Just happened to come across this article about Hemingway by Joan Didion (RIP) from the New Yorker in 1998, and it made me think of our exercise here. She's talking about the first paragraph of "A Farewell to Arms" (link: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/11/09/last-words-6):
"That paragraph, which was published in 1929, bears examination: four deceptively simple sentences, one hundred and twenty-six words, the arrangement of which remains as mysterious and thrilling to me now as it did when I first read them, at twelve or thirteen, and imagined that if I studied them closely enough and practiced hard enough I might one day arrange one hundred and twenty-six such words myself. Only one of the words has three syllables. Twenty-two have two. The other hundred and three have one. Twenty-four of the words are “the,” fifteen are “and.” There are are four commas. The liturgical cadence of the paragraph derives in part from the placement of the commas (their presence in the second and fourth sentences, their absence in the first and third), but also from that repetition of “the” and of “and,” creating a rhythm so pronounced that the omission of “the” before the word “leaves” in the fourth sentence (“and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling”) casts exactly what it was meant to cast, a chill, a premonition, a foreshadowing of the story to come, the awareness that the author has already shifted his attention from late summer to a darker season. The power of the paragraph, offering as it does the illusion but not the fact of specificity, derives precisely from this kind of deliberate omission, from the tension of withheld information. In the late summer of what year? What river, what mountains, what troops?"
Thank you for sharing this find, Priscilla! I had been annoyed by that last bunch of short sentences in the story, and I do know it is characteristic of H’s writing, but now I see how the writer can use this negative feeling in me to create tension, movement and foreshadowing new info… wow, this is powerful!
Priscilla, thank you for noticing and sharing Joan Didion's observations. There's something in the connection to the remembrances of Didion that feels so much a part of what Story Club is about...
Even more than the sentence structure, I'm seeing strong parallels in the content: How the allusions to war (the troops, the war monument) are entwined with the change in weather/season (barren trees post-summer/ the grey unending rain), and how this together creates exactly that sense of "a chill, a premonition, a foreshadowing of the story to come..." For me, since the opening, I felt that the aftermath of what was then the Great War, is essential to this story.
When punctuation and words and how they follow, support, resonate in sentences doing the same work and building into paragraphs . . . are used the way a master painter considers even the smell of the paint or the exact size of the canvas. Inspiring. Thanks.
Priscilla, I just read this, too, and especially appreciated this part of the text. In fact, it stopped me in my tracks as I thought about how it applies to Cat in the Rain.
I’ve been thinking of the similarities between this story and the beginning(and ending) of A Farewell to Arms. If memory serves the “in the rain” phrase also repeats many times in the beginning and ending of Farewell. I think Farewell was written quite a bit later.
Thanks for this, it's great. I was struck by all the 'the's in the first para of our story - and it seems there are plenty in AFTA too - for me they seem to slow things down, make me think more about the objects being referred to, add a weight to the scene. The small details are very interesting to consider aren't they?
‘Bears examination’; certainly; to my mind Joan Didion’s exposition of the first paragraph’s making fits just as well if the words are read with poetic or prose meaning in mind.
Found, copied and pasted the opening paragraph of 'Farewell to Arms' into a new Word document as prose. Then copied the prose and pasted it below, with the heading 'as poetry'; sprinkled a pinch of 'Essence of Didion' in my imagination; then set about bringing a poem directly out the prose text. A satisfying wordplay: same word string now morphed into a poetic presentation on an A4; no loss or alteration of punctuation either; just a pleasing patterning of typed words loosened and laid out in white space to be seen on and / or spoken from the page. And there remains, always will remain, the option to take a little time for another such rewarding wordplay.
I can see how that would work even for the opening of our piece. If you read it out loud and listen, you can see how the words would be laid out on the page as poetry rather than prose, without changing anything else but layout.
You’re right Priscilla, it’ll be interesting to re-run wordplay along the same lines with either just the first four sentences of ‘Cat in the Rain’ or the whole of its opening paragraph.
Works out, readily enough and well enough, both shorter (first for sentences) and longer form (all of the opening paragraph). Not claiming my wordplay results in great poetry but the two drafts of re-laid text do (I think) pass muster as poems. Like any poems they can be further tweaked and honed with the aim of enhancement but whether or not that happens I've already become clearer that it is possible to discern a 'poetic' dimension of Hemingway's writing, and further that this a source of the 'strength' of his prose.
I am loving your commentary, George S. You really go all out and enlarge everything about the American wife character while simultaneously talking about Hemingway's elements of story, elements you illustrate as the definition of fine storytelling. I mean, in the Bigger Sense, that everything you're teaching is sticking with me. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking the newsletter feels a lot like being in the same room. Thank you.
Confession time: I'm loving Story Club, but am noticing that instead of writing, I'm doing this "writing adjacent" thing... The thing that makes me feel like I'm moving towards writing, but without actually taking the plunge. Reading and thinking about writing, but not facing the blank page myself. All the learning on craft won't help, if I'm not actually putting my own words on paper, creating my own characters, making them specific.
The feeling I get is "I don't know how to start..." And so, I don't.
I'm giving myself an assignment: start your own story BEFORE reading the next installment of Swim with a Disappearing Cat in the Rain. Have fun. Imitate Hemingway. Refuse your main character the gift of a name. Unleash a storm. Drench everyone. Give some of them warm towels.
It's inviting me toward writing with a fresh energy. Just needed to tell on myself to notch up the pressure a bit to take the plunge. Writing first. Story Club after
RE: I don't know how to start & positive pressure & fresh energy. Passing on something someone suggested to me. Take a crumb of your idea - choose anything, one word, a name, whatever. Set a timer for 25 minutes. Write, letting it flow without reading back. Stop at the bell. Your writing day is done. Read Story Club. Overnight ideas bubble up or not, and you'll write the next day for 25 minutes to see what happens (maybe suddenly that isn't enough time, so you hit the timer and do a double session). The third day, you'll set the timer or maybe your story takes over and you forget to set the timer and write until you have a cramp or need a glass of water. Repeat regularly and you'll get to the end of what you started. It will be the zero draft, possibly unreadable and certainly incomplete. But hooray, you have something to re-write, which is rewarding after writing on a blank page.
Personally, it felt hard to start when I thought I had to write something good every day. But if you imagine the start of a story is like tilling the soil before planting, you can roll up your sleeves and accept the muck. Don't expect a harvest at the end of the writing day. Expect manure and a lot of manual labor. But, the manual labor ends up feeling good, and that mental tension you have about needing to write - it will disappear.
Brenda, thank you for taking the time to share this. Yes, that "tilling the soil" place is exactly where I'm at. And I live in a place where the muck & manure metaphors land well, lol.
And this: " the manual labor ends up feeling good, and that mental tension you have about needing to write - it will disappear." True with building barns, true with writing stories. True with nearly anything one can fret about, isn't it?
Here is my confession: I am at the end of the third year of wrangling a novel with no end in sight, and there is not one moment of the day that passes when I'm not fiddling with it either at the keyboard or in my addled brain. So I'm tremendously grateful for literary explorations like these (and #tolstoytogether/#apstogether/#booklit in twitter). I stop thinking about my own hopelessly lost protagonist for a few minutes and think about someone else's. What a relief.
Kathy at the Ranch, we just finished our second slow read (approx 15 pp a day) of War and Peace - I imagine there will be another one next fall....in the meanwhile there is James Joyce beginning Jan. 12 and later this spring, Moby Dick!!!! Here are the details for the Stephen Hero/Joyce slow read....
the magazine A Public Space sponsors a series of slow-readings-together -- it started with War & Peace early in the pandemic and some of us just finished a second reading -- we all read at the same planned pace (mostly) and commented on Twitter at #TolstoyTogether -- you can go there and to @apublicspace to see the discussions and the plans for future readings. I've only done War & Peace the one time (just now), but some people have been reading along together throughout the series.
Stop wrangling and get with writing Sadie? Stop being dilettante, grateful for literary digressions, better to get with the conversation . . . the rich fat, in these threads, really is worth chewing on Sadie, and then ruminating reflectively on. You are not hopelessly anything Sadie, just an aspirant writer who may benefit from the forensic focusing fest that George, having invited us in, is constantly encouraging us to stick with. I’m addressing you Sadie but also myself. Thanks for your comment; thought provoking; pleased to be able to opt to reply.
And another thing, just to clarify I am not “hopelessly anything”, my protagonist is….on the A838 as a matter of fact, somewhere between Tongue and Durness…..right exactly where I put her…for the time being….
What a dramatic setting and a fantastic 59 minute drive. What's she doing between Tongue and Durness I find myself curious to know? Is she stopped somewhere or is she moving along the coast, or around the loch, or crossing the headland to roll Durness? Is she alone? Maybe being pursued? Or heading for a showdown? I'm intrigued, even without sight of even the shortest snippet of text from your working draft Sadie. It's a pity that the Met Office reports there is a fog down up there in the Far North just now, stops me getting airborne to trace the route low level in my helicopter. Mind you the weather is saving me from an unwarranted digression on a wild capercaillie chase . . . so I'll bid you adieu Sadie with best wishes for your continuing journey down the long and winding novel writing road your travelling.
What a handy coin you have to hand Sadie, one side ‘Grind’ the other ‘Digress’. I’m glad to get the sense that you are going to keep wrangling on, write on to the end of the road your travelling with this novel.
Do you need a writing prompt? (You wrote "I don't know how to start," so perhaps you do know what you want to write about, but just can't kick things into gear.) If you don't have a writing idea at the moment and simply want an exercise to flex your writing muscles, you could try drawing from the story we are studying: Write a very short story about a married couple on a trip to a foreign place. There is a conflict between them--either the wife is bored with the husband or the husband is bored with the wife. (Or choose your own conflict.) So here they are in their hotel room, together. What happens? (Ignore completely, of course, if you don't need/want a prompt!)
I love this. I do think we know when we don't know, or when we say we don't know. In my classes, if I throw out a question to a student and she says, "Gee, I don't know," my standard response is to ask, "Well, if you did know, what would you say?" Amazingly, and this happens all the time, is that the most pithy things will come forth. What is that about, do you think?
I can't tell if your remarks here are aimed at me or at someone else's post, but I'll tell you what I think, since you've asked. I think you do something wonderful each time you give your students the opportunity to imagine what they would say "if they did know." And then, of course, some "pithy things" rise to the surface, because they are released from the fear of being wrong.
I know, it's hard to tell sometimes which post is being replied to, Mary, but you're right, it was to you. And I do think you're right about being released from the fear. All students are seemingly terrified of being "wrong," because we've stigmatized being "wrong." I always tell them, "There are no right or wrong interpretations to literature; only stronger or weaker arguments based on the textual evidence." But even as I try to convince them of this, I have to keep repeating the mantra. Once they begin to believe it and take me seriously, we have some rather amazing discussions! Thanks for the reply and the insight.
Thanks, Mary. I ended up giving myself a prompt there right after "I don't know how to start," with the idea of a playful riff on the opening of A Cat in the Rain. A Dog in the Snow, if you will. Reflecting, I don't think I need prompts. I think I need a willingness to start in spite of all the openness and ambiguity that comes with a very fresh beginning. One of the gifts of A Swim, to me, was the insight that ambiguity is always the reader's starting place, so why shouldn't it be the writer's? And that removing ambiguity, layering on constraints through specificity is the work of the writer.
Thanks Mary. I have a novella out there that I have a sequel to in draft form that I need to rewrite. Sooooooo too many things in the pot already. cheers MM
Hi, Kathy. I was feeling guilty because I was writing more than paying attention in class. I mostly do Julia Cameron's spin on free writing, morning pages, and it's thrilling when coupled with this course to see what leeches into them. Today's effort forced me over and over again to break down sentences and enjoy the effect of meting out detail. Also, curt sentences create more opportunities to decide on how I bridge them, a surprising revelation and reward. The result has a slight odor of parody in it that was put there by God to prevent me from ever thinking of it as more than an exercise or having a literary future. Regards, John
Hi John, excited to meet a fellow a morning pager. Julia Cameron is first my creative goddess to show me the way. I think you do immerse yourself into the story club lessons for jt to bleed out in morning pages. I am yet to use these lessons as I have not been writing stories, but I want to re read George’s lessons so I am can imbibe them in a wholistic manner. Thank you.
Do you know the book "Free Play"? It is one of my favorite craft books written by a violinist on the nominal topic of improvisation. It emboldened me to take morning pages where I wanted them to go but was afraid to take them without an outside voice to give me the authority. On certain days, I allow myself to steer the morning pages only a little and if it works and it flows, great. If the pen doesn't flow I back out quickly, force my mind blank, and wait for something to come. This modification has started to inch morning pages closer to facile, fluid composition without hardly compromising Cameron's intention. Besides this course, I am conscious that the material I read the day before will leech into my morning pages and I welcome it. Try it and see if it works for you!
Addendum: there's other deeper things going on in morning pages that I wish to acknowledge, because the temptation to see how you can leap from morning pages to masterpiece is always there and this temptation can deprive you of their many other benefits.
1) They habituate you to "flow" as discussed in Free Play. By habituate, I mean "get you in the practice of".
2) They teach you how to bridge the paradox of carrying the dual conviction that your words matter, are vital, etc. and your words don't matter at all. Morning pages can slowly bring you to a relaxed attitude toward your own writing from which your best work will come. That's why a dear friend writes over her previous morning pages to drive this point into her synapses.
3) They are written out in long hand to engage the maximum number of neurons. As you do this, you are subtly and gradually reprogramming them.
