"The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway, published in the 1925 New York edition of In Our Time , by Boni & Liveright. [1] The story is the second in the collection to feature Nick Adams, Hemingway's autobiographical alter ego. [2] "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" follows "Indian Camp" in the collection, includes elements of the same style and themes, yet is written in counterpoint to the first story.
During his youth in Chicago, Ernest Hemingway's family spent summers at Windemere on Walloon Lake, near Petoskey, Michigan. Hemingway's father, who was a doctor, taught him to hunt, fish, and camp in the woods and lakes of Northern Michigan as a young boy. [3]
In 1921, Hemingway married Hadley Richardson and was posted to Paris a few months later as international correspondent for The Toronto Star . [4] In Paris he befriended Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, and John Dos Passos. [5] Pound's influence extended to promoting the young author; in 1923 he commissioned work from Hemingway for the modernist series Pound was editing. [6] In 1924, during one of Hemingway's most productive periods, he wrote eight short stories, including "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife". [7] The stories were combined with the earlier vignettes produced for Pound, and submitted for publication to Boni & Liveright in New York, [8] who accepted the work in March 1925. [9]
The story was included in Hemingway's collection The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories published in October 1938, and in two collections of short stories published after his death, The Nick Adams Stories (1972) and The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition (1987). [10]
Nick Adams' father, Dr. Adams, hires a crew of Native Americans to remove the four large beech logs from the lake's log boom that drifted up on his beach. Dick Boulton, his son Eddy, and Billy Tabeshaw, come through the back gate from the woods, bringing cant hooks, axes and a crosscut saw to cut the logs into cord wood. Boulton compliments Dr. Adams on the timber he is stealing from the logging company; Dr. Adams asserts that the logs are driftwood. Boulton washes a log in the surf, uncovers its mark and tells the doctor it belongs to White and McNally. The doctor becomes uncomfortable, decides not to saw up the logs, but Boulton says it makes no difference to him who the logs are stolen from. The two men engage in a verbal exchange, and when the doctor threatens Boulton with violence, Boulton mocks him.
The doctor leaves the beach in anger, walking back to his cottage. He goes to his bedroom, sits on his bed, and stares with anger at a pile of medical journals still in their wrappers. In the adjacent room his wife lies on her bed with a Bible, a copy of Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures , and an issue of the Christian Science Quarterly . She asks whether he is going back to work; he explains that he had an altercation with Boulton. She asks whether he lost his temper and quotes Scripture, while, in the next room, the doctor sits on his bed and cleans his gun, pushing shells in and out of the magazine. When she presses him about the nature of the dispute he tells her Boulton owes for having his wife treated for pneumonia and does not want to have to work for the doctor. She expresses her disbelief of the explanation and the doctor leaves the house. His wife calls after him to send Nick to her. The doctor finds Nick sitting under a tree, reading a book. Nick tells his father he wants to go with him and suggests they go into the woods to find black squirrels.
Hemingway was inspired by Ezra Pound's writings and applied the principles of imagism to his own work. Pound's influence can be seen in the stripped-down, minimalist style characteristic in Hemingway's early fiction. Betraying his admiration for the older writer, he admitted that Pound "taught [me] more about how to write and how not to write than any son of a bitch alive". He also learned from James Joyce, who further instilled the idea of stripped down economic prose. [11] Hemingway's short stories from the 1920s adhere to Pound's tight definition of imagism; [12] biographer Carlos Baker writes that in his short stories Hemingway tried to learn how to "get the most from the least, [to] prune language, [to] multiply intensities, [to] tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth". [13] Hemingway adapted this style into a technique he called his iceberg theory: as Baker describes it, the hard facts float above water while the supporting structure, including the symbolism, operates out of sight. [13]
The story is a companion to "Indian Camp", the previous story in the collection, which also features Nick Adams and his father Dr. Adams. Unlike "Indian Camp", where Dr. Adams is shown in a position of power, in this story he is a cowardly man who reacts to confrontation with repressed anger. [14] In "Indian Camp" young Nick witnesses his father performing a caesarian; Dr. Adams exposes his young son to childbirth and, unintentionally, to violent death – an experience that causes Nick to equate childbirth with death. [15] Howard Hannum explains the trauma of birth and suicide Hemingway paints in "Indian Camp" rendered a leitmotif that gave Hemingway a unified framework for the Nick Adams stories and is continued in "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" in direct counterpoint to the previous story. [16]
The contrasts and similarities between the two stories are stark. In "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" the family lives in a spacious cottage, whereas in "Indian Camp" a family lives in a cramped shanty. The first is filled with silences, the second with violent screams. In this story, three men come from the Indian camp to the Adams's cottage; in the previous, Dr. Adams, Nick and his uncle visit the Indian camp. The central scenes of both stories occur indoors and involve sick women in bed; both women are married to unhappy, suicidal men (the husband in "Indian Camp" commits suicide in his bed with a razor; Dr. Adams sits on his bed and plays with his gun). Both stories end with Nick and his father leaving – rowing away from the Indian camp in the first, walking into the woods to hunt in this story. [17]
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which included his iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and public image brought him admiration from later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.
In Our Time is the title of Ernest Hemingway's first collection of short stories, published in 1925 by Boni & Liveright, New York, and of a collection of vignettes published in 1924 in France titled in our time. Its title is derived from the English Book of Common Prayer, "Give peace in our time, O Lord".
"Soldier's Home" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. It was included in the 1925 Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers and published by Boni & Liveright in Hemingway's 1925 New York collection short stories, In Our Time.
