation creates a lot of tension for the reader. What are they really talking about under this conversation?
Yes, yes, that's exactly it. Brilliantly put. But now it's dark and still raining but the light comes on... is this the light of hope? Realisation? Or just something for the cat to show up in?
George, I can't help but think of your brilliant essay on endings / close reading of Barthelme's "The School". (Here it is, for anyone who hasn't read it: https://paulsaxton.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/saunders-barthelme-a.pdf)
You say in there, on the brilliance of Barthelme's closing paragraphs: "And look what's happened: Suddenly, Barthelme can end this thing any way he pleases. The essential work has been done." That idea really struck me when I first read it: the notion that the work, when done well (in earlier parts), allows the story to end in any number of different ways and still mean something. And when I think about what would feel unaddressed by Hemingway if "Cat in the Rain" ended here (with the light coming on in the square), while I do feel we need a final moment, a final interaction or glimpse or something, I also think Hemingway has done much of the essential work and has a number of endings open to him, each in line with the "meaning" he has hinted toward.
Thank for the link, Joy
Never read or heard of Barthelme before! The School is so fun. I’m amazed at the fun simplicity of it. It’s so serious and silly simultaneously. The normal speech of the narrator > complex language - you can def see the influence on Saunders work.
Thank you for sharing this! I love all these links people share … distracts me from my desperate need to read the ending of Cat in the Rain 😩
Kate, I’m a little jealous of you with all of Barthelme ahead to read. He and George Saunders are very much kindred spirits, although it would be fair to say Barthelme was more obviously a practitioner of metafiction, and much of his work was called experimental. Both he and George are super intelligent, hilarious, and humane. Though known mostly for his short stories, Barthelme also wrote a couple of short novels: Snow White, and The Dead Father. I highly recommend them both.
It was great to get sent back to Barthelme, and to read George's analysis. Thanks, Joy!
Excited to read this. Much appreciated, Joy. :)
Thank you for this! Reading The School reminded me Lenny Bruce's acts. It flows, comically and with meaning.
I am feeling tenderness for this wife/woman/girl. There is a restlessness to her that is relatable. She’s seeking something tangible: a cat/kitty to rescue, long hair in a bun to ground her in her womanhood, someone to acknowledge her in the ways she wants to be seen. And yet all she’s getting is rain, the absence of a cat, a distracted husband’s suggestion to read a book. She is teetering on the precipice of some kind of understanding of herself, which makes her both infuriating and fascinating.
"She is teetering on the precipice of some kind of understanding of herself, which makes her both infuriating and fascinating." I love that. I guess that's what a good story does, marches us to that same precipice and makes us teeter there too.
Yes, definitely. When I consider my own romantic past (not that anyone asked or cares) but I can recall thay wonderfully exasperating moment when a woman/girl that I was attracted to/intrigued by teetered on this very precipice -- infuriating and exasperating simulataneously -- and it quite literally drove me heart-mad in a way. And I both hated and loved it.
It is the perfect way to put it!
Thank you! I felt like in the last section, the narrator had contempt for her, and that actually made me feel bad for her, even as I know she was a bit peremptory with the hotel staff. And her husband clearly feels contempt for her. All that makes me want to look out for her and see her grow somehow.
But will she grow? That’s what I’m waiting to find out. And I don’t feel the husband has contempt for her. He knew who he was marrying. He is entertained by her…does he really want her to grow!?
I see the husband’s contempt. As soon as she turns away from his sexual invitation (by walking over to the window) and expresses the things she wants (which evidently does not include him?!?!?) he snaps at her to shut up and read. The implication is that her thoughts aren’t up to his intellectual standards.
See, all those things add up to contempt, for me. He doesn't want to know HER, just have her be whatever he imagined she was and nothing else.
Not sure Hemingway is planning on showing "growth" here. In fact, I'm assuming not.
