Eight Lessons in Love

Using such professional devices as the Anger Iceberg Chart and the Power Ladder, and such key professional concepts as "male accountability" and "female collusion," Spilka asks new questions about these stories and sheds surprising new light on both their literary and their current social implications. He asks why Hemingway rewards his dying protagonist with heaven, for instance, in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," when that bravely self-critical man has spent most of his dying days verbally abusing his safari wife; or why Joyce primes his buffeted male protagonist for vengeful domestic violence in "Counterparts," but whisks the man's wife out to evening chapel service so that a child receives the abuse that was surely meant for her.