User:KWatson/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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The problem of ''committed journalism'', even sixty years later, has not been resolved—as anyone paying attention to the media and world affairs well knows. One person’s truth is another person’s propaganda. Certainly, as Knightley notes, reporting from “the heart” affects one’s judgment (234-5). Yet to attempt “balance,” per the edits to Matthews’ Guadalajara piece, betrays one’s believed truth. Furthermore, the kind of reporting done by the correspondents with the Republic—committed, one-sided, optimistic, heroic, human interest work by embedded writers—would be practiced widely and without reserve during World War II. Such narrative journalism, with roots in Louise May Alcott’s “Hospital Sketches” series published in the ''Boston Commonwealth'', and more immediately in 1930s social documentary

writing whose “essence” is “not information” (Stott 11), anticipated post war new journalism’s adoption of novelistic narrative technique for nonfiction which culminated with such wartime books as Norman Mailer’s ''Armies of the Night'' and Michael Herr’s ''Dispatches''. Some of Hemingway’s NANA dispatches fall in this line of development.

Today we might categorize such writing under the awkward umbrella term creative nonfiction. That term certainly fits the mixed bag of nonfiction narratives and commentaries Hemingway published during the war in Ken magazine. These pieces are essays, not journalism, several of which

Page break 439-440

directly appeal for support for the Republic, and most of which really deal with the approaching world war. Ken wanted “precisely the kind of opinion articles he could not write for NANA” (Donaldson 433). His article, ''“The Cardinal Picks a Winner,”'' shows a photo of a row of dead children from Barcelona and another one with Nationalist officers saluting and Catholic officials with raised hands, apparently making the fascist salute as well. He ends ironically: “So I don’t believe the people shown in the photo can really be making it. I would rather prefer to think that the photograph was faked” (436). When Hemingway argues in “A Program for U.S. Realism” that the United States should stay out of the next war except to stuff its pockets through arms sales, one has to wonder, given his call and the democratic nations’ failure to save Spain, if we are to sniff sarcasm here.

The language of the dispatches, with their corrective intent against Franco’s propaganda, does risk propagandizing. Hemingway’s optimism and anti-fascism certainly colored his correspondence work. His criticism of the anarchist and POUM militia for their inactivity on the Aragon front, for example, sounds a lot like the Spanish Communist Party’s.14** But unlike Matthews, Hemingway limited his reports within the Republic to military matters. Hemingway may have generally condemned the anarchists in his nonfiction, considering their activity as hampering the war effort, but he never repeated the accusation of their collaboration with the rebels, as Matthews had done. And when Hemingway commented on the Bareclona crisis, he referred only to the government—not the communists, as Matthews had done.15** Nor did he write articles asserting the limited role of the communists in the government, or explaining Spanish anarchism, also as Matthews had done.16**

During one of Hemingway’s stateside breaks between trips to Spain, his children asked if he was a “tool” of Stalin, an accusation tossed by a schoolmate who, presumably parroting his or her parents, probably understood the term no better than Hemingway’s children (Hemingway, “Home Front”). Hemingway believed in the Republic’s potential, but he was never a dupe of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) or Comintern. As did many others, he accepted PCE’s presence in the government for its discipline and organization toward winning the war, and he understood the material necessity for Comintern’s support. It should also be noted, as historians Hugh Thomas and Helen Graham have reminded us, that the communism associated with

the Republic wasn’t particularly communist anyway (Thomas 628; Graham

page break

184). Hemingway declined to follow Joris Ivens’ suggestion that he write a dispatch on the significant role of the political commissars in the Republican military (Ivens, Letter to Ernest), even though that would have meant featuring his brave new friend Gustav Regler. Hemingway also, in a letter justifying his work to Jack Wheeler at NANA, wrote about choosing not to send a dispatch he had written because it might strike readers as propaganda “no matter how true” (Letter to Jack Wheeler).

Hemingway went to Spain to see the war himself and to support the Republic through his ambulance fund. The paychecks from NANA and the fundraising from The Spanish Earth helped. Whatever propagandistic streak colors the dispatches pales in comparison to the documentary. The filmmaker, Joris Ivens, was well established in European communist circles. The documentary genre then and now has occupied a slippery position between the extremes of impossible-to-achieve empirical nonfiction and of the outright fictionalized. Evaluations of Hemingway’s journalism are informed by knowledge of The Spanish Earth and the Ken essays to the detriment of the journalism. And the very nature of the slippery documentary genre may enable the film to escape opprobrium. It wasn’t reportage; it was altogether something else. But for that matter, Hemingway’s dispatches weren’t purely reportage either, and if not altogether something else, still something else, and should be reckoned with accordingly.

