Today is Friday

in 1927, around the time of the publication of Men Without Women. There is little published content discussing the original publication of Today is Friday. George Monteiro simply describes the play as being published in a short story pamphlet by The As Stable Productions, He subsequently married Pauline Pfeiffer and the two holidayed in Le Grau-du-Roi in the south of France. It was here that Hemingway continued planning his upcoming collection of short stories. John Beall states that Hemingway was actively involved in the planning of Men Without Women while he was still writing The Sun Also Rises, and thus, it was in the South of France that he continued this work. At this point, Hemingway was living comfortably, owing to both Pfeiffer's large trust fund as well as Hemingway's growing income as a writer. Men Without Women was published on October 14 shortly before Hemingway and Pfeiffer moved back to the United States, making the short story collection the last work published in Hemingway's Paris years. Despite seeming so, Today is Friday is not Hemingway's first attempt at writing a piece of drama, having written a piece named No Worst Than a Bad Cold as a teenager. == Plot summary ==

Three Roman soldiers described as "a little cock-eyed" drink red wine in a "drinking place" in the aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. They are in the company of only a Hebrew bartender named George. The first soldier orders more wine from George. The third soldier leans on a barrel in pain, complaining of a gut ache which has rendered him unable to continue drinking. George mixes a drink to fix the third soldier's gut ache. The third soldier drinks the cup and exclaims, "Jesus Christ." The three soldiers then converse about the crucifixion of Jesus they had witnessed earlier that day. The first soldier insists that "he was good in there today," while the soldiers remark on which aspects of the crucifixions they enjoy or dislike. The third soldier continues to feel unwell. The first soldier asks the others if they "saw his girl," which is implied to be Mary Magdalene. The second soldier replies that he "knew her before he did," further implying he used her services as a prostitute before she became a follower of Jesus. The soldiers continue to talk about the crucifixion, where the first soldier admits that he stabbed Jesus with a spear while he was on the cross, insisting it was "the least I could do for him." The three soldiers get up to leave. The second soldier tells George to add the price of the wine to his tab, refusing to pay George an advance sum reasoning that payday is on Wednesdays. Outside on the street, the second soldier refers to George with an anti-semitic term to which the third soldier continues to complain about his painful stomach. == Writing style ==

Hemingway's prose has been extensively analysed for its minimalistic style, which came to be known as the Iceberg theory of omission. According to Meyers, a respected biographer of Hemingway, Hemingway believed the quality of an author's work is assessable by the respective quality of the words eliminated. Furthermore, Meyers asserts that because of Hemingway's mastery of omission in this way, he then went on to become the "most influential prose stylist in the twentieth century."During a period of three and a half years, [Hemingway] completely altered the function and technique of fictional dialogue and presented it as one of his many legacies to twentieth-century literature. While such clearly anachronistic dialogue may detract from the historical accuracy of the piece, it works to reveal the casual, irreverent attitude the soldiers have towards Jesus. Clancy Sigal commented on the style of the conversation between the soldiers as being 'casual sports-game like' and thus rendering the piece to become 'all the more vivid' to modern audiences. Hemingway's ability as a playwright has been often, and understandably overlooked in the field of literary criticism. Moreover, he has rarely, if ever been referred to as a playwright, owing to his prolific career as a novelist and short story writer. Thus Today is Friday occupies a unique position in the Hemingway catalogue as a rare insight into the writer's vision of Christianity and playwriting. == Analysis ==

Critics have discussed the characterization of Christ, the modern Americanized language used by the soldiers and the Hebrew bartender, and a possible play within a play formula utilized by Hemingway. Christopher Dick argues that most critics, aside from inaccurately identifying the genre of Today is Friday as a short story, also fail to notice Hemingway's "use of the dramatic as the controlling metaphor in the text." Comparing the crucifixion to the sport of boxing, as Flora describes, reinforces the notion of the "muscular Jesus." Instead, Jesus is characterized as macho, through the repeated allusions to boxing and his resilience. Tyler insists Hemingway's characterization of Jesus in such a way is due to his belonging to the philosophical movement, Muscular Christianity. == Reception ==

Being one of Hemingway's lesser known works, Today is Friday has not been subject to much criticism, scholarly or otherwise. It has been treated as a "puzzling" work by Hemingway, lending mostly to the question of genre. Joseph M. Flora notes that this confusion spurs from the work being included in two of Hemingway's short story collections: Men Without Women and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, thus treating it as a short story despite clearly being written in the form of a play. The most scolding criticism of the play came from Carlos Baker in his 1969 biography, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, where he described the play as 'tasteless'. While the play itself did not receive much, if any recognition at the time of publication, the collection it was published in, Men Without Women, did receive considerable attention. While some stories were subject to mixed reviews, Hemingway's modernist style was praised almost universally. Percy Hutchinson, in the New York Times Book Review wrote that his writing displayed "language sheered to the bone, colloquial language expended with the utmost frugality; but it is continuous and the effect is one of continuously gathering power." ==References==