That's interesting--I didn't read George's responses as contempt. I saw them as weariness with someone you've grown used to (which also isn't a great basis for marriage, especially so early on). I get the feeling she acts out like this a lot, but with that light coming on in the square, something has changed. But what?!
I've been remembering all the little things that women couldn't do back then, back when this story takes place. In the Sophia Coppola movie, "Lost in Translation" the wife is trapped in a hotel, while her husband has all this exciting work to do, then she goes to a bar by herself and gets to hang out with Bill Murray.
The wife/American girl in this story is living in a time when chopping off hair was a big deal, a huge liberation, and she's chopped off her hair... but still lives, trapped, in how she feels about her looks, how she's looked at, if she's approved of. This last problem, where we feel so much about our external package, seeking approval, still exists. I feel more for her now that I've thought about all the restrictions women had in the past. I don't even think they could open their own bank accounts. Being a wife was like being a child in a way. You had to ask for money. The husband picked where you'd live, where his work took him, and if you got left behind you'd just have to bear the solitude. No Bill Murray hangouts.
"Lost in Translation" is one of my favorite films of all time. Perhaps Sofia Coppola read "Cat in the Rain"? Both Scarlett Johansson and the (American) girl/wife want what they can't have, and that desire for something more, something distant, is entangled with their gender. I don't think it's possible to make a film like "Lost in Translation" today. Scarlett Johansson's character would be too busy posting her trip on Instagram to feel alone.
Hahaha! Wow good point about social media. Well, maybe she'd be posting all the time, but still lonely and empty, and that would be a whole new film. Someone would come along and knock her head away from her phone. Remember the scenes when she was in the hotel, endlessly clicking around for a TV show, but never landing on one? It's like that with Covid and streaming shows, just seeing endless previews, never deciding. It's one of my favorite films, too.
Love that movie! Great connection, Stacya.
I really appreciate what you said about being a wife was like being a child. The tension developed for me is largely about that. I see her more as a child than as a wife. You have put this conflict into some sort of historical context for what it was to be a wife at this time in history, for at least some women.
For the first time in our "serial" reading of the story I really want to read ahead --- to see how the story ends. And yes, I definitely need another brush stroke. In fact I want to know what happens next as much as I want to see how Hemingway finesses it. Between them, husband and wife, another character seems to be needed --- as if the marriage calls for it -- the hotel keeper or the maid, or, of course, the cat.
"She liked, she liked, she liked," now becomes "I want, I want, I want." She's a piece of work!!
George's comment about the subtle shifts in attitude toward her remind me of a phrase used by the film editor Ellen Hovde about the editing of "Grey Gardens." She talked about "structuring sympathy," building sequences so that sympathies shift as the story progresses.
It occurs to me now that what I think of our American wife matters less than how much vitality she's painted with --- I'm learning this from Hemingway.
"Structuring sympathy," yes. And that sometimes involves withdrawing it....
That's deep (or at least vital)! Withdrawing provides a way for the writer to get the ambiguities of the story reverberating in the mind of the reader, forcing them to swap in and swap out different points of view or try them on.
We're having so much debate over whether we like this young woman or not. Well, now it seems, our discussions mimic Hemingways intention of keeping the reader unsure and off-balance and eager for resolution. He wants each reader to suffer these different perspectives and the ambiguity.
Damn it, he's having his way with us!
Excellent way of putting it -- structuring sympathy -- and also, as stated below, withdrawing it. It's this ping-ponging back and forth on how I "feel" about the character(s) that makes the story compelling for me. I like her/him, I don't. I sort of get it and don't appreciate the behavior at the same time. It is exasperating and exhilerating at the same time
Can I ask a related question about reading versus re-reading?
It's a little embarrassing to admit that I enjoyed your analytical chapters in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain more than some of the stories themselves (as a first-timer). Your years of experience with those texts opened my eyes... but also made me feel like a philistine by comparison ;)
I'm wondering what warrants persisting with a text, or going back to it again, when our internal reading meter is not pointing to P? I ask this knowing there is more great literature in the world than we could ever have time to read.