@@ Line 134: / Line 134: @@
 The problem of ''committed journalism'', even sixty years later, has not been resolved—as anyone paying attention to the media and world affairs well knows. One person’s truth is another person’s propaganda. Certainly, as Knightley notes, reporting from “the heart” affects one’s judgment (234-5). Yet to attempt “balance,” per the edits to Matthews’ Guadalajara piece, betrays one’s believed truth. Furthermore, the kind of reporting done by the correspondents with the Republic—committed, one-sided, optimistic, heroic, human interest work by embedded writers—would be practiced widely and without reserve during World War II. Such narrative journalism, with roots in Louise May Alcott’s “Hospital Sketches” series published in the ''Boston Commonwealth'', and more immediately in 1930s social documentary
 writing whose “essence” is “not information” (Stott 11), anticipated post war new journalism’s adoption of novelistic narrative technique for nonfiction which culminated with such wartime books as Norman Mailer’s ''Armies of the Night'' and Michael Herr’s ''Dispatches''. Some of Hemingway’s NANA dispatches fall in this line of development.
+Today we might categorize such writing under the awkward umbrella term creative nonfiction. That term certainly fits the mixed bag of nonfiction narratives and commentaries Hemingway published during the war in Ken magazine. These pieces are essays, not journalism, several of which
+Page break 439-440
+directly appeal for support for the Republic, and most of which really deal with the approaching world war. Ken wanted “precisely the kind of opinion articles he could not write for NANA” (Donaldson 433). His article, ''“The Cardinal Picks a Winner,”'' shows a photo of a row of dead children from Barcelona and another one with Nationalist officers saluting and Catholic officials with raised hands, apparently making the fascist salute as well. He ends ironically: “So I don’t believe the people shown in the photo can really be making it. I would rather prefer to think that the photograph was faked” (436). When Hemingway argues in “A Program for U.S. Realism” that the United States should stay out of the next war except to stuff its pockets through arms sales, one has to wonder, given his call and the democratic nations’ failure to save Spain, if we are to sniff sarcasm here.
+The language of the dispatches, with their corrective intent against Franco’s propaganda, does risk propagandizing. Hemingway’s optimism and anti-fascism certainly colored his correspondence work. His criticism of the anarchist and POUM militia for their inactivity on the Aragon front, for example, sounds a lot like the Spanish Communist Party’s.14** But unlike Matthews, Hemingway limited his reports within the Republic to military matters. Hemingway may have generally condemned the anarchists in his nonfiction, considering their activity as hampering the war effort, but he never repeated the accusation of their collaboration with the rebels, as Matthews had done. And when Hemingway commented on the Bareclona crisis, he referred only to the government—not the communists, as Matthews had done.15** Nor did he write articles asserting the limited role of the communists in the government, or explaining Spanish anarchism, also as Matthews had done.16**
+During one of Hemingway’s stateside breaks between trips to Spain, his children asked if he was a “tool” of Stalin, an accusation tossed by a schoolmate who, presumably parroting his or her parents, probably understood the term no better than Hemingway’s children (Hemingway, “Home Front”). Hemingway believed in the Republic’s potential, but he was never a dupe of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) or Comintern. As did many others, he accepted PCE’s presence in the government for its discipline and organization toward winning the war, and he understood the material necessity for Comintern’s support. It should also be noted, as historians Hugh Thomas and Helen Graham have reminded us, that the communism associated with
+the Republic wasn’t particularly communist anyway (Thomas 628; Graham
+page break
+). Hemingway declined to follow Joris Ivens’ suggestion that he write a dispatch on the significant role of the political commissars in the Republican military (Ivens, Letter to Ernest), even though that would have meant featuring his brave new friend Gustav Regler. Hemingway also, in a letter justifying his work to Jack Wheeler at NANA, wrote about choosing not to send a dispatch he had written because it might strike readers as propaganda “no matter how true” (Letter to Jack Wheeler).
+Hemingway went to Spain to see the war himself and to support the Republic through his ambulance fund. The paychecks from NANA and the fundraising from The Spanish Earth helped. Whatever propagandistic streak colors the dispatches pales in comparison to the documentary. The filmmaker, Joris Ivens, was well established in European communist circles. The documentary genre then and now has occupied a slippery position between the extremes of impossible-to-achieve empirical nonfiction and of the outright fictionalized. Evaluations of Hemingway’s journalism are informed by knowledge of The Spanish Earth and the Ken essays to the detriment of the journalism. And the very nature of the slippery documentary genre may enable the film to escape opprobrium. It wasn’t reportage; it was altogether something else. But for that matter, Hemingway’s dispatches weren’t purely reportage either, and if not altogether something else, still something else, and should be reckoned with accordingly.