The Torrents of Spring
Encyclopedia

The Torrents of Spring is a novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

 written by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

, published in 1926. Hemingway's first long work, it was written as a parody of Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...

. 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.
Hemingway wrote The Torrents of Spring as means to cause his publisher, Horace Liveright
Horace Liveright
Horace Brisbin Liveright was an American publisher and stage producer. With Albert Boni, he founded the Modern Library and Boni & Liveright publishers. He published books from numerous influential American and British authors...

 of Boni & Liveright
Boni & Liveright
Boni & Liveright was a publishing house established in 1916 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright which made a name by publishing work considered avant-garde and in so doing published work by many modernist authors. They attracted attention from the Society for Suppression of Vice...

, to refuse publication. Hemingway then switched publishers to Scribner's—who published his work from that time on. The work is generally dismissed by critics and seen as vastly less important than The Sun Also Rises
The Sun Also Rises
The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel, it received...

,
published in the same year.

Set in northern Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

 in the mid-1920s The Torrents of Spring is about two World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 veterans, Yogi Johnson and writer Scripps O'Neill, both of whom work at a pump factory. The story begins with O'Neill returning home to find that his wife and small daughter have left him. O'Neill befriends a British waitress, Diana, at a "beanery" (diner) and asks her to marry him immediately, but soon becomes disenchanted with her. Diana tries to impress her husband by reading books from the lists of The New York Times Book Reviews but he soon leaves her (as she feared he would) for another waitress, Mandy, who enthralls him with literary (but possibly made up) anecdotes. Johnson, who became depressed after a Parisian prostitute leaves him for a British officer, 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. Ultimately, he falls in love with a native American woman who enters a restaurant clothed only in mocassins, the wife of one of the two Indians he befriends near the end of the story.

Hemingway wrote the satire The Torrents of Spring in an effort to break his contract with his publisher Boni and Liveright. According to the contract Boni and Liveright were to publish Hemingway's next three books, one of which was to be a novel, with the proviso that if a newly submitted work were to be rejected the contract would be terminated. Written in ten days, The Torrents of Spring was a satirical treatment of pretentious writers. Hemingway submitted the manuscript early in December 1925, and it was rejected by the end of the month. In January Max Perkins at Scribner's
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...

 agreed to publish The Torrents of Spring in addition to Hemingway's future work. The Torrents of Spring was published Scribner's in May, 1926. The first edition
First edition
The bibliographical definition of an edition includes all copies of a book printed “from substantially the same setting of type,” including all minor typographical variants.- First edition :...

 had a print-run of 1250 copies.

Hemingway received a mixed reaction to the novella that was sharply critical of other writers. His wife Hadley
Hadley Richardson
Elizabeth Hadley Richardson married writer Ernest Hemingway in 1921. She was born the youngest daughter to a St. Louis family. After Hadley fell out of a window as a child, her mother became overprotective and curtailed her activities from then on...

 believed the characterization of Anderson
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...

 was "nasty"; Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...

 considered it funny but didn't want to see it published; while Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

 considered the novella a masterpiece. The Torrents of Spring has little scholarly criticism as it is considered a to be of less importance than Hemingway's subsequent work.

External links

Hemingway Archives, John F. Kennedy Library
John F. Kennedy Library
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is the presidential library and museum of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. It is located on Columbia Point in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, next to the Boston campus of the University of...

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