4) They expose you to the idea of "practicing practicing" which we are ALWAYS trying to short-cut.
5) By design, because nobody is "watching you", they expose you to the idea that your mind is sufficient sanctuary for your best writing.
Just ordered. What an invaluable recommendation! Thank you so much. Would love to talk about what an influence Julia's works are. in our growth as a writers. Julia led me to Natalie Goldberg, and I am so grateful to these two creative goddesses in my life.
John, if I may ask you, what do you mean by 'The result has a slight odor of parody in it that was put there by God to prevent me from ever thinking of it as more than an exercise or having a literary future. Regards, John'
I did not understand 'to prevent me from ever thinking of it as more than an exercise or having a literary future'
Oh! If you ever try to write like a big deal author, it's damn near impossible, at least for me, not to watch the whole thing slide into parody despite your best efforts. I think that is extra easy to do with the Hemster and inevitable with the indomitable Faulkner! In this case, I argue, it's a saving grace because it makes me not want to show them to anybody and thus prevent me from violating one of the JC's bedrock rules for Morning Pages , "they are to be shown to no one".
I have a Draconian friend who overwrites her morning pages from the day before thus guaranteeing for all time, short of forensics, that she'll show them to no one because there is nothing left that is legible.
I am not as golden or pure as my friend and find that I want to raid my morning pages for fodder all the time. And so I find great benefit in loosening the rules but being mindful of their usefulness and returning to them often.
Some days I go by the spirit of Cameron's definition and sometimes by the law.
I completely agree with you, infact sometimes I write stuff in morning pages, that I cull and put it on the screen. I use her MP journals. They are a balm to my soul - her constant words of wisdom on each page. Today's was particularly valuable - it was something about self-respect, see i forget it now, need to go back and read it.
I saw your today's comments on Julia. I am so glad she is at the tip of your lips and mind, like she is for me. Infact I think I have been removed from her other than MPs. Need to go back and ensconce in her infinite wisdom. I have most of her books with me, and do her dailies sometimes.
I have ordered the book you suggested, and very excited about its arrival into my life. Thank you and wishing you a wonderful year filled with writing possibilities.
Kathy, I really appreciate this comment and I needed to hear it. There’s a sneaky part of myself that says, “Let me just learn everything in Story Club real quick and after *that* I’ll be all set to face my revisions.” The derailer!
I’m trying to set that P/N meter up on my own being so I can tell when I’m giving myself the wrong job.
Read George’s posts, get inspired to read fiction with my eyes wider open, and then go make my own sentences, great!
Keeping a hold of my self-respect while I read and learn from all these insightful comments that I wouldn’t be able to make = great when I can do it, but also dicey.
Start stressing about how I’m reading Cat in the Rain like a moron compared to all these wizards in Story Club, clench up, try and read harder, forget that I’m here because of my own writing, bzzt.
Tina, I peeked at your blog & read/saw your illuminated Oscars & you made me laugh, and you gotta know that the nodding/smiling/chuckling moments you gave me... it fed me at least as much as anything you could've added to the "post-war italian maid holding umbrellas over impulsive American wife/chlld" conversation. Thank you. Onward.
Comdar is back, but on low-wattage! I need to get some mojo. I think I left it back in 2008. That's really all I'm worried about, being vaccinated and boosted and ferreting around the place for where I misplaced my g-damn imagination! Have you seen it?! ;-)
Kathy - have you read Swim In The Pond, i am yet to, and am looking for a reading/exercises to do - buddy. let me know if you would like to take the plunge into the Pond. Thanks
Radhika, I did read A Swim in the Pond, and that's why I was so delighted to hear that George was starting the substack & that I could continue the work AND with the opportunity to talk to people in real time about all the thoughts. When I was reading A Swim, I often wished for someone to talk to about it, and I think your idea of finding a reading buddy or group will add to your experience. Good luck with that!
Love it, Kathy. Write for yourself. It's lonely out there, so this makes some sense, connection-wise. Thanks for your comments to my posts. Again, write for yourself. George Saunders is a model for this, since we track career- and age-wise. Best, MM
Hey Kathy. I note that George indicated that he will be setting some writing exercises later on as part of this course. So getting in early with some writing is not a bad idea.
Oh, do I feel your pain :-)! The way morning pages has helped me has much to do with Julia Cameron's rule not to share them with anyone. This is the great liberating agent.
I fought this idea as much as anything. I still fight it. Nagging me is the injunction itself: "What if I write anything good?", the devil on my left shoulder says. The angel on my right says, "The devil makes a good point. John would never violate an edict of Julia Cameron!"
The devil, who always has to get the last lick in, says, "Great! Then we agree John should do nothing other than sit on his hands!"
Like you Kathy and I sense many others, I feel I'm moving towards writing. Personally I'm very happy to be, as you put it so neatly, 'doing this "writing adjacent" thing'. This is because Story Club is manifestly getting many of us active beyond 'reading and thinking about writing' by getting us writing / conversing online. OK I'm not just yet writing a new original short story or freshly reworking an extant fiction; but since taking out a paid subscription and being given posting rights I've certainly been exercising my option to comment rather than feeling myself sat stuck like a duck struck dumb by facing the blank page. I really like your intention to start your own story BEFORE reading . . . I hope you're manage to do this and wish you and 'No-Name' your main character "Bon Voyage" as you whip up the yarn that will be the warp and weft of the tale you'll be telling of 'The Swimming Cat that Disappeared in a Pond in the Rainstorm' . . . but no worries if your story is slow to come, let it marinade and meantime stick with reading and thinking about each extract in the sequence that is being laid before us.
I wrote yesterday, Rob. Opening lines of a story. I'm old enough to know that there's not always tomorrow, and I don't want to spend any more of my life "moving towards writing." I am writing. You can't learn to swim by watching from the side of the pool. You should jump in, too. I think deep down, you also want to be a jumper inner.
That's great Kathy, writing down the opening lines of a story, right there where you were a day or so ago on the Ranch. How much further have you moved towards writing the next lines of the story?
Here's are lovely opening lines, which have stayed with me since I first read them and which your comment brings back to centre stage in my mind: 'Come on in the water's lovely / It isn't really cold at all'. You'll gather from the way I've set these lines down that I'm quoting from a poem, but maybe you're already wondering what happens next?
Here's another opening line: The snow spread its blanket on the bitter earth. The shape of the story that follows has been in my mind since not longer after the sentence arrived, gifted to me by an acquaintance towards 9.30 PM back on 6th April last. Its time to be written down hasn't arrived quite yet, but not too far into the new year it'll be shunted out of the sidings and into the word forge to be worked on. I'd be quite interested to have your thoughts on what, were this a story of yours in the making, might be the next words you'd write: in the next sentence or through to the end of the opening paragraph?
And here, starting at the fourth sentence following, is the opening paragraph of a short story that I wrote and aired aloud twice during November. I'll be putting the piece up for workshopping in one, possibly two, writing groups in January. Should you care to offer any thoughts that strike about what happens next don't hesitate to share them Kathy, they'll be most welcome.
Ha! I clicked Post before pasting this opening to a story draft into my Reply:
Sam, a handsome young man recently qualified as a Chartered Accountant and just returned from a grand time touring around Europe before the expiry of his Student Inter Rail Pass, will be coming to live in a Royal Town not so far away from where you may be sat reading this, at a time not so far ahead but certainly in the future. The story of what is going to happen to him is quite remarkable. You may be amazed but can be assured every that word you will read is true: Sam’s story is going to come to pass.
I felt rather put off by this section. It took me a while to figure out why but I guess I felt the manipulation of how we were supposed to feel as readers was a bit heavy-handed, like the writer—would this be the omniscient voice of the narrator—telling us, as readers, this is how you should regard the American woman, the American wife, the Wife as now being revealed as a superficial and shallow, naïve American girl, not worthy of a name because of her childish behavior. The husband however gets a name, George, and it will be revealed how he is worthy of this, perhaps because he is more intelligent, more mature than she. The kind hotel owner becomes the padrone, the maid becomes unfriendly, and the girl craves importance which makes her childish. However as I write these observations I do notice this is a really powerful way of making a dramatic change in our points of view and it creates a lot tension to prepare us or unprepare us for what might happen next.
I felt similarly about the change from American wife to wife to American girl. But I wonder if that is meant to reflect, not so much a change in the way Hemingway wants us to judge the AW (from outside, as it were), as a transition in the way that she is thinking about herself, in a sort of unconscious way. Perhaps there's something about seeing the cat in the rain, coupled with her interaction with the hotel owner, which makes her feel more child-like. And perhaps now that she's back in the room with her husband, that self-conception will recede, or be brought into conflict with her self-conception as an AW. No idea. Let's see.
I also read this shift toward her as a child to be reflective of her own feeling of smallness, which seems to be the case based on the line "Something felt very small and tight inside the girl." This doesn't seem to be an outside judgment, but a reflection of her internal state.
I thought it indicated a shift to the maid's perspective. The American wife becomes the American girl because that's how the maid sees her - a foreigner and a tourist, more specifically an American one, and a girl. Possibly quite a silly one, too - getting herself wet in the rain to rescue a "kitty". I imagine that the maid vaguely resents having to trail after such a person with the umbrella and bring her in from the rain. The interaction makes the AW feels both small and important, the way a small child does when their mother comes to stop them from doing something stupid and/or dangerous. Chastened, but also cared for. Only here it's not a parent-child relationship but a more of a master-servant / employer-employee one, based on status and money and power.
Hemingway could be an ass, to be sure, but what saves this story for me is the relation between the Italian staff and the Americans. This story was first published in 1925 and begins with an allusion to the WWI monument visible from the Americans' room. Italy was a somewhat reluctant partner in WWI and emerged from the war with more land but depleted resources and diminished political status, whereas the United States--the baby--became gained status and an industrial infrastructure that made them/us a world power without suffering from fighting within its own borders. The woman in "The Cat in the Rain" demonstrates a sense of entitlement that probably exceeds her socio-economic status. I like that Hemingway, who fought in WWI, puts the Italians in the driver's seat in this story, just as he puts the Spaniards in the foreground of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. When I think of the "American wife/girl" as a specific character who represents an unearned sense of entitlement, I find it easier to appreciate the story as a whole.
I think I would prefer if we were not told how to feel about her through the diminution in her character by how she is described, so that we can come to whatever conclusion Hemingway thinks by her subsequent actions. But I guess that's going to come soon enough.
I think we are meant to feel put off and annoyed. And I know why the maid's face did that tightening thing. These Americans with their terrible Italian, don't they know the hotel workers (everywhere at all times) all speak perfectly adequate English? This cat clearly belongs outside, why try to take it into a hotel room? And why is this wife not with her husband (where she belongs)? And the husband, has he even noticed that his little girl yankee wife has left the room? Is what he is reading so fascinating, so incredibly deep, that nothing else matters? If I were the cat, I would have left too. I would have run away as fast as my four legs could carry me.
Certainly these days hospitality workers--and the public--tend to speak adequate English. I'm not sure that was true when the story was written, although clearly the maid does.
Thanks Annie. I really like how you broke this down, Annie. I'm new at this and am blown away at all the nuance and possibilities. I think I'm going to get a lot out of this year. Thanks George!
It was such a stand-out shift...I've also been wondering about how he plays with point of view in these few first sections! At first it's ambiguous narration and they're "two Americans", when it's focused on husband and wife, she's " American wife" or "wife", then, when it's her and the hotel staff, she's "American girl" - so I wonder if it's also functioning as a tool to create roving POV within third person POV? Also, a consistent feeling of isolation (this was the major mood I got from the first paragraph, they don't know anyone, the rain has driven people away) that's further emphasized by her being seen always through what feels like *two* sets of eyes - the narrator's and her husbands, the narrator's and the maid's...creates so much distance! Thank's for this comment, so much to think about <3
The American wife sets out on a mission but it falls apart almost before it gets started. The maid even questions the very existence of a cat in the rain, laughs at the very idea and that reaction seems to pop the wife's bubble. No one else has even seen the cat. (I'm trying to remember ever seeing a cat in the rain and can't but then I can't remember a lot of stuff.) Everything works to turn the wife around.
The energy threatens to dip here but instead there is renewed escalation as she reenters the hotel, passes in confusion by the owner and into her and George's room. She has failed to save the cat from the rain but she has not gotten wet, not physically anyway. Will the cat reappear in the courtyard? Will the rain stop? Will we learn the American wife's name? Will George redeem himself? Will a new dynamic emerge between the couple?
I noticed that Hemingway takes pains to stipulate that the path is gravel, states it twice and I could hear the women's footsteps as they crunched along through the rain. I appreciated that.
I've never read this story, and reading it this way, not knowing how long it is or where I am in the text is a new experience for me. I keep thinking about it as I go through my day, this spinning ball up in the air, up over my head. When and where will it land?
I don't like not knowing how much more there is to this story. It's okay that I don't know what's going to happen--that's what happens with every story. But I do miss the physical words on the page, that--at a glance--tell me if I am near the end or not. I realize that stories are often read out loud and in such cases we don't know how close we are to the end. But I prefer to read stories off a page, and I like the knowledge that gives me--the white spaces, the length of the story, the length of the paragraphs, the use or non-use of quotation marks, etc.--that you can't get otherwise. Shorter version: this way of reading, while fascinating, also frustrates me.
So, Mary, your prompted me to think that George Saunders has turned the reading of this story about an American couple in an off-season Italian resort hotel into a metaphor for living in the trenches of WWI. Does that seem about right?
