Criticism > Short Story Criticism > A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Ernest Hemingway - Warren Bennett (essay date 1990)

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Ernest Hemingway - Warren Bennett (essay date 1990)

Warren Bennett (essay date 1990)

SOURCE: “The Characterization and the Dialogue Problem in Hemingway's ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’” in The Hemingway Review, Vol. IX, No. 2, Spring, 1990, pp. 122-23.

[In the following essay, Bennett compares Hemingway's “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” and “The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio.”]

I

“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” although long recognized as one of Hemingway's best short stories, has nevertheless been plagued by controversy because of Hemingway's proclivity for writing dialogue without identifying the speakers. The story was first published in Scribner's Magazine in 1933 and then republished the same year in Hemingway's collection of stories Winner Take Nothing. In this 1933 text, Hemingway's failure to identify the speakers created a contradictory dialogue sequence which resulted in a confusion as to which waiter knew about the deaf old man's...

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