Hemingway at His Best (John Frye)

Hemingway at His Best

For creating tremendous pathos in an economy of words, Ernest Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is almost ideal. Read the short story here.

Hemingway had a passion to boil all of life down into its simplest meaning and his short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” may be his best attempt.

The story is about an old man and two waiters in a sidewalk cafe. The old, deaf man is sitting alone and drinking brandy in the moving shadows cast by tree leaves in the bright cafe light. It is very late at night, far past closing. The young waiter comments “an old man is a nasty thing,” forgetting that he, too, someday will be old. The young waiter yearns to get home to his wife’s embrace. The older waiter understands the old man who sits and drinks away his insomnia, stacking the saucers under his brandy cup. The older waiter will stay until the old man leaves.

Simple contrasts: the light, the darkness; the young, the old; those at home asleep, those who can’t sleep; the day, the night; the lonely, the very lonely. What is at the center of life?

The story segment that captivates me is Hemingway’s description of the older waiter’s identification with the old man. The black hole of Hemingway’s view of life is hauntingly expressed in his rendition of the Our Father. Hemingway writes,

“Good night,” said the younger waiter.
“Good night,” the other said. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself. It is the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and light. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it was already nada y pues nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.

My heart grieves at phrases like “a man was a nothing too” and “but deliver us from nada” and “Hail nothing full of nothing.” Hemingway witnessed far too much evil and destruction in life. His belief in God was eroded. At the center of life was nada. I like Hemingway because he vividly writes about life “east of Eden.” He reminds me of Qoheleth writing, “Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). Hemingway describes human beings, to use Scot McKnight’s phrase, as “cracked Eikons” better than most theologians and pastors. Larry Crabb writes that “no one will conclude that ‘God is good’ by examining life.” Did Hemingway in the end view himself as a “nasty thing”?