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Hemingway's Italy: New Perspectives.

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Hemingway's Italy: New Perspectives. Edited by Rena Sanderson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. 252 pp. Cloth $39.95.

This collection of nineteen essays evolved from the July 2002 Hemingway Society Conference in Stresa, Italy. Its editor, Rena Sanderson, graciously acknowledges what she calls its "groundbreaking precursor," Hemingway in Italy and Other Essays, edited by Robert W. Lewis; that collection, too, evolved from a Hemingway Society Conference, the 1986 meeting in Lignano Sabbiadoro. In her introduction, titled "Hemingway's Italy: Paradise Lost," Sanderson gathers in one usefully comprehensive chapter information about all of Hemingway's visits to Italy. The book also offers a detailed bibliography of works on Italy by Hemingway, including unpublished stories, journalism, short stories, and novels.

In their essays opening the collection, both Nancy R. Comley and Kim Moreland draw on the concept of "Italianicity" first advanced by Roland Barthes in his article "Rhetoric of the Image." Comley asks us to consider Hemingway's concept of Italianicity before he went to Italy in 1918 and then examine how his experiences there shaped his understanding of its people and its culture. Moreland examines the way in which Hemingway was constructed as a signifier of Americanicity during his time in Italy and subsequently constructed himself as a signifier of Italianicity in Oak Park. She mentions his Italian cloak and polished boots, parties with Italian food and wine, and his enthusiasm for their wholehearted enjoyment of life.

Steven Florcyk examines the unpublished...

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