I'm finding it surprisingly disconcerting too, not to be able to pace myself. And come to think of it, that subconscious 'how long is this gonna take?' is something that simultaneously irks and intrigues me about short stories in general.
I like the observation about the gravel path, that the crunching sound it likely would have made might have startled the cat into running away from the woman. Perhaps the cat reappears in a more dire circumstance, setting off the woman in a more dangerous mission with greater stakes than getting wet.
A thought unrelated to the story, but not unrelated to the work we are doing: I am reading Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence, in which the protagonist says that while in prison, she taught herself to read “with murderous attention.” Many thanks, George, for sharing this secret with us. Happy not to be self-taught (nor in prison).
A tangent starting with loving Louise Erdrich's writing - sorry Martha - for piggybacking to just write some things here that are much on my mind and relate to writing. I may be off base but through Louise Erdrich's novels, their characters, I feel I gain a kind of quasi-direct experiences of life as lived by them - knowing she is an enrolled member of the Turtle Band of Chippewa Indians so are drawn from her lived experience (and aims her writing at a wider audience than those within that culture). I mean isn't that one of the things novels and stories can do, or are supposed to be able to do? And yet... is it possible? I just pulled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie - so privileged he is participating in Story Club - and am going to reread it - and look up others of his works to enjoy. I wonder about these things: how much can a writer take us into the experience of a different way of being? Is commonality of experience required in order to interpret meaning accurately and fully? I'm thinking of this in the context of just having read Ray Monk's biography of Wittgenstein which puts Wittgenstein's thinking in lived context and which covers his deeply interesting ideas about aesthetic and experiential knowing, which I'm only now coming to with anything approaching understanding. Thinking of it also in the context of "own voices" and similar topics in literature today. As well as in real life. How two people can say the same words but they slot into different frameworks of meaning and convey different things accordingly. Anti-vaxxers. Trumpies. Oil magnates. Priests. Fast car or fast fashion lovers. People who read recipe books for fun! So many people are "not my tribe" in ways maybe trivial or maybe not. Wittgenstein actually has helped me better understand these gulfs between us, how they lie not in what we say but in the framework of our understanding, and how we make meaning beyond words. How to explain music to someone who has not appreciation of music? I'm learning to acknowledge that the ridge I live on is unceded land of Awaswas-speaking people of the Amah Mutsun tribal band. The language of this is new. Like the "they" pronoun is new. And welcome. The framework of meaning or the skin of it - which we construct the world of meaning out of - must be flexible and grow and transform. Art - novels and stories and plays and essays and etc - my experience is they can work on that level and I feel some limited sense of optimism in this area. Okay - all done, but not dusted. Pardon me, and maybe someone will be having these kinds of ideas too, and maybe will come to this little cul-de-sac of the Story Club comment world! Aside from Martha for whom I sincerely hope this may be interesting - or easy to skim over and move on at least!
Oh, Jackie. Your words are hitting me right where I live today. This whole concept of meaning-making across the gulf - of culture, experience, perspective - may be our only hope. Limited optimism, indeed. Thank you.
As others are mentioning, what struck me most here is the shifting title of our protagonist: from American Wife, to Wife, to now American girl. There’s a diminishing of her power in that trend, a shrinking from importance to insignificance. This shift happens at the moment she finds the cat gone, and she suddenly feels much younger, much less imperious and powerful than our first impression of her. Similarly, as she heads in again past the hotel owner, I’m struck by the way her sense of self shrinks even more (“Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. The padrone made her feel very small”).
And yet, I’m also struck by this line that seems to defy this trend toward smallness (no stasis here!): “She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance.” Hemingway breaks the pattern here to give us this glimpse, this sense that she remembers or is still holding on however weakly to this other, more commanding, larger version of herself (how we first meet her, the “American Wife”). My sense of her as a complex character is growing: we see clearly that she has these different sides to herself, and that somehow the loss of the cat has caused this change in her. We also learn that she’s not conducting a straightforward act of rescue but “wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty” which seems to suddenly make this act a much more personal one: there is something personal at stake for her here, in her desire for a “kitty”, and I’m curious what that is!
Another bowling pin in the air for me: The maid’s incredulous response to the wife/girl’s words that there was a cat in the rain. Is this really something so hard to imagine? Clearly the maid hasn’t seen the cat. This reaction from the maid does two things: It creates a kind of divide in my mind between the wife and this maid, adding to the wife’s sense of smallness - her aloneness in her desire to rescue the cat, in her knowledge/belief that the cat was even there. The maid’s reaction also highlights the rareness of the situation - cat in the rain - as not something they see everyday. It would feel very different if the maid said something like, “Oh yes, that cat lives around here”. But this disbelief from her gives the whole situation this aura of specialness, rarity. It’s something that the wife/girl seems to have noticed that others haven’t.
I was thinking that the story is set in the time not long after the flu pandemic of 1918, when a cold was not just a cold and who would venture out into a cold rain for a cat? Frivolous indeed.
Same, I read it as the maid being a little incredulous that the American girl would go to the trouble of going out into the rain for something as unimportant as a (possibly stray) cat. And then the maid's face tightens at the girl's emotional display of neediness, like now she's become a spoiled child the maid has to serve/manage.
Loving this exercise. This seems really insightful, Joy. I immediately noticed the American wife turned wife is now the American girl or just the girl. From a noble mission - saving the cat — she’s been reduced to wanting a kitty - a cat that was there but now it seems (to the maid at least) shouldn’t ever have existed. She wanted something to take care of. Was there a baby? Someone mentioned this in the comments about the last post. I think she’s getting interestingly complicated - diminished but I suspect we’re going to learn something about George - the one in the story - that makes a different sense of this than just as a put down of a silly, frivolous, privileged American woman. At least I hope!
I had the same thought, Danilyn, about a possible baby. Could this be why she needs a kitty? Is it a stand-in for the baby she lost? Or the baby George didn't want? (And then of course there's Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" which is making "baby symbolism!" alarms go off in me.)
That’s what I thought too, Joy and Danilyn. I thought the theme was going to be “loss”, (loss of a child, saving a cat). but after reading the above comments I think it might be about power…anyway, I said I was annoyed by this section, but now I see that this section has produced the most emotion in me…I want more…
I see a twist in this story, a different background. I have been in jobs where I needed to bow, where I needed to supply people lacking independence and common sense the obvious necessities.
The maid is bothered by the American woman’s immaturity, clearly, closer to stupidity than innocence. I see the woman as a bother to the “help.” Yet, they do what must be done. The old man is more capable, practiced at hiding his disdain.
If she is more frivolous, silly even, like a child, the husband is probably exhausted with her, rather than dismissive. This is a tale of a pampered person unable to wait like everyone else.
I agree John. In their eyes she's petty and spoiled. I'm sure the maid and manager also think about how the Americans lived fairly untouched by the war compared to their own experience.
I have never had a job where I was required to bow, although I once had a temp job, dressing up in a tuxedo and handing out flowers to customers, mainly women, as they entered a new clothing store. I felt silly but of course had to "mask" that for the benfit of the customer, so that they would feel importan. I also work retail, which presents a similar if not entirely indentical feeling.
Girl! I now see her as quite young, married to an older man. He talks to her as though she is very young--"Don't get wet." Like you'd say to a child. And now I start to see that they are here during the off season--when rates are cheaper. So maybe she thought she was marrying a wealthy older man, but it turns out he's not so wealthy...? And she is bored. He's an adult--reading on the bed. She's a kid, looking for fun, a playmate--the kitty, perhaps. And isn't she the one who calls the cat a kitty? Like a young girl might do. Anyway, I see her reaction to the hotel staff as immaturity--a young girl who is being patronized and doesn't realize it. At the end of this section, we are given the husband's name. He is named--a real person. A man. She remains a girl, unnamed. Can't say I understand why the maid's face tightens when the girl speaks English. Anyway, my view of the entire story changed with the word "girl." Maybe I'm giving that too much meaning, as women have often been referred to as girls despite their age. Still, to me the story really turned on that one word.
I took the maid's face-tightening as annoyance at the "American girl" for lapsing back into English when she can speak Italian--puts the onus on the help to translate and respond in a foreign language.
Yes, that too. I think annoying American / annoying American woman-girl is a persistent theme in his stories and novels (haven’t read this one, so I wait!)
I am rereading this this morning and it struck me that the "she" in that sentence does not necessarily refer to the American girl. The maid is also speaking English. Just an off-hand thought.
The reference to her as a girl was the first thing that jumped out at me, too. The last excerpt had me picturing her as a sophisticated, bored, more mature woman, while this one completely changed the way I thought of her. I definitely have more questions now related to the maid's response (her laughter and the tightening of her face) and regarding who George is. Interesting to compare the "tightness" of the maid's face to the fact that the girl felt something "tight" and small in her chest. And that the padrone is the one that made her feel small when it was the maid who had laughed at her and treated her as a child -- "We must get back inside. You will be wet." And hadn't her husband told her not to get wet?
I wondered about the age difference, too, when "girl" replaced wife. I'm wondering how long the two will stay there...weeks? Months? What does George do for a living? Is George someone she'd looked up to before they married, and now she's bored? Is George someone with status, but maybe not so wealthy?
While the preceding passage focused on class, this one subtly shifts the emphasis (without removing the earlier one) to tensions between Americans and Europeans in the aftermath of the Great War. The American girl (thrice referenced here!) is contrasted to the (I can only imagine) older European maid, and the former appears full of childishness even as she enjoys a superior position over the latter. The maid is, understandably, put out.
I read this as a delightfully subtle and puckish commentary on American adventurism in foreign policy, with the American girl jaunting out into unfamiliar environs to engage in good deeds (but in fact driven by her own selfish desire for the kitty). She jaunts out under the great umbrella while the maid takes all the rain, even remaining outside to close the umbrella after the whole thing.
Likewise, the death toll of the Great War fell much more heavily on Europe than it did America, and it was Europe that suffered the profound devastation (the empty square of the story) of the war, not the heroic doughboys. I think Hemingway is perhaps reflecting here on what he saw in the eyes of Europeans (not the soldiers, necessarily, but the people) when he was a medic in the war. The young ingenue is full of nobility and selfishness, and largely ignorant of anyone else's conditions.
But wait, she is redeemed by a moment of clarity! As she re-enters the hotel she sees the padrone's quiet and unobtrusive performance of his duties--in stark contrast to her own performative antics--and she suddenly feels small, even while still finding herself in the spotlight. It's a great moment, like an amateur actor onstage for the first time, the spotlight in her eyes.
I am full of craving. Dukkha!!! It’s good for me to read it this way. I can feel my cells wanting to KNOW WHAT HAPPENS! I am an American girl, after all. Very elderly girl but still. Lol
A tribute to Hemingway's ability to draw the reader in! I definitely want to read on ... so tempted! But I am confident the benefits will be worth the wait. I would love to be able to write a story where the reader felt as you do.
Same here Carol! Trying hard to stick with George’s original instructions. “This exercise works best if you’ve never read the story. If you haven’t, hooray. And it’s best not to find it and read ahead. Just absorb it a fragment at a time.
But if you have read it…do your best to pretend you haven’t.” I’m so glad though that I’ve never read it so I can enjoy the full benefit of the exercise. And grateful to those here who have read it and are doing a great job pretending they haven’t. The process of reading & re-reading is fascinating. I wonder how you do not allow your knowledge of how the whole story unfolds to color even a little bit your re-reading of each section from the beginning. It is such a gift for us to be first timers with this story.
My read: now I’m contrasting the hotel keeper with George. The wife also comes alive for me when she sees him at his desk. But I don’t read her fondness of him as so much… entitlement as, here is this warm and attentive man who takes her concerns seriously, even when they are silly, and makes her feel seen. (As opposed to the aloof American guy upstairs who only feigns interest, clearly wants to chill out and do his own thing, even if he loves her.) If the hotel keeper were a little younger, I’d argue she’s lusting after him. (Took me a second read to notice he’s old. If you reread that passage assuming he’s young, it almost reads like a trashy romance novel.) OK so he’s old, but there’s a courtliness to their interaction, which European men do so well (and American women often delight in, thinking it’s meant specifically for them!) Sending the maid is a form of protection, caring, from the hotel keeper.. the wife is able to delight for just a moment in feeling feminine, and in « danger », but also someone to be taken seriously.
When the maid tightens at the wife speaking English, it could be her recognizing the dynamic and feeling « there goes the hotel keeper flirting again with a foreigner so he can feel masculine and desired and important and I’m here stuck holding the umbrella for this ditz who can’t be bothered to learn Italian »
Hemingway just got me in the mood to watch Emily in Paris Season 2. 😅
Yesss! I know it’s not « high art » per se but I enjoyed S1 way too much. Speaking of, should probably add it to my Excel spreadsheet of (real) artistic influences 😅
Haha, yeah, definitely not high art but I enjoyed it. It was entertaining! Makes me want to visit Paris again... and watch Amelie again (which reminds me: I need to add that movie to my spreadsheet)!
To me the shift from "wife" to "girl" represents a change in the protagonist's perspective, brought about by her failure to find the cat and the maid's mockery for wasting time on such a thing. It lines up with the shift in what the hotel-keeper is called as well - "padrone," which definitely evokes a fatherly/paternal power, inverting the social hierarchy that made her feel empowered earlier. She seems to be or to feel like a child being indulged by parents (the padrone and the maid) more than a person with any real power.
I also suspect that we'll see something more explicit on the subject of having or not having children, or possibly a miscarriage or abortion, soon; "I wanted a kitty" and the rest of that line strikes that bell pretty hard to me.
