Fitzgerald and Hemingway

Abstract

Place and genre join the perennial issues of gender, race, and class this year. And on the eve of centennial celebrations for Hemingway, debates about authenticity abound. Abroad, The Times of London (25 Sept.) reports that a 275-lot auction of Hemingway memorabilia was halted when the items were discovered to be bogus; at home, Joan Didion cries foul at the impending publication of True at First Light (NY 9 Nov.: 74-80), while others welcome the prospect of a fifth posthumous work from Hemingway, who has o√ered readers something ''new'' for eight consecutive decades. Scholars continue to be well served by editor Susan F. Beegel's Hemingway Review, an annual source of a dozen solid articles and half as many more notes and reviews. Making a rare editorial intrusion, Beegel brings to bear her experience as editor, explaining how and why the journal selects articles for publication (''The Journal in the Jungle: The Hemingway Review and the Contemporary Academy,'' HN 17, ii: 5-17). What is more, in as lucid and succinct a fashion as we have seen, Beegel charts Hemingway's posthumous reputation and demonstrates that interest in him-measurable in terms of entries in the MLA Bibliography-has increased by 125 percent since 1961, typically placing him ahead of all 20th-century writers and behind only Henry James and Herman Melville from the 19th. Publication on Fitzgerald wanes this year, which finds biographers silent and the Cambridge edition between volumes. But even during this hiatus following the great surge generated by the centenary in 1996, Fitzgerald still garners scholarship in every area of this survey, and nearly every piece is important. Both authors share the careful attention of editors J.