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 attempted suicide. No one, however, seemed to have noticed the contradictory sequence and its resulting confusion until 1956—twenty-three years later—at which...