I too feel some premonition of miscarriage or abortion, I think for two reasons: (1) the Hemingway story I’ve read most is “Hills Like White Elephants” (okay, not a great reason) and (2) the maid asks in Italian if she has lost something. Rereading that question, I felt there was a certain weight to it.
Bryce, I agree with you, and I gave my reasons in a post responding to the previous section of the story. The maid now asking if she has lost something makes me more certain. I think this couple has lost a child.
To go along with the ideas of miscarriage or abortion, the man in the rubber cape could be seen as a death figure. For some reason I pictured it black. Maybe? I could be reaching for that one.
It struck me that way too only not so strongly that I could articulate it and I think that is an essential element of the art. That your thoughts are "reachable".
Yes - I really like your idea there - about children, miscarriage, difficulties. I noticed that I still feel sympathy for this unlikeable child-like woman at the end of the passage and this idea of yours feeds into that possibility that she is out of her depth in so many ways, maybe.
The more I think about this story, I’m starting to feel like the war is almost an invisible character. Was George in the war? Is that why they are at this town with the memorial, in what is apparently the off-season for tourists?
Her whims and complaints are frivolous compared to the loss and devastation Italians had just lived through.
I don’t despise her for her frivolity, though, She is an innocent (a girl!). To her, the whims and complaints feel big and urgent. However, she is in a position where no one around her can take her seriously.
“…maid’s face tightened.” Those four words create the most tension for me, along with her condescending laughter at the American girl’s mission to save a cat. Sometimes, perhaps, the only weapon a servant has against a rich tourist is contempt? Economic class distinctions seem to have become more stark. And I’m intrigued by the maid’s nationalist reaction to the English language. Is the maid to become a larger character in the story?
I find the back and forth between English and Italian and the attention Hemingway calls to it intriguing. At first, I thought the American wife was practicing what little Italian she knew. But when I read the line, “When she talked English the maid’s face tightened.” I wondered if the American woman/girl might actually speak enough Italian to communicate and the switch into English made the maid feel uncomfortable.
As for the cat and the issue of contempt, I’ll share a story that might shed a different light. Long ago, I attended a summer art program in Lacoste, a small village in the Luberon, best known at the time for the ruins of the château of the Marquis de Sade. A few female students spent the summer doting on a stray, pregnant cat. The kittens were born and disappeared a week before the program ended. A local woman had drowned them. She said, “Those cute kittens won’t be so cute in the winter when they’re grown, roaming the village caterwauling, starving.” So maybe the maid found the American naive and self-absorbed. And maybe she was put off by how the woman chose (or didn’t choose) to exercise her agency.
Wow, that story about the drowned kittens is intense. Growing up, my best friend’s family raised pigs, thousands of them. Their stark objectivity about the animals’ lives were distressing to me when I first experienced it. My sensitivities didn’t change but I came to accept the cultural differences.
Makes me think of Steinbeck’s Of M+M, “She slang her pups last night," said Slim. "Nine of ‘em. I drowned four of ‘em right off. She couldn’t feed that many."
In the case of the woman (she had a name, Germaine) who drowned the kittens, I believe a gritty realism factored in. She’d seen too many dazzling summers, the village alive with artists and tourists, turn into harsh, empty winters, her sleep interrupted by the howl of the mistral, the growls of strays.
I imagine the pigs on your best friend’s family’s farm had personalities, spirits, names. And though I’ve been a vegetarian most of my life, I’d rather see animals killed to feed people than for sport. I’d rather confront carcasses hanging in butcher shops (overt message — this that you’re about to partake once grazed in a field you might’ve driven by) than sanitized cuts on plastic-wrapped styrofoam trays. I appreciate the honesty over disguise.
I think the cat is very much a cultural signifier. Given the time/place, I'm guessing stray cats were a dime a dozen, and likely considered pests rather than pets.. So wanting to rescue one is like someone saying they wanted to go out and rescue, say, a squirrel in the yard—not something that needs intervention in the eyes of the maid/hotel proprietor. She is diminishing in their eyes even as the maid is forced to stand in the rain—close to the umbrella but not under it—to indulge her.
I'm remembering being struck in the first paragraph with how many times the war monument was mentioned. I felt then like the shadow of the just-concluded war (WW I) must be part of the story, part of the "rain". So, maybe there's an element of both nationalist and class distinctions that make sense to me for that time & place.
Personally, the deflation that occurred when the cat wasn't there delighted me-- as exactly the escalation that the story needed. And I felt the tension rise then, and with the maid's scoffing at the idea of going out to rescue a cat in the rain... The switch to American Girl is so perfect, makes me go "Ah, yes," to that lingering question, "Why doesn't she merit a name?" She's the American Wife so she can become the American Girl. To me, this is one of those bowling pins that had been up in the air, and has me nodding, yes, yes...
And then that sense of being both small/shrunken and internally important... Just can't wait to read the next installment. Building, building...
Yes, great observation about the post-war class and nation conflicts. Americans didn’t live in the war zone. Americans didn’t have to rebuild their country.
I haven't read Hemingway in a long time and have never read this story, but I also instantly noticed the monument in the first paragraph. Apart from the individual characters, there are the Americans (only two of them), the artists, the Italians (presumably from outside this town since they drive to see the monument), and the locals. So far, one of the Americans (George) is not engaged with his surroundings at all, the other (wife ... girl) seems to feel the need to rescue (or possess / be rescued by?) a cat that doesn't really seem to need rescuing, and neither the artists (who love the beauty of the place) nor the Italians (who are likely there to commemorate war heros) come out when it's raining. The locals are the ones who live with the effects of the rain. It makes me wonder if this doesn't have something to do with the fact that only those who really go through a war know what it's like. I mentioned this in an earlier thread, but the Americans (only two of them) who know no one else in the hotel seem to be very significant -- are they sweeping in to "save the day" in some way without really knowing the people they are coming to rescue?
Yes! My sense of the American wife/girl is not that she's there to rescue or save the day. More that she's feeling aimless and alone. The cat would've given her companionship and purpose, which it appears she's not getting in her marriage? The husband is characterized as indifferent to what's happening around him, immersed in his book in their room. Maybe he's a writer? Taking advantage of post-war situation... cheap living along the Mediterranean. And she's without her own direction, drifting in his wake?
Yes, on the wife/girl, it started out looking like she wanted to rescue the cat: “No, I’ll get it. The poor kitty out trying to keep dry under a table,” then changed to her needing the cat for the reasons you mentioned: “Oh, I wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty.” She seems to have mixed motives, which reminds me of America and war. Her husband, on the other hand, reminds me of pre-war apathy. Probably far-fetched and a bit too symbolic but just having fun with it!
It does seem like she is just traipsing along with no purpose, needing something to make her feel like she has a sense of purpose. All this could shift in the next section, though!
Me too. My face tightened before this when she interrupted her husband while reading. And the maid must be soaked. I wonder if we get to see the maid soaked. Maybe it’s more powerful not to see it?
Yes, the maid stays outside with the umbrella in the rain. Dismissed from the narrative for now. That’s a tool in the the narrative tool box—to have the story itself dismiss the maid to represent the way the American wife also dismisses her. And, here, I find myself choosing a side in this little battle!
I had the same reaction about whether to choose sides between these two women! But I also found the face tightening as a vehicle used for how the women dismissing and diminishing each other lessens them both in their strength of character.
Yes, and a fragment of movie dialogue popped into my head. Can’t remember the movie but the fragment is “I’m not a class warrior but…” So, as a reader, I’ll be wary of my class warrior tendencies as this story continues.
I think “I’m not a class warrior, but…” is from High Fidelity. I totally heard the phrase in John Cusack’s voice. :) I, too, found myself choosing sides in the interaction - and getting mad that the maid is left outside to clean up. Love the idea of the narrative dismissing the maid just like the wife does. Such a great way to provoke a reader’s reaction.
For all who haven’t seen it, I recommend Lina Wertmüller’s 1974 film “Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August,” debate whether the film’s more about class warfare or male fantasy. Like with Hemingway’s story, it’s hard to check our biases and distill how we experience characters and protagonists.
But back to “Cat in the Rain,” which I think is less about class privileges and resentments than about a woman/wife/girl who might have less theory of mind than a raven.
George talks about this in an earlier post, about establishing a character and then adding a reaction, so that the character's actions have more meaning. I feel that the maid's face tightening helps establish the meaning of the AW's actions.
But I'm disappointed that she seems to be simply entitled, vain and frivolous. I hope this character becomes more complex.
I hope so, too. I'd like to think that her vanity, entitlement and frivolousness are masks for some deep insecurity. The "momentary feeling of supreme importance" is fleeting—as if she is trying to quell a more permanent sense of insignificance.
I took this to mean that she was ensnared in a bizarre relationship with her hosts, that her feeling of supreme importance is desperate and fragile in that she realizes or intuits that the staff confers that feeling upon her and could snatch it back at any time. That's not power at all, quite the opposite.
Yes! I thought about that, too. The maid is probably pissed that the hotel owner asked her to offer the umbrella while she, the maid, got drenched. Damned privileged Americans...
Wow, so happy you are here! Heard David Means read your story, “The Toughest Indian in the World,” on the TNY Fiction Podcast and really, really "enjoyed" it; twisted me up "a thousand ways to Sunday." Very exciting to have another "known/established/respected" writer here, along with George Saunders leading this wondrous technique of reading fiction, particularly the short story form. I feel so honored to be amongst everyone's serious and dedicated company here, and to have such quality writers as you and George to guide us on this journey. Thank you.
On a second read, I find myself wondering about the antecedent of "she" in "When she talked English the maid’s face tightened." It appears the maid has switched to English, too... could "she" refer to her, instead of to the wife/woman/girl? This would change my reading somewhat! The maid might be amused by the American, but this facial expression might register focus or mild annoyance at speaking English, rather than disdain in reaction to the wife's decision to do so.
More likely Hemingway intends us to understand that he is translating Italian to English for our benefit when he has the maid say “A cat?...A cat in the rain?” but I think there's some ambiguity (?) If the maid has already switched to English, it's less clear why she'd be pained by the wife's decision to use it, too.
...actually--scratch that--either way, the American woman makes the switch to English first, which matters. I'm still not certain about that "she," though.
I had the same reaction to that line. At first I felt she was being protective—offering the umbrella, offering shelter—but her face-tightening felt ominous. The girl isn't safe with her.
I am a late arrival to story club and am just catching up, but I love this observation about the "maid's face tightened." That and the use of "girl" immediately changed the tone of the story for me and my perceptions of the wife. For a few paragraphs I was thinking of her as strong, haughty; now, as tremendously insecure. I have also begun to wonder how the husband capitalizes on and reinforces that insecurity. An amazing example of the power of a single word or short phrase.
I noticed that at the end of the piece, George Saunders is somehow in the room, reading. So that’s cool. Also, as a reader, I at first thought she wanted to help the cat, but now, when the cat is gone and had escaped its somewhat desperate, huddled situation (presumably for better safety from the rain) the woman is disappointed for herself instead of happy for the cat that we thought she cared about. Turns out she wants to trap it, so to speak, even more, but this time for herself. This is when she becomes the “girl.”
Just happened to come across this article about Hemingway by Joan Didion (RIP) from the New Yorker in 1998, and it made me think of our exercise here. She's talking about the first paragraph of "A Farewell to Arms" (link: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/11/09/last-words-6):
"That paragraph, which was published in 1929, bears examination: four deceptively simple sentences, one hundred and twenty-six words, the arrangement of which remains as mysterious and thrilling to me now as it did when I first read them, at twelve or thirteen, and imagined that if I studied them closely enough and practiced hard enough I might one day arrange one hundred and twenty-six such words myself. Only one of the words has three syllables. Twenty-two have two. The other hundred and three have one. Twenty-four of the words are “the,” fifteen are “and.” There are are four commas. The liturgical cadence of the paragraph derives in part from the placement of the commas (their presence in the second and fourth sentences, their absence in the first and third), but also from that repetition of “the” and of “and,” creating a rhythm so pronounced that the omission of “the” before the word “leaves” in the fourth sentence (“and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling”) casts exactly what it was meant to cast, a chill, a premonition, a foreshadowing of the story to come, the awareness that the author has already shifted his attention from late summer to a darker season. The power of the paragraph, offering as it does the illusion but not the fact of specificity, derives precisely from this kind of deliberate omission, from the tension of withheld information. In the late summer of what year? What river, what mountains, what troops?"
Thank you for this!
I love the Didion claim "offering as it does the illusion but not the fact of specificity..."
Yes, I loved that line.
Thank you for sharing this find, Priscilla! I had been annoyed by that last bunch of short sentences in the story, and I do know it is characteristic of H’s writing, but now I see how the writer can use this negative feeling in me to create tension, movement and foreshadowing new info… wow, this is powerful!
Priscilla, thank you for noticing and sharing Joan Didion's observations. There's something in the connection to the remembrances of Didion that feels so much a part of what Story Club is about...
Even more than the sentence structure, I'm seeing strong parallels in the content: How the allusions to war (the troops, the war monument) are entwined with the change in weather/season (barren trees post-summer/ the grey unending rain), and how this together creates exactly that sense of "a chill, a premonition, a foreshadowing of the story to come..." For me, since the opening, I felt that the aftermath of what was then the Great War, is essential to this story.
When punctuation and words and how they follow, support, resonate in sentences doing the same work and building into paragraphs . . . are used the way a master painter considers even the smell of the paint or the exact size of the canvas. Inspiring. Thanks.
Thanks for this. I will miss having Joan Didion around. What a master of the sentence.
Thanks for sharing that article! So much to be gathered from the omission of a single "the."
