I'm writing this before reading any other comments.
My reaction to the American wife and the cat. The cat "trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on" made me think about how abused people will do the same, only they are trying to make themselves so psychically small that they won't be noticed, because to be noticed is usually to be harmed.
When George asked the question "what do you think is going to happen next?" my mind immediately flashed to: the American wife will want to save the cat and bring it in from the rain, and the American husband will disagree. I had an image of a marriage where the man is stern and kind of mean, but he thinks he's just being rational, while he thinks his wife is sentimental and frivolous. When George asked "what do you hope will happen?" I thought... almost anything else. I want to be surprised.
I want the cat to be saved from the rain. But as I thought about it for a bit, the idea that pleased me most was: I want the cat to jump in through the window and tear around the American's hotel room, destroying their complacency and most of their material goods, before escaping into mouse-filled cellars with plenty of hiding places.
I should also say that just the title 'Cat in the Rain' brought up vague fuzzy memories of Breakfast at Tiffany's, where Audrey Hepburn saves a cat. I think? And the writing advice book 'Save the Cat.' I haven't read the book but I've read about it. My vague, probably inaccurate memory, is that the advice is to give your unpleasant characters an opportunity to 'save the cat,' to do something a little heroic and sweet. It doesn't matter whether my memory is right or not - just that it rose up in my mind and is sitting alongside this story. I can't shake my belief that this story will be about saving the cat, in some way.
She doesn’t know the cat’s gender. But she - or the narrator - has decided the cat is a she. Can’t help but feel that the American Wife is prone to identify with the cat, down there hunched into shelter.
the couple is wealthy because they are on the second floor and facing the sea--second floor rooms are larger than upper floor rooms and more costly, too. the bronze monument is weeping with rain. a cat makes itself small under a table, and is identified as female--is the american wife making herself small?
Let's be honest this is probably what happens next:
The American couple were bored. They went down to the cafe for a drink. The young waiter brought a bottle of grappa. He poured the grappa into two glasses. The grappa was harsh and good. They finished the bottle and ordered another. The cat came into the cafe. It cuddled in the corner of the cafe. The American wife gave the cat some grappa. Life didn't seem so bad as she gazed out at the sea and the rain. It was still raining.
Because the cat and the woman made their appearance into the story basically hand-in-hand, they feel like two parts of the same being to me, or soul mates. Struggle buddies. (The cat being a “she”reinforces the connection, too.)
And because I like and relate to this cat—“Ugh, I’m just trying to get comfortable”—I spontaneously like and relate to the woman and hope she’ll be able to get comfortable, too.
I want to know why the wife is uncomfortable, because I’ve decided she is. I want the cat do more things. That’s it so far.
In the first paragraph, I was so struck by the longest sentence (29 words), where Hemingway describes the sea breaking in a long line in the rain twice, drawing attention to that detail by the elongation of the sentence, the mimicry of appearing, to slip back, to appear again—the ebb and flow of arrival and departure, an ambivalent stasis (“the sea broke in a long line in the rain and slipped back down the beach to come up and break again in a long line in the rain.”) It almost feels like a palindrome, a balance board in the middle of the paragraph. The second longest sentence also echoes the back and forth motion of the waves: “They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from the room.”
It feels like there is an ambivalence being established—a back and forth that repeats itself, and yet is unknowable, unrelenting.
The cat draws attention in the second paragraph, and the detail of making itself more compact to avoid getting wet feels weighty and important. Like others have observed, it feels as though the cat is reflecting with the woman at the window, of avoiding the elements, while being immersed within them. Of feeling out of place, wanting to stay small, unnoticed, untouched.
I'm thinking about how this might feel different if, instead of "American wife," Hemingway had introduced us to the character with a full name: "Olive Kittredge" or "Daisy Buchanan" or whatever. Not using her name makes us feel more distant and clinical. Like we are standing back watching a specimen and analyzing what happens to it, rather than joining this woman in chatty conversation.
(Although another part of me -- my feminist part -- had my hackles go up and felt "here we go again, Hemingway seeing women through the lens of the men they are connected to and not as people in their own right.") ;-)
“We can (we must, when writing) think in a smaller, more local, way than that. (‘What is my next sentence? What is the first phrase of my next sentence? Where is everybody standing right now?’)
