Known as one of America’s greatest gothic writers, Ernest Hemingway was a well-traveled man, serving in Italy in the First World War, living in Paris in his younger years, and eventually moving to Cuba. Often, this mosaic of cultures appears clearly in his writing, both through his colorful worlds and his interpretations of that which is most important in a man’s life. In “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” which is set in a small café in what is assumed to be Spain, Hemingway describes two waiter...