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''The Torrents of Spring'' is a
novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most novelettes and short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) ...
written by
Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...
, published in 1926. Subtitled "A Romantic Novel in Honor of the Passing of a Great Race", Hemingway used the work as a spoof of the world of writers. It is Hemingway's first long work and was written as a parody of Sherwood Anderson's '' Dark Laughter''.


Synopsis

Set in northern
Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...
, ''The Torrents of Spring'' concerns two men who work at a pump factory:
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
veteran Yogi Johnson, and writer Scripps O'Neill. Both are searching for the perfect woman, though they disagree over this ideal. The story begins with O'Neill returning home from the library to find that his wife and small daughter have left him, explaining that "It takes a lot to mend the walls of fate." O'Neill, desperate for companionship, befriends a British waitress, Diana, at the restaurant where she works and immediately asks her to marry him. Diana makes an attempt to impress her spouse by reading books from the lists of ''
The New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
,'' including many forgotten pot-boilers of the 1920s. But O'Neill soon leaves her (as she feared he would when she first met him) for another waitress, Mandy, who enthralls him with her store of literary (but possibly made up) anecdotes. Yogi Johnson has a period during which he anguishes over the fact that he doesn't seem to desire any woman at all, even though spring is approaching, "which turns a young man's fancy to love." At last, he falls in love with an Indigenous American woman who enters a restaurant clothed only in moccasins, the wife of one of the two Indigenous Americans he befriends near the end of the story, in the penultimate chapter. Johnson is cured of his
impotence Erectile dysfunction (ED), also referred to as impotence, is a form of sexual dysfunction in males characterized by the persistent or recurring inability to achieve or maintain a Human penis, penile erection with sufficient rigidity and durat ...
when, viewing the naked woman, he is overcome by "a new feeling" which he hastens to attribute to
Mother Nature Mother Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth or the Earth Mother) is a personification of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing aspects of nature by embodying it, in the form of a mother or mother goddess. European concept tr ...
, and together they "light out for the territories."


Publication

It was widely believed that Hemingway wrote ''The Torrents of Spring'' in an effort to get out of his contract with his publisher Boni & Liveright, though Hemingway denied this. They held the
right of first refusal Right of first refusal (ROFR or RFR) is a contractual right that gives its holder the option to enter a business transaction with the owner of something, according to specified terms, before the owner is entitled to enter into that transactio ...
for his next three books, one of which was to be a novel, with the proviso that the contract would be terminated if one of the three were rejected. By rejecting ''Torrents'', Boni & Liveright terminated the contract. In his letters, Hemingway shows a passionate affection for his novella. He corresponded with Sherwood Anderson in May–July 1926, stating that his motivation for writing his first long work was more motivated by his refusal to "pull punches" and encourage sub-par work out of Anderson—as his peer—and not to simply get out of a contract with Boni & Liveright. ''The Torrents of Spring'' was a satirical treatment of pretentious writers. Written in ten days, at an average of 2,000 words a day, the work did not undergo Hemingway's typical editing process. Hemingway submitted the manuscript early in December 1925, and it was rejected by the end of the month. In January 1926, Max Perkins at Scribner's agreed to publish ''The Torrents of Spring'' in addition to Hemingway's future work. ''The Torrents of Spring'' was published by Scribner's in May of that year; the first edition had a print run of 1,250 copies.


Critical reception

Mixed reaction greeted the novella, itself sharply critical of other writers. The work is generally dismissed by critics and seen as vastly less important than ''
The Sun Also Rises ''The Sun Also Rises'' is the first novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway, following his experimental novel-in-fragments '' In Our Time (short story collection)'' (1925). It portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Par ...
,'' which was published in the same year. Hadley Richardson, Hemingway's wife at the time, believed his characterization of Anderson was "nasty", while
John Dos Passos John Roderigo Dos Passos (; January 14, 1896 – September 28, 1970) was an American novelist, most notable for his U.S.A. (trilogy), ''U.S.A.'' trilogy. Born in Chicago, Dos Passos graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He traveled widely as a ...
considered it funny but did not want to see it published. F. Scott Fitzgerald, on the other hand, considered the novella a masterpiece. Little scholarly criticism has been devoted to ''The Torrents of Spring'', as it is considered less important than Hemingway's subsequent work. American readers would have recognized "a Great Race" in the subtitle as alluding to Madison Grant's ''
The Passing of the Great Race ''The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History'' is a 1916 racist and pseudoscientific book by American lawyer, anthropologist, and proponent of eugenics Madison Grant (1865–1937). Grant expounds a theory of Nordi ...
'', a eugenic history and argument for the superiority of Nordic blood, influential in the USA and Germany when first published (1916).


References


Sources

* * Berg, A. Scott (1979). ''Max Perkins: Editor of Genius''. New York: Washington Square Press. . * * *


External links

* * *
Hemingway Archives
John F. Kennedy Library {{DEFAULTSORT:Torrents Of Spring, The 1926 American novels 1926 debut novels American novellas Books by Ernest Hemingway Charles Scribner's Sons books Novels by Ernest Hemingway Novels set in Michigan Parody novels