Using "Cat in the Rain" as an example is perfect. I try to pretend that I've never heard of Hemingway, that I've never read this story, and set aside the context that he's a master of simplicity. I turn on the meter and take it line by line, just as you've suggested.
"There were only two Americans stopping at the hotel." OK, so what? As openings go, this one leaves me pretty indifferent.
"They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from their room." I'm not captivated by this. Why would we expect them to know other guests?
"Their room was on the second floor facing the sea." I don't see the escalation here. Do I need to know what floor they're on? Okay, there must be a payoff coming... but I'm also wondering if my attention is being taken for granted at this point. If I didn't know it was Hemingway, I can't say if I would detect enough writerly charm to keep going here.
Am I misapplying the principles you've shared? Because if I'm the bouncer at Story Club here, I'm on the verge of turning away one of the greatest writers in history, purely based on first impressions. I feel like a philistine just writing that because the story is a masterpiece and I agree with everything you've said about it.
But do you see what I'm getting at? At a time when our attention is being pulled in countless directions, how can we override that internal meter and trust that our efforts at re-reading something will be rewarded?
Thank you.
(By contrast, in case I sound crazy, here is what I would consider an opening that practically *dares* you to stop reading:
"I wake up afraid. My wife is sitting on the edge of my bed, shaking me. ‘They’re at it again,’ she says." - Tobias Wolff, Next Door
or
“Two years ago, Kazushige Nishida, a Tokyo businessman in his sixties, started renting a part-time wife and daughter.” - Elif Batuman, The New Yorker)
This is a great question. My thing is to pull forward what I'd term "considerable examples" of the form. I always tell my students that I'm not making any claims about the quality of the stories we're studying..except that they have lasted. And, at one point, were considered powerful. Earlier I mentioned that I thought of calling this Story Morgue....and that's sort of right. A dead guy comes in. Once, he was a alive; he has a particular body, it served him well. We just...examine it. 1) How did this thing work? and then we can ask 2) Do I like it? That is, if we try to understand it on its own terms, then we get the right to reject it because its esthetic is somehow off from ours. And we do this is in the hopes that something in the story under consideration will teach us something about our approach. So we are VERY free to not like any of these stories in the ultimate sense, once we've consented to them, to their rules. I think it's a bit like music - we listen to the songs, we maybe learn the changes, and then, having tried our best, we can say, "Not for me." But we leave feeling that we've honored the form by our attention. Something like that?
Can we please get “Story Morgue” t-shirts???
Thanks to both for the question and the reply. This post made me look closely at the opening lines and try to find the escalation in this 'homeopathic way of reading' we are practicing here.
Looking back at these three lines from where we are now I think there is indeed an escalation. And it is about Isolation. And it has to do both with place and language.
‘There were only two Americans stopping at the hotel’. So, if these two Americans don’t speak Italian well they are condemned to talk to each other. If one is not prepared to listen, the other will feel pretty isolated.
‘They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from their room’. So, if there were going to be other guests who spoke their language, they would not speak to them anyway as not knowing them would somehow impede it.
‘The room was on the second floor facing the sea’ So, as it is going to be raining, no one will be in the sea. Rain = Further isolation.
Then there is the language barrier isolation. The 'padrone' speaks English to the AW (makes her feel important- connexion makes her feel seen) but later on ignores her.
The maid only uses English to mock her 'A cat in the rain!' (and this mocking utterance is what EH decides to use as tittle making us perhaps join in the mocking?)
Then George, who first does not listen and then tells her to 'shut up'. So, the isolation is now complete. The only person she could communicate with is not interested.
And I am still thinking about this nameless thing. Isn’t this what we do to ostrasize others? To call them by a generic term? So. perhaps this feeling of being ‘uncomfortable’ I get when reading this story is not because it belongs to its time but because this is precisely what EH wanted us to feel like. We cannot name her ether because he has not given us her name, so we are somehow forced to be on the side of the 'bullies'...