Priscilla, I just read this, too, and especially appreciated this part of the text. In fact, it stopped me in my tracks as I thought about how it applies to Cat in the Rain.
I’ve been thinking of the similarities between this story and the beginning(and ending) of A Farewell to Arms. If memory serves the “in the rain” phrase also repeats many times in the beginning and ending of Farewell. I think Farewell was written quite a bit later.
Thanks for this, it's great. I was struck by all the 'the's in the first para of our story - and it seems there are plenty in AFTA too - for me they seem to slow things down, make me think more about the objects being referred to, add a weight to the scene. The small details are very interesting to consider aren't they?
Thank you so much for this.
‘Bears examination’; certainly; to my mind Joan Didion’s exposition of the first paragraph’s making fits just as well if the words are read with poetic or prose meaning in mind.
Found, copied and pasted the opening paragraph of 'Farewell to Arms' into a new Word document as prose. Then copied the prose and pasted it below, with the heading 'as poetry'; sprinkled a pinch of 'Essence of Didion' in my imagination; then set about bringing a poem directly out the prose text. A satisfying wordplay: same word string now morphed into a poetic presentation on an A4; no loss or alteration of punctuation either; just a pleasing patterning of typed words loosened and laid out in white space to be seen on and / or spoken from the page. And there remains, always will remain, the option to take a little time for another such rewarding wordplay.
I can see how that would work even for the opening of our piece. If you read it out loud and listen, you can see how the words would be laid out on the page as poetry rather than prose, without changing anything else but layout.
You’re right Priscilla, it’ll be interesting to re-run wordplay along the same lines with either just the first four sentences of ‘Cat in the Rain’ or the whole of its opening paragraph.
Works out, readily enough and well enough, both shorter (first for sentences) and longer form (all of the opening paragraph). Not claiming my wordplay results in great poetry but the two drafts of re-laid text do (I think) pass muster as poems. Like any poems they can be further tweaked and honed with the aim of enhancement but whether or not that happens I've already become clearer that it is possible to discern a 'poetic' dimension of Hemingway's writing, and further that this a source of the 'strength' of his prose.
I am loving your commentary, George S. You really go all out and enlarge everything about the American wife character while simultaneously talking about Hemingway's elements of story, elements you illustrate as the definition of fine storytelling. I mean, in the Bigger Sense, that everything you're teaching is sticking with me. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking the newsletter feels a lot like being in the same room. Thank you.
Confession time: I'm loving Story Club, but am noticing that instead of writing, I'm doing this "writing adjacent" thing... The thing that makes me feel like I'm moving towards writing, but without actually taking the plunge. Reading and thinking about writing, but not facing the blank page myself. All the learning on craft won't help, if I'm not actually putting my own words on paper, creating my own characters, making them specific.
The feeling I get is "I don't know how to start..." And so, I don't.
I'm giving myself an assignment: start your own story BEFORE reading the next installment of Swim with a Disappearing Cat in the Rain. Have fun. Imitate Hemingway. Refuse your main character the gift of a name. Unleash a storm. Drench everyone. Give some of them warm towels.
I agree with that - let this stuff be a nice after-writing thing or, if it's messing with your writing...let it go.
It's inviting me toward writing with a fresh energy. Just needed to tell on myself to notch up the pressure a bit to take the plunge. Writing first. Story Club after
RE: I don't know how to start & positive pressure & fresh energy. Passing on something someone suggested to me. Take a crumb of your idea - choose anything, one word, a name, whatever. Set a timer for 25 minutes. Write, letting it flow without reading back. Stop at the bell. Your writing day is done. Read Story Club. Overnight ideas bubble up or not, and you'll write the next day for 25 minutes to see what happens (maybe suddenly that isn't enough time, so you hit the timer and do a double session). The third day, you'll set the timer or maybe your story takes over and you forget to set the timer and write until you have a cramp or need a glass of water. Repeat regularly and you'll get to the end of what you started. It will be the zero draft, possibly unreadable and certainly incomplete. But hooray, you have something to re-write, which is rewarding after writing on a blank page.
Personally, it felt hard to start when I thought I had to write something good every day. But if you imagine the start of a story is like tilling the soil before planting, you can roll up your sleeves and accept the muck. Don't expect a harvest at the end of the writing day. Expect manure and a lot of manual labor. But, the manual labor ends up feeling good, and that mental tension you have about needing to write - it will disappear.
Brenda, thank you for taking the time to share this. Yes, that "tilling the soil" place is exactly where I'm at. And I live in a place where the muck & manure metaphors land well, lol.
And this: " the manual labor ends up feeling good, and that mental tension you have about needing to write - it will disappear." True with building barns, true with writing stories. True with nearly anything one can fret about, isn't it?
Here is my confession: I am at the end of the third year of wrangling a novel with no end in sight, and there is not one moment of the day that passes when I'm not fiddling with it either at the keyboard or in my addled brain. So I'm tremendously grateful for literary explorations like these (and #tolstoytogether/#apstogether/#booklit in twitter). I stop thinking about my own hopelessly lost protagonist for a few minutes and think about someone else's. What a relief.
So happy to find #TolstoyTogether people here!
I'm looking forward to the upcoming slow reading of Joyce's Stephen Hero with Belinda McKeon!
I'm intrigued... What is #TolstoyTogether?
Kathy at the Ranch, we just finished our second slow read (approx 15 pp a day) of War and Peace - I imagine there will be another one next fall....in the meanwhile there is James Joyce beginning Jan. 12 and later this spring, Moby Dick!!!! Here are the details for the Stephen Hero/Joyce slow read....
https://apublicspace.org/news/detail/belinda-mckeon-james-joyce
and here is more info on the apublicspace #tolstoytogether read (that finished last month)
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/09/08/tolstoys-uncommon-sense-and-common-nonsense/
the magazine A Public Space sponsors a series of slow-readings-together -- it started with War & Peace early in the pandemic and some of us just finished a second reading -- we all read at the same planned pace (mostly) and commented on Twitter at #TolstoyTogether -- you can go there and to @apublicspace to see the discussions and the plans for future readings. I've only done War & Peace the one time (just now), but some people have been reading along together throughout the series.
I love this... the positive side of social media, right?
yes! and I learned the value of a good hashtag & that it's primarily "trending Twitter" that's so toxic
Sadie, you go!
Stop wrangling and get with writing Sadie? Stop being dilettante, grateful for literary digressions, better to get with the conversation . . . the rich fat, in these threads, really is worth chewing on Sadie, and then ruminating reflectively on. You are not hopelessly anything Sadie, just an aspirant writer who may benefit from the forensic focusing fest that George, having invited us in, is constantly encouraging us to stick with. I’m addressing you Sadie but also myself. Thanks for your comment; thought provoking; pleased to be able to opt to reply.
And another thing, just to clarify I am not “hopelessly anything”, my protagonist is….on the A838 as a matter of fact, somewhere between Tongue and Durness…..right exactly where I put her…for the time being….
What a dramatic setting and a fantastic 59 minute drive. What's she doing between Tongue and Durness I find myself curious to know? Is she stopped somewhere or is she moving along the coast, or around the loch, or crossing the headland to roll Durness? Is she alone? Maybe being pursued? Or heading for a showdown? I'm intrigued, even without sight of even the shortest snippet of text from your working draft Sadie. It's a pity that the Met Office reports there is a fog down up there in the Far North just now, stops me getting airborne to trace the route low level in my helicopter. Mind you the weather is saving me from an unwarranted digression on a wild capercaillie chase . . . so I'll bid you adieu Sadie with best wishes for your continuing journey down the long and winding novel writing road your travelling.
I do write, Rob. Something called the daily grind. It’s fantastic. You should try it sometime. And yea, I am a dilettante and proud of it.
And I love how you describe this “forensic focusing fest”
What a handy coin you have to hand Sadie, one side ‘Grind’ the other ‘Digress’. I’m glad to get the sense that you are going to keep wrangling on, write on to the end of the road your travelling with this novel.
Do you need a writing prompt? (You wrote "I don't know how to start," so perhaps you do know what you want to write about, but just can't kick things into gear.) If you don't have a writing idea at the moment and simply want an exercise to flex your writing muscles, you could try drawing from the story we are studying: Write a very short story about a married couple on a trip to a foreign place. There is a conflict between them--either the wife is bored with the husband or the husband is bored with the wife. (Or choose your own conflict.) So here they are in their hotel room, together. What happens? (Ignore completely, of course, if you don't need/want a prompt!)
I love this. I do think we know when we don't know, or when we say we don't know. In my classes, if I throw out a question to a student and she says, "Gee, I don't know," my standard response is to ask, "Well, if you did know, what would you say?" Amazingly, and this happens all the time, is that the most pithy things will come forth. What is that about, do you think?
I can't tell if your remarks here are aimed at me or at someone else's post, but I'll tell you what I think, since you've asked. I think you do something wonderful each time you give your students the opportunity to imagine what they would say "if they did know." And then, of course, some "pithy things" rise to the surface, because they are released from the fear of being wrong.
I know, it's hard to tell sometimes which post is being replied to, Mary, but you're right, it was to you. And I do think you're right about being released from the fear. All students are seemingly terrified of being "wrong," because we've stigmatized being "wrong." I always tell them, "There are no right or wrong interpretations to literature; only stronger or weaker arguments based on the textual evidence." But even as I try to convince them of this, I have to keep repeating the mantra. Once they begin to believe it and take me seriously, we have some rather amazing discussions! Thanks for the reply and the insight.
Thanks, Mary. I ended up giving myself a prompt there right after "I don't know how to start," with the idea of a playful riff on the opening of A Cat in the Rain. A Dog in the Snow, if you will. Reflecting, I don't think I need prompts. I think I need a willingness to start in spite of all the openness and ambiguity that comes with a very fresh beginning. One of the gifts of A Swim, to me, was the insight that ambiguity is always the reader's starting place, so why shouldn't it be the writer's? And that removing ambiguity, layering on constraints through specificity is the work of the writer.
Oh, good to hear that you've launched into something. Here's to your "fresh beginning," and also to your eventual ending!
Thanks Mary. I have a novella out there that I have a sequel to in draft form that I need to rewrite. Sooooooo too many things in the pot already. cheers MM
That's fantastic.
writers gotta write. I haven't. Changing that.
Hi, Kathy. I was feeling guilty because I was writing more than paying attention in class. I mostly do Julia Cameron's spin on free writing, morning pages, and it's thrilling when coupled with this course to see what leeches into them. Today's effort forced me over and over again to break down sentences and enjoy the effect of meting out detail. Also, curt sentences create more opportunities to decide on how I bridge them, a surprising revelation and reward. The result has a slight odor of parody in it that was put there by God to prevent me from ever thinking of it as more than an exercise or having a literary future. Regards, John
Hi John, excited to meet a fellow a morning pager. Julia Cameron is first my creative goddess to show me the way. I think you do immerse yourself into the story club lessons for jt to bleed out in morning pages. I am yet to use these lessons as I have not been writing stories, but I want to re read George’s lessons so I am can imbibe them in a wholistic manner. Thank you.
Do you know the book "Free Play"? It is one of my favorite craft books written by a violinist on the nominal topic of improvisation. It emboldened me to take morning pages where I wanted them to go but was afraid to take them without an outside voice to give me the authority. On certain days, I allow myself to steer the morning pages only a little and if it works and it flows, great. If the pen doesn't flow I back out quickly, force my mind blank, and wait for something to come. This modification has started to inch morning pages closer to facile, fluid composition without hardly compromising Cameron's intention. Besides this course, I am conscious that the material I read the day before will leech into my morning pages and I welcome it. Try it and see if it works for you!
Addendum: there's other deeper things going on in morning pages that I wish to acknowledge, because the temptation to see how you can leap from morning pages to masterpiece is always there and this temptation can deprive you of their many other benefits.
1) They habituate you to "flow" as discussed in Free Play. By habituate, I mean "get you in the practice of".
2) They teach you how to bridge the paradox of carrying the dual conviction that your words matter, are vital, etc. and your words don't matter at all. Morning pages can slowly bring you to a relaxed attitude toward your own writing from which your best work will come. That's why a dear friend writes over her previous morning pages to drive this point into her synapses.
3) They are written out in long hand to engage the maximum number of neurons. As you do this, you are subtly and gradually reprogramming them.
4) They expose you to the idea of "practicing practicing" which we are ALWAYS trying to short-cut.
5) By design, because nobody is "watching you", they expose you to the idea that your mind is sufficient sanctuary for your best writing.
Just ordered. What an invaluable recommendation! Thank you so much. Would love to talk about what an influence Julia's works are. in our growth as a writers. Julia led me to Natalie Goldberg, and I am so grateful to these two creative goddesses in my life.
John, if I may ask you, what do you mean by 'The result has a slight odor of parody in it that was put there by God to prevent me from ever thinking of it as more than an exercise or having a literary future. Regards, John'
I did not understand 'to prevent me from ever thinking of it as more than an exercise or having a literary future'
Thank you
Radhika,
Oh! If you ever try to write like a big deal author, it's damn near impossible, at least for me, not to watch the whole thing slide into parody despite your best efforts. I think that is extra easy to do with the Hemster and inevitable with the indomitable Faulkner! In this case, I argue, it's a saving grace because it makes me not want to show them to anybody and thus prevent me from violating one of the JC's bedrock rules for Morning Pages , "they are to be shown to no one".
https://juliacameronlive.com/2017/04/19/morning-pages-10/.
