---

Rich Youmans

What’s Left Unsaid

Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory & Harriot West’s “Empty Spaces”

Photo by James Eades on Unsplash

Ernest Hemingway’s “iceberg theory” has influenced many a writer eager to say more by saying less. The name of the theory derives from a passage in Hemingway’s 1932 book about bull fighting, Death in the Afternoon:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

Hemingway’s theory offers valuable guidance—especially for writers of haibun, a form that relies so much on concision and compression in its prose. Few haibun writers have learned and practiced this lesson better than Harriot West. The author of two award-winning books, Into the Light (Mountains and River Press, 2014) and Shades of Absence (Red Moon Press, 2018), West at her best offers a master’s class in how to say much in very few words. She selects details that don’t just propel the narrative, but also lead readers toward what they can initially only feel and must complete for themselves. The following haibun provides a good example.

---

Empty Spaces

We’re drinking orange juice. Not fresh squeezed but from a can. It’s slightly bitter with a metallic taste. But father doesn’t mind. He’s having his Kentucky style—with a splash of bourbon and a sigh from mother. As a treat for me, he is making scrapple, cornmeal mush with greasy sausage. I love it but what I love most is father cooking. For me. And I love watching mother push the scrapple around her plate. She barely eats a bite.

cabin in winter
the floorboards too
have pulled away

---

From the opening sentence, details build one upon another, adding key bits of information. The sentences are Hemingwayesque in their simplicity, each with a purpose that propels the narrative, each implying more than they say:

We’re drinking orange juice: This sets the stage. As a reader, I see a group of people (a family?) at breakfast (the meal most closely associated with orange juice).

Not fresh squeezed but from a can: By itself, orange juice conjures images of health, wholesomeness, and vitality, but in this case it’s not fresh but artificial. A turn that sets up the next sentence:

It’s slightly bitter with a metallic taste: Not just artificial, but bad. Here West activates my sense of taste to bring home the mood of the scene: There’s something wrong here, something not quite right behind the facade of a pleasant family breakfast. An ominous feeling emerges.

But father doesn’t mind: The cast of characters is becoming clearer: at least two in this group are family, a father and his child (the narrator). We’re not sure if it’s a son or daughter, since the prose hasn’t yet made that clear. (I can’t assume it’s a daughter just because of the author’s gender. As West herself said in an interview in the March 2015 Haibun Today, “[I]t is interesting that there is a tendency to conflate narrator and poet in both haibun and haiku. . . . I have never bothered much about reality in my haiku or haibun.”)

He’s having his Kentucky style—with a splash of bourbon and a sigh from mother: In a single sentence, West introduces not only the mother into the setting, but also key traits of both parents. The mother’s sigh indicates disapproval, resignation, or both regarding the father’s drinking so early in the morning. The drinking must be a common occurrence, given her reaction, which also hints at an underlying problem. That “slightly bitter” taste returns.

As a treat for me, he is making scrapple, cornmeal mush with greasy sausage: The bond between narrator and father is established. It’s also significant, I think, that the meal is not just eggs or pancakes, but scrapple. I’ve met few people who don’t either love or hate it (and as a native Philadelphian, I fall in the former category), but it’s a meal made literally from “scraps”—which, in this case, could imply this “treat” is really just a scrap of affection, moments that are few and far between.

I love it but what I love most is father cooking. For me: These two sentences expand upon the earlier interpretation. This is not a common occurrence, and the child embraces it all the more for its rarity. But why is it a rarity? It could be just the traditional dynamic of a certain era when women worked around the house and men went off to jobs, without much overlap. But that ominous note sounded earlier still resounds. Is the father not around much? Perhaps he often drinks too much at night, and mornings are usually spent nursing a hangover rather than making breakfast. Does it allude to not just alcoholic tendencies, but an overall absence? The mother’s sigh echoes here and gains significance, and “for me” becomes poignant.

And I love watching mother push the scrapple around her plate. She barely eats a bite: Two simple sentences that add new layers to this family portrait. Perhaps the mother falls into the camp of the scrapple haters, in which case the father shows how little he cares whether or not she eats. Or perhaps it’s her disdain for the father’s drinking, her worry about how it’s affecting their relationship, that has taken her appetite. Has the father’s drinking created financial problems as well? Is that why they’re eating scrapple?

Another family dynamic also becomes clear—a tension between mother and child. Why does the narrator love the mother’s lack of interest in breakfast? Is there a competition between the two for the father’s affection, an envy that becomes, for the child, a feeling of victory (at least for that morning)? The reader is left with the image of the mother pushing the pieces of scrapple around with useless swipes—an image of futility that resonates perfectly with the scene.

By the time I get to the haiku,

cabin in winter
the floorboards too
have pulled away

with its image of separating floorboards (and the “empty spaces” between) along with the perfect use of “too,” the portrait is complete—I have a sense of the dysfunction and distance growing within the family, as well as their seemingly hard-scrabble circumstances. West presented just the right details and left me, the reader, enough clues to discover that those “empty spaces” weren’t so empty after all.

Hemingway would nod in approval.

---

Notes

1. “Empty Spaces” appears in Into the Light (Mountains and River Press, 2014). The book shared (with Marjorie Buettner’s Some Measure of Existence) the Mildred Kanterman Memorial First Place Award in the Haiku Society of America’s 2015 Merit Book Awards. It is reprinted by permission of the author.

2. The Haibun Today interview with Harriot West, “Until One Day I Said Enough: Harriot West on Haibun” by Jeffrey Woodward, was published in the March 2015 edition (volume 9, number 1). It can be found here.

3. For more about Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory, see this entry in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_theory.

---

About the Author

Rich Youmans lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Alice. His books include Shadow Lines (Katsura Press, 2000), a collection of linked haibun with Margaret Chula, and Head-On (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2018).