67 research outputs found
Barbershop Bravery
No full textReview article focused on Mark Spilka’s Hemingway’s Quarrel with Androgyny (1990). Although finding Spilka’s work a “worthwhile and necessary” read, Baym takes Spilka to task for his lack of evidence for Hemingway’s motivations regarding sexuality and his inconsistent use of the concept of androgyny
Novels, Readers, and Reviewers
No full textThis book describes and characterizes responses of American readers to fiction in the generation before the Civil War. It is based on close examination of the reviews of all novels—both American and European—that appeared in major American periodicals during the years 1840–1860, a period in which magazines, novels, and novel reviews all proliferated. Nina Baym makes uses of the reviews to gain information about the formal, aesthetic, and moral expectations of reviewers. Her major conclusion is that the accepted view about the American novel before the Civil War—the view that the atmosphere in America was hostile to fiction—is a myth. There is compelling evidence, she shows, for the existence of a veritable novel industry and, concomitantly, a vast audience for fiction in the 1840s and 1850s
Actually, I Felt Sorry for the Lion
No full textFeminist reading of Margot Macomber’s motives in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Taking issue with critics who read Margot as an example of the stereotypical “bitch,” Baym describes a bond between the lion and Margot, arguing that the latter is innocent because of her identification with the lion as a victim of male domination and cruelty. Baym questions Wilson’s hunting prowess and the presumed dangers of big-game hunting, characterizing Wilson as a man “who makes his living by manipulating the appearances of moral danger for the titillation of his clients.
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