Just wondering if maybe when I kept leaving Hemingway stories half read because I felt uncomfortable reading them, I was missing the point…Or maybe not.
Thank you, Àngels! Great points. You've made me think about it in a new way.
I agree with Vila. Thank you for your lucid candor.
Thank you Cian for posing the problem, it would have not occurred to me to look so closely otherwise :)
Bravo!
Something like that, absolutely. This gets at something I struggled with while reading A Swim, and struggle with while slow-reading A Cat: Insofar as I've always read, to some degree, as a writer--or a future writer, or a would-be writer--I find myself more interested in dissecting work that's closer to what I aspire to. I could never, nor would I want to, write like Chekhov, Tolstoy, or Hemingway. And while I'm finding many of the comments extremely valuable in terms of how to be a better reader--from George and most everyone else--my thoughts keep returning to how Denis Johnson, for example, manages to affect me the way he does. (I'm reading/rereading him a lot lately.) I mean, he's self-evidently a brilliantly poetic novelist/wordsmith, so there's that. But his stories tend not to be rigorously told, at least not in the way we're discussing here. In any case, I guess I'm associating myself with Cian's comments in that some part of me rebels slightly against the effort to pore over old Hemingway's story's bones, as opposed to, say, Barry Hannah's (or George Saunders'). I still remember the first time I read "Even Greenland," or, yes, anything by Donald Barthelme. It's less a question of whether a writer is "for me" than it is whether or not I can, in fact, properly honor the form by my attention. (This is obviously a matter of degrees, and may simply speak to my own attention deficit disorder, or my need to Be More Zen.) Anyway I do appreciate this class enormously, as I did A Swim. Thanks.
Yes, I've never seen what it is about Hemmingway - but haven't read him in maybe 40 years. Now I think I'm seeing the power in the timing, the rhythm of those sentences. I read an essay by Joan Didion (who I'm sure y'all know just died, one of the greats). It was on Hemingway, October 1996, the New Yorker. The opening paras do the same close analysis of the beginning of A Farewell to Arms that we are doing here - and the sentences - that rhythm. She also mentions the plain word choice, sentence structure. it's a lot like the opening of A Cat in the Rain, and she points out what removing one "the" does to the rhythm. (It does a lot.). So - currently that's my way in, the rhythm, the careful placements - here's the URL. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/11/09/last-words-6
I also would be really interested in something exploring these questions! I felt the same way about A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, and I have the same anxiety about being a philistine poser, lol.
No, truly. Not liking something is really just having the experience of one's true artistic feelings asserting themselves. The only thing I'd say is, that's a stronger stance after we've done the work. As we are, here.
We don’t have to like everything George does/says/writes just because we love most of his writing. I really didn’t like that story about the nose in that book. I felt it obvious and a bit dim. I was unabashed in my dislike and still a huge fan of George. No philistines just people with sometimes opposing views. But I’m pretty old. When I was younger I’d pretend to like things I didn’t. Like Phish and most of Henry James.
Amen.
Also - bear in mind, this is the slowest we will ever go on a story. Promise. :)
But what if we like going this slow? I'm finding it such a pleasure....
I'd never read any Russian literature before 'Swim in a Pond'. I railed against the way it made me feel - so glum! Then I had to read more about the time it was written and realised just how glum it made me feel. Really very glum indeed. It made me feel the flavours of the time very intensely, which was the point, right?
I felt the nose story to be comedic by comparison, but surely must have something missing in the translation. As a comedy it was a little like looking at a handkerchief that had been mistaken for a clay pigeon.
I second this post. I'm trying to learn from George S. while simultaneously being reinforced in my "meh" opinion of Hemingway--and despite the assertion that there are no wrong answers or feelings, I suspect I'm chronically, stubbornly missing the point.
I feel the same way about most conceptual art.