I have a Draconian friend who overwrites her morning pages from the day before thus guaranteeing for all time, short of forensics, that she'll show them to no one because there is nothing left that is legible.
I am not as golden or pure as my friend and find that I want to raid my morning pages for fodder all the time. And so I find great benefit in loosening the rules but being mindful of their usefulness and returning to them often.
Some days I go by the spirit of Cameron's definition and sometimes by the law.
Regards,
John
I completely agree with you, infact sometimes I write stuff in morning pages, that I cull and put it on the screen. I use her MP journals. They are a balm to my soul - her constant words of wisdom on each page. Today's was particularly valuable - it was something about self-respect, see i forget it now, need to go back and read it.
I saw your today's comments on Julia. I am so glad she is at the tip of your lips and mind, like she is for me. Infact I think I have been removed from her other than MPs. Need to go back and ensconce in her infinite wisdom. I have most of her books with me, and do her dailies sometimes.
I have ordered the book you suggested, and very excited about its arrival into my life. Thank you and wishing you a wonderful year filled with writing possibilities.
If you can set up your profile, maybe point to some of your writings, I would love to take a look.
Kathy, I really appreciate this comment and I needed to hear it. There’s a sneaky part of myself that says, “Let me just learn everything in Story Club real quick and after *that* I’ll be all set to face my revisions.” The derailer!
I’m trying to set that P/N meter up on my own being so I can tell when I’m giving myself the wrong job.
Read George’s posts, get inspired to read fiction with my eyes wider open, and then go make my own sentences, great!
Keeping a hold of my self-respect while I read and learn from all these insightful comments that I wouldn’t be able to make = great when I can do it, but also dicey.
Start stressing about how I’m reading Cat in the Rain like a moron compared to all these wizards in Story Club, clench up, try and read harder, forget that I’m here because of my own writing, bzzt.
Eye on the prize. Thanks, Kathy!
Tina, I peeked at your blog & read/saw your illuminated Oscars & you made me laugh, and you gotta know that the nodding/smiling/chuckling moments you gave me... it fed me at least as much as anything you could've added to the "post-war italian maid holding umbrellas over impulsive American wife/chlld" conversation. Thank you. Onward.
Aw, Kathy, that makes me glad. Thank you for saying so. Onward, indeed.
So glad to see you here my friend! Hope the fam is well and let's have some fun with Mr. S and this amazing crew! :-D
Hi Comdar! So nice to see you in here! The fam is great, hope you are, too, and fun, yes—let’s do just that! :)
Comdar is back, but on low-wattage! I need to get some mojo. I think I left it back in 2008. That's really all I'm worried about, being vaccinated and boosted and ferreting around the place for where I misplaced my g-damn imagination! Have you seen it?! ;-)
It’s under the thing, I bet. Check under the thing!
Big hugs. You're the best. :-D
That's an excellent plan. Cheering you on..
Kathy - have you read Swim In The Pond, i am yet to, and am looking for a reading/exercises to do - buddy. let me know if you would like to take the plunge into the Pond. Thanks
Radhika, I did read A Swim in the Pond, and that's why I was so delighted to hear that George was starting the substack & that I could continue the work AND with the opportunity to talk to people in real time about all the thoughts. When I was reading A Swim, I often wished for someone to talk to about it, and I think your idea of finding a reading buddy or group will add to your experience. Good luck with that!
Love it, Kathy. Write for yourself. It's lonely out there, so this makes some sense, connection-wise. Thanks for your comments to my posts. Again, write for yourself. George Saunders is a model for this, since we track career- and age-wise. Best, MM
Hey Kathy. I note that George indicated that he will be setting some writing exercises later on as part of this course. So getting in early with some writing is not a bad idea.
Oh, do I feel your pain :-)! The way morning pages has helped me has much to do with Julia Cameron's rule not to share them with anyone. This is the great liberating agent.
I fought this idea as much as anything. I still fight it. Nagging me is the injunction itself: "What if I write anything good?", the devil on my left shoulder says. The angel on my right says, "The devil makes a good point. John would never violate an edict of Julia Cameron!"
The devil, who always has to get the last lick in, says, "Great! Then we agree John should do nothing other than sit on his hands!"
Like you Kathy and I sense many others, I feel I'm moving towards writing. Personally I'm very happy to be, as you put it so neatly, 'doing this "writing adjacent" thing'. This is because Story Club is manifestly getting many of us active beyond 'reading and thinking about writing' by getting us writing / conversing online. OK I'm not just yet writing a new original short story or freshly reworking an extant fiction; but since taking out a paid subscription and being given posting rights I've certainly been exercising my option to comment rather than feeling myself sat stuck like a duck struck dumb by facing the blank page. I really like your intention to start your own story BEFORE reading . . . I hope you're manage to do this and wish you and 'No-Name' your main character "Bon Voyage" as you whip up the yarn that will be the warp and weft of the tale you'll be telling of 'The Swimming Cat that Disappeared in a Pond in the Rainstorm' . . . but no worries if your story is slow to come, let it marinade and meantime stick with reading and thinking about each extract in the sequence that is being laid before us.
I wrote yesterday, Rob. Opening lines of a story. I'm old enough to know that there's not always tomorrow, and I don't want to spend any more of my life "moving towards writing." I am writing. You can't learn to swim by watching from the side of the pool. You should jump in, too. I think deep down, you also want to be a jumper inner.
That's great Kathy, writing down the opening lines of a story, right there where you were a day or so ago on the Ranch. How much further have you moved towards writing the next lines of the story?
Here's are lovely opening lines, which have stayed with me since I first read them and which your comment brings back to centre stage in my mind: 'Come on in the water's lovely / It isn't really cold at all'. You'll gather from the way I've set these lines down that I'm quoting from a poem, but maybe you're already wondering what happens next?
Here's another opening line: The snow spread its blanket on the bitter earth. The shape of the story that follows has been in my mind since not longer after the sentence arrived, gifted to me by an acquaintance towards 9.30 PM back on 6th April last. Its time to be written down hasn't arrived quite yet, but not too far into the new year it'll be shunted out of the sidings and into the word forge to be worked on. I'd be quite interested to have your thoughts on what, were this a story of yours in the making, might be the next words you'd write: in the next sentence or through to the end of the opening paragraph?
And here, starting at the fourth sentence following, is the opening paragraph of a short story that I wrote and aired aloud twice during November. I'll be putting the piece up for workshopping in one, possibly two, writing groups in January. Should you care to offer any thoughts that strike about what happens next don't hesitate to share them Kathy, they'll be most welcome.
Ha! I clicked Post before pasting this opening to a story draft into my Reply:
Sam, a handsome young man recently qualified as a Chartered Accountant and just returned from a grand time touring around Europe before the expiry of his Student Inter Rail Pass, will be coming to live in a Royal Town not so far away from where you may be sat reading this, at a time not so far ahead but certainly in the future. The story of what is going to happen to him is quite remarkable. You may be amazed but can be assured every that word you will read is true: Sam’s story is going to come to pass.
Oh, do I hear that, KATR. On the other hand, I love this exercise and wished George's book kept to this method.
I felt rather put off by this section. It took me a while to figure out why but I guess I felt the manipulation of how we were supposed to feel as readers was a bit heavy-handed, like the writer—would this be the omniscient voice of the narrator—telling us, as readers, this is how you should regard the American woman, the American wife, the Wife as now being revealed as a superficial and shallow, naïve American girl, not worthy of a name because of her childish behavior. The husband however gets a name, George, and it will be revealed how he is worthy of this, perhaps because he is more intelligent, more mature than she. The kind hotel owner becomes the padrone, the maid becomes unfriendly, and the girl craves importance which makes her childish. However as I write these observations I do notice this is a really powerful way of making a dramatic change in our points of view and it creates a lot tension to prepare us or unprepare us for what might happen next.
I felt similarly about the change from American wife to wife to American girl. But I wonder if that is meant to reflect, not so much a change in the way Hemingway wants us to judge the AW (from outside, as it were), as a transition in the way that she is thinking about herself, in a sort of unconscious way. Perhaps there's something about seeing the cat in the rain, coupled with her interaction with the hotel owner, which makes her feel more child-like. And perhaps now that she's back in the room with her husband, that self-conception will recede, or be brought into conflict with her self-conception as an AW. No idea. Let's see.
I also read this shift toward her as a child to be reflective of her own feeling of smallness, which seems to be the case based on the line "Something felt very small and tight inside the girl." This doesn't seem to be an outside judgment, but a reflection of her internal state.
I thought it indicated a shift to the maid's perspective. The American wife becomes the American girl because that's how the maid sees her - a foreigner and a tourist, more specifically an American one, and a girl. Possibly quite a silly one, too - getting herself wet in the rain to rescue a "kitty". I imagine that the maid vaguely resents having to trail after such a person with the umbrella and bring her in from the rain. The interaction makes the AW feels both small and important, the way a small child does when their mother comes to stop them from doing something stupid and/or dangerous. Chastened, but also cared for. Only here it's not a parent-child relationship but a more of a master-servant / employer-employee one, based on status and money and power.
I agree with you. The writing feels condescending and almost mysoginistic
Hemingway could be an ass, to be sure, but what saves this story for me is the relation between the Italian staff and the Americans. This story was first published in 1925 and begins with an allusion to the WWI monument visible from the Americans' room. Italy was a somewhat reluctant partner in WWI and emerged from the war with more land but depleted resources and diminished political status, whereas the United States--the baby--became gained status and an industrial infrastructure that made them/us a world power without suffering from fighting within its own borders. The woman in "The Cat in the Rain" demonstrates a sense of entitlement that probably exceeds her socio-economic status. I like that Hemingway, who fought in WWI, puts the Italians in the driver's seat in this story, just as he puts the Spaniards in the foreground of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. When I think of the "American wife/girl" as a specific character who represents an unearned sense of entitlement, I find it easier to appreciate the story as a whole.
I agree. Brilliant.
What? from Ernest?
LOL
I think I would prefer if we were not told how to feel about her through the diminution in her character by how she is described, so that we can come to whatever conclusion Hemingway thinks by her subsequent actions. But I guess that's going to come soon enough.
Yep.
I think we are meant to feel put off and annoyed. And I know why the maid's face did that tightening thing. These Americans with their terrible Italian, don't they know the hotel workers (everywhere at all times) all speak perfectly adequate English? This cat clearly belongs outside, why try to take it into a hotel room? And why is this wife not with her husband (where she belongs)? And the husband, has he even noticed that his little girl yankee wife has left the room? Is what he is reading so fascinating, so incredibly deep, that nothing else matters? If I were the cat, I would have left too. I would have run away as fast as my four legs could carry me.
Certainly these days hospitality workers--and the public--tend to speak adequate English. I'm not sure that was true when the story was written, although clearly the maid does.
Thanks Annie. I really like how you broke this down, Annie. I'm new at this and am blown away at all the nuance and possibilities. I think I'm going to get a lot out of this year. Thanks George!
It was such a stand-out shift...I've also been wondering about how he plays with point of view in these few first sections! At first it's ambiguous narration and they're "two Americans", when it's focused on husband and wife, she's " American wife" or "wife", then, when it's her and the hotel staff, she's "American girl" - so I wonder if it's also functioning as a tool to create roving POV within third person POV? Also, a consistent feeling of isolation (this was the major mood I got from the first paragraph, they don't know anyone, the rain has driven people away) that's further emphasized by her being seen always through what feels like *two* sets of eyes - the narrator's and her husbands, the narrator's and the maid's...creates so much distance! Thank's for this comment, so much to think about <3
The American wife sets out on a mission but it falls apart almost before it gets started. The maid even questions the very existence of a cat in the rain, laughs at the very idea and that reaction seems to pop the wife's bubble. No one else has even seen the cat. (I'm trying to remember ever seeing a cat in the rain and can't but then I can't remember a lot of stuff.) Everything works to turn the wife around.
The energy threatens to dip here but instead there is renewed escalation as she reenters the hotel, passes in confusion by the owner and into her and George's room. She has failed to save the cat from the rain but she has not gotten wet, not physically anyway. Will the cat reappear in the courtyard? Will the rain stop? Will we learn the American wife's name? Will George redeem himself? Will a new dynamic emerge between the couple?
I noticed that Hemingway takes pains to stipulate that the path is gravel, states it twice and I could hear the women's footsteps as they crunched along through the rain. I appreciated that.
I've never read this story, and reading it this way, not knowing how long it is or where I am in the text is a new experience for me. I keep thinking about it as I go through my day, this spinning ball up in the air, up over my head. When and where will it land?
I don't like not knowing how much more there is to this story. It's okay that I don't know what's going to happen--that's what happens with every story. But I do miss the physical words on the page, that--at a glance--tell me if I am near the end or not. I realize that stories are often read out loud and in such cases we don't know how close we are to the end. But I prefer to read stories off a page, and I like the knowledge that gives me--the white spaces, the length of the story, the length of the paragraphs, the use or non-use of quotation marks, etc.--that you can't get otherwise. Shorter version: this way of reading, while fascinating, also frustrates me.
So, Mary, your prompted me to think that George Saunders has turned the reading of this story about an American couple in an off-season Italian resort hotel into a metaphor for living in the trenches of WWI. Does that seem about right?
I'm finding it surprisingly disconcerting too, not to be able to pace myself. And come to think of it, that subconscious 'how long is this gonna take?' is something that simultaneously irks and intrigues me about short stories in general.
I like the observation about the gravel path, that the crunching sound it likely would have made might have startled the cat into running away from the woman. Perhaps the cat reappears in a more dire circumstance, setting off the woman in a more dangerous mission with greater stakes than getting wet.
