Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.

In Our Time was published in 1925 and praised by John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein and many more famous writers.

It was Ernest Hemingway's first collection of short stories.

He loved life in Paris with his new wife, Hadley, and began to set out to create a life of adventure.

Many marriages and great writing.

The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, all of which led to his Nobel Prize in literature in 1954, one year after winning the Pulitzer.

All of this made him very famous.

Let's meet my guest, Jane Poe, who will help us understand the appeal and the early influences of this great writer.

Welcome, Jane.

Hi.

It's so--so good to have you, because you know a lot about Mr. Hemingway.

And that really adds a lot of flavor to Dinner and a Book.

And I appreciate that.

Well, I first read him in '68 and I still admire him immensely.

Good.

Well, I just want to say that we are going to make a meal here, but it's a camping sort of meal.

Right?

Right.

And it sets the tone, the stage for the two short stories we're going to focus on.

And they are?

Indian Camp and Big Two-Hearted River.

They're the first and last stories in most editions of In Our Time, which went through four different publications and editions.

And what fascinates me is what's the first thing he sets in a cafe and writes in Paris?

He writes stories about fishing in Michigan and going with his father, the doctor, to deliver a baby at the Indian camp where the woman's been in labor for two days.

Yes.

And we will get back to that story.

You bet.

I won't--.

You won't leave this place without getting back to that story.

So I am doing something you could take on a picnic outside as there--which is described in the second short story.

It's the--.

Big Two Hearted River.

Yes.

Number one and number two.

And so I'm going to--I'm going to broil actually, roast some potatoes and some whitefish.

And I have chosen actually a whitefish.

That's cod.

I know it's not in the rivers of Michigan, but we will have that and then we will have some berries that were in the--in that particular episode, plus some baked beans for the campsite.

Our lead character opens up a can of baked beans.

So I thought, there's our picnic and you're going to do--?

I'm going to make an appetizer tray.

I got it from a Basque recipe when I Googled because he loved Spain.

Also, I think this could be something he could pack in his backpack as he goes fishing by himself.

Or it could be something that maybe Alice B. Toklas would serve in Gertrude Stein's Salon.

He did pick up a lot from them, didn't he?

Yes, he did.

He left Chicago in 1921 with letters of introduction from Sherwood Anderson to John Dos Passos, to Gertrude Stein to Sylvia Beach and to Ezra Pound, who became his first publisher and a huge influence.

But he was writing about Michigan when he got to Paris.

Isn't that something?

Here you are.

But he knew about it.

You're supposed to write about something you know, and he didn't know Paris, yet, but he certainly knew Michigan.

Born in Oak Park and then his summers, the family went up to--.

Walloon Lake.

They called the cottage Windemere.

That's one of Hemingway's homes that you can't visit because it's still owned by the family and pretty much guarded privately.

But can you drive around it?

You see it from the road?

I don't think so.

You have to row across the lake just to go.

I'm glad I ask you because I would hate--.

We tried.

We tried without success.

Well, let's get started on our preparation here.

And I do want to mention that we're talking about these two short stories.

And Jane really knows the history of Ernest Hemingway.

He was really a part of your college life, wasn't he?

Yes.

Yes.

And I taught him I always loved to teach Sun Also Rises, as that is my very favorite.

Very favorite.

And I will say, when I went back to the short stories, Indian Camp was the only one I remembered.

And it's still my favorite.

Well, and people do refer to this collection when they talk about early Hemingway.

And so I am going to chop up some potatoes when--we're going to pretend we're putting them in the fire.

But actually they're going in the broiler.

We decided not to do a fire here.

So anyway, you're making a spread, aren't you?

I'm going to put--.

I put cream cheese on some bread and I'm going to put tomatoes with a little seasoning on them, and then I'm going to wrap up some ham and or salami.

Perfect.

You can do anything when you have that in your your backpack.

And this--.

Well, in the story, he takes onion sandwiches, but that didn't sound very good for dinner and a book.

Oh, yes.

You know, but actually I bet it is good, but it just doesn't sound like, you know, something we really need to do.

Anyway, what I want to say is that this is our campsite meal.

We talk about the Midwest and its influences on Ernest Hemingway.

What else about the Midwest you think influenced him?

Was it a style or a style of talking or did he learn the bravado in the Midwest or once he left the Midwest?

Yeah, that's a complicated question.

Oh, well, it isn't for you.

He liked the new modern style.

He's the bridge between Victorianism and the modern era.

He was not the first.

