User:JBrown/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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‘It must have made him [the brakeman] feel good to bust you,’the man said seriously. ‘I’ll bust him.’. . . . . . . . . . . ‘All you kids are tough.’‘You got to be tough,’ Nick said.‘That’s what I said.’ (131)

Nick’s pleasure at establishing a rapport with a fellow battler is short-lived, however. Ad, he discovers, is unstable (“crazy”), and depends on his companion Bugs to stop him from battling (132). When Ad tries to start a fight with Nick, in “an ugly parody of a boxing match” (Strychacz 252), Bugs intervenes by knocking him out with a stick from behind in a manner that recalls Hemingway’s very first story, “A Matter of Color” (Bruccoli 98-100). Color is also important here as Nick is obviously startled by the fact that Bugs is black, and makes a great deal of his “negro's voice,” the “negro” way he walks, and his “long nigger’s legs” (Hemingway,“Battler” 133). Although it has been argued that the story reveals Hemingway’s racism, these almost compulsively repeated epithets (like those describing whiteness in “The Light of the World”) seem to be Nick’s as he struggles to understand the relationship between the two men. White prizefighters, after all, were not supposed to have black friends. Bugs tells Nick a story about Ad which adds to his confusion. Ad had a woman manager, and it was always being “written up in the papers all about brothers and sisters and how she loved her brother and how he loved his sister, and then they got married in New York and that made a lot of unpleasantness”

Nick’s pleasure at establishing a rapport with a fellow battler is short-lived, however. Ad, he discovers, is unstable (“crazy”), and depends on his companion Bugs to stop him from battling (132). When Ad tries to start a fight with Nick, in “an ugly parody of a boxing match” (Strychacz 252), Bugs intervenes by knocking him out with a stick from behind in a manner that recalls Hemingway’s very first story, “A Matter of Color” (Bruccoli 98-100). Color is also important here as Nick is obviously startled by the fact that Bugs is black, and makes a great deal of his “negro's voice,” the “negro” way he walks, and his “long nigger’s legs” (Hemingway,“Battler” 133). Although it has been argued that the story reveals Hemingway’s racism, these almost compulsively repeated epithets (like those describing whiteness in “The Light of the World”) seem to be Nick’s as he struggles to understand the relationship between the two men. White prizefighters, after all, were not supposed to have black friends. Bugs tells Nick a story about Ad which adds to his confusion. Ad had a woman manager, and it was always being “written up in the papers all about brothers and sisters and how she loved her brother and how he loved his sister, and then they got married in New York and that made a lot of unpleasantness” (136-37). Nick vaguely remembers this, but then Bugs adds,“[O]f course they wasn’t really brother and sister no more than a rabbit, but there was a lot of people didn’t like it either way” (137). Bugs repeatedly stresses how “awful good-looking” the woman was, and how she “looked enough like him to be twins” (137). Some have read this admiring comment (along with the description of Ad’s face as “queerly formed” and his lips as “queer shaped” (131)) as a suggestion that the two men may be lovers. Less directly, like “The Light of the World,” the story slides anxiously between taboos—incest becomes homosexuality becomes miscegenation. The “perplexing behavior” of boxers once more promises to reveal the perplexing nature of masculinity, and again the boy flees (Brenner 159).

(136-37). Nick vaguely remembers this, but then Bugs adds,“[O]f course they wasn’t really brother and sister no more than a rabbit, but there was a lot of people didn’t like it either way” (137). Bugs repeatedly stresses how “awful good-looking” the woman was, and how she “looked enough like him to be twins” (137). Some have read this admiring comment (along with the description of Ad’s face as “queerly formed” and his lips as “queer shaped” (131)) as a suggestion that the two men may be lovers. Less directly, like “The Light of the World,” the story slides anxiously between taboos—incest becomes homosexuality becomes miscegenation. The “perplexing behavior” of boxers once more promises to reveal the perplexing nature of masculinity, and again the boy flees (Brenner 159).

What boxers reveal again and again is that the biggest of men are just “not big enough” to take on the “dark” and ambiguous world that surrounds the most well-regulated and well-lit ring, as the narrator of “Fifty Grand” notes (Hemingway 320). The first quotation above is from Mailer’s response to a question from his son, John Buffalo Mailer, about the relation between boxing and writing. A writer, he said, like a fighter, can come to realize that he’s “[b]ig, but not big enough” (''Big Empty'' 189). This is an insight that Nick Adams tries to avoid in “The Killers” (1927). Two men show up in a small-town café and hold the staff hostage as they wait for the man they want to kill, Ole Andreson, a former heavyweight boxer. When Nick, who has been in the café, tells Andreson about the men, the boxer says that nothing can be done to save him and turns his face to the wall. Little more than a page of this eleven-page story is devoted to Nick’s encounter with Andreson, but it changes everything. The gangsters dub Nick “bright boy,” but the story reveals how little he knows about power and powerlessness (Hemingway,“Killers” 283). In an attempt to escape his revelation—that the heavyweight, the epitome of masculinity, is not prepared to fight back—Nick decides to move on. “I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it” (289). As in the case of “The Battler” and “The Ligh

