The early years of the Hemingway Review (1981-1992): an interview with Charles M. ("Tod") Oliver.

Curnutt, Kirk

ABSTRACTS

To commemorate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Hemingway Review, founding editor Charles M. "Tod" Oliver reminisces about the early years of the journal. He recalls its evolution from Hemingway notes, the "technologies" available for producing an issue, the founding of the Hemingway Society, and important relationships and issues along the way.

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How did you come to serve as the founding editor of the Hemingway Review?

"Founding editor" of the Review I guess is fair enough, but what tends to be hidden in history is that my initial effort was in restarting Hemingway notes. Ken Rosen at Dickinson College and Taylor Alderman at Youngstown State University began Hemingway notes in 1971 and published it until the spring issue, 1974 (Vol. 4, No. 1). I restarted notes in the fall of 1979 with Vol. V, No. 1.

By July 1980 when "forty-two Hemingway scholars met under the oak tree on Dorchester Bay's Thompson Island" and talked some about the value of publications, it became clear to me that "notes" was not a very satisfactory title for a Hemingway Society journal. I changed the title and published Vol. I, No. 1 of the Hemingway Review in the fall of 1981.

Your years as editor (1981-1992) basically coincided with the computer revolution. What was the production process like in the early years? Did you have issues set in type at the beginning, and what were the early years of editing/layout on computer files like?

My "computer" turned out the articles, but I needed help from the advertising department at Ohio Northern University for organizing and setting up the pages. I received similar help on the first two issues of the Hemingway Newsletter (January and July 1981). The University's printing department printed both publications with its fairly new technology, such as it was in 1981. I got software after a few years that allowed me to do my own layout for both publications.

Wait--you actually had a computer in 1981? That's pretty amazing. I remember seeing my first desktop in 1984 in a dorm room. I thought it was a refrigerator; it was that big. You were way ahead of the revolution. Do you remember what kind of computer it was?

I'm glad you raised the question about the computer. It didn't occur to me that it wasn't a "computer" of one sort or another. But I went to Google, and it's clear (I think we can trust Google on this) that I couldn't have anything very sophisticated at home; I couldn't have afforded it. On the other hand, I don't remember using my old typewriter.

I e-mailed a former student of mine, now with her own law firm in Columbus, who was active both as an editor, including layouts, of the ONU literary magazine, for which I was adviser. In the late 70s, she was also a student assistant of mine, with primary responsibilities for keeping subscription information for both the Review and the Newsletter up-to-date. In answer to my question about what we used, she wrote back;

"I think we just referred to it as an IBM or computer. It was the old bulky kind of hard drive that was not an Apple because it used the old DOS system. I helped create a Fox-based program for mailing labels and automatic billing. We could only have run that program on the old IBMs."

According to Google the IBM-PC was "launched in 1981." My student is remembering Ohio Northern equipment, of course, and not what I had at home, but I'm not sure I'm any further toward an answer to your question than before. The university could well have had one of the early computers, and I trust my student's memory over my own, but that still doesn't solve my problem. And something else came up in my thinking through all of this that doesn't help; I remember having difficulty transferring copy that I had from my home whatever-it-was to whatever was in the student publications office--because I had a "Mac" to their "standard" machine. Which may just mean that I'm answering your question from memory of the last years.

Another issue that bothers me, though, is that I worked in newspaper sports departments for almost six years, before I got to Ohio Northern, including The South Bend Tribune where one of my responsibilities was reading the sports pages back in the press room, set in type, yes, the old system. (I can still read lines of print upside down). My point is that I should remember the system I used at Northern when I got there, including how I prepared copy for the university printing press. Ah well, all of this was thirty-five years ago.

In what ways did Ohio Northern University support the Review? How important was that support to the journal's success?

I cannot overstate the help and encouragement I got from Ohio Northern faculty and administration. Some readers won't believe the story I'm about to tell, but remember: this was thirty-five years ago!

Northern is a small university; when I was there (from 1965-1992) it had about 3,500 students in five colleges. When I first approached the president, Dr. DeBow Freed, about publishing, first the Newsletter, then the Review, I had no idea how enthusiastic he would be. He and other administrators thought it would be a big boost to the university's reputation to take on such nation-wide projects. I was made completely aware, however, when the president called me into his office two or three years later to tell me about a meeting of university presidents he had attended in Chicago. Four or five presidents were talking, and at one point when Dr. Freed was trying to explain to his colleagues where Ada, Ohio is located (a very difficult task: "fifteen miles east off 1-75, midway between Toledo and Dayton"), the president of one of the California universities interrupted and said, "Why I know where Ada, Ohio is located; that's where the Hemingway Review is published."