He was following in the footsteps of Sherwood Anderson.

And it was at Sherwood Anderson's apartment in Chicago that Sherwood Anderson convinced him to change his plans to take Hadley and live in Italy and that he really should be in Paris instead.

And Paris was where it was happening at the time in music and art and sculpture, everything.

And they all seem to converge someplace.

He was he was with the artistic crowd.

Well, he loved it, didn't he?

And we know a little bit about his life.

You can go to Oak Park and tour his home in where he was born.

And it's it's it's not a modest house, but it is a large house.

And we learn about what kind of upbringing he had.

Talk about his mother and father a little bit.

Well, there is another deep topic.

We're full of deep topics, aren't we?,.

His mother was a frustrated opera singer and she gave music lessons.

She charged eight dollars an hour for music lessons.

Back then, his father was a doctor.

Grace, his mother was pretty frustrated and she raised Ernest and his older sister as twins dress them alike, which he had great issues with later, and also conflicts with his sister.

But he loved going with his father, who loved the outdoors and taught him his first lessons about nature and fishing and hunting and--.

They had a good relationship, didn't they?

Then, they did.

Yes.

Later it shattered.

But yes.

Well, and, you know, life brings all kinds of changes that we can never predict.

His father was a Puritan and did not approve of the subject matter in Ernest's first stories.

In fact, he sent back all of the copies the publisher sent to their home in our time and said he didn't want it in his house.

And I think that really damaged Ernest because he wanted his father's approval, even though he wasn't willing to follow his father's--.

Right.

Tastes.

But it was the period, you know, you said it was sort of the end of the Victoriana period, and that was kind of prissy particularly.

Well, it was hidden.

You know, everything Victorian was hidden there--.

Everything was covered up always.

And Hemingway, I think it's interesting that his house is walking distance from Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Lloyd Wright, who changed architecture and took away all the Bric-A-Brac and Victoriana from things and made it all simple.

Hemingway was doing the same thing with the language.

And if you have read it, you will--you probably were told all of that how he changed.

In a way, it's not Dick--Dickens style anymore.

It's pare away the adjectives, take away the adverbs, just tell the story.

He called it subtraction.

Subtract, subtract, subtract.

In fact, he took it to the extreme.

For instance, Big Two Hearted River is about his return or Nick Adams' return after World War One when he goes up in the UP to fish and try and pull himself together again.

But World War One is never mentioned.

You only know it because obviously Nick Adams is recovering from something very traumatic.

Oh, that's a good point.

I'm going to put these in the broiler, by the broiler here and we'll keep our eye on them.

It could be right on a little tray you use for camping.

What do you call those things you set up?

Anyway, the beans are are hot, the berries have been washed, they've been picked and washed, and now the fish and the potatoes are cooking.

And right here we're getting the ham.

Oh, it's going to be beautiful.

It's going to be marvelous.

So what we have done, we've set the sort of scene of his early life.

And, you know, people say you take that with you, that early life with you for the rest of your life, whether you know it or not, you might modify it somewhat.

And being in foreign locales, you might change your behavior.

But you carry a kernel of--of that beginning and there's a picture of him later in life when he is older and become more frail.

We do want to take a break.

We're going to just set up the scene here.

We're going to show you pictures of the early Hemingway, the child with his family.

You will see a picture and resemblance between his father and himself.

And then when we come back, we're going to talk more about characters and words.

Jane loves words.

And so Jane is going to be using words, wonderful words.

So we'll be right back.

Hemingway's words.

Yes.

We'll be right back.

And we are today talking about Ernest Hemingway and his first collection of short stories in our time, and we are continuing to assort--put together our food for our picnic.

Are we going fishing?

Fishing?

Yes, we'll go fishing.

I don't think we'll take food to go deliver the baby.

No, no.

You're going to talk now about these two--these two books, these two short stories that are really world famous.

And tell us what you're going to do now.

I'm going to read from Indian Camp.

It's one of the first stories that introduces Nick Adams, who's a character that Hemingway will come back to throughout his whole career, even though he changes the names in his novels.

But it is--.

But they're all the same person.

Nick Adams.

So you see life through a young boy's eyes and that's what he does so beautifully in here.

Nick's dad wakes him up and says, come along.

I'm going to take you on an adventure.

I have to--there's this Indian woman who's been trying to deliver a baby for two years.

This will be fun--two days.

This will be fun.

Come along, Nick.

And so he rows across the lake with his uncle and a couple other Indians, and they go in there and the woman has indeed been in labor for two days.

