And the big question: what made us keep going, line to line? What are the micro-qualities of the prose (word choice, rhythm) that compelled and intrigued us? The pattern of knowing, then wondering, etc. Or, more broadly: Can you draw any conclusions on how YOU read? What are you looking for, line to line? And so on.
I’d never read Hemingway before but I’m reading him now. I should confess too, not only that I never finished high school, I barely started it never mind college. I honestly thought you were the dude from All About Eve. And I like O. Henry too. Hemingway is blowing my mind. This course is phenomenal. Thank you so much.
Fun Fact: George Sanders is listed among the memorized Hollywood suicides by James Lear in Michael Chabon’s novel The Wonder Boys which centers around a professor of creative writing’s relationship with and tutelage of an aspiring writer.
His suicide note read,
“Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”
If Story Club is The Wonder Boys you’re Grady Tripp and we’re James Lear working on The Love Parade. In the film, Grady’s wife is played by the excellent Francis McDormand, maybe best know for Fargo. The love parade must go far, and we’re graded on the trip, not the destination.
Wonderful fun facts indeed. I have seen the film and she (FM) was luminous as she always is. My favourite performance of hers is a film called Laurel Canyon. She plays a record producer and she’s thoroughly believable, utterly transcendent and incredibly sexy. It’s gorgeous “little film” and full of delicious performances by several other surprising actors too. I might need to rewatch it actually.
FM is a jewel of an actor and Laurel Canyon was splendid, if my memory serves, which it does not as well as it once did. Perhaps time to watch it again.
Jason, I'd forgotten about that detail in The Wonder Boys, which I have not read in too many years, althouhg I have seen the movies so many times, I cannot count anymore.
Hey, Cat. I think you should view your educationm or lack there of, as an advantage, of not being subjected to so many rules and expecations -- this is this way, because we say it is, because it has always been. I can't tell you how many times in the course of my education (or even over-education, possibly) that I had to battle with people who insisted something was a certain way just because that is what the book says or scholars say or the way it has always been.
Besides education comes in all forms. Life itself, is an education, to lean on a cliche.
The first paragraph introduced the formidable square, and I wanted to be with the story because that place was so remarkable (worth the visit of tourists and the paint of artists) that I knew something interesting would happen there. Then there was a fantastic pace and endless tension that carried me to the end. I must confess, I really had to fight hard not to go ahead with the reading.
The final paragraph, with a new, big cat taken from somewhere to please the wife, tells me that the the hotel owner and the maid can well call the wife “signora”, but when they offer (any) cat, they treat her like a child. In fact, with this ending, we understand that it’s all a farce. The girl plays lady, the couple play wife and husband, the big cat plays little kitten, the maid and the hotel owners play pleasing servants, and yet they truly put themselves above the wife in the moment they bring another cat: perhaps they think she’s just capricious, or perhaps they are thinking she can’t recognise the cat she wants, so they cheat her. They might also think that, with that rain, the capricious wife might leave, and so they bring her a cat for good measure.
On a side note, I’m Italian, I’ve seen the “giving of another cat” so many times when I lived there, that this ending seems to me at the same time marvellously symbolic and terribly prosaic.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to partecipate to this group. I loved reading A Swim in the Pond in the Rain and being part of this group brings it alive.
I really like your observation that so much of this story is about people acting out roles... even the cat. Fascinating - a thought-provoking observation.
Thanks Vanessa. Yes, I thought there was something about pretending, about the lack of meaning, which makes the wife act out a role… and then this pretence extends to the entire story. Quite sad actually.
I love the image of this as a farce. Something I wouldn't have thought of and a reminder of how we each bring ourselves to what we read as we do when we write. And the capper for me is that it led to me thinking of it as a Fawlty Towers episode. I can see it all and it makes me laugh!
Well, it seems kind of embarrassing to admit this, but I'm looking for at least a glimpse of understanding as to the doors I've opened or shut in my own life. For this particular story, I was drawn (as always) by the fact of a couple and the immediate knowledge that this couple seems to be in trouble in their own unique way--but in a way that, perhaps, I can relate to (who can't relate to a couple in trouble?). I read for me, is what I guess I'm saying. (Oh, god, how dumb that sentence sounds. I hope you get my point.) How is THIS couple going to work things out? Or not? As far as what I'm looking for line to line--I'm hoping to remain in the story, to not be stopped by something that takes me out of the story. I don't like having to read a sentence twice, for instance, if it is worded clumsily. I'm also looking, line by line, for the tension to increase. Some stories may not do this and I'll like them anyway for being so beautifully written, sentence by sentence. But I'd say, overall, I just want a good story. And if it works on more than one level, that's fantastic. And if I'm still thinking about the story later that day or the next day, that's the best of all.
I love this comment. I believe we’re all looking for clues to how to live well, righteously, properly and wholly in every character, but especially the protagonist, we observe. Im asking in every moment - is this how I’d act, react?
Oh my goodness, Mary. Reading this story now resulted in a wash of memory/experience of my relationships, which served to draw me into the story so much more securely than, say, when I was 14, just a kid, or, in my mid-20s, with only an inkling of understanding about myself and any romantic relationships that I had had or would have.
I believe I have always, first and foremost, read for me. Perhaps that is narcassistic, but there it is. Although, in my defense (if I need one), I have found that reading for me means understand and empathizing more deeply with others.
It may, in fact, be impossible to not read for one's self first. I just know that some stories speak to me more closely than others, and I think it's because I am relating to the characters or just finding something that clicks with me and my life or my feelings about life. What's amazing is when I read a story that is not at all like me but that still speaks to me on that universal level that the best stories all have.
You may be right. As a younger reader I struggled to finish or enjoy a story that did not speak directly to my experience but am happy to say that now I find myself seeking out those stories that depict characters and experience entirely different from myself and my own. Although I admit to be most strongly hooked into stories that I can put myself into, or which draw me in.
What you describe is the more exciting aspect of reading the story, viz. how it engages with the reader and what it excites in us. The line that appears elsewhere in the comments about a thousand readers, a thousand stories is so apt.
I don't know about you but when I was in school a piece of literature that worked on "multiple levels" was all the rage with my profs and all they wanted us to notice. Or so it seemed. I think that it is too often conflated with packing in, beyond the limits of pretension, every cultural allusion the writer can think of. But done without pretense, no small feat, it's exactly what I want, a piece of writing that works on multiple-levels. It's "fantastic", as you say.
I think that I, and most, if not all, readers, are alway simultaneously talking about the characters and themselves at the same time. I think it is one of the most valuable things that I took away from education as an English Writing/Lit major. That people are always telling you about themselves when they speak, you only have to listen.
NOTE: That is a variation on something my former writing teacher, Stuat Dybek, often said about writing fiction: The Story is always talking to you, you just have to listen. Something I did not quite understand until more recently, when I heard George quote it in a youtube vidoe of a reading or talk or whatever. Thanks for that George. I might have gone my whole life without getting it.
Agree with your comment, Chris. And Stuart Dybek! I love his stories, and he seems like such a kind person and generous teacher, much like our fearless leader George. (Did you go to WMU?)
Oh, Prince, it's not just you. That's one of the things that struck me about the innumerable interpretations of this story and its many components That the interpretations were much a reflection on the interpreter as anything else and, to the extent that it happens, is real magic. it has the power to illuminate a corner of our souls.
Doing this as a joint exercise made this infinitely easy to witness and stand in awe of.
I credit this effect to the author's intention and skill.
I enjoy talking and thinking about the work of Ernest Hemingway but I generally don’t like to put into words what it is I find transcendent and beautiful in his deceptively simple and terse language. It literally frightens me to go there. Imagine someone who receives a hand thrown vase as a gift. Imagine the vase falls and is shattered. A bit of kintsugi might repair the vase to its former shape and also enhance it- the gold fused seams of the broken parts take on the mysterious beauty of wabi sabi a new vessel simply cannot possess. But to grind the vase down to powder so as to understand what is at the very substrate of the clay might leave you with a formula for good clay but it will irreversibly destroy the gifted vessel.
I have learned over the years and here I care more about how a story is told than what it’s about. If it has the ‘truth beauty’ of Shelley’s Grecian Urn I find a way to care about the subject, because it’s true and beautiful. I find literary fiction when approached this way definitely flexes my empathy muscle and expands what and who I’m able to care about and ultimately love.
Great post, Jason. There is always some risk attached to understanding. Maybe it changes us more than the object of our attention, moves us in directions we hadn’t planned to go?
Adore this description & your wording here, Jason -- makes me reflect on lessons the field of anthropology was learning in the 1980's about working in the field and their influence in act of regarding & judging other cultures on what they were studying -- uncovering the complexity of interaction/condemnation of other country's (in Africa for example) practice of female genital mutilation . . .
I have to admit that this is exactly the kind of story that made me uninterested in reading Hemmingway. The presumably white American tourist (or traveler) saying "shut up" to his apparently unhappy (perhaps feeling trapped in a disappointing marriage) wife without any other readers taking umbrage, is just the sort of not so subtle reproduction of a culture that I cringe about having to be a part of, if only by birth.
If they'd been fighting, it would be different, but it was only said by him and taken by her as their normal conversation. This is telling in context, about their relationship and personalities, but the fact that so many comments have been given and nobody seeming to mind, bothers me. It seems that Hemmingway is admired, especially by male writers, for his macho style. It is easy to be derisive, but that doesn't make it cool. At least to me.
I've read it four times and hardly care more about it now than I did at first. I immediately thought it was not the same cat. It brought to mind O'Henry, for the abrupt surprising ending. That was the best part of the story for me.
Thanks for this, Masako. Just letting you know that LOTS of readers took umbrage and minded, myself included. What this slow-reading exercise taught me (and others) is to pay close attention to our reactions at the sentence level. Discovering how we read and what we react to in accordance with our personal circumstances is part of the exercise (I think?). Discovering (once more) that H. was a misogynist and that we have nothing in common with his over-interpreted world-view is as much an achievement as is finding common ground with the guy. Nobody's 'right'. Nobody's 'wrong'. It's all just a matter of taste and personal truth?
I sympathize with your feelings. Here's how I come to grips with some of the similar feelings I have had about Ernest Hemingway (fun fact: my father had the same high school English teacher as "Papa").
A goto form of comedy for a lot of great comedians is self-deprecation, an art form where the comedian makes his/herself the butt of his jokes.
The analogous form of self-deprecation for a writer would be is to steal insights he/she might have into their own personality and foibles and exploit them for the sake of a good story.
The club has proven that Hemingway is very resourceful, having modeled the hotel with the war monument outside from a hotel with a war monument outside that he visited with his first wife. My feeling is there is no way Hemingway is going to forego the juicy material he could tap just from observing himself. And once you do that, the go-to approach for an artful story is to mine your less flattering traits and use them. It almost automatically makes them more genuine and sincere.
