SOURCE: Beach, Joseph Warren. Review of Hemingway: The Writer as Artist, by Carlos Baker. American Quarterly 6, no. 1 (spring 1954): 79-83.

In the following mixed assessment of Hemingway: The Writer as Artist, Beach commends Baker's analysis of specific stories and novels, but criticizes his treatment of Hemingway's aesthetic.

Even if he is not always satisfied with Professor Baker's approach to the esthetic problem, the devoted reader of Hemingway must hail this study [entitled Hemingway: The Writer as Artist] as of decided importance for an understanding and evaluation of Hemingway's writing. To begin with, it is full and detailed in its account of the conditions under which each work was written and published and of Hemingway's intentions in general and in particular. Frequent quotations from Hemingway's letters to Baker underline the zeal with which the latter has gone about to inform himself. But what is more important, in his analysis of...