And the father examines him and then says, I'm going to have to operate.

And so here's Nick standing there, getting in for more than he bargained on.

Later, when he started to operate, Uncle George and the three Indian men held the woman still.

She bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said, 'Damn squaw bitch'.

And the young Indian who rowed Uncle George over laughed at him.

Nick held a basin for his father.

It all took a long time.

His father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it to the old woman.

'Say, it's a boy!'

Nicky said, 'How do you like being an intern?'

Nick said, 'All right'.

He was looking away so as not to see what his father was doing.'

There, that gets it', said his father, and put something into the basin.

Nick didn't look at it.

'Now,' His father said.

'There's some stitches to put in.

You can watch this or not, Nick, just as you like.

I'm going to sew up the incision I made'.

Nick did not watch.

His curiosity had been gone for a long time.

Yes, he got in over his head.

And I don't know if the father should have sent him out.

I don't know.

But it's very simple writing, isn't it?

Yes.

And you see it through this kid's eyes because you're almost ignoring this woman who's been in labor, who was having a cesarean section with no anesthetic.

And the knife is a jack knife and she's going to be sewn up with fishing line.

Yes.

And so no wonder Nick doesn't watch anymore.

But the father's so intrigued by what he's doing, he ignores Nick.

583 00:15:12,410 --> 00:15:14,029 Well, he had to save this woman.

It is--it--and that's the beginning.

This is some of the life that--that Hemingway is a--you know, is Nick Adams sees right away in his life.

And it will stay with him for a long time and then--.

At the very end.

Yeah.

He asked his father when they walk away, As they're walking away They find out that the father of the new baby has slit his throat because he couldn't stand listening to his wife's screams.

So Nick and his father and Uncle George and a couple of the Indians walk away and Nick asked his father if it's always like that and his father talks to him, but not very sensitively, I don't think.

Nick is in the boat.

He sticks his hand in the water and he feels OK.

In the early morning on the lake, sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

So seeing this horrendous scene before him, he can't even imagine that he will go through anything like this.

But yet he's obsessed with death in all of his writings for the rest of his life.

Yes, and there are themes that do emerge from this collection that will set the tone for his writing and his lifestyle.

And you just want to think,reading backwards, you want to think that maybe this was part of the impetus for when he writes his second novel, A Farewell to Arms, where Catherine Barkley dies in childbirth and Lieutenant Henry walks away in the rain.

But most men didn't even come into the birthing area.

He wasn't in the birthing area.

He saw her afterwards.

He saw afterwards.

OK, is there something else you want to know mention?

I think is the fourth theme.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, yes.

Good.

And I think.

Get your pencil.

I think that's why he's intrigued with the bullfights, because the matador confronts death in the afternoon in the form of the bull and maybe he will defeat death one more time.

Suicide is a theme, unfortunately, through his whole family.

This is before anyone's committed suicide, but Hemingway's father will commit suicide within the next few years.

Of course, Hemingway committed suicide.

His younger brother and his sister and his granddaughter all died by suicide.

And that is one of the deep secrets of Hemingway, I think.

You have--actually, it was the darkness that he--I don't think he thought he was mentally ill or had anything.

But as we look back on that time period, he must certainly--there had to be a family strain of some kind of impending doom.

And it is--it is--that tone kind of comes back and forth.

And what is the great solace for--for Hemingway?

It's always nature.

And in spite of all of his life and travels and women and everything else, he always comes back to nature because he died in Ketchum, Idaho.

He loved being in Ketchum.

He loved the deep sea fishing when he lived in Cuba.

He loved going to the bullfights in Spain.

He loved being outdoors.

He always wanted to go fishing--.

In Africa.

And Africa with, again, big game hunting.

It was part of that time with the big white hunter.

Yes.

And his second son stays in Africa and makes his career there.

Guiding safaris.

Yes.

And the older son becomes a conservationist.

So--and we even heard Ken Burns speak about this a little bit, that actually there was this act of killing that is repeated in Hemingway's life from going to Africa to even grabbing a machine gun in World War Two and shooting a person.

And he wasn't part of the military.

No, he was operating independently.

He was.

And so, you know, there there are these themes in all of these books.

And we have we've kind of just touched upon some of this.

But I think we should touch on something else here.

We have some Two Hearted ale, and that's the name of the second book that you like.

Short story.

He wrote Indian Camp and Big Two Hearted River together.