I can't prove it but I think that's what he's doing. I have a daughter who runs some kind of chance of marrying a "George". She is also a reader. I wouldn't want her to read books that suggest that men don't have unflattering and damnable traits like Hemingway's "George". The last thing we want is a George, who happens to be a prince as envisioned by Disney.
I'm quite happy that Hemingway made this George so unappealing. It's a satire of America's capacity for generating louts, which is little diminished since in all the time that has passed since this story was written.
Thanks for bringing this out in the open for reflection.
You yourself have provided the tone of the conversation and then got mad at yourself.
Multiple readers “took umbrage”.
Sometimes married couples will playfully say “oh, shut up” or even “fuck you” to each other as non hostile terms of endearment. Not everybody is like you, thankfully.
Let's go easy on the personal stuff, eh? That's not what we're about here. Anything that needs to be discussed can be discussed in a technical sense - using the story itself to make the case. I appreciate it.
I had not considered that, Jasone, although I'm not sure why. That some couples, as a matter of course or personality or whatever, will strike sort of pseudo hostiles attitude towards one another, which is both irreverant and affectionate at the same time, if that makes sense.
I've actually had opportunity recently to witness this first hand with a couple-friends that I know , a situation/circumstance that I have been considering mining for a story perhaps.
There is nothing in this story to suggest this is an affectionate, playful or non hostile "shut up." All the evidence in the text is to the contrary. He is nothing but dismissive and non-engaging. E.g., when he does put down his book to talk to her he does it because his eyes are tired.
I thought your point was that some couples say “shut up“ in an affectionate way and therefore George in the story could have been doing so. My point is that there is nothing in the story to back that up.
I've been travelling in quite the opposite direction to you Masako. Like you I've been left cold by my previous encounters with Hemingway: 'so what', 'who cares', 'losing the will' are indicative of my typical reactions. But all that I've just said being said I've noentheless found myself returning to sample Hemingway from time to time, because I've always had a sense that there's more to him than has met my reader's eye. And this revisit and go round 'Cat in the Hat' has - writing as I think it, definitely not trying to be 'clever' or 'grandiose - somehow given me the sense of getting closer to the heart of Hemingway.
Who knows we have passed each other over the past couple weeks, you on the down elevator and me ascending. Do you happen to have been in 'Edificio Hemingway' lately?
As with so many other contributions to this and the other threads of conversation in what I'm inclined to think of as 'The Hemingway Workshop #1' I've really appreciated the passion and candour of your expression of your point(s) of view. Thanks Masako.
If you are in America reading this as you order a lunch sandwich you'll be saying yes or no to the offer of having 'tomato' in the salad. I'll be thinking, next time I pick up as lunch sandwich about whether or not I want one with 'tomato'. You'll be saying 'tomato', I'll be saying 'tomato' and we'll be as different in our pronounciation as in our responses to 'Cat in The Rain'.
"Così è la vita!!" Which is what George (in the story) is likely to saying, with a wry smile and a manly shake of the head, as he acknowledges Ton his way aover to get lunch in the cafe across the public square, having left his wife in their room with the cuddlesome tortose.
I wanted to respond to your reference to H's "macho style." Jake Barnes (The Sun Also Rises) is impotent. Frederick Henry (A Farewell to Arms) walks away from a war. There's a character in one of the stories in In Our Time, if I'm remembering right, who is about to be executed and he's falling apart. A priest tells him to "be a man." I think H recjognizes that is exactly what he's being, i.,e a human being, scared out of his mind at the prospect of his imminent death. I didn't much like about Cat in the Rain for some other reasons (George is a jerk and nothing but annoying. Compare another jerk--Csurmmings in The Falls--my heart kind of goes out to him), but to put in a good word fo H, he's not all macho posturing.
Thank you, Paul. I have not read Hemingway, so my use of the macho allusion was my faulty echoing of cliches I've read. I think it's meant to describe his staccato, unadorned sentences, more than the content of the stories, but I should stop talking because I know not. This story is actually more poetic than the comic imitations of his style usually is.
I liked The Falls, you got a feeling for both men involved. Their personalities were each believable and affectionately portrayed, so the ending brought with it some emotional response.
The Cat in the Rain elicited a mild amusement when the maid showed up with any old cat-- Like an extra pillow or blanket for the restless young American guest. Neither character attracted me enough to care what happened next, unlike in a Paul Bowles novel which also featured a couple like this.
Thanks for shining a light on this. We've talked about the character of George as though it's obvious Hemingway meant to paint a picture of an insensitive partner. Perhaps I'm being ungenerous, but isn't it possible that Hem actually approves of his husbandly behavior? The wife doesn't even get a name, and complains about what she hasn't got - while George contentedly reads and admires his wife's haircut. Not so sure we aren't projecting our 2022 perspective on a story written in 1925. But perhaps the spare language, ironically, allows us to see it in a different way than (maybe) EH meant it. Thoughts?
I'm going to be really honest here... what kept me going was that I felt someone was actually telling me a story - the words are simple and uncomplicated; the sentences are short and complete. I felt that Hemingway wasn't trying to impress me, he just wanted to tell me about something that happened. And while I'm aware there is all the complicated, and interesting relationship, personal stuff going on, I have to admit I love the setting. I love the fact that its both perfect and imperfect, colourful but wet. You know what i think would be really interesting ...if we could read stories without knowing who the author is and therefore not be influenced by expectation of style or awe. I loved this story, and I really loved reading it closely. I've noticed that I read too fast, that I'm often not reading the words for their sake just trying to get the gist. I;ve noticed that I don't give enough time to the structure e.g. a good sentence, what makes a paragraph complete. Thanks George - just lovin' this stuff !
Elmore Leonard memorably said "I try to leave out the parts that people skip." In Hemingway there's very little one could possibly skip, and still hope to make sense of it. That said, what keeps me going is the way each line seems to create a question or expectation, which makes me want to go to the next line to see how it turns out. Will she get the cat? Who is this padrone, and how will he figure in to the story after his initial appearance? How will her husband respond to her soliloquy? Who's at the door? And so on.
Every sentence is an opportunity to skip over something. Shorter sentences yield more opportunities to skip. Each sentence can change the speed and direction of the story. The ability to pivot and turn more frequently confers a lot of possibility on a lithe mind. I'm pretty sure Hemingway's mind was uncommonly lithe when he wrote this.
What made me keep going was my trust in George Saunders and learning something new in spite of my misgivings about Hemingway (the person). I already knew that I'm a biased reader - forever ready to take offense on behalf of my gender -- but this exercise brought new revelations. How very many different takes there are on any given sentence! What solidified was my instinct to trust my instincts: With all the beautiful, accomplished, efficient prose out there, what I really care about is connection; finding a mind I enjoy to hang out in. Chekhov: Yes. Saunders: Absolutely. Hemingway: not that much...It has to do with affinity for one's characters and kindness. Without those two elements, the (reading) world is too sad a place.
"how very many different takes": heck, yeah! Maybe it boils down to the more you credit the writer with honorable intentions, the better story you will find? It's a charming reminder to think that the final product is not what the author wrote but how we read and interpret what he wrote. It reminds me of parables in they way they force your mind to churn.
You prompted me to think that Hemingway is everywhere daring us to interpret the darn thing. All those different spins on names (wife, girl, American, kitty, cat.... benignly keep us off kilter. We were always asking why is this name changing here? Why indeed? Now he's inviting me to make sense of it.
I like that George Saunders confessed that he used this story as a "burner" story. Lead us into ripping it up on purpose. Almost as a tune-up. Some tune-up!
"trust your instincts". Yes, I agree. Develop them too. Write stories that invite an instinctual response. I think that's what he angles for with this "lithe" or "lapidary" prose style. So much is elided. It turns on a dime (or something much more minute).
The way we attacked this story was almost like it was a form or a template where we as the readers had to fill in the blanks and make it our own. What he leaves out is as important as what he puts in.
About a month ago, on the pavement near a glass skyscraper in Baltimore, I came upon an injured woodcock — a stunningly beautiful woodland bird — fluttering around its dead mate. I was at a conference, and instead of attending any sessions, my colleagues and I spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to save the bird. (We succeeded in the end, thanks to Lights Out Baltimore, Woody (we named him) spent the night in a rehabilitation center, then flew free the next day.) I’m not a big softy, but the experience moved me. I found myself picturing what it would be like to be a lost bird in this confusing place. Our efforts were awkward — we nearly killed the poor bird trying to capture it in a towel — but for a brief time, nothing seemed more important than acting on its behalf.
So when I came to this story, animal rescue was on my mind. For me , what kept me reading was the cat — or more precisely, wanting to know what to make of the wife’s empathy for the cat. I wanted to know where her sympathy for the poor cat would lead her, what kind of train of events it would set in motion. This turned out to be a series of more or less misguided acts of identification — people trying, more or less hard and more or less successfully, to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. The padrone is the expert in this regard — anticipating the wife’s needs, getting her an umbrella, getting her a cat, staving off her suffering and her boredom - but even he gets it comically wrong. (I think the maid would agree, and so would the tortoiseshell, whom I'm thinking might have been snatched from a nap.). The husband, who would seem to know the wife best, hardly tried — ‘“get something to read.” The wife wants to save the poor kitty, but even more she wants to possess it, without thinking about what that might be like for the cat. Still, however ridiculous and privileged and clueless the wife seemed, I felt compelled by her mission. The story made me think not only about wanting, but what it takes to try to act on another’s needs— when you can’t really be sure of what they are.
I think Hemmingway’s prose is perfect for thinking about this kind of problem because it’s so spare. There are so many obstacles to understanding for the people in the story -- differences in language, class, nationality, species -- Hemmingway creates obstacles for us, too. You find yourself paying close attention to every word. He gives us all kinds of fodder for inference and imagination – all those clues, poetically and evocatively unfolded – and we have to conjure up the context that makes sense of what this place is, who these people are, and who they are to one another. We get inside the wife’s head, but only bit by bit and with only small clues about the context that would let us understand her yearning. We sympathize with her, then she does or thinks something small that leads our opinion to swing the other way. I think this strategy is super seductive – I kept feeling like there was so much more to know – I can completely understand why Mia hunted down the hotel. Hemmingway gives us the tip of the iceberg and lets our imagination – and sympathies – run wild.
Yes. I love this about Hemingway. The sparse style forces me to fill out the details in my head. So my own life experience more heavily affects my reading than with most authors. He leaves space for the reader far more than most.