Isn’t that a comfort? Theme will come once we choose the right sentences, that is, the ones that delight us (and they can delight us for reasons we don’t have to name).”
Helen Keller/Annie Sullivan Miracle Worker feelings going on here.
I’ve been working on my first novel for almost four years. This last year I finally found the courage to take a run at a draft. Got 90,000 words to the page.
And now here I am rejoicing at the possibility of forgetting everything I’ve done and starting fresh, going sentence by sentence, making things undeniable and to my taste.
Forgive my detour into the personal here, everyone, but George, I’m so grateful. This is a watershed moment in my understanding. Thank you!
I'm not actually familiar with Hemingway at all, much to my discredit, so I'm coming to this story very fresh and unaware of the usual 'rules' he plays by as a writer... I guess at a base level what I'm expecting to happen next is for the cat to make, or cause, something to happen.
I read paragraph 1 a little differently. For me the rain had caused a welcome break in the usual business of the square: the waiter was not in my mind looking for customers but leaning against the door post breathing a sigh of relief. (I live and work in a tourist town so I think I was probably projecting my own annual sigh of relief when the winter weather sends the tourists packing. Not that the busy and the summer isn't fun, just that it's always nice to have a chance to breathe again).
For me the whole story seems to be almost on pause at this point: the waiter is still in his doorway, the American wife is still at her window, the square is empty other than the cat. I'm waiting for someone to 'press play' and the cat seems the odd one out (participating rather than watching) and therefore the most likely candidate to either press play or cause someone else to.
About reaction shots: As George says, they're a really important way to make meaning—to tell the reader how to or even what to think about something. Or at least, what or how a certain character thinks about something. But there are also times when you clearly don't want to do this, when it's really important NOT to tell the reader what to think or how to feel—when it's essential that they figure that out for themselves. When they're allowed, even encouraged, to wonder and wander.
Often endings are the place for this. Imagine how deflated the ending of "The Falls" would feel if, after the guy dives into the water, we heard other people commenting on or reacting to what he just did. On the other hand, by leaving it uncertain—that's where the magic can happen. And it doesn't just need to be the ending of a story: often the ends of paragaphs, or chapters, or the last line before a space break, is served well by this sort of thing too. Even within paragraphs, this can work.
In general: the more that is left unexplained, the more "demanding" or "experimental" the work will be seen as. It's one of the most fundamental judgement calls we make as writers: how much to explain, and how much do we let (or make) the reader figure out for themselves? There are readers who at some times will love the line about the face like a chessboard as-is, and feel that it's been ruined (dumbed-down, been made prescriptive, its poetry destroyed) by including by the reaction of the woman. There are other readers at other times who would get nothing from that sentence alone (and may even be baffled by it or feel put off) and for whom the meaningfullness (and willingness to keep reading) is greatly enhanced by the wife's reaction.
I think the key is balance, of course. But where the line between open and determined, explained and implied, sense and nonsense should be for each of us, as writers and as readers, is really hard to say. It may be the single hardest thing we need to figure out.
I have read the story before, so I won't answer George's questions here. I avoid commenting because I'm a good sport. Also, because I'm something of an idiot. So, I will confine my comments to George's pandemic ponytail; specifically, that it complies with the Pencil Rule. What is the Pencil Rule? I'm glad I pretended you asked that. The PR provides: "No male person's hair may be gathered into a ponytail if the circumference of the gathered portion is smaller than the circumference of a standard #2 pencil." Congratulations, George! Now, on with "Cat…"
The cat is in distress… but not a life-or-death sort. She could get out from under the table, but it would be unpleasant and she would have to sit with wet fur. Where would she go? The next table wouldn’t be much of an improvement. She would need to know there was food and safety at the end of her “escape” to make the trip worthwhile.
It makes me wonder if American Wife is feeling similarly trapped - in her marriage? On this trip? She *could* leave, but where would she go? And would it be any better?
Not having read this story, I feel as if the rain may stop and the cat will go on its way, while the wife continues to be trapped under her own dripping table of a marriage.
