Choice Review

Hemingway scholar Lewis (Hemingway on Love, CH, Jun'66; Hemingway in Italy and Other Essays, 1990) undertakes a close analysis of A Farewell to Arms as a product of the ^D["modernist movement,^D]" the attempt to break away from ^D["the Victorian literature of convention, loss, and despair . . .^D]" Farewell is particularly vital to this movement because of the ^D["artistic skill with which Hemingway uses the language.^D]" The resulting analysis includes the way in which the identity of characters is revealed through words, Hemingway's efforts to find the right words to express the hero's duality (the man he was, the man he was to become), and how Hemingway uses words to express the false and the true. Though heavily reliant on previous scholarship, the volume is reflective of the growing movement to pick Hemingway's bones, to write three pages of analysis of two sentences. Whatever happened to comparison and judgment, (evaluation), as essential parts of criticism? Is analysis enough? For graduate libraries.