I forget where it was but I read an interview with Hemingway, a rare one, in which he talked about the craft-he mentioned that a writer who is writing about what they know about will know what to leave out where as a writer who doesn’t know tends to put too much in. He used Stephen Crane as an example -speaking of him as a man who wrote about war in a way it was obviously to a reader who knew that he had never seen it up close.
The Open Boat..try that if Red Badge of Courage fell short..you can always catch the flag before it hits the ground...The flag is red and blue with stars^..^
I've not read a lot of Hemingway's short stories, but his story "Indian Camp" is memorable to me for its theme about life and death (and performing a C-section with a jacknife and gut leaders). "Cat in the Rain" was harder for me to get into. It wouldn't have held as much interest for me had you not taught me to search more deeply and move beyond my initial feelings about the characters. The conversations in the story were few and told us precious little about the true nature of the relationships between the characters. Learning the fate of the cat kept me interested, but the ending of the story initially left me thinking, "Huh?!?"
I particularly appreciated that you asked us to imagine how a different cat would have mattered. It altered my entire view of everything I'd already assumed about the story. What adds value to the lesson is hearing the analysis of others here at Story Club, bringing their own ideas and experience to the table. I'm loving this. Thank you, George.
So what is 'the fate of the cat' as you read the story Jude? Or should I be asking about the fate of the each of the cats? 'Fate' was not a word that had in any way come to mind in my reading, but now that you've dropped mention of it in your post . . . why it is become yet another pebble of perturbation in the anything but still pond of my reading mind.
Shorter answer, I'll never know the ultimate fate of either the cat or the American couple, but imagining a different cat causes me to wonder how the wife will receive it. The possibility that it's a different cat raises questions that lead me to believe the story is about desire.
Longer answer follows.
Triggered by her failure to find and possess the cat in the rain, many of the wife's unfulfilled desires rise to the surface just when, boom, the maid arrives at the door delivering the catalyst (no pun intended) for the wife's earlier conveying her litany of desires to her somewhat inattentive husband. Is it a different cat? The wife couldn't say because she never got a good enough look at the cat under the table to know. Where did the maid find it? The Padrone sent the maid to the room with this cat and only they know where it came from. Was this act purely transactional or did the Padrone go above and beyond his business role to try to ease the suffering he'd detected in the wife's earlier unsuccessful quest? These questions are intriguing to me. Why? It's because it's within my own wheelhouse to want there to be a happy ending for both the cat and the wife, and I'm not convinced, yet hoping that there'll be one. The wife's stated longing for a cat, any cat, seemed to me impulsive rather than a well thought-out plan. Would the wife care if it was the same cat? Probably not, but the story teases me, makes me wonder. Will she and her husband make the cat a permanent part of their life in America or will it be a temporary amusement for a lonely woman far from home? Hemingway was not telling me enough about her to know. I haven't been left to believe that the cat was ever the end-all solution to her desires. I imagine the couple packing up to go back to America, leaving the cat behind.
The word that struck me the most at the end of the story is that the maid says "the padrone asked me to bring *this* for the signora." The cat--maybe--is not so much a real living thing to the maid, but more just "something the rich people want."
I don't say this to disparage the maid's perspective, necessarily, but more to point to perhaps a subtle indication by Hemingway of the ways people in her position are always placating the desires of their clients, however esoteric they may be.
(also, thank you so much for this newsletter! I'm a bit intimidated to comment because I love your writing so much, but I can't resist the opportunity, so thank you for that, too)
That's a good point, Donna. What we haven't discussed (to my knowledge) is that in much of Southern Europe, groups of cats that belong to no one gather in courtyards and on rooftops and are somehow cared for by the neighborhood.... don't know if same was true when EH wrote this, but don't see why not? Would be another explanation for the maid's incredulity at the wish for a wet cat and for calling the kidnapped cat 'this'?
The opening line about there being only two Americans stopping at the hotel posed the question - ok, so what about the two Americans? - which held my attention through the whole story. As we proceed, we begin to find out about the wife but then the husband looms, still mysterious in the background. At some point the wife will return to her room, we imagine, and we will find out what sort of a guy he is. So I guess a sort of 'wanting resolution' kept me focused and reading. And the ending was perfect! I found it tender and absurd; the care and (possibly misplaced) attention of the hotel staff acting as a counterpoint to the abstracted impatience of the husband. The final collision of 'husband/private room' and 'kitty/maid'; of Americans and Italians; of paying guests and hotel staff, of frivolous desires and practical solutions - it really popped for me. That knock at the door! I was completely with the story at that moment.
I think I also kept reading because Hemingway's famously spare tone makes the prose move on so effortlessly. There is no friction one sentence to the next so why stop. Each sentence is deceptively simple and straightforward but holds (or gestures to) so much. The action moves at a steady walking pace. 'We are getting somewhere,' we think as the reader, but we also have time to contemplate why the characters are behaving the way they do. There are no tangents for the energy of the writing to dissipate in. By under-explaining Hemingway draws us in and offers so much space to the reader and their interpretatory cogitations! And there was something about the spareness and simplicity of the tone that was so very suited to the subject matter of travelling and staying in hotels - it captured the acuity of one's vision when one is out of one's usual environment and the feeling of being more than usually tethered to the present. It captured the fleetingness of travel (people, places, interactions, weather, desires, frustrations...).
There you have it. H under-explains and I over-explain. Ha.
Beautiful phrase ''interpretatory cogitations". I'm enjoying saying it as I write this. Rolls round the mouth and off the tongue. And it captures exactly what we are doing in these rich conversation threads: we're all interpretatory cogitators, each bringing our own takes on the meaning of the story and also on the process of close reading to share in the thread. Thanks Tash.
I like Hemingway's short, simple prose. It reads kind of like poetry, especially the first paragraph. I noticed this line at first: "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."
I noticed it because it was the very beginning of the story and Hemingway chose to repeat "in a long line in the rain" twice in one sentence. It bothered me until I read it aloud, and then it worked, kind of like poetry. The repetition was beautiful out loud.
The story bothered me around the time the female character developed. I noticed it bothered me because she's kind of a stereotype for women in that period — a needy, preposterous child. But I realized that Hemingway could very well be poking fun of the stereotype. I especially think he could be doing this because of the way he ended the story: with the wrong cat. Only the wife will notice, and suddenly, I feel alone with her.
I also found myself thinking 'It reads kind of like poetry' Alexandra. Thought it so much that a few days ago I had a go at laying out the text of the opening paragraph (i.e. Extract 1) with poet-making intent.
I'd like to share this but been thwarted in attempting to so.
Regrettably I've just found that 'Save' left justifies the start of each line here in Substack Comments, so I can't see a way to paste it below with each line laid out as it looks on a Word dcument or to paste it in as an image.
Maybe I'll have a bright 💡 about how to work around this issue or maybe even there are 🛠 available that can be accessed to do the job ❓
One thing the first paragraph does for me is remind me what a great big world is out there, a world with wars and heroes and art and artists and the vast oceans. The American wife’s desire, her longing, wouldn’t feel as real without that paragraph.
"Why is that last page so much darker? Perhaps, I was being metaphorical, trying to subtly track the movement of the story (“It was quite dark now…”) or maybe…that one was taken on a different counter than the others. Who can say? Art is a mystery." This is the best. I'm going to use this for all my technical struggles.
Thank you for this experience. I can feel my brain changing. As you said, there are ways to be a better reader and I'd like to be on that path. One of my struggles with Hemingway, and there are so many teachers in this class so perhaps someone has a wise bit of advice...I've known too much about him as a person (because he, the person, is much discussed in our culture) and it did impact the way I read this story. I realize that it might create "rabbit holes" for the mind to go down that has nothing to do with learning technique, building tension, the way words are used and evolve in the story, his style and intention. I wonder how we would've read the story if we knew absolutely nothing about Hemingway's personal life. Anyway, I love the comments on these lessons.
I think just making that observation re his life affecting your reading is really valuable, and is, itself, an acute observation of the way you are reading.
So true. Hem doesn't exactly have the reputation of being particularly feminist, to put it mildly. (I've always been struck in For Whom The Bell Tolls at how much we learn about Robert's inner life, but the only glimpse of Maria's interior is her gushing for Roberto.) So it's difficult (for me) to not read this story as a not-so-subtle implication that all a woman should/can want is stability, "a table with my own silver", a cat. Though the nameless she is our protagonist, she doesn't even get a name - unlike her husband George, who from a 2022 perspective seems unsympathetic, but I'm not sure EH intended him to be.
In any case, I am clearly bringing my own bias into this interpretation, as you rightly say. As Louise Rosenblatt wisely said, "The reader brings to the work personality traits, memories of past events, present needs and preoccupations, a particular mood of the moment and a particular physical condition. These and many other elements in a never-to-be duplicated combination determine his response to the text."
Interesting Stayca: having read George’s last(ish) post on ‘Cat in the Rain’ and, prior to Story Club, ‘In the Cart’ in ‘A Swim . . .’ I dare say Chekhov will have a first story hove up on our horizon, but quite when is a question not to be much concerned with. At least that is my thought.
I didn't know about Hemingway's life ( oops) and so I put a wholly positive spin on my reading of the story. But I suspect even if I knew what I know now ( thanks Google) I would still have tried to convince myself it was the same cat. So interesting to note that we bring so much of ourselves to stories.
I felt Hemingway's character and life bleeding through into my interpretation, too. Maybe that's why people say it is often difficult for family members to be objective about another member's writing. They know the person too well. That said, my brother and I are writing buddies, and we work really well together, so if you are approaching something critically, I think the separation can be made; it might just take more effort!
Ha! I just made a very similar comment before I saw yours. I feel the same way about Hemingway - hard to separate the writing from the man. But i think after this exercise I do feel more “okay” with that and can just add his larger than life persona to the things I’m responding to.
Keen observation on the Hemingway 'character' coloring his work. Part of my wants to really dive into his life at this time to shed light on what he was trying to do here, but now I realize the work really needs to stand alone and he would probably agree.
Thank you, Teacher. Oh, if I had had a teacher like you I might not have become a math teacher! I’d like to add two thoughts to wrap up this exercise: first of all, the only time I could picture George, (not you, Teacher) was when he said, “Oh, shut up, and find something to read.” I pictured him amused, half genuinely smiling at his pet wife and her little declarations. She’s there to entertain him, although he does get a little tired of it. And finally, the ideas and external knowledge I gathered from all your comments made my reading so much more interesting! Thank you, dear members, for your opinions and experience in the field of literature, as readers, but mainly as teachers and writers!! What a privilege this is to participate with you, George Saunders, and this class of smart, funny and enlightened (and supportive) people!
