SOURCE: “The Confusion Dialogue in Hemingway's ‘Clean, Well-Lighted Place’: A Final Word?,” in Studies in American Fiction, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring, 1973, pp. 93-101.

In the following essay, MacDonald concurs with Charles Mays's interpretation of the dialogue in “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” contending that Hemingway ignored normal dialogue conventions in several other fictional works.

In his generally sensible, but somewhat precipitant article, “Is Hemingway's ‘Well-Lighted Place’ Really Clean Now?” Charles E. May shows how the long critical debate about the confusing dialogue in Hemingway's “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” resulted in Charles Scribner's Sons changing the text of the story.¹ Until recently “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” was printed so that near the end of the long exchange which has caused so much confusion, the younger waiter says, “His niece looks after him,” and the older waiter responds, “I know. You said she cut him down.” In the last few years, however...