Ah, crap Saunders, this is so tease with a long zzzzzzzz, but I get where you're going. It was funny because I hadn't read this story and only found the "complete short stories of Ernest Hemingway" at a used bookstore today. Where of course, there was the story, which I had a strong desire to see in full (but I DID NOT READ IT). It felt comforting to own the story as a whole so after we're through with this torture (delicious as it is infuriating) I can re-read it. And then figure out other stories Mr. H busied himself with. So: I think I see the landscape, and it's spare, but you know everything is there for a reason. I'll try to do the same with this comment by saying: I'm sticking with this. It's too fun. It's UNREASONABLY fun. Thanks for building the ark for all us paired and unpaired animals fleeing a global crisis. Cheers, Mike
What really stands out for me in these two paragraphs is the repetition of the term “American”. Capitalised, of course. For those from the US, this may be an unproblematic term (or even one used with pride), but for the rest of us, this term speaks loudly of difficult, even unpleasant (or worse) matters. Latin Americans particularly resent it being used in this way, because the citizens of ALL the countries of the Americas (there are two American continents, let me remind you) are “Americans”, so this usage stinks of the wider expropriation of our land, forests, mineral resources,natural pharmacopoeia, cultural emblems, etc.
Hemingway, although from the US, will have known of this subtext once he travelled and lived in the wider American environment, although he may not have been conscious of it at the time he wrote this story (which others in the thread have said is from 1925). My guess, though, is that he was at least aware of the resentment of US aspirations to empire status, especially in Europe.
So the doubled and capitalised “American” in these paragraphs seems to me to have an ironic tinge (as in “do you get this?”), and presents the binary of dominator/dominated - with perhaps a third smaller category of “resistors” - possibly represented by the uncomfortable cat (outside in the rain, but free). This would fit with the mention of the war memorial, and the line of rain - the “front” line of a battle, with the sea of empire encroaching?
Hemingway is doing this sort of funny thing where a lot of sentences lead literally into the next:
“…their room. Their room…”
“…an artist with an easel. Artists liked…”
“…glistened in the rain. It was raining. The rain dripped…”
“…the square by the war monument. Across the square…”
“…looking out. Outside…”
The feeling is that the narrator is making this up as she goes along; there is a free-associative feeling about it.
I'm writing this before reading any other comments.
My reaction to the American wife and the cat. The cat "trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on" made me think about how abused people will do the same, only they are trying to make themselves so psychically small that they won't be noticed, because to be noticed is usually to be harmed.
When George asked the question "what do you think is going to happen next?" my mind immediately flashed to: the American wife will want to save the cat and bring it in from the rain, and the American husband will disagree. I had an image of a marriage where the man is stern and kind of mean, but he thinks he's just being rational, while he thinks his wife is sentimental and frivolous. When George asked "what do you hope will happen?" I thought... almost anything else. I want to be surprised.
I want the cat to be saved from the rain. But as I thought about it for a bit, the idea that pleased me most was: I want the cat to jump in through the window and tear around the American's hotel room, destroying their complacency and most of their material goods, before escaping into mouse-filled cellars with plenty of hiding places.
I should also say that just the title 'Cat in the Rain' brought up vague fuzzy memories of Breakfast at Tiffany's, where Audrey Hepburn saves a cat. I think? And the writing advice book 'Save the Cat.' I haven't read the book but I've read about it. My vague, probably inaccurate memory, is that the advice is to give your unpleasant characters an opportunity to 'save the cat,' to do something a little heroic and sweet. It doesn't matter whether my memory is right or not - just that it rose up in my mind and is sitting alongside this story. I can't shake my belief that this story will be about saving the cat, in some way.
She doesn’t know the cat’s gender. But she - or the narrator - has decided the cat is a she. Can’t help but feel that the American Wife is prone to identify with the cat, down there hunched into shelter.
it feels lonely, is what it feels.
the couple is wealthy because they are on the second floor and facing the sea--second floor rooms are larger than upper floor rooms and more costly, too. the bronze monument is weeping with rain. a cat makes itself small under a table, and is identified as female--is the american wife making herself small?
i feel for this woman.