I became a little fixated on wanting to see the war monument and went searching for a picture of it. I found this article that says the monument in Rapallo stood for less than 20 years before being melted down in the 1930s...for military hardware. That also seems like a terrible joke. The monument to the war to end all wars was melted down to make weapons for the next world war. Later a new one replaced it. Not only do we not get the same cat, we don't get the same war monument.
Thank you so much Mia, for sharing the fruits of your having become 'a little fixated'. I've followed you in digging and drilling down and about a bit into the online archaeological of 20th Century war memorials.
Like you I have found not a trace, other than words, of so much as a poorly framed and badly taken image of the WW1 War Memorial that stood, according to Hemingway's story corroborated by the source you've kindly signposted, in the Public Square of Rapallo, Italy.
How strange, I'm thinking, that the former Rapallo War Monument should turn out to be as enigmatic as the 'Cat in the Rain'. It was there, supposedly, but then it wasn't; then another, monument took it's place out front of the Hotel Splendide, but who can really care?
Is knowledge of the where (Rapallo) and what (War Memorial) extraneous or germane to OUR reading(S) of 'Cat in the Rain'? That is, I think, a rather key question.
And, towards the end of the next war, after the great patriotic national effort to collect and recycle pointlessly spent bullet metal, the real irony is that not more than one of the mid-20th century's 'Classical Fascists' were strung up from recently recast lamp posts.
Old Romantic that he was Percy Bysshe sure packed a hell of a punch into his suddenly-this-moment-relevant-sonnet 'Ozymandias'. Far fewer flabby words than Earnest Ernest sprays, oh so repetitiously, across the few - but longer than 14 line - pages of his 'Cat in the Hat'.
Thank you so much, George. Your warmth, humor and generosity make me feel as though I'm right there in the classroom with you. Recommended by a writer friend, Story Club has turned out to be the best holiday gift I could have hoped for: the opportunity to become regularly immersed in a world with other writers, talking about what we love best. So excited for Story Club 2022!
Thank you for this first exercise, George. I’ve throughly enjoyed being part of it. As one of those who missed that it might be a different cat, I am grateful to you for sharing that you read this story many times before it hit you that it might be a different cat.
I also felt that sense of distance that Hemingway has to his characters, even though I too in a previous comment noted that because of the specificity in his writing, I wondered if they were based on him and his wife. Which kinda makes the story sadder if true.
But I just love love love your insight about the way a writer can be asking and answering the question, “What is the highest way in which to regard our fellow human beings?”
Here’s to a great 2022 with lots of Story Club as we aspire to ask and answer that question in our writing as best we can.
Jan 2, 2022·edited Jan 2, 2022Liked by George Saunders
I keep turning the story over in my head, and I keep coming back to that boyish haircut. The wife says explicitly that she is tired of looking like a boy, which doesn’t sound to me like it’s a fashionable bob or anything feminine. I think that’s part of the power of how the maid addresses her in the end, regardless of the identity of the cat or it’s appropriateness as a gift. That “Signora” is more than just a term of polite respect. It is recognition that the American wife is a *woman* (not a child and definitely not a boy), which I think is what she ultimately wants. It’s an exceedingly lovely gift.
What a perfect story to go over this week–it’s been raining all week it seems. The mood of the story fit the weather in NY perfectly. It has been so nice to think so much about short stories, which I love and forgot how much I loved. I have truly appreciated reading so many interesting comments from so many different people.
For personal extra credit, I did some of my own exercises. Someone said this would be a fun vignette to act out, so I tied my hair up in a knot and had my cat sit on my lap for a while (ha ha, yes, I’m bored!). What does that feel like? It’s very serene and comforting. I don't have any silver though...Another random personal extra credit: I wrote a story using the pulses we were given as a guide. I had an idea that I didn’t know how to start, and I used the scaffolding of this story to help me flesh out a visual idea that I had. Sort of like writing a song by using the chords of another song that you may know very well.
Anyway: Thank you, thank you. Looking forward to learning more. And looking forward to the sun being out this week!
In the previous post, GS wrote that "[f]iction is lovely because it ... lets us (briefly) reside in a more truthful land, where things are rich in contradiction and, not only do we not mind it, we like it. We get a glimpse of who we might be if we decided/opined/were sure less often, or a little later in the game."
In a nutshell, this is why the Humanities matter, especially now, especially after being in the decline for so many decades.
Can I begin, as a teacher, by thanking you, George for generously sharing your teaching tips for this story? I’m definitely going to use the method with my students.
As for my feelings about the story itself, for me, the whole thing comes together around the wife’s aspiration to eat at her own table, with her own silver. This reads to me not so much as a sense of entitlement as insecurity. I wonder all the way through if this couple has a home or if they’re drifting from hotel to hotel. There’s no real suggestion they’re on a trip. The sense of the reluctant Bohemian lifestyle is reinforced by her short hair (in the immediate past WW1 period). She wants to grow her hair back into something more matronly and respectable.
I think she sees herself in the kitty in the rain and also the desire for a child, and I think Hemingway shows us, with the final gift of the big lump of a cat, that wishes may come true but not as we expect. (On the subject of the cat as child substitute, there are aspects of this story that remind me of The Sun Also Rises, with its narrator who has been rendered impotent by a war wound.)
Well, there’s my two penn’ orth. Happy new year to all who are celebrating.
Thank you so much for this. The slowing down. The permission to let things bubble. I began to really notice and to really experience how one sentence leads to the next. I mean experiencing writing in a way that I'd never truly "got" before. Of course, intellectually this always made sense. But this forced slowly down was more of a visceral experience. Fabulous!
I'm definitely going to play with this in my English classes. I'll be teaching the transcendentalists next and I start with Emerson's Nature. You know how sentences are really just about everything with Emerson? . . . I'm going to print out the introduction to Nature and do exactly as we've done here with Hemingway. Slowing down is really the only way to even begin to grasp what Emerson is stating. And getting high school students to slow down is not always easy. So, thank you for giving me the feeling I can go with the less is more approach in terms of pacing.
Oh, and my reaction to this story initially? I was initially embarrassed that I found it a sadly funny ending. And, in fact, laughed out loud when the maid appeared with a large (likely new) cat.
I didn't want to comment before because I've read the story a lot and it seemed out of the spirit of the exercise! But I think it's a different cat because no wet cat would be "swung down" against the maid's body: that is a cat that was recently sleeping. (I doubt the maid would hold a wet cat in this way anyway.) I don't think the wife wants a cat - this cat or the wet cat. Her husband is absent, controlling, shows no sign of love and barely any sign of attention. She tells him that she wants change -- but elliptically, by asking about her haircut (not fixable! it's cut short! how many years would it take to get enough to have a "big knot"?) and saying she wants it to be spring. She mixes up things that can easily be had, things he clearly is not letting her have, and things that are not have-able, and punctuates it with a cat. She doesn't want a cat. She wants her husband to notice her, hear her dissatisfaction, do something about it. To me this is a story that is all about frustration. I have always thought they were on their honeymoon (it doesn't actually say that) and she is realizing her epic mistake in marrying him. She thought it would be different. He doesn't care, or he's resigned, he tells her to read, he does nothing but read. And she's afraid, maybe of him or (I think) of her mistake in marrying him. It's not "any fun". But she doesn't want to give it up yet, she doesn't want to cause trouble or start a fight or leave; she doesn't have the assurance that she's important enough in this marriage to do that. I don't thinks she wants a cat: I think she is the cat, "trying to make herself so compact that she would not get dripped on".
Yours is closest to my own feeling about this woman...she wants stability (candle, silver at the table...those things that are home/settled...much as having a cat is a sign of being "settled"....
This has been such a great experience. Thank you, to George and to everyone for the insightful comments.
I really like the idea that the task is to start with your initial response to a piece and work towards making sense of it. Learning needn’t be, as I think is often taken for granted, a matter of increasingly complex theorising. It can be as simple as paying attention to how the work is affecting you.
I’ll be taking that away from the exercise, along with the related thought that ambiguity can often be a virtue, not a vice.
Heartfelt thanks for running this series, and for introducing me (sorry... ) to this story. I feel I have discovered something important, but if I look too closely, and try to articulate what it is, it might vanish. But it's got something to do with slowing down. Something to do with respecting the words, and the order in which they are gifted to me. Something to do with cutting out the noise and listening to the small things. For a while during this exercise, I found myself pushing back, thinking 'how can anyone possibly know what is really intended, unless you have the writer there and can cross-question?' Now, I know I was thinking codswallop. Listening to those small things is probably the key.
And the big question: what made us keep going, line to line? What are the micro-qualities of the prose (word choice, rhythm) that compelled and intrigued us? The pattern of knowing, then wondering, etc. Or, more broadly: Can you draw any conclusions on how YOU read? What are you looking for, line to line? And so on.
I’d never read Hemingway before but I’m reading him now. I should confess too, not only that I never finished high school, I barely started it never mind college. I honestly thought you were the dude from All About Eve. And I like O. Henry too. Hemingway is blowing my mind. This course is phenomenal. Thank you so much.
Ha. “That” George (Sanders) also did the voice of the tiger in the old “Jungle Book.” Glad you’re here & enjoying it.
Fun Fact: George Sanders is listed among the memorized Hollywood suicides by James Lear in Michael Chabon’s novel The Wonder Boys which centers around a professor of creative writing’s relationship with and tutelage of an aspiring writer.
His suicide note read,
“Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”
If Story Club is The Wonder Boys you’re Grady Tripp and we’re James Lear working on The Love Parade. In the film, Grady’s wife is played by the excellent Francis McDormand, maybe best know for Fargo. The love parade must go far, and we’re graded on the trip, not the destination.
Wonderful fun facts indeed. I have seen the film and she (FM) was luminous as she always is. My favourite performance of hers is a film called Laurel Canyon. She plays a record producer and she’s thoroughly believable, utterly transcendent and incredibly sexy. It’s gorgeous “little film” and full of delicious performances by several other surprising actors too. I might need to rewatch it actually.
I haven’t seen that and now I want to. Thanks
I really sold it to you there
She disappears in that role, almost. It is so different from her many other characters.
FM is a jewel of an actor and Laurel Canyon was splendid, if my memory serves, which it does not as well as it once did. Perhaps time to watch it again.
Jason, I'd forgotten about that detail in The Wonder Boys, which I have not read in too many years, althouhg I have seen the movies so many times, I cannot count anymore.
"If you covered him with garbage/ George Sanders would still have style." -- Ray Davies
Yeah! 🙏🏻
Hey, Cat. I think you should view your educationm or lack there of, as an advantage, of not being subjected to so many rules and expecations -- this is this way, because we say it is, because it has always been. I can't tell you how many times in the course of my education (or even over-education, possibly) that I had to battle with people who insisted something was a certain way just because that is what the book says or scholars say or the way it has always been.
