Mann’s protagonist is a writer; Hemingway’s a soldier. Both faced death, and in the face of death sought solace in a much younger character. Cantwell reminisces about the past while Renata (an 18-year-old countess with whom Cantwell spends the last days of his life) lives in the present. Cantwell says that «Every day is a new and fine illusion» where a kernel of truth can be found. Cantwell is a character in opposition: a tough soldier yet a tender friend and lover. The two Cantwells at times overlap and bleed into one another. Hemingway added yet another layer in the characterization: 50-year-old Cantwell in his dying day is «in an intense state of awareness» of his younger self of 1918 to the point that meld – yet retain the differences wrought by time.
Charles Oliver writes the novel shows a central Hemingway theme of «maintaining control over one’s life, even in the face of terrible odds.» Cantwell knows he is dying and faces death «with the dignity which he believes he has maintained throughout his military service.» Oliver thinks the two male characters, Cantwell and Alvarito, have an unstated understanding – both men love Renata, but Cantwell accepts and is happy to know Renata will almost certainly marry Alvarito. Within hours of dying, he says to himself: «You have said goodbye to your girl and she has said goodbye to you. That is certainly simple». The theme of death is central in Hemingway’s writings and his characters routinely achieve redemption at the moment of death, which can be seen as a form of existentialism. Jean-Paul Sartre believed to face death well is to live a heightened existence.
Jackson Benson writes that how a writer transforms biographical events into art is more important than looking for connections between Hemingway’s life and his fiction. He believes autobiographical events may have a «very tenuous relationship» with the fiction similar to a dream from which a drama emerges. Hemingway’s later fiction, Benson writes «is like an adolescent day-dream in which he acts out infatuation and consummation, as in Across the River.»
Meyers agrees that parallels exist between Hemingway and Colonel Cantwell, but he sees more similarities with Hemingway’s friend of many decades «Chink» Dorman-Smith, whose military career was undermined causing his demotion. Benson believes Hemingway used autobiographical details to work as framing devices to write about life in general—not only about his life. For example, Benson postulates that Hemingway used his experiences and drew them out further with «what if» scenarios: «what if I were wounded in such a way that I could not sleep at night? What if I were wounded and made crazy, what would happen if I were sent back to the front?» For example, he describes Hemingway’s experiences in the World War II battle of the Battle of Hürtgen Forest succinctly as «Passchendaele with tree bursts.»
Hemingway himself stated that Cantwell was based on three men: close friend and mercenary Charles Sweeny, American officer «Buck» Lanham, and most importantly, himself.
Reception
John O’Hara wrote in The New York Times; «The most important author living today, the outstanding author since the death of Shakespeare, has brought out a new novel. The title of the novel is Across the River and Into the Trees. The author, of course, is Ernest Hemingway, the most important, the outstanding author out of the millions of writers who have lived since 1616.» Tennessee Williams, in The New York Times, wrote: «I could not go to Venice, now, without hearing the haunted cadences of Hemingway’s new novel.
It is the saddest novel in the world about the saddest city, and when I say I think it is the best and most honest work that Hemingway has done, you may think me crazy. It will probably be a popular book. The critics may treat it pretty roughly. But its hauntingly tired cadences are the direct speech of a man’s heart who is speaking that directly for the first time, and that makes it, for me, the finest thing Hemingway has done.»
Williams and O’Hara were among the very few positive contemporary reviews, while negative reviews appeared in more than 150 publications. Critics claimed the novel was too emotional, had inferior prose and a «static plot», and that Cantwell was an «avatar» for Hemingway’s character Nick Adams. The novel was also criticized for being an unsuitable autobiography, and for presenting Cantwell as a bitter soldier.
According to Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker, Hemingway was «deeply wounded by the negative reviews» of this novel. Furthermore, Baker explains Hemingway was unaware that those close to him agreed with the majority of critics. For example, his wife Mary, who disapproved of Across the River and into the Trees, said: «I kept my mouth shut. Nobody had appointed me my husband’s editor.»
Later literary scholars consider the novel better than the contemporary reception. Baker compares it to Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, or The Tempest: not a major work, but one with an «elegiac» tone. Literary biographer Jeffrey Meyers believes the novel shows a new «confessional mode» in Hemingway’s work, and that it «would have been hailed as more impressive if it had been written by anyone but Hemingway.» Critic Ben Stoltzfus agrees, and he believes Hemingway’s structure is more comprehensible for the modern reader—exposed to the Nouveau roman—than for those of the mid-20th century.
Film adaptation
Main article: Across the River and Into the Trees (film)
In 2016, it was announced that a feature film based upon the novel was being developed with producers Kirstin Roegner and John Smallcombe. Filming started in Venice, Italy on December 9, 2020, with Liev Schreiber in the lead role and Paula Ortiz directing. The film debuted at the Sun Valley Film Festival on March 30, 2022.