Bravo!
That’s very similar to my experience. The spinning ball in the air.
A thought unrelated to the story, but not unrelated to the work we are doing: I am reading Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence, in which the protagonist says that while in prison, she taught herself to read “with murderous attention.” Many thanks, George, for sharing this secret with us. Happy not to be self-taught (nor in prison).
A tangent starting with loving Louise Erdrich's writing - sorry Martha - for piggybacking to just write some things here that are much on my mind and relate to writing. I may be off base but through Louise Erdrich's novels, their characters, I feel I gain a kind of quasi-direct experiences of life as lived by them - knowing she is an enrolled member of the Turtle Band of Chippewa Indians so are drawn from her lived experience (and aims her writing at a wider audience than those within that culture). I mean isn't that one of the things novels and stories can do, or are supposed to be able to do? And yet... is it possible? I just pulled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie - so privileged he is participating in Story Club - and am going to reread it - and look up others of his works to enjoy. I wonder about these things: how much can a writer take us into the experience of a different way of being? Is commonality of experience required in order to interpret meaning accurately and fully? I'm thinking of this in the context of just having read Ray Monk's biography of Wittgenstein which puts Wittgenstein's thinking in lived context and which covers his deeply interesting ideas about aesthetic and experiential knowing, which I'm only now coming to with anything approaching understanding. Thinking of it also in the context of "own voices" and similar topics in literature today. As well as in real life. How two people can say the same words but they slot into different frameworks of meaning and convey different things accordingly. Anti-vaxxers. Trumpies. Oil magnates. Priests. Fast car or fast fashion lovers. People who read recipe books for fun! So many people are "not my tribe" in ways maybe trivial or maybe not. Wittgenstein actually has helped me better understand these gulfs between us, how they lie not in what we say but in the framework of our understanding, and how we make meaning beyond words. How to explain music to someone who has not appreciation of music? I'm learning to acknowledge that the ridge I live on is unceded land of Awaswas-speaking people of the Amah Mutsun tribal band. The language of this is new. Like the "they" pronoun is new. And welcome. The framework of meaning or the skin of it - which we construct the world of meaning out of - must be flexible and grow and transform. Art - novels and stories and plays and essays and etc - my experience is they can work on that level and I feel some limited sense of optimism in this area. Okay - all done, but not dusted. Pardon me, and maybe someone will be having these kinds of ideas too, and maybe will come to this little cul-de-sac of the Story Club comment world! Aside from Martha for whom I sincerely hope this may be interesting - or easy to skim over and move on at least!
Oh, Jackie. Your words are hitting me right where I live today. This whole concept of meaning-making across the gulf - of culture, experience, perspective - may be our only hope. Limited optimism, indeed. Thank you.
Nice book wasn’t it?
As others are mentioning, what struck me most here is the shifting title of our protagonist: from American Wife, to Wife, to now American girl. There’s a diminishing of her power in that trend, a shrinking from importance to insignificance. This shift happens at the moment she finds the cat gone, and she suddenly feels much younger, much less imperious and powerful than our first impression of her. Similarly, as she heads in again past the hotel owner, I’m struck by the way her sense of self shrinks even more (“Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. The padrone made her feel very small”).
And yet, I’m also struck by this line that seems to defy this trend toward smallness (no stasis here!): “She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance.” Hemingway breaks the pattern here to give us this glimpse, this sense that she remembers or is still holding on however weakly to this other, more commanding, larger version of herself (how we first meet her, the “American Wife”). My sense of her as a complex character is growing: we see clearly that she has these different sides to herself, and that somehow the loss of the cat has caused this change in her. We also learn that she’s not conducting a straightforward act of rescue but “wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty” which seems to suddenly make this act a much more personal one: there is something personal at stake for her here, in her desire for a “kitty”, and I’m curious what that is!
Another bowling pin in the air for me: The maid’s incredulous response to the wife/girl’s words that there was a cat in the rain. Is this really something so hard to imagine? Clearly the maid hasn’t seen the cat. This reaction from the maid does two things: It creates a kind of divide in my mind between the wife and this maid, adding to the wife’s sense of smallness - her aloneness in her desire to rescue the cat, in her knowledge/belief that the cat was even there. The maid’s reaction also highlights the rareness of the situation - cat in the rain - as not something they see everyday. It would feel very different if the maid said something like, “Oh yes, that cat lives around here”. But this disbelief from her gives the whole situation this aura of specialness, rarity. It’s something that the wife/girl seems to have noticed that others haven’t.
I read the maid's remark as going out into the rain to pick up a cat from under a table as being frivolous.
And that now she, the maid, must get wet. A lot of trouble for a cat.
I was thinking that the story is set in the time not long after the flu pandemic of 1918, when a cold was not just a cold and who would venture out into a cold rain for a cat? Frivolous indeed.
Yes! And interesting how fearful everyone is about getting wet in the rain. I mean, natural, yes, but it does seem to have a lot of emphasis from H.
Yes, becomes highly significant.
Same, I read it as the maid being a little incredulous that the American girl would go to the trouble of going out into the rain for something as unimportant as a (possibly stray) cat. And then the maid's face tightens at the girl's emotional display of neediness, like now she's become a spoiled child the maid has to serve/manage.
I agree.
Loving this exercise. This seems really insightful, Joy. I immediately noticed the American wife turned wife is now the American girl or just the girl. From a noble mission - saving the cat — she’s been reduced to wanting a kitty - a cat that was there but now it seems (to the maid at least) shouldn’t ever have existed. She wanted something to take care of. Was there a baby? Someone mentioned this in the comments about the last post. I think she’s getting interestingly complicated - diminished but I suspect we’re going to learn something about George - the one in the story - that makes a different sense of this than just as a put down of a silly, frivolous, privileged American woman. At least I hope!
I had the same thought, Danilyn, about a possible baby. Could this be why she needs a kitty? Is it a stand-in for the baby she lost? Or the baby George didn't want? (And then of course there's Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" which is making "baby symbolism!" alarms go off in me.)
That’s what I thought too, Joy and Danilyn. I thought the theme was going to be “loss”, (loss of a child, saving a cat). but after reading the above comments I think it might be about power…anyway, I said I was annoyed by this section, but now I see that this section has produced the most emotion in me…I want more…
I see a twist in this story, a different background. I have been in jobs where I needed to bow, where I needed to supply people lacking independence and common sense the obvious necessities.
The maid is bothered by the American woman’s immaturity, clearly, closer to stupidity than innocence. I see the woman as a bother to the “help.” Yet, they do what must be done. The old man is more capable, practiced at hiding his disdain.
If she is more frivolous, silly even, like a child, the husband is probably exhausted with her, rather than dismissive. This is a tale of a pampered person unable to wait like everyone else.
Just a thought.
I agree John. In their eyes she's petty and spoiled. I'm sure the maid and manager also think about how the Americans lived fairly untouched by the war compared to their own experience.
Excellent observation. Surely the perspective on the war had to be quite different depending if you were American or Italian or whatever,
I have never had a job where I was required to bow, although I once had a temp job, dressing up in a tuxedo and handing out flowers to customers, mainly women, as they entered a new clothing store. I felt silly but of course had to "mask" that for the benfit of the customer, so that they would feel importan. I also work retail, which presents a similar if not entirely indentical feeling.
Hard agree
Girl! I now see her as quite young, married to an older man. He talks to her as though she is very young--"Don't get wet." Like you'd say to a child. And now I start to see that they are here during the off season--when rates are cheaper. So maybe she thought she was marrying a wealthy older man, but it turns out he's not so wealthy...? And she is bored. He's an adult--reading on the bed. She's a kid, looking for fun, a playmate--the kitty, perhaps. And isn't she the one who calls the cat a kitty? Like a young girl might do. Anyway, I see her reaction to the hotel staff as immaturity--a young girl who is being patronized and doesn't realize it. At the end of this section, we are given the husband's name. He is named--a real person. A man. She remains a girl, unnamed. Can't say I understand why the maid's face tightens when the girl speaks English. Anyway, my view of the entire story changed with the word "girl." Maybe I'm giving that too much meaning, as women have often been referred to as girls despite their age. Still, to me the story really turned on that one word.
I took the maid's face-tightening as annoyance at the "American girl" for lapsing back into English when she can speak Italian--puts the onus on the help to translate and respond in a foreign language.
Yes, that too. I think annoying American / annoying American woman-girl is a persistent theme in his stories and novels (haven’t read this one, so I wait!)
I am rereading this this morning and it struck me that the "she" in that sentence does not necessarily refer to the American girl. The maid is also speaking English. Just an off-hand thought.
The reference to her as a girl was the first thing that jumped out at me, too. The last excerpt had me picturing her as a sophisticated, bored, more mature woman, while this one completely changed the way I thought of her. I definitely have more questions now related to the maid's response (her laughter and the tightening of her face) and regarding who George is. Interesting to compare the "tightness" of the maid's face to the fact that the girl felt something "tight" and small in her chest. And that the padrone is the one that made her feel small when it was the maid who had laughed at her and treated her as a child -- "We must get back inside. You will be wet." And hadn't her husband told her not to get wet?
I *think* the maid’s face tightens because it registers for the maid that this woman is… another… “American girl.”
She, similar to her husband, can’t take her seriously for “wanting a kitty” who is in the rain which the maid finds as unbelievable.
I wondered about the age difference, too, when "girl" replaced wife. I'm wondering how long the two will stay there...weeks? Months? What does George do for a living? Is George someone she'd looked up to before they married, and now she's bored? Is George someone with status, but maybe not so wealthy?
While the preceding passage focused on class, this one subtly shifts the emphasis (without removing the earlier one) to tensions between Americans and Europeans in the aftermath of the Great War. The American girl (thrice referenced here!) is contrasted to the (I can only imagine) older European maid, and the former appears full of childishness even as she enjoys a superior position over the latter. The maid is, understandably, put out.
I read this as a delightfully subtle and puckish commentary on American adventurism in foreign policy, with the American girl jaunting out into unfamiliar environs to engage in good deeds (but in fact driven by her own selfish desire for the kitty). She jaunts out under the great umbrella while the maid takes all the rain, even remaining outside to close the umbrella after the whole thing.
Likewise, the death toll of the Great War fell much more heavily on Europe than it did America, and it was Europe that suffered the profound devastation (the empty square of the story) of the war, not the heroic doughboys. I think Hemingway is perhaps reflecting here on what he saw in the eyes of Europeans (not the soldiers, necessarily, but the people) when he was a medic in the war. The young ingenue is full of nobility and selfishness, and largely ignorant of anyone else's conditions.
But wait, she is redeemed by a moment of clarity! As she re-enters the hotel she sees the padrone's quiet and unobtrusive performance of his duties--in stark contrast to her own performative antics--and she suddenly feels small, even while still finding herself in the spotlight. It's a great moment, like an amateur actor onstage for the first time, the spotlight in her eyes.
Perfect. Bang on!
I really like this amazing assessment. Lovely.
Wow!
Right on!
Great insights, Adam.
It takes all my strength not to just find the story and read the damn thing all the way through now. I'm done with guessing what's next.
I am full of craving. Dukkha!!! It’s good for me to read it this way. I can feel my cells wanting to KNOW WHAT HAPPENS! I am an American girl, after all. Very elderly girl but still. Lol
Would you have eaten the marshmallow?
So would have — poor impulse control
I had a momentary compulsion to do the same thing, Carol, but I've loosed my weak and wobbly willpower upon it!
A tribute to Hemingway's ability to draw the reader in! I definitely want to read on ... so tempted! But I am confident the benefits will be worth the wait. I would love to be able to write a story where the reader felt as you do.
I have read it before but fortunately, my memory is not always so good.
Same here. But I suspect that once this exercise has concluded we will never forget it.
Lol same, Chris. I’ve read it and I forget what happens!
Yes, me as well. Soooo tempted ...
Same here Carol! Trying hard to stick with George’s original instructions. “This exercise works best if you’ve never read the story. If you haven’t, hooray. And it’s best not to find it and read ahead. Just absorb it a fragment at a time.
But if you have read it…do your best to pretend you haven’t.” I’m so glad though that I’ve never read it so I can enjoy the full benefit of the exercise. And grateful to those here who have read it and are doing a great job pretending they haven’t. The process of reading & re-reading is fascinating. I wonder how you do not allow your knowledge of how the whole story unfolds to color even a little bit your re-reading of each section from the beginning. It is such a gift for us to be first timers with this story.
Same, Carol! Tempted to Google it but I won't.
My read: now I’m contrasting the hotel keeper with George. The wife also comes alive for me when she sees him at his desk. But I don’t read her fondness of him as so much… entitlement as, here is this warm and attentive man who takes her concerns seriously, even when they are silly, and makes her feel seen. (As opposed to the aloof American guy upstairs who only feigns interest, clearly wants to chill out and do his own thing, even if he loves her.) If the hotel keeper were a little younger, I’d argue she’s lusting after him. (Took me a second read to notice he’s old. If you reread that passage assuming he’s young, it almost reads like a trashy romance novel.) OK so he’s old, but there’s a courtliness to their interaction, which European men do so well (and American women often delight in, thinking it’s meant specifically for them!) Sending the maid is a form of protection, caring, from the hotel keeper.. the wife is able to delight for just a moment in feeling feminine, and in « danger », but also someone to be taken seriously.
When the maid tightens at the wife speaking English, it could be her recognizing the dynamic and feeling « there goes the hotel keeper flirting again with a foreigner so he can feel masculine and desired and important and I’m here stuck holding the umbrella for this ditz who can’t be bothered to learn Italian »
Hemingway just got me in the mood to watch Emily in Paris Season 2. 😅
Signed,
The girl with one too many European exes
Agree with everything here, including Emily in Paris S2!