Well put! Thank you. To be clear, I do love the story. It's just that strictly speaking, my internal meter could have denied me the layers of meaning to be found here... right from the start. And if I could do that with Hemingway, I could do it with my own writing.
Hey, I just wanted to pop in here before the year switches over and wish everyone in Story Club a fine farewell to ‘21 and a ‘22 with as much health, joy and fascination as life allows. This amazing crew makes me want to stretch myself as much as possible and grow in wisdom to keep up.
George, you’ve done so much to boost that joy and fascination for us already and I hope everything you wish for rains upon you in response. Having the serious pleasure of Story Club to look forward to - a major win on the books for 2022, and before midnight, even - that’s gold. Thank you for this massive act of generosity. Let us know how we can keep this experience a happy one for you, as you’re giving so much.
Thanks to all of you and happy new year!
Hi All…
When the writer called the AW a “girl” a feeling coalesced that I didn’t trust the writer…
Now I feel - the husband believes he is living the life of the mind, the life of an artist. Her short hair signifies their life in the avante garde of the time.
However, perhaps she had given up a lot for that identity and maybe she’s ambivalent about it. Long hair (at the time, a signifier of married secure womanhood) and a cat, a comfortable domestic life.
What does she get from being the boyish fun cool girl appendage of an artist?
What does he get?
“Shut up and read” - be like me, live this life.
Lee this is how I was thinking about her, too. The hair, her identity, and what limited choices now that she's married. The role of a woman/wife/girl non-artist back then, even in arty, forward-thinking circles was limited.
Cutting ones’ hair, going to Europe, choosing someone hoping for freedom and finding…
Anyway I think this is more about how he sees her than her actual experience
I’m beginning to agree with you, Lee!
All this talk about her hair has me in mind of a couple of things. First, I am trying to recall the author of a collection of essays entitled Hair, I think, a woman, and that was the title of one of the essays. I think. My memory is often unreliable.
Also, of a woman I knew who had beautifully wild, dark hair when I met her. But she had gut it quite short upon fleeing her marriage with here two girls. She grew it out longer. And later, cut it short again, and then regularly colored it -- blonde, blue, green, red, deep black. Upon "falling in love" again, she went back to her original color and began letting it grow out again. Which is all just to say it was something I noticed.
The wife/girl's short hair is so interesting in light of the Ken Burns documentary about how H's wives would have short hair, etc.
You're right, that was kinda creepy. But this story was written in the 1920's, when short hair was in fashion for women.
The fashion had a whole social meaning.. this is my point.
Hi Lee, yours is an interesting take. Thank you! Your observations about the hair cut are spot on.
Yeah— he’s saying “female presence, absorb the world the way I do— linear and on the page— two dimensionally and from a lens of emotionless absorption. All this dreamy emotion is seriously annoying”
Yes… I’m seeing this story more and more as George/EH projections about his wife at the time… how foolish she is! How un intellectual! She doesn’t get it!
So many more contradictions! I love the idea that a story is practice for a reader to feel comfy in her ever-contradictory reality/self.
I feel a little heartbroken by how human this character becomes in this section. She wants things! And she's failed to get this one thing that she thought she sort of wanted (but was actually just a proxy desire for the other, deeper, realer desires), and now she's so frustrated and dissatisfied and feeling important and small and impotent/helpless that her realer deeper desires are spewing out in a jumble. This feels like such a refreshing and true version of (or response to?) one kind of classic shape of a story that I feel familiar with: what does the protagonist want, and does she get it in the end?