They were the first ones he wrote when he got back in Paris after coming back from Toronto, Canada, where his first son was born.

So he's sitting in a cafe in Paris and writing about Big Two Hearted River.

And he didn't want to be bothered when he finished the story because he could still see the brown trout there in the river water.

That is a beautiful description of going fishing in Michigan, isn't it?

And the ferns.

I remembered the ferns from reading this the first time in high school.

And he sits there, he makes camp very methodically and it gives you every detail of how he puts the camp together.

And then he was hungry.

And then he gets his can of beans and he gets some fruit and he has some beer and we have some Two Hearted--I've got a big head on this.

And you said you're just going to have a sip.

This is some of the best beer.

Where is it?

Where is it made?

This is made in Kalamazoo.

Cheers to you, Jane.

Thank you.

You see?

You are the lead on Hemingway.

You really are.

And this is a nice beer.

It really is.

If you're the type to say 'Oh, no, I don't like beer'.

It's nice.

Mmhmm.

I know when I serve it at home, that's the one they always choose.

Yes.

And I buy it just for the can but--.

Because it is designed by an artist in--.

Out of Kalamazoo and he's got some of his work at our local Elkhart Museum of American Art, the big mural that you go in there called Song of the Kalamazoo, which is the Kalamazoo River and all the life that is in that river.

Well, you know, I looked at a map of Michigan and I think I want to drive around Walloon like--.

They are having a tour this summer.

Walloon is making it a tourist attraction that you go around Walloon lake, you listen to some lectures and then you go to these sites.

Basically I went from Mancelona up to Petoskey and Harbor Springs and Horton Bay and so you--he mentions all of these and you can do your own little road tour--.

Great.

In Hemingway's steps.

You can do it too, right?

I've done parts of it.

I know you have.

We're going to choose some more pictures of Hemingway, the bon vivant and the people he liked to surround himself with.

That bolstered him up and talked about him and made him the brand that Hemingway wanted.

Don't you think?

He was really a brand.

He was.

Because he photographed well, he had movie star good looks, he had all the movie stars playing in his movies, Gary Cooper and--.

Oh, yes,.

And Ingrid Bergman--.

Oh my.

Yes.

Oh, goodness.

And so he--he knew everybody's photographed with Fidel Castro in Cuba.

And he--he's everywhere where it's happening with these people, although he--the dark side to him, he often turned on the people that befriended him the most.

Yes.

And that, I think, is part of that disturbance a bit.

Always to put somebody down.

And anyway, we're going to set up camp, put out our food.

We invite you to join us alongside the--.

Big Two Hearted River.

There we go.

We'll see you in a minute.

Jane Poe has been my guest today, our book was In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway.

Let's talk about the food that we prepared.

What do you have here?

My board of appetizers, Basque style bread, baguette with cream cheese, tomatoes, salami and our ham with an olive on the top.

You know, that's a perfect picnic.

She could just wrap this up and go right over to Boot Lake or whatever, you know,.

Good.

In our time.

TK Lawless Park.

Yes.

Yes.

And of course, some fresh berries we picked right before we started and some beans.

And Nick Adams opened a can of beans in one of these short stories, so--.

Oh, and the Two Hearted ale from Michigan--.

Kalamazoo.

To you, Jane.

Thank you so much for being here today.

And I'd like your final word on--it doesn't have to be finally might change your mind, but--.

I might.

How do you regard now Hemingway?

This was a revelation because I'd always had him on a pedestal.

Even knowing what we know about his life now, we probably know too much.

And the fact that it's-- one hundred years separates us from when he left for Paris.

A lot has changed.

I mean, he ushered in modernism, but now we're postmodern.

That was after Vietnam.

And I don't know what we are right now, but I'm sure we're something else.

So parts of him are a little dated.

The words when he really--when he's really hitting on all the stops, he can still move me.

He gives what I call--makes the stomach believe.

It's very visceral.

You can't really explain it.

It works or it doesn't.

And some of it works a lot.

And I really think that we need now to also read more diversity that we have.

Yes, we will find some new voices for in our time.

In our time.

That's so good because there are a lot of good voices coming out today.

But we do keep Hemingway in mind as a good writer of his period and still no adjectives, no adverbs.

Just say what's going on.

Let's have a final toast to Ernest Hemingway and to you, Jane.

To the chaps.

Yes, to the chaps.

And we will see you next time.

Remember; good food, good books--good food!

I said that!

Good friends and good picnics make for great life.

We'll see you next time.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex's and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.