Yesss! I know it’s not « high art » per se but I enjoyed S1 way too much. Speaking of, should probably add it to my Excel spreadsheet of (real) artistic influences 😅
Haha, yeah, definitely not high art but I enjoyed it. It was entertaining! Makes me want to visit Paris again... and watch Amelie again (which reminds me: I need to add that movie to my spreadsheet)!
I feel so much better about watching that show
It’s Hemingway inspired!
To me the shift from "wife" to "girl" represents a change in the protagonist's perspective, brought about by her failure to find the cat and the maid's mockery for wasting time on such a thing. It lines up with the shift in what the hotel-keeper is called as well - "padrone," which definitely evokes a fatherly/paternal power, inverting the social hierarchy that made her feel empowered earlier. She seems to be or to feel like a child being indulged by parents (the padrone and the maid) more than a person with any real power.
I also suspect that we'll see something more explicit on the subject of having or not having children, or possibly a miscarriage or abortion, soon; "I wanted a kitty" and the rest of that line strikes that bell pretty hard to me.
I too feel some premonition of miscarriage or abortion, I think for two reasons: (1) the Hemingway story I’ve read most is “Hills Like White Elephants” (okay, not a great reason) and (2) the maid asks in Italian if she has lost something. Rereading that question, I felt there was a certain weight to it.
Bryce, I agree with you, and I gave my reasons in a post responding to the previous section of the story. The maid now asking if she has lost something makes me more certain. I think this couple has lost a child.
To go along with the ideas of miscarriage or abortion, the man in the rubber cape could be seen as a death figure. For some reason I pictured it black. Maybe? I could be reaching for that one.
It struck me that way too only not so strongly that I could articulate it and I think that is an essential element of the art. That your thoughts are "reachable".
Yes - I really like your idea there - about children, miscarriage, difficulties. I noticed that I still feel sympathy for this unlikeable child-like woman at the end of the passage and this idea of yours feeds into that possibility that she is out of her depth in so many ways, maybe.
Me, too, Jim, especially with the American husband (if I may) lying on the bed, sexual site, but self-absorbed in his reading
OMG, Rhonda. You're right. He's just lying about waiting to get recharged. Yuck!
Excellent!
The more I think about this story, I’m starting to feel like the war is almost an invisible character. Was George in the war? Is that why they are at this town with the memorial, in what is apparently the off-season for tourists?
Her whims and complaints are frivolous compared to the loss and devastation Italians had just lived through.
I don’t despise her for her frivolity, though, She is an innocent (a girl!). To her, the whims and complaints feel big and urgent. However, she is in a position where no one around her can take her seriously.
In this connection my Italian wife tells me the “tempo” in “brutto tempo” can mean not only weather but time—it’s a brutal era.
I agree that the war will be a factor. Perhaps the maid’s annoyance at hearing English is part of that reaction.
the couple may be there to visit the war memorial, why else are they there, the only Americans there at the time?
“…maid’s face tightened.” Those four words create the most tension for me, along with her condescending laughter at the American girl’s mission to save a cat. Sometimes, perhaps, the only weapon a servant has against a rich tourist is contempt? Economic class distinctions seem to have become more stark. And I’m intrigued by the maid’s nationalist reaction to the English language. Is the maid to become a larger character in the story?
I find the back and forth between English and Italian and the attention Hemingway calls to it intriguing. At first, I thought the American wife was practicing what little Italian she knew. But when I read the line, “When she talked English the maid’s face tightened.” I wondered if the American woman/girl might actually speak enough Italian to communicate and the switch into English made the maid feel uncomfortable.
As for the cat and the issue of contempt, I’ll share a story that might shed a different light. Long ago, I attended a summer art program in Lacoste, a small village in the Luberon, best known at the time for the ruins of the château of the Marquis de Sade. A few female students spent the summer doting on a stray, pregnant cat. The kittens were born and disappeared a week before the program ended. A local woman had drowned them. She said, “Those cute kittens won’t be so cute in the winter when they’re grown, roaming the village caterwauling, starving.” So maybe the maid found the American naive and self-absorbed. And maybe she was put off by how the woman chose (or didn’t choose) to exercise her agency.
Wow, that story about the drowned kittens is intense. Growing up, my best friend’s family raised pigs, thousands of them. Their stark objectivity about the animals’ lives were distressing to me when I first experienced it. My sensitivities didn’t change but I came to accept the cultural differences.
Makes me think of Steinbeck’s Of M+M, “She slang her pups last night," said Slim. "Nine of ‘em. I drowned four of ‘em right off. She couldn’t feed that many."
Such brutal compassion.
In the case of the woman (she had a name, Germaine) who drowned the kittens, I believe a gritty realism factored in. She’d seen too many dazzling summers, the village alive with artists and tourists, turn into harsh, empty winters, her sleep interrupted by the howl of the mistral, the growls of strays.
I imagine the pigs on your best friend’s family’s farm had personalities, spirits, names. And though I’ve been a vegetarian most of my life, I’d rather see animals killed to feed people than for sport. I’d rather confront carcasses hanging in butcher shops (overt message — this that you’re about to partake once grazed in a field you might’ve driven by) than sanitized cuts on plastic-wrapped styrofoam trays. I appreciate the honesty over disguise.
I think the cat is very much a cultural signifier. Given the time/place, I'm guessing stray cats were a dime a dozen, and likely considered pests rather than pets.. So wanting to rescue one is like someone saying they wanted to go out and rescue, say, a squirrel in the yard—not something that needs intervention in the eyes of the maid/hotel proprietor. She is diminishing in their eyes even as the maid is forced to stand in the rain—close to the umbrella but not under it—to indulge her.
I'm remembering being struck in the first paragraph with how many times the war monument was mentioned. I felt then like the shadow of the just-concluded war (WW I) must be part of the story, part of the "rain". So, maybe there's an element of both nationalist and class distinctions that make sense to me for that time & place.
Personally, the deflation that occurred when the cat wasn't there delighted me-- as exactly the escalation that the story needed. And I felt the tension rise then, and with the maid's scoffing at the idea of going out to rescue a cat in the rain... The switch to American Girl is so perfect, makes me go "Ah, yes," to that lingering question, "Why doesn't she merit a name?" She's the American Wife so she can become the American Girl. To me, this is one of those bowling pins that had been up in the air, and has me nodding, yes, yes...
And then that sense of being both small/shrunken and internally important... Just can't wait to read the next installment. Building, building...
Yes, great observation about the post-war class and nation conflicts. Americans didn’t live in the war zone. Americans didn’t have to rebuild their country.
I haven't read Hemingway in a long time and have never read this story, but I also instantly noticed the monument in the first paragraph. Apart from the individual characters, there are the Americans (only two of them), the artists, the Italians (presumably from outside this town since they drive to see the monument), and the locals. So far, one of the Americans (George) is not engaged with his surroundings at all, the other (wife ... girl) seems to feel the need to rescue (or possess / be rescued by?) a cat that doesn't really seem to need rescuing, and neither the artists (who love the beauty of the place) nor the Italians (who are likely there to commemorate war heros) come out when it's raining. The locals are the ones who live with the effects of the rain. It makes me wonder if this doesn't have something to do with the fact that only those who really go through a war know what it's like. I mentioned this in an earlier thread, but the Americans (only two of them) who know no one else in the hotel seem to be very significant -- are they sweeping in to "save the day" in some way without really knowing the people they are coming to rescue?
Yes! My sense of the American wife/girl is not that she's there to rescue or save the day. More that she's feeling aimless and alone. The cat would've given her companionship and purpose, which it appears she's not getting in her marriage? The husband is characterized as indifferent to what's happening around him, immersed in his book in their room. Maybe he's a writer? Taking advantage of post-war situation... cheap living along the Mediterranean. And she's without her own direction, drifting in his wake?
Yes, on the wife/girl, it started out looking like she wanted to rescue the cat: “No, I’ll get it. The poor kitty out trying to keep dry under a table,” then changed to her needing the cat for the reasons you mentioned: “Oh, I wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty.” She seems to have mixed motives, which reminds me of America and war. Her husband, on the other hand, reminds me of pre-war apathy. Probably far-fetched and a bit too symbolic but just having fun with it!
It does seem like she is just traipsing along with no purpose, needing something to make her feel like she has a sense of purpose. All this could shift in the next section, though!
Yes! I agree with all this.
Me too. My face tightened before this when she interrupted her husband while reading. And the maid must be soaked. I wonder if we get to see the maid soaked. Maybe it’s more powerful not to see it?
Yes, the maid stays outside with the umbrella in the rain. Dismissed from the narrative for now. That’s a tool in the the narrative tool box—to have the story itself dismiss the maid to represent the way the American wife also dismisses her. And, here, I find myself choosing a side in this little battle!
Me, too, Sherman. So amazing how Hemingway does that for us.
Yes, to be made starkly aware of my foibles as I read about the foibles of fictional characters!
And every great story teller.
I had the same reaction about whether to choose sides between these two women! But I also found the face tightening as a vehicle used for how the women dismissing and diminishing each other lessens them both in their strength of character.
Yes, and a fragment of movie dialogue popped into my head. Can’t remember the movie but the fragment is “I’m not a class warrior but…” So, as a reader, I’ll be wary of my class warrior tendencies as this story continues.
I think “I’m not a class warrior, but…” is from High Fidelity. I totally heard the phrase in John Cusack’s voice. :) I, too, found myself choosing sides in the interaction - and getting mad that the maid is left outside to clean up. Love the idea of the narrative dismissing the maid just like the wife does. Such a great way to provoke a reader’s reaction.
Thank you, Patricia! Yes, it was High Fidelity. It was bugging me. Thanks for the relief!
For all who haven’t seen it, I recommend Lina Wertmüller’s 1974 film “Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August,” debate whether the film’s more about class warfare or male fantasy. Like with Hemingway’s story, it’s hard to check our biases and distill how we experience characters and protagonists.
But back to “Cat in the Rain,” which I think is less about class privileges and resentments than about a woman/wife/girl who might have less theory of mind than a raven.
"might have less theory of mind than a raven" :-)
Me too! Thank you.
George talks about this in an earlier post, about establishing a character and then adding a reaction, so that the character's actions have more meaning. I feel that the maid's face tightening helps establish the meaning of the AW's actions.
But I'm disappointed that she seems to be simply entitled, vain and frivolous. I hope this character becomes more complex.
I hope so, too. I'd like to think that her vanity, entitlement and frivolousness are masks for some deep insecurity. The "momentary feeling of supreme importance" is fleeting—as if she is trying to quell a more permanent sense of insignificance.
I took this to mean that she was ensnared in a bizarre relationship with her hosts, that her feeling of supreme importance is desperate and fragile in that she realizes or intuits that the staff confers that feeling upon her and could snatch it back at any time. That's not power at all, quite the opposite.
Yes! I thought about that, too. The maid is probably pissed that the hotel owner asked her to offer the umbrella while she, the maid, got drenched. Damned privileged Americans...
Wow, so happy you are here! Heard David Means read your story, “The Toughest Indian in the World,” on the TNY Fiction Podcast and really, really "enjoyed" it; twisted me up "a thousand ways to Sunday." Very exciting to have another "known/established/respected" writer here, along with George Saunders leading this wondrous technique of reading fiction, particularly the short story form. I feel so honored to be amongst everyone's serious and dedicated company here, and to have such quality writers as you and George to guide us on this journey. Thank you.
Thank you. It’s awesome to be here.
Ditto!
On a second read, I find myself wondering about the antecedent of "she" in "When she talked English the maid’s face tightened." It appears the maid has switched to English, too... could "she" refer to her, instead of to the wife/woman/girl? This would change my reading somewhat! The maid might be amused by the American, but this facial expression might register focus or mild annoyance at speaking English, rather than disdain in reaction to the wife's decision to do so.
More likely Hemingway intends us to understand that he is translating Italian to English for our benefit when he has the maid say “A cat?...A cat in the rain?” but I think there's some ambiguity (?) If the maid has already switched to English, it's less clear why she'd be pained by the wife's decision to use it, too.
...actually--scratch that--either way, the American woman makes the switch to English first, which matters. I'm still not certain about that "she," though.
I had the same reaction to that line. At first I felt she was being protective—offering the umbrella, offering shelter—but her face-tightening felt ominous. The girl isn't safe with her.
I am a late arrival to story club and am just catching up, but I love this observation about the "maid's face tightened." That and the use of "girl" immediately changed the tone of the story for me and my perceptions of the wife. For a few paragraphs I was thinking of her as strong, haughty; now, as tremendously insecure. I have also begun to wonder how the husband capitalizes on and reinforces that insecurity. An amazing example of the power of a single word or short phrase.
I noticed that at the end of the piece, George Saunders is somehow in the room, reading. So that’s cool. Also, as a reader, I at first thought she wanted to help the cat, but now, when the cat is gone and had escaped its somewhat desperate, huddled situation (presumably for better safety from the rain) the woman is disappointed for herself instead of happy for the cat that we thought she cared about. Turns out she wants to trap it, so to speak, even more, but this time for herself. This is when she becomes the “girl.”
Yes, I noticed George slip into the story, too. I assume, to make it truly meta, he's reading Hemingway... lol
Oh, yeah.
Yes! I saw him, too. haha. Then corrected myself.
Hahaha. You legit just blew my mind even more, Graham.
Ha! He really knows how to get inside a story ...