Besides education comes in all forms. Life itself, is an education, to lean on a cliche.
The first paragraph introduced the formidable square, and I wanted to be with the story because that place was so remarkable (worth the visit of tourists and the paint of artists) that I knew something interesting would happen there. Then there was a fantastic pace and endless tension that carried me to the end. I must confess, I really had to fight hard not to go ahead with the reading.
The final paragraph, with a new, big cat taken from somewhere to please the wife, tells me that the the hotel owner and the maid can well call the wife “signora”, but when they offer (any) cat, they treat her like a child. In fact, with this ending, we understand that it’s all a farce. The girl plays lady, the couple play wife and husband, the big cat plays little kitten, the maid and the hotel owners play pleasing servants, and yet they truly put themselves above the wife in the moment they bring another cat: perhaps they think she’s just capricious, or perhaps they are thinking she can’t recognise the cat she wants, so they cheat her. They might also think that, with that rain, the capricious wife might leave, and so they bring her a cat for good measure.
On a side note, I’m Italian, I’ve seen the “giving of another cat” so many times when I lived there, that this ending seems to me at the same time marvellously symbolic and terribly prosaic.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to partecipate to this group. I loved reading A Swim in the Pond in the Rain and being part of this group brings it alive.
I really like your observation that so much of this story is about people acting out roles... even the cat. Fascinating - a thought-provoking observation.
Thanks Vanessa. Yes, I thought there was something about pretending, about the lack of meaning, which makes the wife act out a role… and then this pretence extends to the entire story. Quite sad actually.
Is that really a thing? Do people just give cats like gifts in Italy? Not trying to be funny--I'm honestly curious!
Hi Julia,
No, not literary. I refer to the attitude of the maid and the padrone and to their attempt to appease, which ends up being patronising.
I love the image of this as a farce. Something I wouldn't have thought of and a reminder of how we each bring ourselves to what we read as we do when we write. And the capper for me is that it led to me thinking of it as a Fawlty Towers episode. I can see it all and it makes me laugh!
Hi Steve, I love to read what other people make of the story. It’s a truly a fascinating process
Well, it seems kind of embarrassing to admit this, but I'm looking for at least a glimpse of understanding as to the doors I've opened or shut in my own life. For this particular story, I was drawn (as always) by the fact of a couple and the immediate knowledge that this couple seems to be in trouble in their own unique way--but in a way that, perhaps, I can relate to (who can't relate to a couple in trouble?). I read for me, is what I guess I'm saying. (Oh, god, how dumb that sentence sounds. I hope you get my point.) How is THIS couple going to work things out? Or not? As far as what I'm looking for line to line--I'm hoping to remain in the story, to not be stopped by something that takes me out of the story. I don't like having to read a sentence twice, for instance, if it is worded clumsily. I'm also looking, line by line, for the tension to increase. Some stories may not do this and I'll like them anyway for being so beautifully written, sentence by sentence. But I'd say, overall, I just want a good story. And if it works on more than one level, that's fantastic. And if I'm still thinking about the story later that day or the next day, that's the best of all.
I love this comment. I believe we’re all looking for clues to how to live well, righteously, properly and wholly in every character, but especially the protagonist, we observe. Im asking in every moment - is this how I’d act, react?
Oh my goodness, Mary. Reading this story now resulted in a wash of memory/experience of my relationships, which served to draw me into the story so much more securely than, say, when I was 14, just a kid, or, in my mid-20s, with only an inkling of understanding about myself and any romantic relationships that I had had or would have.
I believe I have always, first and foremost, read for me. Perhaps that is narcassistic, but there it is. Although, in my defense (if I need one), I have found that reading for me means understand and empathizing more deeply with others.
It may, in fact, be impossible to not read for one's self first. I just know that some stories speak to me more closely than others, and I think it's because I am relating to the characters or just finding something that clicks with me and my life or my feelings about life. What's amazing is when I read a story that is not at all like me but that still speaks to me on that universal level that the best stories all have.
You may be right. As a younger reader I struggled to finish or enjoy a story that did not speak directly to my experience but am happy to say that now I find myself seeking out those stories that depict characters and experience entirely different from myself and my own. Although I admit to be most strongly hooked into stories that I can put myself into, or which draw me in.
Hi, Mary.
What you describe is the more exciting aspect of reading the story, viz. how it engages with the reader and what it excites in us. The line that appears elsewhere in the comments about a thousand readers, a thousand stories is so apt.
I don't know about you but when I was in school a piece of literature that worked on "multiple levels" was all the rage with my profs and all they wanted us to notice. Or so it seemed. I think that it is too often conflated with packing in, beyond the limits of pretension, every cultural allusion the writer can think of. But done without pretense, no small feat, it's exactly what I want, a piece of writing that works on multiple-levels. It's "fantastic", as you say.
Regards,
John
I've been impatient but when I was at my best, I observed the tension and I observed the conflict. I observed the beauty and I observed the stakes.
I don't know if I'm a good reader.
I think I'm talking about myself when I pretend to talk about the chracters in the story.
Slow reading took me to an analytical angle of reading and comprehending.
Thank you for this precious experience, sir.
Happy New Year.
I think that I, and most, if not all, readers, are alway simultaneously talking about the characters and themselves at the same time. I think it is one of the most valuable things that I took away from education as an English Writing/Lit major. That people are always telling you about themselves when they speak, you only have to listen.
NOTE: That is a variation on something my former writing teacher, Stuat Dybek, often said about writing fiction: The Story is always talking to you, you just have to listen. Something I did not quite understand until more recently, when I heard George quote it in a youtube vidoe of a reading or talk or whatever. Thanks for that George. I might have gone my whole life without getting it.
Agree with your comment, Chris. And Stuart Dybek! I love his stories, and he seems like such a kind person and generous teacher, much like our fearless leader George. (Did you go to WMU?)
Oh, Prince, it's not just you. That's one of the things that struck me about the innumerable interpretations of this story and its many components That the interpretations were much a reflection on the interpreter as anything else and, to the extent that it happens, is real magic. it has the power to illuminate a corner of our souls.
Doing this as a joint exercise made this infinitely easy to witness and stand in awe of.
I credit this effect to the author's intention and skill.
Well said, John.
I enjoy talking and thinking about the work of Ernest Hemingway but I generally don’t like to put into words what it is I find transcendent and beautiful in his deceptively simple and terse language. It literally frightens me to go there. Imagine someone who receives a hand thrown vase as a gift. Imagine the vase falls and is shattered. A bit of kintsugi might repair the vase to its former shape and also enhance it- the gold fused seams of the broken parts take on the mysterious beauty of wabi sabi a new vessel simply cannot possess. But to grind the vase down to powder so as to understand what is at the very substrate of the clay might leave you with a formula for good clay but it will irreversibly destroy the gifted vessel.
I have learned over the years and here I care more about how a story is told than what it’s about. If it has the ‘truth beauty’ of Shelley’s Grecian Urn I find a way to care about the subject, because it’s true and beautiful. I find literary fiction when approached this way definitely flexes my empathy muscle and expands what and who I’m able to care about and ultimately love.
Great post, Jason. There is always some risk attached to understanding. Maybe it changes us more than the object of our attention, moves us in directions we hadn’t planned to go?
You have gained me as subscriber to The Gnostic Reclamation!!
Great to hear - I’ll be posting their soon.
Adore this description & your wording here, Jason -- makes me reflect on lessons the field of anthropology was learning in the 1980's about working in the field and their influence in act of regarding & judging other cultures on what they were studying -- uncovering the complexity of interaction/condemnation of other country's (in Africa for example) practice of female genital mutilation . . .
Everyone could use 'Kintsugi' on or in their soul for the battle with life^^
I have to admit that this is exactly the kind of story that made me uninterested in reading Hemmingway. The presumably white American tourist (or traveler) saying "shut up" to his apparently unhappy (perhaps feeling trapped in a disappointing marriage) wife without any other readers taking umbrage, is just the sort of not so subtle reproduction of a culture that I cringe about having to be a part of, if only by birth.
If they'd been fighting, it would be different, but it was only said by him and taken by her as their normal conversation. This is telling in context, about their relationship and personalities, but the fact that so many comments have been given and nobody seeming to mind, bothers me. It seems that Hemmingway is admired, especially by male writers, for his macho style. It is easy to be derisive, but that doesn't make it cool. At least to me.
I've read it four times and hardly care more about it now than I did at first. I immediately thought it was not the same cat. It brought to mind O'Henry, for the abrupt surprising ending. That was the best part of the story for me.
Thanks for this, Masako. Just letting you know that LOTS of readers took umbrage and minded, myself included. What this slow-reading exercise taught me (and others) is to pay close attention to our reactions at the sentence level. Discovering how we read and what we react to in accordance with our personal circumstances is part of the exercise (I think?). Discovering (once more) that H. was a misogynist and that we have nothing in common with his over-interpreted world-view is as much an achievement as is finding common ground with the guy. Nobody's 'right'. Nobody's 'wrong'. It's all just a matter of taste and personal truth?
Hi, Masako.
I sympathize with your feelings. Here's how I come to grips with some of the similar feelings I have had about Ernest Hemingway (fun fact: my father had the same high school English teacher as "Papa").
A goto form of comedy for a lot of great comedians is self-deprecation, an art form where the comedian makes his/herself the butt of his jokes.
The analogous form of self-deprecation for a writer would be is to steal insights he/she might have into their own personality and foibles and exploit them for the sake of a good story.
The club has proven that Hemingway is very resourceful, having modeled the hotel with the war monument outside from a hotel with a war monument outside that he visited with his first wife. My feeling is there is no way Hemingway is going to forego the juicy material he could tap just from observing himself. And once you do that, the go-to approach for an artful story is to mine your less flattering traits and use them. It almost automatically makes them more genuine and sincere.
I can't prove it but I think that's what he's doing. I have a daughter who runs some kind of chance of marrying a "George". She is also a reader. I wouldn't want her to read books that suggest that men don't have unflattering and damnable traits like Hemingway's "George". The last thing we want is a George, who happens to be a prince as envisioned by Disney.
I'm quite happy that Hemingway made this George so unappealing. It's a satire of America's capacity for generating louts, which is little diminished since in all the time that has passed since this story was written.
Thanks for bringing this out in the open for reflection.
Best regards,
John
I think you may be right, that this may have happened to him and a wife.
You yourself have provided the tone of the conversation and then got mad at yourself.
Multiple readers “took umbrage”.
Sometimes married couples will playfully say “oh, shut up” or even “fuck you” to each other as non hostile terms of endearment. Not everybody is like you, thankfully.
