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THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS
• SPRING 2012 •
S
TUDIES IN
A
MERICAN
T
HOUGHT AND
C
ULTURE
Paul S. Boyer, Series Editor
May 2012
LC: 2011041962 PS
176 pp. 6 x 9
Paper $26.95 s
ISBN 978-0-299-28654-5
e-book $16.95 s
ISBN 978-0-299-28653-8
Literature & Criticism / American Studies
Thought in Action
A new look at Hemingway, revealing a concern with
consciousness similar to his predecessors and
contemporaries William Faulkner, James Joyce,
Virginia Woolf, Henry James, and Marcel Proust
Ernest Hemingway’s groundbreaking prose style and examination of
timeless themes made him one of the most important American
writers of the twentieth century. Yet in
Ernest Hemingway: Thought in
Action
, Mark Cirino observes, “Literary criticism has accused
Hemingway of many things but thinking too deeply is not one of
them.”
Although much has been written about the author’s love of ac-
tion—hunting, fishing, drinking, bullfighting, boxing, travel, and the
moveable feast—Cirino looks at Hemingway’s focus on the modern
mind, paralleling the interest in consciousness of such predecessors
and contemporaries as Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, and Henry
James. Hemingway, Cirino demonstrates, probes the ways his charac-
ters’ minds respond when placed in urgent situations or when
damaged by past traumas.
In Cirino’s analysis of Hemingway’s work through this lens—
examining such celebrated classics as
A Farewell to Arms, The Old
Man and the Sea
, and “Big Two-Hearted River” as well as less appreci-
ated works including
Islands in the Stream
and “Because I Think
Deeper”—an entirely different Hemingway hero emerges: intelligent,
introspective, and ruminative.
is assistant professor of
English at the University of Evans-
ville. He is the coeditor of
Ernest
Hemingway: Geography of Memory
and
the general editor of Kent State Uni-
versity Press’s “Reading Hemingway”
series. He is also the author of two
novels,
Name the Baby
and
Arizona Blues.
“Cirino . . . collapses the distinction between
thought and action that has traditionally
typecast Hemingway as an anti-intellectual
dolt—the ‘he-man’ of American literature.”
—Kirk Curnutt, author of
Coffee with
Hemingway
Of related interest
A Poet’s Life
“Peters’ groundbreaking biography will bring a new wave of readers to this solitary heartland
poet.”—
Booklist
Published October 2011
LC: 2011018267 PS 334 pp. 6 x 9 36 b/w photos
ISBN 978-0-299-28500-5 Cloth $34.95 t ISBN 978-0-299-28503-6 e-book $19.95 t
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