@@ Line 58: / Line 58: @@
   ‘It must have made him [the brakeman] feel good to bust you,’the man said seriously. ‘I’ll bust him.’. . . . . . . . . . . ‘All you kids are tough.’‘You got to be tough,’ Nick said.‘That’s what I said.’ (131)
-Nick’s pleasure at establishing a rapport with a fellow battler is short-lived, however. Ad, he discovers, is unstable (“crazy”), and depends on his companion Bugs to stop him from battling (132). When Ad tries to start a fight with Nick, in “an ugly parody of a boxing match” (Strychacz 252), Bugs intervenes by knocking him out with a stick from behind in a manner that recalls Hemingway’s very first story, “A Matter of Color” (Bruccoli 98-100). Color is also important here as Nick is obviously startled by the fact that Bugs is black, and makes a great deal of his “negro's voice,” the “negro” way he walks, and his “long nigger’s legs” (Hemingway,“Battler” 133). Although it has been argued that the story reveals Hemingway’s racism, these almost compulsively repeated epithets (like those describing whiteness in “The Light of the World”) seem to be Nick’s as he struggles to understand the relationship between the two men. White prizefighters, after all, were not supposed to have black friends. Bugs tells Nick a story about Ad which adds to his confusion. Ad had a woman manager, and it was always being “written up in the papers all about brothers and sisters and how she loved her brother and how he loved his sister, and then they got married in New York and that made a lot of unpleasantness”
+Nick’s pleasure at establishing a rapport with a fellow battler is short-lived, however. Ad, he discovers, is unstable (“crazy”), and depends on his companion Bugs to stop him from battling (132). When Ad tries to start a fight with Nick, in “an ugly parody of a boxing match” (Strychacz 252), Bugs intervenes by knocking him out with a stick from behind in a manner that recalls Hemingway’s very first story, “A Matter of Color” (Bruccoli 98-100). Color is also important here as Nick is obviously startled by the fact that Bugs is black, and makes a great deal of his “negro's voice,” the “negro” way he walks, and his “long nigger’s legs” (Hemingway,“Battler” 133). Although it has been argued that the story reveals Hemingway’s racism, these almost compulsively repeated epithets (like those describing whiteness in “The Light of the World”) seem to be Nick’s as he struggles to understand the relationship between the two men. White prizefighters, after all, were not supposed to have black friends. Bugs tells Nick a story about Ad which adds to his confusion. Ad had a woman manager, and it was always being “written up in the papers all about brothers and sisters and how she loved her brother and how he loved his sister, and then they got married in New York and that made a lot of unpleasantness” (136-37). Nick vaguely remembers this, but then Bugs adds,“[O]f course they wasn’t really brother and sister no more than a rabbit, but there was a lot of people didn’t like it either way” (137). Bugs repeatedly stresses how “awful good-looking” the woman was, and how she “looked enough like him to be twins” (137). Some have read this admiring comment (along with the description of Ad’s face as “queerly formed” and his lips as “queer shaped” (131)) as a suggestion that the two men may be lovers. Less directly, like “The Light of the World,” the story slides anxiously between taboos—incest becomes homosexuality becomes miscegenation. The “perplexing behavior” of boxers once more promises to reveal the perplexing nature of masculinity, and again the boy flees (Brenner 159).
-(136-37). Nick vaguely remembers this, but then Bugs adds,“[O]f course they wasn’t really brother and sister no more than a rabbit, but there was a lot of people didn’t like it either way” (137). Bugs repeatedly stresses how “awful good-looking” the woman was, and how she “looked enough like him to be twins” (137). Some have read this admiring comment (along with the description of Ad’s face as “queerly formed” and his lips as “queer shaped” (131)) as a suggestion that the two men may be lovers. Less directly, like “The Light of the World,” the story slides anxiously between taboos—incest becomes homosexuality becomes miscegenation. The “perplexing behavior” of boxers once more promises to reveal the perplexing nature of masculinity, and again the boy flees (Brenner 159).
+What boxers reveal again and again is that the biggest of men are just “not big enough” to take on the “dark” and ambiguous world that surrounds the most well-regulated and well-lit ring, as the narrator of “Fifty Grand” notes (Hemingway 320). The first quotation above is from Mailer’s response to a question from his son, John Buffalo Mailer, about the relation between boxing and writing. A writer, he said, like a fighter, can come to realize that he’s “[b]ig, but not big enough” (''Big Empty'' 189). This is an insight that Nick Adams tries to avoid in “The Killers” (1927). Two men show up in a small-town café and hold the staff hostage as they wait for the man they want to kill, Ole Andreson, a former heavyweight boxer. When Nick, who has been in the café, tells Andreson about the men, the boxer says that nothing can be done to save him and turns his face to the wall. Little more than a page of this eleven-page story is devoted to Nick’s encounter with Andreson, but it changes everything. The gangsters dub Nick “bright boy,” but the story reveals how little he knows about power and powerlessness (Hemingway,“Killers” 283). In an attempt to escape his revelation—that the heavyweight, the epitome of masculinity, is not prepared to fight back—Nick decides to move on. “I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it” (289). As in the case of “The Battler” and “The Ligh