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Where is Smyrna exactly?
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Great question, Gene. Smyrna is a city located on the Anatolian coast of Turkey. For most of its modern history, it lay within the political boundaries of Turkey. However, after the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in World War I – – the port city of Smyrna was occupied by Greece for several years. In 1922, Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, attacked the city. It was a scene of fierce fighting – – including the Great Fire of Smyrna. 50 to 100 thousand Greek and Armenian refugees crowded the waterfront for several weeks. Conditions were appalling and atrocities were common.
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I noticed that most of the chapters are quite short, could they possible referred to as a diary entry? Also, does the setting take place in France or Spain?
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The chapters are very, very short – – almost as short as “A Very Short Story.” They also seem to be vignettes or snapshots – – rather than full-fledged narratives, almost like scenes in a film where we don’t get the whole movie. I think they are like diary entries at least in the sense that they are very tuned to capturing a specific moment . . .a kind of “isolate fleck.” The setting of the chapters is a bit confusing – – sometimes in France, sometimes in Spain, Greece, even Chicago. Two questions: why do you think Hemingway keeps skipping around in terms of setting? And, why do you think he wants us to be a little confused or surprised or caught off-foot with all these switches?
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What’s up with the overarching stories about the bullfighters? Hemmingway seems to go show a depth of pain and exhaustion on both man and beast but in relatively short pages. The chapters begin detailing several glimpses of the perspectives of war and the humanity within it, but it cuts to the matadors and their battles with the bulls.
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Yes, this seems to be especially true in the latter part of the collection – – where Hemingway switches from WWI scenes to matador scenes. Why do you think the collection shifts from war to bullfighting? Do the two types of chapters share anything in common? Do they seem to feature different protagonists? If both war and bullfighting are violent life-and-death struggles – – how do they differ? I guess one way of thinking about the juxtaposition of the two is that Hemingway is somehow encouraging us to see them as related. This shift also seems to be linked to a shift in topic/subject matter in the collection – – i.e. from Nick Adams to the exile life of Mr. and Mrs. Eliot and the other couples featured in the second sequence of stories. How does the shift from war to bullfighting fit with this other shift (Nick to exile)?
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Do all sales girls in Chicago have gonorrhea? Okay, in all seriousness, I just finished “A Very Short Story” and I know this is a collection of short stories, but it really feels like a novel with short chapters. The lines seemed kinda blurred. And it feels like the opening chapter heads (in italics) are almost flash-forwards. And yet he uses “I” and “We”. Hmmm. It is almost as if he’s blending fiction and non-fiction together.
So. Question: Are all these stories connected in some way or are they simply a collection of stories he’s written?
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Yes, I think this is one of the central questions – – form and genre-wise – – of IOT. On the one hand, there seems to be some coherent unity amongst the parts (ie. novel-like), on the other hand, it’s hard to see how “Quai at Smyrna” fits with something like “Mr. and Mrs. Eliot.” Maybe this is a question that begs a definitive answer. A question that might be phrased more self-reflexively: how much do we want to “read” coherence into IOT? What are the happy by-products of this will to coherence? (But also, what gets left out if we read IOT this way.) I.e. why do we want/tend to read IOT as a more coherent narrative? What does this desire say about how we read and/or about our own desire/comfort with coherence (as opposed to incoherence)? The collection as a kind of gestalt for our own/the reader’s proclivities. Interestingly, I think Hemingway’s narratives grow more coherent/less experimental (structure-wise) as he keeps writing: IOT as most experimental; Sun Also Rises as more linear but still less plot-oriented; To Have and Have Not and For Whom the Bell Tolls as more traditionally “plotted” and linear-coherent narratives, etc.
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I think the reason that he jumps around in the setting is that he’s portraying himself in his character Nick. Hemingway himself lived in Europe for a period, while he was serving for the army. I think he uses these switches to make us pay more attention to the themes of his story.
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