The object, for this character, has definitely exceeded the desire (Is that a Lacan thing? I can't remember who wrote about that...) because the "kitty" has become bigger than its literal self in the woman's consciousness (and it ran away before she could catch it!). But then Hemingway pushes this farther, into more desperate territory (so satisfying for the reader!). Instead of having the woman say, "I want you, George, to tell me I'm beautiful and help me feel feminine and important and wealthy and purposeful, and I want you to let me be my true self, and I want help knowing what I actually want," (or whatever it is she really wants from him), she says something so much more inarticulate and human and specific and mysterious and vulnerable and revealing. She really lets herself sound "silly" (what *she* might think of as silly, or what she might worry her husband thinks of as silly). This is (to me) a more unexpected and satisfying ("surprising and inevitable"?) version of the more traditional story shape with a character who knows just what she wants, goes for it (or is forced by circumstance to go for it), and then gets it or fails. Hemingway's character is moving through the soup of desire (maybe that's all life is for many of us!) in a more interesting and complex way. ...And we still haven't seen how she feels about what she's said! Or how George reacts to what she's said! Or whether the rain will stop! Or whether the cat will reappear!
The way you describe the woman is so right. The proxy desires and her inarticulate "silly" pleas. I find it heartbreaking too, and I'm not very optimistic about the final pulse, as far as she's concerned.
“I love the idea that a story is practice for a reader to feel comfy in her ever-contradictory reality/self.” Yes, this! It gets at one of my biggest flaws as a writer, which is trying to balance the creation of a flawed character - since we all have contradictory feelings at once.
I love everything you've said here, Polly.
The kitty running away before she can rescue seems perhaps indicitive of her life, or at least I imagine her feeling that way.
Waking up this morning to the power being out, a foot of new snow falling, I stay in bed and am happy to have the excuse to just lie there and just think about things.
I think about the Cat in the Rain story and the petulant young wife and her woes. Then I start in on my woes, and find myself for a few minutes in her same exact complaining attitude. I want the power to go on, I want it to go on now. I want to sit at my table with my hot coffee and I want to not hear my husband worrying on about the pipes and the roof and the snow to shovel.
I too want a nice kitty to pet, to hold, to keep warm with and I want to sit by a warm fire and never be cold. Ok. This sentiment does not last long, since for heavens sake I know how unlikely it is that the power will stay out for more than a few more hours, and we have every comfort and so forth and so on. We are the fortunate with a nice house, plenty of food, ability to use shovels and we don’t have to go anywhere.
I’ve been thinking lately about the injustices we see, and those we don’t. How injustice surrounds us in so many ways. How can I be spending my time reading an old Hemingway story and writing my little comments, when I could be —- could be what? I could be out helping the old person around the block with their snow shoveling, I could be donating to the many go fund me projects for people in my county and towns nearby who have been devastated by floods, and now are seeing pipes freeze under their houses and can’t afford to get things fixed. People who see their flooded fields now turn to frozen lakes. I could be writing essays and articles and even short stories about these injustices I see. And about the ones I don’t see, but maybe can imagine.
But no. Can’t do any of that. I’m going to just lie here in bed with covers pulled overhead and complain. I want my coffee since its now morning and I don’t want to get up and be cold.
are you in Fraser Valley Sylvia? I appreciate the way you connected our own longings to those suggested in the story. Its our naturally human longings I think we relate intuitively to if we are honest. ; )
I'm near Skagit County, in mountains of North Cascades
My daughter has many friends in Whatcom county, hit very hard recently
I'm in Alberta Canada so very aware of flooding farmlands in B.C . sounds like similar situation just south into your area. I'm actually a dual citizen as mom was from New York and schooled in Boston. I've family in Washington state. Thanks for sharing. This opportunity is a rare gem, eh? said as a true Canadian. ; )
Yes, quite an opportunity to get close to writers and pieces of writing.
Rub comments with, if not literal elbows 😎
Thank you for counting my blessings :)
Our understanding of the woman’s intense interest in the cat (which is not a tomcat but a female cat) has exploded, with the cat representing so much more than a kitty to be cuddled. Our protagonist, like so many women before and after her, is diminished like a cat in the rain. But unlike the cat, she lacks freedom of movement and self-agency, as well as a sense of connection, including to place. Our American wife wants to sit at her own table with her own silver and candles, symbols of affluence, light, and romance. She sounds homesick and lovesick. Her husband denies her the simple luxury of her own hair. Why does he want her to look like a boy? Is he jealous of the potential attentions of other men? Or does he prefer men over women? Although George is not (yet) a monster, he is controlling, absorbed in his own agenda, and emotionally indifferent to his wife and her needs.