Nicholas Adams is a fictional character, the protagonist of two dozen short stories and vignettes written in the 1920s and 1930s by American author Ernest Hemingway. Adams is partly inspired by Hemingway's own experiences, from his summers in Northern Michigan at his family cottage to his service in the Red Cross ambulance corps in World War I. The first of Hemingway's stories to feature Nick Adams was published in his 1925 collection In Our Time, with Adams appearing as a young child in "Indian Camp", the collection's first story.
The iceberg theory or theory of omission is a writing technique coined by American writer Ernest Hemingway. As a young journalist, Hemingway had to focus his newspaper reports on immediate events, with very little context or interpretation. When he became a writer of short stories, he retained this minimalistic style, focusing on surface elements without explicitly discussing underlying themes. Hemingway believed the deeper meaning of a story should not be evident on the surface, but should shine through implicitly.
"Big Two-Hearted River" is a two-part short story written by American author Ernest Hemingway, published in the 1925 Boni & Liveright edition of In Our Time, the first American volume of Hemingway's short stories. It features a single protagonist, Hemingway's recurrent autobiographical character Nick Adams, whose speaking voice is heard just three times. The story explores the destructive qualities of war which is countered by the healing and regenerative powers of nature. When it was published, critics praised Hemingway's sparse writing style and it became an important work in his canon.
"Cat in the Rain" is a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), first published by Richard Hadley of Boni & Liveright in 1925 in the short story collection In Our Time. The story is about an American man and wife on vacation in Italy. Critical attention focuses chiefly on its autobiographical elements and on Hemingway's "theory of omission".
Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man is a 1962 American adventure film directed by Martin Ritt based on Ernest Hemingway's semi-autobiographical character Nick Adams, and featuring Richard Beymer as Adams. A.E. Hotchner wrote the screenplay, originally calling the film Ernest Hemingway's "Young Man". The cast includes Diane Baker, Jessica Tandy, Ricardo Montalbán, Eli Wallach, Arthur Kennedy and Paul Newman. It was released in July 1962.
“The Three-Day Blow” is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway, published in the 1925 New York edition of In Our Time, by Boni & Liveright. The story is the fourth in the collection to feature Nick Adams, Hemingway's autobiographical alter ego.
"Indian Camp" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. The story was first published in 1924 in Ford Madox Ford's literary magazine Transatlantic Review in Paris and republished by Boni & Liveright in Hemingway's first American volume of short stories In Our Time in 1925. Hemingway's semi-autobiographical character Nick Adams—a child in this story—makes his first appearance in "Indian Camp", told from his point of view.
“The End of Something” is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway, published in the 1925 New York edition of In Our Time, by Boni & Liveright. The story is the third in the collection to feature Nick Adams, Hemingway's autobiographical alter ego.
"The Battler" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway, published in the 1925 New York edition of In Our Time, by Boni & Liveright. The story is the fifth in the collection to feature Nick Adams, Hemingway's autobiographical alter ego.
The Nick Adams Stories is a volume of short stories written by Ernest Hemingway published in 1972, a decade after the author's death. In the volume, all the stories featuring Nick Adams, published in various collections during Hemingway's lifetime, are compiled in a single collection. The Nick Adams Stories includes 24 stories and sketches, eight of which were previously unpublished. Some of Hemingway's earliest work, such as "Indian Camp," as well as some of his best known stories, such as "Big Two-Hearted River," are represented.
"Cross Country Snow" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. The story was first published in 1924 in Ford Madox Ford's literary magazine Transatlantic Review in Paris and republished by Boni & Liveright in Hemingway's first American volume of short stories In Our Time in 1925. The story features Hemingway's recurrent autobiographical character Nick Adams and explores the regenerative powers of nature and the joy of skiing.
On Writing is a story fragment written by Ernest Hemingway which he omitted from the end of his short story, "Big Two-Hearted River", when it was published in 1925 in In Our Time. It was then published after Hemingway's death in the 1972 collection The Nick Adams Stories.
"The Revolutionist" is an Ernest Hemingway short story published in his first American volume of stories In Our Time. Originally written as a vignette for his earlier Paris edition of the collection, titled in our time, he rewrote and expanded the piece for the 1925 American edition published by Boni & Liveright. It is only one of two vignettes rewritten as short stories for the American edition.
"My Old Man" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway, published in his 1923 book Three Stories and Ten Poems, which published by a small Paris imprint. The story was also included in his next collection of stories, In Our Time, published in New York in 1925 by Boni & Liveright. The story tells of a boy named Joe whose father is a steeplechase jockey, and is narrated from Joe's point-of-view.
"Out of Season" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway, first published in 1923 in Paris in the privately printed book, Three Stories and Ten Poems. It was included in his next collection of stories, In Our Time, published in New York in 1925 by Boni & Liveright. Set in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, the story is about an expatriate American husband and wife who spend the day fishing, with a local guide. Critical attention focuses chiefly on its autobiographical elements and on Hemingway's claim that it was his first attempt at using the "theory of omission".
"On the Quai at Smyrna" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway, first published in the 1930 Scribner's edition of the In Our Time collection of short stories, then titled "Introduction by the author". Accompanying it was an introduction by Edmund Wilson. Considered little more than a vignette, the piece was renamed "On the Quai at Smyrna" in the 1938 publication of The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories. When In Our Time was reissued in 1955, it led with "On the Quai at Smyrna", replacing "Indian Camp" as the first story of the collection.
"Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. The story was first published in The Little Review in 1924 and republished by Boni & Liveright in Hemingway's first American volume of short stories, In Our Time, in 1925.