Simmer down
Let's go easy on the personal stuff, eh? That's not what we're about here. Anything that needs to be discussed can be discussed in a technical sense - using the story itself to make the case. I appreciate it.
I had not considered that, Jasone, although I'm not sure why. That some couples, as a matter of course or personality or whatever, will strike sort of pseudo hostiles attitude towards one another, which is both irreverant and affectionate at the same time, if that makes sense.
I've actually had opportunity recently to witness this first hand with a couple-friends that I know , a situation/circumstance that I have been considering mining for a story perhaps.
There is nothing in this story to suggest this is an affectionate, playful or non hostile "shut up." All the evidence in the text is to the contrary. He is nothing but dismissive and non-engaging. E.g., when he does put down his book to talk to her he does it because his eyes are tired.
There is nothing in this story to suggest this is an affectionate, playful or non hostile "shut up."
You seem to be making my point for me.
My eyes also grow tired.
I thought your point was that some couples say “shut up“ in an affectionate way and therefore George in the story could have been doing so. My point is that there is nothing in the story to back that up.
Thankfully
I've been travelling in quite the opposite direction to you Masako. Like you I've been left cold by my previous encounters with Hemingway: 'so what', 'who cares', 'losing the will' are indicative of my typical reactions. But all that I've just said being said I've noentheless found myself returning to sample Hemingway from time to time, because I've always had a sense that there's more to him than has met my reader's eye. And this revisit and go round 'Cat in the Hat' has - writing as I think it, definitely not trying to be 'clever' or 'grandiose - somehow given me the sense of getting closer to the heart of Hemingway.
Who knows we have passed each other over the past couple weeks, you on the down elevator and me ascending. Do you happen to have been in 'Edificio Hemingway' lately?
As with so many other contributions to this and the other threads of conversation in what I'm inclined to think of as 'The Hemingway Workshop #1' I've really appreciated the passion and candour of your expression of your point(s) of view. Thanks Masako.
If you are in America reading this as you order a lunch sandwich you'll be saying yes or no to the offer of having 'tomato' in the salad. I'll be thinking, next time I pick up as lunch sandwich about whether or not I want one with 'tomato'. You'll be saying 'tomato', I'll be saying 'tomato' and we'll be as different in our pronounciation as in our responses to 'Cat in The Rain'.
"Così è la vita!!" Which is what George (in the story) is likely to saying, with a wry smile and a manly shake of the head, as he acknowledges Ton his way aover to get lunch in the cafe across the public square, having left his wife in their room with the cuddlesome tortose.
Ciao, Rob!
I wanted to respond to your reference to H's "macho style." Jake Barnes (The Sun Also Rises) is impotent. Frederick Henry (A Farewell to Arms) walks away from a war. There's a character in one of the stories in In Our Time, if I'm remembering right, who is about to be executed and he's falling apart. A priest tells him to "be a man." I think H recjognizes that is exactly what he's being, i.,e a human being, scared out of his mind at the prospect of his imminent death. I didn't much like about Cat in the Rain for some other reasons (George is a jerk and nothing but annoying. Compare another jerk--Csurmmings in The Falls--my heart kind of goes out to him), but to put in a good word fo H, he's not all macho posturing.
Thank you, Paul. I have not read Hemingway, so my use of the macho allusion was my faulty echoing of cliches I've read. I think it's meant to describe his staccato, unadorned sentences, more than the content of the stories, but I should stop talking because I know not. This story is actually more poetic than the comic imitations of his style usually is.
I liked The Falls, you got a feeling for both men involved. Their personalities were each believable and affectionately portrayed, so the ending brought with it some emotional response.
The Cat in the Rain elicited a mild amusement when the maid showed up with any old cat-- Like an extra pillow or blanket for the restless young American guest. Neither character attracted me enough to care what happened next, unlike in a Paul Bowles novel which also featured a couple like this.
Try Big Two hearted river by E. Hemingway^^
Thanks for shining a light on this. We've talked about the character of George as though it's obvious Hemingway meant to paint a picture of an insensitive partner. Perhaps I'm being ungenerous, but isn't it possible that Hem actually approves of his husbandly behavior? The wife doesn't even get a name, and complains about what she hasn't got - while George contentedly reads and admires his wife's haircut. Not so sure we aren't projecting our 2022 perspective on a story written in 1925. But perhaps the spare language, ironically, allows us to see it in a different way than (maybe) EH meant it. Thoughts?
You may be right...
Sometimes what keeps me going is the author not stopping me.
Well put. I try to remember that as I am writing myself -- amd I inhibiting the reader?
I'm going to be really honest here... what kept me going was that I felt someone was actually telling me a story - the words are simple and uncomplicated; the sentences are short and complete. I felt that Hemingway wasn't trying to impress me, he just wanted to tell me about something that happened. And while I'm aware there is all the complicated, and interesting relationship, personal stuff going on, I have to admit I love the setting. I love the fact that its both perfect and imperfect, colourful but wet. You know what i think would be really interesting ...if we could read stories without knowing who the author is and therefore not be influenced by expectation of style or awe. I loved this story, and I really loved reading it closely. I've noticed that I read too fast, that I'm often not reading the words for their sake just trying to get the gist. I;ve noticed that I don't give enough time to the structure e.g. a good sentence, what makes a paragraph complete. Thanks George - just lovin' this stuff !
Elmore Leonard memorably said "I try to leave out the parts that people skip." In Hemingway there's very little one could possibly skip, and still hope to make sense of it. That said, what keeps me going is the way each line seems to create a question or expectation, which makes me want to go to the next line to see how it turns out. Will she get the cat? Who is this padrone, and how will he figure in to the story after his initial appearance? How will her husband respond to her soliloquy? Who's at the door? And so on.
I don’t read crime novels, but when I do they’re by Elmore Leonard.
:-)
yes, completely agree, each line feeds into another, and since Hemmingway has left out all the fluff, you just roll along with the story. Thank you.
Every sentence is an opportunity to skip over something. Shorter sentences yield more opportunities to skip. Each sentence can change the speed and direction of the story. The ability to pivot and turn more frequently confers a lot of possibility on a lithe mind. I'm pretty sure Hemingway's mind was uncommonly lithe when he wrote this.
What made me keep going was my trust in George Saunders and learning something new in spite of my misgivings about Hemingway (the person). I already knew that I'm a biased reader - forever ready to take offense on behalf of my gender -- but this exercise brought new revelations. How very many different takes there are on any given sentence! What solidified was my instinct to trust my instincts: With all the beautiful, accomplished, efficient prose out there, what I really care about is connection; finding a mind I enjoy to hang out in. Chekhov: Yes. Saunders: Absolutely. Hemingway: not that much...It has to do with affinity for one's characters and kindness. Without those two elements, the (reading) world is too sad a place.
Well said Helia, for what we read is what we become.
Thank you for articulating something that lie deep in my heart to come out now to express - Saunders and you.
Heila,
"how very many different takes": heck, yeah! Maybe it boils down to the more you credit the writer with honorable intentions, the better story you will find? It's a charming reminder to think that the final product is not what the author wrote but how we read and interpret what he wrote. It reminds me of parables in they way they force your mind to churn.
You prompted me to think that Hemingway is everywhere daring us to interpret the darn thing. All those different spins on names (wife, girl, American, kitty, cat.... benignly keep us off kilter. We were always asking why is this name changing here? Why indeed? Now he's inviting me to make sense of it.
I like that George Saunders confessed that he used this story as a "burner" story. Lead us into ripping it up on purpose. Almost as a tune-up. Some tune-up!
"trust your instincts". Yes, I agree. Develop them too. Write stories that invite an instinctual response. I think that's what he angles for with this "lithe" or "lapidary" prose style. So much is elided. It turns on a dime (or something much more minute).
The way we attacked this story was almost like it was a form or a template where we as the readers had to fill in the blanks and make it our own. What he leaves out is as important as what he puts in.
I love your last paragraph--you describe exactly how reading turns us into writers!
Thanks heaps, Melora. Definitely what I was reaching for, though it mightily strained my ability to form sentences :-).
About a month ago, on the pavement near a glass skyscraper in Baltimore, I came upon an injured woodcock — a stunningly beautiful woodland bird — fluttering around its dead mate. I was at a conference, and instead of attending any sessions, my colleagues and I spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to save the bird. (We succeeded in the end, thanks to Lights Out Baltimore, Woody (we named him) spent the night in a rehabilitation center, then flew free the next day.) I’m not a big softy, but the experience moved me. I found myself picturing what it would be like to be a lost bird in this confusing place. Our efforts were awkward — we nearly killed the poor bird trying to capture it in a towel — but for a brief time, nothing seemed more important than acting on its behalf.
So when I came to this story, animal rescue was on my mind. For me , what kept me reading was the cat — or more precisely, wanting to know what to make of the wife’s empathy for the cat. I wanted to know where her sympathy for the poor cat would lead her, what kind of train of events it would set in motion. This turned out to be a series of more or less misguided acts of identification — people trying, more or less hard and more or less successfully, to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. The padrone is the expert in this regard — anticipating the wife’s needs, getting her an umbrella, getting her a cat, staving off her suffering and her boredom - but even he gets it comically wrong. (I think the maid would agree, and so would the tortoiseshell, whom I'm thinking might have been snatched from a nap.). The husband, who would seem to know the wife best, hardly tried — ‘“get something to read.” The wife wants to save the poor kitty, but even more she wants to possess it, without thinking about what that might be like for the cat. Still, however ridiculous and privileged and clueless the wife seemed, I felt compelled by her mission. The story made me think not only about wanting, but what it takes to try to act on another’s needs— when you can’t really be sure of what they are.
I think Hemmingway’s prose is perfect for thinking about this kind of problem because it’s so spare. There are so many obstacles to understanding for the people in the story -- differences in language, class, nationality, species -- Hemmingway creates obstacles for us, too. You find yourself paying close attention to every word. He gives us all kinds of fodder for inference and imagination – all those clues, poetically and evocatively unfolded – and we have to conjure up the context that makes sense of what this place is, who these people are, and who they are to one another. We get inside the wife’s head, but only bit by bit and with only small clues about the context that would let us understand her yearning. We sympathize with her, then she does or thinks something small that leads our opinion to swing the other way. I think this strategy is super seductive – I kept feeling like there was so much more to know – I can completely understand why Mia hunted down the hotel. Hemmingway gives us the tip of the iceberg and lets our imagination – and sympathies – run wild.
Vesper Flights by Helen MacDonald^^
High buildings are a slaughter house for birds^^
Well put.
^..^
Beautiful! Thanks so much, Graeme.
I think what keeps me going is what is left out. It's always my curiosity that makes me keep reading.
