Hemingway's Six: Always Mentioned, Rarely Explained
It is sad. Certainly. As someone who, as a husband, has experienced the pain of miscarriages (and of course I don’t know if this is what this couple has experienced), I feel that sadness. And that surely might be enough to ask from six words, yes? But I think there’s another story here, and it has to do with the decision not only to sell the shoes but to write and place the “for sale” ad. It means that this couple—who once had such faith in the world that they bought baby shoes for a baby not yet born (endnote 1)—are done with baby shoes. And they want the world to know what has been done to them, and I understand that, too, this desire for the “invisible” pain to be made visible: “baby shoes, never worn.”
There are other stories for other readers. Of someone else (not the couple) selling the shoes. Of a baby born with bigger feet than planned for. Of a gift that wasn’t needed for a free-spirited family that goes barefoot (endnote 2). For me, it’s about this couple, somehow connected to the couple from “Hills Like White Elephants,” their innocence being taken from them as it was from the girl who once saw a round white belly in the distance. It is about innocence and the world’s inability to find anything to do with it but to have us lose it in the most horrific of ways.
Endnotes
1. Thanks for flash fiction writer Sue Babcock’s insights into this couple’s innocence: “I envision excited new soon-to-be parents rushing out and buying all those things a baby will need. And then…the baby doesn’t need shoes.”
2. Thanks to (very) short fiction writer Sue Ann Connaughton for these other possible readings of Hemingway’s famous six-word story: “The baby was so big at birth that the shoes never fit” and “Another possibility is that the parents are free spirits and all the family members go barefoot, so no need for baby shoes that were a gift.”
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posted on 31 Jan 2011, 5:29 PM
Terrific blog, Randall. Good resources, I'll have to start checking it regularly.
posted on 1 Feb 2011, 3:58 PM
Thanks, Sue Ann!
posted on 1 Feb 2011, 12:39 PM
Randall,
I appreciate the variety of readings you present in such a concise way here. I'd love to add another interpretation: Ernest had four wives, right? There was Hadley, Pauline, Martha, and Mary. One of those early wives must have used the "But I'm pregnant!" fib in order to keep her man. Needless to say, that didn't work. After Ernest bought adorable shoes for the baby-to-be, he waited, but no belly grew. To get even, Ernest sold the shoes, divorced the dishonest woman, and wrote six words to help himself move on.
posted on 1 Feb 2011, 3:59 PM
Thanks, Jane. I enjoyed your reading of these six words. I like the image of Ernest buying the shoes for the baby-to-be.
posted on 1 Feb 2011, 3:57 PM
D Bruton,
The tailors knew the invisible cloth had no substance; I myself think (clearly) that this piece has some. It's fine to think it doesn't. One thing I love about very short pieces is the place they leave for the reader. I think that aspect of them is quite wondrous.
posted on 4 Feb 2011, 7:18 AM
Dear Randall,
The main reason I was excited to read this debate is that every time I’ve read this six-worder, to date, I had the very same take which is unlikely to happen, when reading the same story over and over. As I see it, this is about brusque disruption: a baby’s just died and his/her parents put an ad on the newspaper. Such ad works, or at least resembles an obituary insertion. That’s the reason why the shoes have never been worn and are for sale. For the first time, honestly, I even considered another interpretation. Not for any sort of conviction. I’ve simply been led to it so much this story had a piercing impact on me.
The nugget here, I dare say, is that Hemingway’s or not Hemingway’s, if that’s the question – although I believe it is, indeed, his – resumes in the prophetic concision concerning language, space, length of time. “Girtwise” this equals a tiny tablet, a dot in a pointillist canvas we all experience in the editing of action movies, the evident “bzz, bzz, bzz” tempo with which MTV ads and programs are dressed into, internet lingo, and the flash fiction fever of such times we live hodiernaly, imbued and brought upon by this story. Call me crazy, but, such story always redirects my perception to Van Ghog’s pool table foreseeing and timidly trumpeting, in as much as it could be, the fauvism.
I love this story!
Thank you so much for this sparkling opportunity, Randall.
Cheers,
bernardo bolt gregori
posted on 8 Feb 2011, 1:25 PM
Thanks, BBG! Love this: ". Call me crazy, but, such story always redirects my perception to Van Gogh’s pool table foreseeing and timidly trumpeting, in as much as it could be, the fauvism."
posted on 7 Feb 2011, 9:19 PM
I love the six words and Rendall's explanation. I use the story to teach inference to my 10th graders and they often tug along the same edges that have been ironed out so prettily here.
posted on 8 Feb 2011, 1:26 PM
Great idea, Melinda. I like that idea of tugging at the edges.
posted on 8 Feb 2011, 1:24 PM
I think that your certainty that "any story that exists here is the creation of the inferer" is fine to have for yourself, but I hope you're aware that it isn't the "truth" about this piece. It's your strong opinion. At AWP this year, we discussed this piece during a panel and everyone concluded that there's a story there. Not that such a consensus means that we are right, but I just find your certainty about what this piece means a bit uninteresting. That's all.
posted on 9 Feb 2011, 1:41 PM
I only discovered flashfiction.net today. Love it! I can't wait to see articles on twitter fiction. I've tried it, not easy but a great writing exercise.
posted on 9 Feb 2011, 2:55 PM
I guess what I'm saying is that this debate about whether it's a story or not doesn't interest me. I don't care if one person feels it's a story and another person doesn't. I don't mean this to be dismissive; you're just engaging in a dialogue about this piece that I have no interest in engaging in. To me, the six-words add up to something powerful and emotional and important; to you, they don't. That's all, I think, there is to say about it.