Dave Schaafsma's Reviews > A Clean Well-Lighted Place

“It was very late and everyone had left the café except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference”--the opening lines

"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" first published in 1933, Is one of my favorite and one of Ernest Hemingway’s--one of the great masters of the short story, in particular-- most despairing and yet most achingly beautiful stories, featuring an old man who comes in every night to drink himself to closing, and one waiter who reveals he is sympathetic to him. If Hemingway has any moral intent in the story, it is to have us see the old man through the older waiter’s eyes.

Two waiters, alone late, watch the old man, and discuss his recent suicide attempt. The younger waiter is not sympathetic--why commit suicide? He has enough money--wants him just to go home, so he can go home to his wife. They watch the streets as “a girl and a soldier went by in the street. “ The older waiter notes that the old man’s wife is now gone. This focus on grief and love relationships just may be part of the unsaid under the “iceberg” of the story.

What is it that drives the old man to despair? Maybe it is just the generalized depression that many feel: “ What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too.”

The younger waiter may point to another underlying societal condition for what the old man is experiencing, the sudden invisibility of the elderly:

Younger waiter: “I wouldn’t want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing.”
Older waiter: “Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him.”

The older waiter seems to understand the old man; he cares: “Each night. I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone who needs the cafe.” And later: "’I am of those who like to stay late at the café,’ the older waiter said. “With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.’"

The older waiter thinks to himself a sort of nihilist Lord’s Prayer, or existentialist, Our nada who art in nada, that comes close to the end of the story., as he himself goes--alone--to his bed. A prayer of despair? Well, as with Beckett, he is still praying, at least. Then the punch in the gut finish, as we now walk home with the older waiter, who may not be so different than the old man:

“He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.”

Indeed and alas, many do. A story of acknowledgement for these times, with so many in despair.

James Joyce once remarked: "He [Hemingway] has reduced the veil between literature and life, which is what every writer strives to do. Have you read 'A Clean Well-Lighted Place'?. . . It is masterly. Indeed, it is one of the best short stories ever written..."

I agree, and maybe pointedly, on this, my seventieth birthday.

Thanks to the Short Story Club and Leonard for the focus this week on this terrific story. I got the message from Leonard and read it through.