This section ends when a light comes on in the square, suggesting that darkness has descended but also that there is the possibility of a new vision in the light. If the story ended here, however, I wouldn’t be satisfied. I want our protagonist and/or the cat to own the last scene, not the husband. George (the character, not Saunders) shouldn’t have the last word, through silence or otherwise.
"She laid the mirror down on the dresser and went over to the window and looked out. It was getting dark."
This sentence is a bit haunting to me. The overstory has been occurring on the surface (to retrieve the cat from the rain) and we sense that the American wife has deeper inner stirrings, but this is the moment for me that the understory rears its head definitively, and it's quite a predicament.
Yes, she's a girl. She's got the superficial desires of a girl (a cat, long hair, pretty nice things), but the inner energy expressing those desires is much stronger and darker. This is the woman in her. It isn't what she is saying so much, it's how she is saying it. She's saying it rapidly, articulately, and passionately. This is the voice of a woman, not a girl.
Everyone seems to think that George doesn't care. I disagree. I think it isn't relevant if he cares or not. I think what is most important is that he doesn't know what to do.
"'Oh, shut up and get something to read.,' George said. He was reading again."
He is telling her to read as he is reading. I see it as him saying, "You aren't happy, you want all this and can't have it, well same here, and so I read." He might not be saying that he wishes it was different for her, but he seems at the very least to be saying that he reads to distract from feelings of this kind.
George in the story has served up to this point I believe to show that she is married and therefore should be a woman by now. His indifference towards her was first sensed as apathy, but maybe now we are starting to see that apathy is hiding something much more active. He is actively avoiding her predicament, and maybe his own predicaments as well in this same way.
It could end here, but this is a ripe moment for a breakthrough. Will she push harder till she breaks his avoidance? Or will she recede like the waves breaking on the beach? If she pushes, there might be destruction, but also there might be a moment of them meeting each other and seeing each other. If she abates, we will go back to stasis, and perhaps the point is that this type of marriage is very static and stuck. I do hope she fights.
I think (hope) there may be more to George than we've seen thus far, and that that may be why this can't be the end of the story. He, despite appearances, is on a precipice. I was just thinking that I'd like it if the AW finds out that George sent the maid to keep her from "getting wet." That would tie in, wouldn't it? And it would give this reader hope for the marriage.
Nice thought Teri; wishful I think; George would have to get up off the bed, either to reach the bedside telephone to call or actually go down to speak to reception and ask / instruct that his wife should be over-brollied-by-a-minion; frankly can't see him being arsed, not so much as to budge an inch; why take his nose out of the book it's - supposedly - buried in?
God forbid she, his wife - should have come back into the room dripping, onto the pristine leaves of his book - splat, spludge, smudge - that is his book, first edition of his first novel, a beautiful realisation of his fondest ambition, his name emblazoned as author, across the front cover and down the spine, on a hardback publication.
The flurry of his fists - smash, spludge, splat - mean that they'll be staying hold up in their room tonight, rather than stepping out into the light lit public square and striding across to the cafe to be greeted by the waiter and seated at the table where the guy in who was in the rubber cape is expecting them to join him, already knocking back his second martini.
My oh my. The thoughts that cross a person's mind while waiting for the next piece of this story's jigsaw to arrive. Nonsense I guess; this uninvited scenario that's just popped up in my mind's eye; though there's that less than one per cent chance that the American wife's desire for a kitty to comfort her is nervous displacement behaviour. She, just may, know that George is in for a beating: betting on a string of losing runners at the racetrack; then borrowing Mafia money to recover his losses; never likely to end well; and unlike that Cat in the Rain her darling George doesn't have nine lives.