Let's be honest this is probably what happens next:
The American couple were bored. They went down to the cafe for a drink. The young waiter brought a bottle of grappa. He poured the grappa into two glasses. The grappa was harsh and good. They finished the bottle and ordered another. The cat came into the cafe. It cuddled in the corner of the cafe. The American wife gave the cat some grappa. Life didn't seem so bad as she gazed out at the sea and the rain. It was still raining.
Because the cat and the woman made their appearance into the story basically hand-in-hand, they feel like two parts of the same being to me, or soul mates. Struggle buddies. (The cat being a “she”reinforces the connection, too.)
And because I like and relate to this cat—“Ugh, I’m just trying to get comfortable”—I spontaneously like and relate to the woman and hope she’ll be able to get comfortable, too.
I want to know why the wife is uncomfortable, because I’ve decided she is. I want the cat do more things. That’s it so far.
In the first paragraph, I was so struck by the longest sentence (29 words), where Hemingway describes the sea breaking in a long line in the rain twice, drawing attention to that detail by the elongation of the sentence, the mimicry of appearing, to slip back, to appear again—the ebb and flow of arrival and departure, an ambivalent stasis (“the sea broke in a long line in the rain and slipped back down the beach to come up and break again in a long line in the rain.”) It almost feels like a palindrome, a balance board in the middle of the paragraph. The second longest sentence also echoes the back and forth motion of the waves: “They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from the room.”
It feels like there is an ambivalence being established—a back and forth that repeats itself, and yet is unknowable, unrelenting.
The cat draws attention in the second paragraph, and the detail of making itself more compact to avoid getting wet feels weighty and important. Like others have observed, it feels as though the cat is reflecting with the woman at the window, of avoiding the elements, while being immersed within them. Of feeling out of place, wanting to stay small, unnoticed, untouched.
I'm thinking about how this might feel different if, instead of "American wife," Hemingway had introduced us to the character with a full name: "Olive Kittredge" or "Daisy Buchanan" or whatever. Not using her name makes us feel more distant and clinical. Like we are standing back watching a specimen and analyzing what happens to it, rather than joining this woman in chatty conversation.
(Although another part of me -- my feminist part -- had my hackles go up and felt "here we go again, Hemingway seeing women through the lens of the men they are connected to and not as people in their own right.") ;-)
“We can (we must, when writing) think in a smaller, more local, way than that. (‘What is my next sentence? What is the first phrase of my next sentence? Where is everybody standing right now?’)
Isn’t that a comfort? Theme will come once we choose the right sentences, that is, the ones that delight us (and they can delight us for reasons we don’t have to name).”
Helen Keller/Annie Sullivan Miracle Worker feelings going on here.
I’ve been working on my first novel for almost four years. This last year I finally found the courage to take a run at a draft. Got 90,000 words to the page.
And now here I am rejoicing at the possibility of forgetting everything I’ve done and starting fresh, going sentence by sentence, making things undeniable and to my taste.
Forgive my detour into the personal here, everyone, but George, I’m so grateful. This is a watershed moment in my understanding. Thank you!
I'm not actually familiar with Hemingway at all, much to my discredit, so I'm coming to this story very fresh and unaware of the usual 'rules' he plays by as a writer... I guess at a base level what I'm expecting to happen next is for the cat to make, or cause, something to happen.
I read paragraph 1 a little differently. For me the rain had caused a welcome break in the usual business of the square: the waiter was not in my mind looking for customers but leaning against the door post breathing a sigh of relief. (I live and work in a tourist town so I think I was probably projecting my own annual sigh of relief when the winter weather sends the tourists packing. Not that the busy and the summer isn't fun, just that it's always nice to have a chance to breathe again).
For me the whole story seems to be almost on pause at this point: the waiter is still in his doorway, the American wife is still at her window, the square is empty other than the cat. I'm waiting for someone to 'press play' and the cat seems the odd one out (participating rather than watching) and therefore the most likely candidate to either press play or cause someone else to.
About reaction shots: As George says, they're a really important way to make meaning—to tell the reader how to or even what to think about something. Or at least, what or how a certain character thinks about something. But there are also times when you clearly don't want to do this, when it's really important NOT to tell the reader what to think or how to feel—when it's essential that they figure that out for themselves. When they're allowed, even encouraged, to wonder and wander.