Yes. I love this about Hemingway. The sparse style forces me to fill out the details in my head. So my own life experience more heavily affects my reading than with most authors. He leaves space for the reader far more than most.
I forget where it was but I read an interview with Hemingway, a rare one, in which he talked about the craft-he mentioned that a writer who is writing about what they know about will know what to leave out where as a writer who doesn’t know tends to put too much in. He used Stephen Crane as an example -speaking of him as a man who wrote about war in a way it was obviously to a reader who knew that he had never seen it up close.
The Open Boat..try that if Red Badge of Courage fell short..you can always catch the flag before it hits the ground...The flag is red and blue with stars^..^
yes, yes, yes....
I've not read a lot of Hemingway's short stories, but his story "Indian Camp" is memorable to me for its theme about life and death (and performing a C-section with a jacknife and gut leaders). "Cat in the Rain" was harder for me to get into. It wouldn't have held as much interest for me had you not taught me to search more deeply and move beyond my initial feelings about the characters. The conversations in the story were few and told us precious little about the true nature of the relationships between the characters. Learning the fate of the cat kept me interested, but the ending of the story initially left me thinking, "Huh?!?"
I particularly appreciated that you asked us to imagine how a different cat would have mattered. It altered my entire view of everything I'd already assumed about the story. What adds value to the lesson is hearing the analysis of others here at Story Club, bringing their own ideas and experience to the table. I'm loving this. Thank you, George.
So what is 'the fate of the cat' as you read the story Jude? Or should I be asking about the fate of the each of the cats? 'Fate' was not a word that had in any way come to mind in my reading, but now that you've dropped mention of it in your post . . . why it is become yet another pebble of perturbation in the anything but still pond of my reading mind.
Shorter answer, I'll never know the ultimate fate of either the cat or the American couple, but imagining a different cat causes me to wonder how the wife will receive it. The possibility that it's a different cat raises questions that lead me to believe the story is about desire.
Longer answer follows.
Triggered by her failure to find and possess the cat in the rain, many of the wife's unfulfilled desires rise to the surface just when, boom, the maid arrives at the door delivering the catalyst (no pun intended) for the wife's earlier conveying her litany of desires to her somewhat inattentive husband. Is it a different cat? The wife couldn't say because she never got a good enough look at the cat under the table to know. Where did the maid find it? The Padrone sent the maid to the room with this cat and only they know where it came from. Was this act purely transactional or did the Padrone go above and beyond his business role to try to ease the suffering he'd detected in the wife's earlier unsuccessful quest? These questions are intriguing to me. Why? It's because it's within my own wheelhouse to want there to be a happy ending for both the cat and the wife, and I'm not convinced, yet hoping that there'll be one. The wife's stated longing for a cat, any cat, seemed to me impulsive rather than a well thought-out plan. Would the wife care if it was the same cat? Probably not, but the story teases me, makes me wonder. Will she and her husband make the cat a permanent part of their life in America or will it be a temporary amusement for a lonely woman far from home? Hemingway was not telling me enough about her to know. I haven't been left to believe that the cat was ever the end-all solution to her desires. I imagine the couple packing up to go back to America, leaving the cat behind.
The word that struck me the most at the end of the story is that the maid says "the padrone asked me to bring *this* for the signora." The cat--maybe--is not so much a real living thing to the maid, but more just "something the rich people want."
I don't say this to disparage the maid's perspective, necessarily, but more to point to perhaps a subtle indication by Hemingway of the ways people in her position are always placating the desires of their clients, however esoteric they may be.
(also, thank you so much for this newsletter! I'm a bit intimidated to comment because I love your writing so much, but I can't resist the opportunity, so thank you for that, too)
That's a good point, Donna. What we haven't discussed (to my knowledge) is that in much of Southern Europe, groups of cats that belong to no one gather in courtyards and on rooftops and are somehow cared for by the neighborhood.... don't know if same was true when EH wrote this, but don't see why not? Would be another explanation for the maid's incredulity at the wish for a wet cat and for calling the kidnapped cat 'this'?
What kept me reading:
The opening line about there being only two Americans stopping at the hotel posed the question - ok, so what about the two Americans? - which held my attention through the whole story. As we proceed, we begin to find out about the wife but then the husband looms, still mysterious in the background. At some point the wife will return to her room, we imagine, and we will find out what sort of a guy he is. So I guess a sort of 'wanting resolution' kept me focused and reading. And the ending was perfect! I found it tender and absurd; the care and (possibly misplaced) attention of the hotel staff acting as a counterpoint to the abstracted impatience of the husband. The final collision of 'husband/private room' and 'kitty/maid'; of Americans and Italians; of paying guests and hotel staff, of frivolous desires and practical solutions - it really popped for me. That knock at the door! I was completely with the story at that moment.
I think I also kept reading because Hemingway's famously spare tone makes the prose move on so effortlessly. There is no friction one sentence to the next so why stop. Each sentence is deceptively simple and straightforward but holds (or gestures to) so much. The action moves at a steady walking pace. 'We are getting somewhere,' we think as the reader, but we also have time to contemplate why the characters are behaving the way they do. There are no tangents for the energy of the writing to dissipate in. By under-explaining Hemingway draws us in and offers so much space to the reader and their interpretatory cogitations! And there was something about the spareness and simplicity of the tone that was so very suited to the subject matter of travelling and staying in hotels - it captured the acuity of one's vision when one is out of one's usual environment and the feeling of being more than usually tethered to the present. It captured the fleetingness of travel (people, places, interactions, weather, desires, frustrations...).
There you have it. H under-explains and I over-explain. Ha.
Beautiful phrase ''interpretatory cogitations". I'm enjoying saying it as I write this. Rolls round the mouth and off the tongue. And it captures exactly what we are doing in these rich conversation threads: we're all interpretatory cogitators, each bringing our own takes on the meaning of the story and also on the process of close reading to share in the thread. Thanks Tash.
I like Hemingway's short, simple prose. It reads kind of like poetry, especially the first paragraph. I noticed this line at first: "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."
I noticed it because it was the very beginning of the story and Hemingway chose to repeat "in a long line in the rain" twice in one sentence. It bothered me until I read it aloud, and then it worked, kind of like poetry. The repetition was beautiful out loud.
The story bothered me around the time the female character developed. I noticed it bothered me because she's kind of a stereotype for women in that period — a needy, preposterous child. But I realized that Hemingway could very well be poking fun of the stereotype. I especially think he could be doing this because of the way he ended the story: with the wrong cat. Only the wife will notice, and suddenly, I feel alone with her.
I also found myself thinking 'It reads kind of like poetry' Alexandra. Thought it so much that a few days ago I had a go at laying out the text of the opening paragraph (i.e. Extract 1) with poet-making intent.
I'd like to share this but been thwarted in attempting to so.
Regrettably I've just found that 'Save' left justifies the start of each line here in Substack Comments, so I can't see a way to paste it below with each line laid out as it looks on a Word dcument or to paste it in as an image.
Maybe I'll have a bright 💡 about how to work around this issue or maybe even there are 🛠 available that can be accessed to do the job ❓
C'est la vie!
One thing the first paragraph does for me is remind me what a great big world is out there, a world with wars and heroes and art and artists and the vast oceans. The American wife’s desire, her longing, wouldn’t feel as real without that paragraph.
Can’t believe I’m getting this opportunity. God is good. Thank you, George.
Sometimes I want to pinch myself because how can this be real? I feel incredibly fortunate to be here.
Agree. It's such perfect timing...although I wish I'd had this in school.
"Why is that last page so much darker? Perhaps, I was being metaphorical, trying to subtly track the movement of the story (“It was quite dark now…”) or maybe…that one was taken on a different counter than the others. Who can say? Art is a mystery." This is the best. I'm going to use this for all my technical struggles.
Thank you for this experience. I can feel my brain changing. As you said, there are ways to be a better reader and I'd like to be on that path. One of my struggles with Hemingway, and there are so many teachers in this class so perhaps someone has a wise bit of advice...I've known too much about him as a person (because he, the person, is much discussed in our culture) and it did impact the way I read this story. I realize that it might create "rabbit holes" for the mind to go down that has nothing to do with learning technique, building tension, the way words are used and evolve in the story, his style and intention. I wonder how we would've read the story if we knew absolutely nothing about Hemingway's personal life. Anyway, I love the comments on these lessons.
I think just making that observation re his life affecting your reading is really valuable, and is, itself, an acute observation of the way you are reading.
So true. Hem doesn't exactly have the reputation of being particularly feminist, to put it mildly. (I've always been struck in For Whom The Bell Tolls at how much we learn about Robert's inner life, but the only glimpse of Maria's interior is her gushing for Roberto.) So it's difficult (for me) to not read this story as a not-so-subtle implication that all a woman should/can want is stability, "a table with my own silver", a cat. Though the nameless she is our protagonist, she doesn't even get a name - unlike her husband George, who from a 2022 perspective seems unsympathetic, but I'm not sure EH intended him to be.
In any case, I am clearly bringing my own bias into this interpretation, as you rightly say. As Louise Rosenblatt wisely said, "The reader brings to the work personality traits, memories of past events, present needs and preoccupations, a particular mood of the moment and a particular physical condition. These and many other elements in a never-to-be duplicated combination determine his response to the text."
Amen.
Looking forward to Chekhov.
Interesting Stayca: having read George’s last(ish) post on ‘Cat in the Rain’ and, prior to Story Club, ‘In the Cart’ in ‘A Swim . . .’ I dare say Chekhov will have a first story hove up on our horizon, but quite when is a question not to be much concerned with. At least that is my thought.
You are so right. Should've said, "looking forward to what's next."
I didn't know about Hemingway's life ( oops) and so I put a wholly positive spin on my reading of the story. But I suspect even if I knew what I know now ( thanks Google) I would still have tried to convince myself it was the same cat. So interesting to note that we bring so much of ourselves to stories.
I felt Hemingway's character and life bleeding through into my interpretation, too. Maybe that's why people say it is often difficult for family members to be objective about another member's writing. They know the person too well. That said, my brother and I are writing buddies, and we work really well together, so if you are approaching something critically, I think the separation can be made; it might just take more effort!
How cool, siblings as writing buddies. I guess we do just have to practice "noticing" as George S. says, and keep moving forward.
Ha! I just made a very similar comment before I saw yours. I feel the same way about Hemingway - hard to separate the writing from the man. But i think after this exercise I do feel more “okay” with that and can just add his larger than life persona to the things I’m responding to.
Stacya,
I had this same issue. I am a teacher and I do not have any wise bit of advice!!
Nice to know! I was a theater major and don't know anything about Chekhov's personal life, so we'll see how we do next lesson.