Not that she'll have time to fret . . .
Knock, knock.
"Who's there?"
Knock, knock . . .
My oh my, Rob. And now I must go off to learn about nervous displacement behavior. What I want, more than dinner at home, long hair, new clothes, fun, even a kitty, is for the AW's "of course" in "Of course, the hotel-keeper had sent her" to be wrong.
Teri! Could we be onto something?
Why didn't EH write "Non devi bagnarti", which would have been what the maid would have said in speaking Italian? Why write "Of course, the hotel-keeper had sent her" when he could have written "Certo, l'albergatore l'aveva mandata"? Because EH would, in various ways, have given the end game away?
No chance - I'm thinking - that it wasn't the hotel-keeper who had sent the maid. The old man was, by unspoken order of the local Mafia Don, required on pain of his life and his family's longevity to cover every move of the American couple staying in the second floor sea view room of his hotel: "Guarda l'uomo nel mantello di gomma per raggiungere il caffè".
This American, Signor George, has form. He's not lost, borrowed, lost and run just once. George is a serial loser. Fact is he and the girl that travels with him have been on the run down the length of The Apennine spine of Italy; the reason why George is reading so intently is because he's paralysed by knowing that there is only one road in and out of this coastal place; he's cornered; has known so since the departing smile on the face of the taxi driver that had brought them to the hotel, a week past Friday; known so from the welcoming smile of The Padrone when they'd signed in; known day by day from resigned, slightly sad, smile of the helpful room maid.
This time, George knows, is different: nothing is going to turn out well.
It'll have to be someone else who'll finish my second novel, 'Death in the Rain', he is thinking when for the third time his reading is disturbed by another, weightier 'Knock, Knock' on the door of their room.
But is he really reading, or has he been staring at the same page this whole time, contemplating his next move or his fate? EH hasn't had him turn a page when we've been in his presence.
Could be he is transfixed in blind terror at his situation Teri. Or just maybe he is stoically accepting what he knows is to come, reading W B Yeats . . . the 16 line poem that opens . . . 'I know that I will meet my fate' . . . OK he's an American who may (possibly have reason to believe fought in WW1) rather than the protagonist of Yeats' 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death' . . . but being an aspirant writer, not so many years out of college with the vigorous ambition of youth merely pulsing but pounding through him, he's been seeking solace in the words of writers as contemporary as Yeats and as classical as Cicero?
Or, then again, maybe the words required to confirm George is a page turner were a few words too many for the taste of EH?
Wow Teri what fun straying, way out, beyond the (likely) Pale of our story in focus is proving to be. And all because we're indulging in distraction behaviour to take our minds off our mounting excitement to know What Happens Next - at least according to EH - in 'Cat in the Rain'.
Good God Man, at your age, excited? Grow-up!
KnoCK, KnOCK, KNOCK . . . that really isn't The Postman at George's door. He never knocks thrice, twice is normally quite sufficient!
I began wondering about this too. If his intense focus on reading might be covering his growing insecurity about her escalating dissatisfaction.
I like the way you unpacked his suggestion that she read a book. I read it in a similar way. I feel like it gives us the sense that they are both trapped, and that raises the tension for me, too.
Trapped is a good word for the feeling.
Thank you for your skillful writing and analysis. I am new to close reading and you (and many others in Story Club) are very helpful to my getting a better understanding of this practice. I am grateful to you and to everyone for their comments.
Thank you, Bryn! I’m glad you’re giving this a try.
For all the judgement against Hemingway regarding women, I do find it interesting that he can so brilliantly capture the wife/girl's sense of isolation and her lack of agency. He obviously understood this place society put women in, and the lack of compassion given them by men like her husband. Clearly, so much of her sense, or lack, of being is driven by her husband who likes her boy cut and wants her to preoccupy herself and stop complaining.
I would not want the story to end here. I'm not satisfied yet. I want to know if she is redeemed or not, and what the factors are that allow or deny her that redemption.