SOURCE: Newman, Paul B. “Hemingway's Grail Quest.” University of Kansas City Review 28 (1962): 295-303.

In the following essay, Newman remarks on the influence of T. S. Eliot and Jessie Weston on Ernest Hemingway, pointing out that Hemingway's writing reflected contemporary concerns over the breakdown of individualism that was often addressed by an interest in and the use of the Holy Grail theme.

“All of Eliot's poems are perfect,” Hemingway wrote in 1925, “and there are very few of them. He has a very fine talent and he is very careful of it. He never takes chances with it and it is doing very well thank you.”

In the early twenties Hemingway was a good friend of Ezra Pound, at a time when the latter had just finished editing “The Waste Land.” Eliot himself was an occasional visitor to Paris and the story of the Fisher King may well have been...