SOURCE: “The Manuscript and the Dialogue of ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’” in American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography, Vol. 50, No. 4, January, 1979, pp. 613-24.

In the following essay, Bennett reiterates the importance of Hemingway's original manuscript of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” and asserts that it shows “evidence of two mistakes, one by a typist or typesetter, and one by Hemingway himself; and it clarifies Hemingway's intention as to which waiter knows about the old man's suicide attempt.”

The known manuscripts of Ernest Hemingway are in the possession of Mrs. Mary Hemingway, who on several occasions since 1972 has deposited short story material at the John F. Kennedy Library. This has been inventoried and arranged for examination, and was opened to research in 1975. In this material is a previously undiscovered pencil manuscript of Hemingway's much debated short story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.”¹ This discovery seems to resolve...