Often endings are the place for this. Imagine how deflated the ending of "The Falls" would feel if, after the guy dives into the water, we heard other people commenting on or reacting to what he just did. On the other hand, by leaving it uncertain—that's where the magic can happen. And it doesn't just need to be the ending of a story: often the ends of paragaphs, or chapters, or the last line before a space break, is served well by this sort of thing too. Even within paragraphs, this can work.
In general: the more that is left unexplained, the more "demanding" or "experimental" the work will be seen as. It's one of the most fundamental judgement calls we make as writers: how much to explain, and how much do we let (or make) the reader figure out for themselves? There are readers who at some times will love the line about the face like a chessboard as-is, and feel that it's been ruined (dumbed-down, been made prescriptive, its poetry destroyed) by including by the reaction of the woman. There are other readers at other times who would get nothing from that sentence alone (and may even be baffled by it or feel put off) and for whom the meaningfullness (and willingness to keep reading) is greatly enhanced by the wife's reaction.
I think the key is balance, of course. But where the line between open and determined, explained and implied, sense and nonsense should be for each of us, as writers and as readers, is really hard to say. It may be the single hardest thing we need to figure out.
I have read the story before, so I won't answer George's questions here. I avoid commenting because I'm a good sport. Also, because I'm something of an idiot. So, I will confine my comments to George's pandemic ponytail; specifically, that it complies with the Pencil Rule. What is the Pencil Rule? I'm glad I pretended you asked that. The PR provides: "No male person's hair may be gathered into a ponytail if the circumference of the gathered portion is smaller than the circumference of a standard #2 pencil." Congratulations, George! Now, on with "Cat…"
I love that you give permission to write sentences that “can delight us for reasons we don’t have to name”
The cat is in distress… but not a life-or-death sort. She could get out from under the table, but it would be unpleasant and she would have to sit with wet fur. Where would she go? The next table wouldn’t be much of an improvement. She would need to know there was food and safety at the end of her “escape” to make the trip worthwhile.
It makes me wonder if American Wife is feeling similarly trapped - in her marriage? On this trip? She *could* leave, but where would she go? And would it be any better?
Not having read this story, I feel as if the rain may stop and the cat will go on its way, while the wife continues to be trapped under her own dripping table of a marriage.
Ah, crap Saunders, this is so tease with a long zzzzzzzz, but I get where you're going. It was funny because I hadn't read this story and only found the "complete short stories of Ernest Hemingway" at a used bookstore today. Where of course, there was the story, which I had a strong desire to see in full (but I DID NOT READ IT). It felt comforting to own the story as a whole so after we're through with this torture (delicious as it is infuriating) I can re-read it. And then figure out other stories Mr. H busied himself with. So: I think I see the landscape, and it's spare, but you know everything is there for a reason. I'll try to do the same with this comment by saying: I'm sticking with this. It's too fun. It's UNREASONABLY fun. Thanks for building the ark for all us paired and unpaired animals fleeing a global crisis. Cheers, Mike
What really stands out for me in these two paragraphs is the repetition of the term “American”. Capitalised, of course. For those from the US, this may be an unproblematic term (or even one used with pride), but for the rest of us, this term speaks loudly of difficult, even unpleasant (or worse) matters. Latin Americans particularly resent it being used in this way, because the citizens of ALL the countries of the Americas (there are two American continents, let me remind you) are “Americans”, so this usage stinks of the wider expropriation of our land, forests, mineral resources,natural pharmacopoeia, cultural emblems, etc.
Hemingway, although from the US, will have known of this subtext once he travelled and lived in the wider American environment, although he may not have been conscious of it at the time he wrote this story (which others in the thread have said is from 1925). My guess, though, is that he was at least aware of the resentment of US aspirations to empire status, especially in Europe.
So the doubled and capitalised “American” in these paragraphs seems to me to have an ironic tinge (as in “do you get this?”), and presents the binary of dominator/dominated - with perhaps a third smaller category of “resistors” - possibly represented by the uncomfortable cat (outside in the rain, but free). This would fit with the mention of the war memorial, and the line of rain - the “front” line of a battle, with the sea of empire encroaching?