SOURCE: “Ernest Hemingway: The ‘Dumb Ox’,” in Men Without Art, 1934. Reprint by Russell & Russell, Inc., 1964, pp. 17-41.

In the following essay, originally published in 1934, Lewis accuses Hemingway of borrowing the style of Gertrude Stein, purveying brutish speech patterns, and championing the unthinking masses, but at the same time praises his skill as a writer.

Ernest Hemingway is a very considerable artist in prose-fiction.

Besides this, or with this, his work possesses a penetrating quality, like an animal speaking. Compared often with Hemingway, William Faulkner is an excellent, big-strong, novelist: but a conscious artist he cannot be said to be. Artists are made, not born: but he is considerably older, I believe, than Hemingway, so it is not that. But my motive for discussing these two novelists has not been to arrive at estimates of that sort.

A quality in the work of the author of Men Without Women...