Who is Philip Young? What is AMERICAN FICTION, AMERICAN MYTH?
In 2000, I co-edited (with Sandra Spanier) a collection of essays by the noted Hemingway critic Philip Young, American Fiction, American Myth. Like Stirling Silliphant, Young was extremely important to me. In 1965, as an undergraduate English student at a small college in Ontario, Canada (St. Jerome’s College at the University of Waterloo), I came across Young’s book ERNEST HEMINGWAY. A Hemingway enthusiast, I was first attracted to the book because of its subject. But Young had such an engaging style and such interesting ideas that I instantly knew I had to study with him. So I went home and asked my pregnant wife if she would give up her job as a high-school history teacher and travel with me to the United States, where Young taught at Penn State. To my delight, she agreed. That was a life-changing moment. With most of our possessions crammed into a VW bug, we (and our newborn daughter) moved to the U.S. in 1966. Eventually I progressed from being a student in Young’s classes to bein