I had already been allowed to avoid membership on various faculty committees, but during the last four or five years at Northern, the university paid my expenses to all national and international meetings involving Hemingway. That included the International Hemingway meetings, most of which took place in Europe, plus MLA and regional programs.... What was your question again?

How involved was the Society's board of trustees and/or the journal's editorial board in setting the tone of the journal?

I was a non-voting member of the board, and remember only continued encouragement of the work I was doing. Individual members would provide ideas, always good; one idea in particular bothered me, because I was never very good at it, and it took my successor, Susan Beegel, to get it right. I'm referring to the need for unidentified readers to accept or reject articles submitted for publication in the Review.

You mean "blind review"?

Yes! Blind review!

You used a lot of illustrations for the covers during your tenure--some of them almost caricatures of Hemingway. (I'm thinking of the Fall 1983 cover in particular). How did you choose the illustrations? Did you commission those, or did artists submit to you?

Cover photographs and art impressions of Hemingway came from a number of sources, most with artistic quality and good taste. The contributor of the "caricature" which you mention was John Goin, M. D., of Los Angeles, who identified the artist as Nicholas Bentley, an English illustrator. The art for three of four of the Review covers came from Dr. Goins collection. I've gone through most of the first twenty issues and most of the illustrations came from members of the Hemingway Society.

Your second issue was also a special issue--one scholars wouldn't necessarily consider when thinking of Hemingway's influence: a whole issue devoted to the British response to Hemingway, featuring some major names (Tony Tanner, Malcolm Bradbury). What inspired that particular special issue?

Moira Monteith of Sheffield City Polytechnic was at the Thompson Island conference and indicated an interest in a special British issue. She wrote the lead article, which summarizes twenty-five years of Hemingway criticism in England. Graham Clarke, a specialist on American Literature at the University of Kent, provided seven pages of bibliography. He refers to it as a "map of response, on the part of the British, to a writer whose work, on both the academic and popular levels, stands as a central indice in the debate between the English and American traditions."

The cover artist for the British issue was Simon Freeston, a 1981 graduate in English Studies at Sheffield City Polytechnic. It's the only cover that includes color, "only" because it was more expensive than I had counted on, and I was concerned about how far Ohio Northern might be willing to go. Freeston also did the other four, black and white, illustrations in the issue, all also of Hemingway and very British.

There are a lot of famous names that appear in the 1980s and early 1990s, but the essay that really leapt out at me is Jim Hinkle's "What's Funny in The Sun Also Rises" (Spring 1985). That piece has to be one of the most republished pieces of Hemingway scholarship ever. Do you remember much about its genesis? About its going through the editorial process?

Jim Hinkle, San Diego State University, was a good friend of mine, so when he told me that he had counted more than fifty places in The Sun Also Rises that were "funny," I kidded him about it until his article arrived on my desk. The "editorial process" was easy; I didn't ask anyone else's opinion (see Question #4).

How would you describe your process as an editor? Did you personally intervene a lot in folks' writing? It strikes me that in the days before email revisions must have taken forever to pass back and forth through the mail! Did you do a lot of phone calls with contributors?

Writers would phone or send a letter, asking what I thought of a particular idea. I kept up with Hemingway scholarship pretty well in those days and so could often make a suggestion or two. And if an article was acceptable but needed some editorial changes, I would phone about simple things or send the edited article back for the writers approval. As is suggested in my answer to Question #4, I was pretty informal. The number of incoming articles grew with subscriptions, though, and I realized more formality, including editorial help, was necessary.

William White, best known as the editor of By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, wrote a column for you about collecting Hemingway in those years. He passed away in 1995 (at the age of eighty-four) but he was largely out of Hemingway when most of my generation started attending conferences and submitting in the early 1990s. (I never met him, anyway). What was he like?

