A new reader to J’s Notes (welcome aboard, Jim) pointed out that Edward (who I had called Ed) Hopper’s inspiration for “The Nighthawks” may have been Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Killers”.  From an interview with Gail Levins:

DA : In Silent Places (Universe, 2000), you mention that detective and mystery writers most frequently refer to Hopper. Do you think it’s the elusive nature of his work? We talked earlier about the many levels you feel his paintings operate on.
GL : They’re obviously projecting their imagination and story onto Hopper. That’s particularly true with his image “Nighthawks,” which has become a cultural icon. Writers of thrillers occasionally refer to other images by Hopper. Perhaps because Hopper’s work is so accessible and because it has become a kind of common currency. I think that “Nighthawks” has that sense of mystery, unease; of something happening in the night (the early morning hours, or the late night hours). And it’s not only detective writers and fiction, but also moviemakers and playwrights.

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942, oil on canvas; 33-1/8″ x 60″. The Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of the American Art Collection.

I wrote an article a long time ago in which I suggested that “Nighthawks” was inspired by Hemingway’s short story “The Killers,” which Hopper read in Scribner’s magazine and liked so much when it first came out, that he wrote a fan letter to Scribner’s. He said that this writer was so much better than the rest and it was unusual that it wasn’t sentimental or saccharin like so many stories. But that short story has the sense of something about to happen, and it never does. In a sense, Hopper’s paintings are just like that. So that enables writers and filmmakers–fiction writers and poets, and other artists, perhaps too–to project their own imagination…and the viewer in general.

So Hopper doesn’t give you the last word. He sort of gives you the scenario and you have to imagine the conclusion, I suppose.

“The Killers” is a great story and the full text is available here.  Ron Berman reflects on the vaudeville philosophy of the story here:

Max and Al don’t like bright boys – the phrase is repeated more than any other in the story. In one of the two-man acts, “The Sport and the Jew,” the straight man says to Cohen (whose name has a certain resonance in Hemingway), “You’re a pretty smart fellow” (Laurie 455). He means the opposite. Al and Max are gangsters, satirists, philosophers, and vaudes, but they are above all ironists (Donaldson). Almost everything they say means its opposite. And one of the great resentments in their dialogue is intellectual. The dialogue is economical to a degree – minimalist – conveying the meaning not only of statement but also of predisposition.

Max and Al enter the text with attitudes about a number of things. As professionals, they have ideas about the job, but as comedians they have ideas about life. Their problem is not really Ole Andreson but the yokels they have to deal with – after all, these people have been cluttering up the vaudeville stage past living memory. There is no reason to expect them to behave correctly now.

I can’t recommend the story enough.  It’s relation to “Nighthawks” just makes me appreciate it more.

Thanks, Jim.

Is war photography art?  An interview with Philip Jones Griffiths:

My photography, unlike say, police photography, relies on emotion. I need to make the viewer laugh or cry, and sometimes both. Statistics are important, but it’s a photograph of the anguish in the eyes of a starving child in Darfur that initiates the quest for a solution.