SOURCE: “Wallace Stevens' ‘The Snow Man’ and Hemingway's ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,’” in ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews, Vol. 2, No. 2, April, 1989, pp. 61-3.

In the following essay, Fleming speculates on the possible influence of the poet Wallace Stevens and his concept of nothingness on Hemingway's short story.

The relationship between Wallace Stevens and Ernest Hemingway is best remembered for the one-sided fist fight between the two in February of 1936. According to a letter Hemingway wrote on 27 February 1936, Hemingway knocked Stevens down several times because he had insulted Hemingway's sister Ursula at a party. According to Hemingway, Stevens spent several days in the hospital, but an impartial witness said that the poet was seen in public the day after the fight, wearing sunglasses to conceal bruises.¹

It is possible, however, that there is a more meaningful connection between the two. In “The Snow Man...