
Title
Beleaguered Modernists: Hemingway, Stevens, and the Left
Document Type
Book Chapter
Annotation
Characterizing both Hemingway and Wallace Stevens as apolitical, Cohen compares how each dealt with the pull of the Left during the economic crisis of the 1930s. Maintains that while rejecting Marxism, each gradually integrated political and economic issues into their writings. Uses To Have and Have Not and For Whom the Bell Tolls to exemplify Hemingway’s leftward movement, prompted largely by the Spanish Civil War and his desire to bolster his flagging critical reputation. Attributes Stevens and Hemingway’s easy transition away from leftist politics at the end of the 1930s to their essential apolitical nature.
Published in
Date
2009
Pages
77-90
Citation
Curnutt, Kirk and Gail D. Sinclair, eds. Key West Hemingway: A Reassessment. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009.