Keen observation on the Hemingway 'character' coloring his work. Part of my wants to really dive into his life at this time to shed light on what he was trying to do here, but now I realize the work really needs to stand alone and he would probably agree.
Thank you, Teacher. Oh, if I had had a teacher like you I might not have become a math teacher! I’d like to add two thoughts to wrap up this exercise: first of all, the only time I could picture George, (not you, Teacher) was when he said, “Oh, shut up, and find something to read.” I pictured him amused, half genuinely smiling at his pet wife and her little declarations. She’s there to entertain him, although he does get a little tired of it. And finally, the ideas and external knowledge I gathered from all your comments made my reading so much more interesting! Thank you, dear members, for your opinions and experience in the field of literature, as readers, but mainly as teachers and writers!! What a privilege this is to participate with you, George Saunders, and this class of smart, funny and enlightened (and supportive) people!
You made me realize I was picturing a young Hemingway the whole time. Probably a lack of imagination on my part.
I became a little fixated on wanting to see the war monument and went searching for a picture of it. I found this article that says the monument in Rapallo stood for less than 20 years before being melted down in the 1930s...for military hardware. That also seems like a terrible joke. The monument to the war to end all wars was melted down to make weapons for the next world war. Later a new one replaced it. Not only do we not get the same cat, we don't get the same war monument.
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/NOTES+THE+WAR+MONUMENT+IN+%22CAT+IN+THE+RAIN%22%3A+THEN+AND+NOW.-a064339767
Amazing, Mia, and the article even gives his room number there (66).
Thank you so much for looking this up, and sharing it. It does add a layer, doesn't it? The monument signifies even more, knowing that.
Mia, this is brilliant!
If I have looked it up correctly, here is the hotel today: http://riviera-16043.liguriatophotels.com/en/
It's a 9 1/2 hour drive from where I am - so, cross fingers, summer 2022: Andiamo!
(If I have not looked it up correctly, well, it's still Italy. ;)
Wow! Hope you make it there.
Thanks, Mia!!! Cross fingers that we can all go there. (We could identify ourselves as being the ones looking for cats and hoping it rains. ;-)
Thank you so much Mia, for sharing the fruits of your having become 'a little fixated'. I've followed you in digging and drilling down and about a bit into the online archaeological of 20th Century war memorials.
Like you I have found not a trace, other than words, of so much as a poorly framed and badly taken image of the WW1 War Memorial that stood, according to Hemingway's story corroborated by the source you've kindly signposted, in the Public Square of Rapallo, Italy.
How strange, I'm thinking, that the former Rapallo War Monument should turn out to be as enigmatic as the 'Cat in the Rain'. It was there, supposedly, but then it wasn't; then another, monument took it's place out front of the Hotel Splendide, but who can really care?
Is knowledge of the where (Rapallo) and what (War Memorial) extraneous or germane to OUR reading(S) of 'Cat in the Rain'? That is, I think, a rather key question.
Bravo!
And, towards the end of the next war, after the great patriotic national effort to collect and recycle pointlessly spent bullet metal, the real irony is that not more than one of the mid-20th century's 'Classical Fascists' were strung up from recently recast lamp posts.
Old Romantic that he was Percy Bysshe sure packed a hell of a punch into his suddenly-this-moment-relevant-sonnet 'Ozymandias'. Far fewer flabby words than Earnest Ernest sprays, oh so repetitiously, across the few - but longer than 14 line - pages of his 'Cat in the Hat'.
Thank you so much, George. Your warmth, humor and generosity make me feel as though I'm right there in the classroom with you. Recommended by a writer friend, Story Club has turned out to be the best holiday gift I could have hoped for: the opportunity to become regularly immersed in a world with other writers, talking about what we love best. So excited for Story Club 2022!
Thank you for this first exercise, George. I’ve throughly enjoyed being part of it. As one of those who missed that it might be a different cat, I am grateful to you for sharing that you read this story many times before it hit you that it might be a different cat.
I also felt that sense of distance that Hemingway has to his characters, even though I too in a previous comment noted that because of the specificity in his writing, I wondered if they were based on him and his wife. Which kinda makes the story sadder if true.
But I just love love love your insight about the way a writer can be asking and answering the question, “What is the highest way in which to regard our fellow human beings?”
Here’s to a great 2022 with lots of Story Club as we aspire to ask and answer that question in our writing as best we can.
I keep turning the story over in my head, and I keep coming back to that boyish haircut. The wife says explicitly that she is tired of looking like a boy, which doesn’t sound to me like it’s a fashionable bob or anything feminine. I think that’s part of the power of how the maid addresses her in the end, regardless of the identity of the cat or it’s appropriateness as a gift. That “Signora” is more than just a term of polite respect. It is recognition that the American wife is a *woman* (not a child and definitely not a boy), which I think is what she ultimately wants. It’s an exceedingly lovely gift.
Agree completely.
Not coincidental he titled his next book of short stories published only two years later “Men Without Women.”
What a perfect story to go over this week–it’s been raining all week it seems. The mood of the story fit the weather in NY perfectly. It has been so nice to think so much about short stories, which I love and forgot how much I loved. I have truly appreciated reading so many interesting comments from so many different people.
For personal extra credit, I did some of my own exercises. Someone said this would be a fun vignette to act out, so I tied my hair up in a knot and had my cat sit on my lap for a while (ha ha, yes, I’m bored!). What does that feel like? It’s very serene and comforting. I don't have any silver though...Another random personal extra credit: I wrote a story using the pulses we were given as a guide. I had an idea that I didn’t know how to start, and I used the scaffolding of this story to help me flesh out a visual idea that I had. Sort of like writing a song by using the chords of another song that you may know very well.
Anyway: Thank you, thank you. Looking forward to learning more. And looking forward to the sun being out this week!
Yes, and that’s really what outlining can be - making suppositions pulses or prompts and then filling them in/responding to them.
That is a beautiful way to go about it!
Never tried it before, but definitely adding it to my tool kit!
In the previous post, GS wrote that "[f]iction is lovely because it ... lets us (briefly) reside in a more truthful land, where things are rich in contradiction and, not only do we not mind it, we like it. We get a glimpse of who we might be if we decided/opined/were sure less often, or a little later in the game."
In a nutshell, this is why the Humanities matter, especially now, especially after being in the decline for so many decades.
Thank you!
Now more than ever many humanities dept.’s and students seem more sure- and immediately in the game.
Can I begin, as a teacher, by thanking you, George for generously sharing your teaching tips for this story? I’m definitely going to use the method with my students.
As for my feelings about the story itself, for me, the whole thing comes together around the wife’s aspiration to eat at her own table, with her own silver. This reads to me not so much as a sense of entitlement as insecurity. I wonder all the way through if this couple has a home or if they’re drifting from hotel to hotel. There’s no real suggestion they’re on a trip. The sense of the reluctant Bohemian lifestyle is reinforced by her short hair (in the immediate past WW1 period). She wants to grow her hair back into something more matronly and respectable.
I think she sees herself in the kitty in the rain and also the desire for a child, and I think Hemingway shows us, with the final gift of the big lump of a cat, that wishes may come true but not as we expect. (On the subject of the cat as child substitute, there are aspects of this story that remind me of The Sun Also Rises, with its narrator who has been rendered impotent by a war wound.)
Well, there’s my two penn’ orth. Happy new year to all who are celebrating.
Thank you so much for this. The slowing down. The permission to let things bubble. I began to really notice and to really experience how one sentence leads to the next. I mean experiencing writing in a way that I'd never truly "got" before. Of course, intellectually this always made sense. But this forced slowly down was more of a visceral experience. Fabulous!
I'm definitely going to play with this in my English classes. I'll be teaching the transcendentalists next and I start with Emerson's Nature. You know how sentences are really just about everything with Emerson? . . . I'm going to print out the introduction to Nature and do exactly as we've done here with Hemingway. Slowing down is really the only way to even begin to grasp what Emerson is stating. And getting high school students to slow down is not always easy. So, thank you for giving me the feeling I can go with the less is more approach in terms of pacing.
Oh, and my reaction to this story initially? I was initially embarrassed that I found it a sadly funny ending. And, in fact, laughed out loud when the maid appeared with a large (likely new) cat.
I love that Emerson idea and I agree that the ending is funny/comic - very joke-like.
Please let us know how that Emerson works for your class.
I didn't want to comment before because I've read the story a lot and it seemed out of the spirit of the exercise! But I think it's a different cat because no wet cat would be "swung down" against the maid's body: that is a cat that was recently sleeping. (I doubt the maid would hold a wet cat in this way anyway.) I don't think the wife wants a cat - this cat or the wet cat. Her husband is absent, controlling, shows no sign of love and barely any sign of attention. She tells him that she wants change -- but elliptically, by asking about her haircut (not fixable! it's cut short! how many years would it take to get enough to have a "big knot"?) and saying she wants it to be spring. She mixes up things that can easily be had, things he clearly is not letting her have, and things that are not have-able, and punctuates it with a cat. She doesn't want a cat. She wants her husband to notice her, hear her dissatisfaction, do something about it. To me this is a story that is all about frustration. I have always thought they were on their honeymoon (it doesn't actually say that) and she is realizing her epic mistake in marrying him. She thought it would be different. He doesn't care, or he's resigned, he tells her to read, he does nothing but read. And she's afraid, maybe of him or (I think) of her mistake in marrying him. It's not "any fun". But she doesn't want to give it up yet, she doesn't want to cause trouble or start a fight or leave; she doesn't have the assurance that she's important enough in this marriage to do that. I don't thinks she wants a cat: I think she is the cat, "trying to make herself so compact that she would not get dripped on".
Thank you, Semi, that is a great elucidation of the subtle currents running through this story.
Yours is closest to my own feeling about this woman...she wants stability (candle, silver at the table...those things that are home/settled...much as having a cat is a sign of being "settled"....
This has been such a great experience. Thank you, to George and to everyone for the insightful comments.
I really like the idea that the task is to start with your initial response to a piece and work towards making sense of it. Learning needn’t be, as I think is often taken for granted, a matter of increasingly complex theorising. It can be as simple as paying attention to how the work is affecting you.
I’ll be taking that away from the exercise, along with the related thought that ambiguity can often be a virtue, not a vice.
Heartfelt thanks for running this series, and for introducing me (sorry... ) to this story. I feel I have discovered something important, but if I look too closely, and try to articulate what it is, it might vanish. But it's got something to do with slowing down. Something to do with respecting the words, and the order in which they are gifted to me. Something to do with cutting out the noise and listening to the small things. For a while during this exercise, I found myself pushing back, thinking 'how can anyone possibly know what is really intended, unless you have the writer there and can cross-question?' Now, I know I was thinking codswallop. Listening to those small things is probably the key.