William White's primary Hemingway interest was bibliography, so he rarely attended conferences, but he was certainly well read; he was one of the most knowledgeable Hemingway scholars I knew. He had in his home a large library of Hemingway items, most of them "rare," many of them purchased he said at places like The Strand and House of Books in New York. His collection made him something of a natural for bibliography. He invited me to his home, just outside of Detroit, to see his collection, and, in the process, I remember thinking that his Hemingway knowledge would make him a good editor. He was bibliographer for the last few issues of Hemingway notes and for the first six years of the Review, up through Vol. VI, No. 2 (Spring 1987).

Professor White also did regular updates on the Imitation Hemingway Contest that Harry's Bar in LA used to sponsor. In a couple of cases the Review even printed the winning entry, such as Lynda Leidiger's "A Farewell to Val" (Fall 1983) or Dave Eskes's "Paris in Spring" (Fall 1984). Printing Hemingway parodies in the Review strikes me as really brave! Was that ever controversial?

Parodies of Hemingway's writing were popular for several years; contest headquarters were in Harry's Bar & American Grill in Los Angeles. There were often several thousand entries, and established writers such as Ray Bradbury and Barnaby Conrad were judges, along with Jack Hemingway and occasional Hemingway scholars.

Winners were awarded with trips to the original Harry's Bar in Venice, Italy. We printed six of the "Imitation Hemingway Contest" winners in the Review, beginning with Vol I, No. 1, after two had been published in Hemingway notes, all thanks to William White. In his introduction to publication of the "Contest: 9" winner, White quotes Jack Hemingway, who, when asked "what his father would have thought about the contest, said, 'I think he would have loved it. He probably would have entered it.'"

At one point around 1988, I sense you got so overwhelmed by the number of Hemingway books being published that you started reviewing most of them yourself in shorter, paragraph-length notices. There are a couple of issues where you have, like, ten bylines! How hard was it to find book reviewers back then, or were you just trying to keep the shelves clear as new books arrived?

The question surprised me, because I had no memory of doing so many reviews; I had to check the ten-year Index--where I discovered twenty reviews with my byline! One of them, by the way, was of George Pimpton's The Best of Bad Hemingway: Choice Entries from the Harry's Bar & American Grill Imitation Hemingway Competition.

I certainly remember getting phone calls or letters from people volunteering to review this or that of the flood of books on Hemingway that came out in the 1970s and 80s. So I don't know why I did so many of the reviews myself. Maybe they were of books not reviewed elsewhere yet, and I felt they at least needed identification as Hemingway items.

Is there a particular essay that you're proudest of publishing?

The research required in answering two or three of the above questions reminded me that one of the most important projects I did was the ten-year Index. I miss not having a thirty-five year or maybe just a thirty-year index to the Hemingway Review. There was also a five-year index, although every five years now would be a stretch.

I'm also proud of the Spring 1990 issue, devoted to two previously unpublished short stories, "Philip Haines Was a Writer" and "A Lack of Passion." Don Junkins provides information about the first story, plus an article, "Hemingway's Paris Short Story: A Study in Revising." Susan Beegel provides the second story, plus four manuscript versions and a typescript version. These stories were clearly unfinished, but what we learn from the examinations by Junkins and Beegel is valuable in our further understanding of the writer. As far as I know, neither story has been dealt with since.

Your last issue ended where, in a sense, you began: with a special issue on European responses to Hemingway. Was that a conscious decision? What made you decide to pass along the editorship?

With all the European members of the Hemingway Society, many of whom were publishing articles on Hemingway in Europe, it made sense to consider a European issue of the Hemingway Review.

Arranging to have several articles together for the issue took longer than expected; as a result, I was ready to retire at Ohio Northern and from the Review before I had the material in hand. The result was published as "Special European Issue" (Summer 1992). Roger Asselineau, the leading French Hemingway scholar, was guest editor and a huge help in corresponding about the issue with his European colleagues.

I had an early retirement arrangement with Ohio Northern, so my last official action was the May commencement in 1992. My wife, Helen, and I were already in our new home in Charlottesville, Virginia, by the time the European issue was published. Not only was the "extra" issue okay with the ONU administration, but, as a sort of retirement gift, they paid my way to the fifth International Hemingway Conference that summer in Pamplona, Spain.

That was my very first International Hemingway Conference, by the way. It's hard to believe it's been almost twenty-five years already.

That's true! And I would just like to end by saying that I could not have been more pleased than that Susan Beegel took over editorial responsibilities for the Hemingway Review in fall 1992.

Kirk Curnutt

Troy University