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The forefront scholar of 20th-century American literature, Robert E. Lee, jr. Robert W Trogdon told The Guardian that Hemingway's work cannot accurately express the author's original intentions because there are hundreds of errors in Hemingway's novels, short stories, and nonfiction works that have been published so far. While many were minor mistakes, mistakes were mistakes, and most of them were caused by mistakes by editors and typesetters at the time.
Troden told the Guardian about the mistakes made in the editorial process. Take, for example, the 1926 novel The Sun Rises Normally, which tells the story of the disillusionment experienced by the French and Spanish peoples after the war. Characters in the novel include the matador Maria Lalanda, but the author's handwritten letters L and S look very similar, so the editor at the time spelled Maria Laland as Maria Saland. In addition, because it is difficult to distinguish between the author's "s" and "q", it is easy to mistake hemingway's reference to a real Restaurant in Paris, "Cigogue", as "Ciqoque".
Hemingway published the cover of the Chinese edition of "The Sun Also Rises", Translation Forest Press, May 2015 edition
In addition, the typesetters changed the punctuation and verb tenses in Hemingway's original text. For example, in Hemingway's 1933 short story The Light of the World, the original text actually reads "She's been laughing and shivering." (she just kept on laughing and shaking), but the typeseters changed it to "she just keep on laughing and shaking." This incorrectly changes the tense of the original text.
Troden notes that with the exception of Kilimanjaro and A Feast of Flow, published in 2005 and 2009, Hemingway's currently published books have not been edited to retain what he really wanted to say. The works of Hemingway's contemporaries Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner have been republished to correct their original errors.
In his forthcoming book, The New Hemingway Studies, Cambridge University Press, Troden points out that the Hemingway family and his publishers were reluctant to provide academic editors with the original text, despite previous scholars pointing out errors in the existing version. Hemingway's manuscripts were mostly kept in a library in Boston, and Troden came to this conclusion after careful reading.
Hemingway, Image source: The Guardian.
Professor Kirk Curnutt, co-editor of the New Hemingway Study, said that a simple distinction like the distinction between "b" and "h" can change the whole meaning. This collection of essays by eminent scholars includes articles by Professor Sandra Spanier, editor-in-chief of The Hemingway's Epistles. Cambridge University Press also published The Letter of Ernest Hemingway, Volume 5 (1932-1934), the latest of 17 volumes, this month.
Spanier told The Guardian that several of the book's collection were never-before-published letters about Hemingway's feelings about changes to his published work. In his letter, Hemingway objected to the editor's censorship of his story, saying that if the story could be shorter, he would make it shorter, which was already the best and most complete story he presented, otherwise he would not show the story to anyone.
Sbanier believes that Hemingway's letter shows that Hemingway is strict with every detail of his work, which also fully demonstrates his creative style — the usual simplicity and accuracy.
Reference Links:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/02/ernest-hemingway-published-works-littered-with-errors-study-finds
Compiled | Tang Mingming
Editor| Zhang Ting
Proofreader | Liu Baoqing
Source: Beijing News