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4.17 AVERAGE
4.17 AVERAGE
I wasn’t expecting to like these short stories as much as I did. Hemingway does a really good job of building character through action instead of a tedious backstory. His to the point writing style is on full display here and I can’t get enough of it. He tackles themes of death, manhood, maturity, abortion, love and love lost, feelings of nostalgia, and so much more. I’ll definitely be revisiting these stories over the course of my life.
“‘That’s all we do, isn’t it - look at things and try new drinks?’
‘I guess so.’”
- Ernest Hemingway; Hills Like White Elephants
“‘That’s all we do, isn’t it - look at things and try new drinks?’
‘I guess so.’”
- Ernest Hemingway; Hills Like White Elephants
I get the hype. Snows of Kilimanjaro is one of the best stories I have ever read.
Best of the Hemingway Shorts
Review of the Scribner Kindle eBook edition (March 2021) collected from various earlier publications (1923-1939) with an added introduction & commentaries
Scribner's new edition of selected Hemingway short stories is released in conjunction with the upcoming Ken Burns PBS TV documentary Hemingway (April 5-7, 2021) and is edited by Tobias Wolff with individual story commentary by Wolff and several other authors. This is an excellent 'best of' selection even though fans will inevitably lament the absence of 1 or 2 favourites (I definitely missed seeing Cat in the Rain and The Sea Change).
Over the years, I have probably read each of these a dozen times or more, but I still find new nuances to appreciate every single time. The selected commentaries were excellent as well. I especially enjoyed those by [a:Edna O'Brien|7184|Edna O'Brien|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615660470p2/7184.jpg].
Table of Contents
Introduction by Tobias Wolff.
1. Up in Michigan (1923) commentary by Edna O’Brien
2. Out of Season (1923) Tobias Wolff
3. Indian Camp (1924) Tim O’Brien, Tobias Wolff, Abraham Vergese
4. Cross-Country Snow (1924) Tobias Wolff
5. The End of Something (1925) Tobias Wolff
6. The Three-Day Blow (1925) Amanda Vaill
7. Vignette (While the bombardment...) from in our time (1924), later the Chapter 7 interchapter before Soldier's Home (1925) Tim O’Brien
8. Soldier’s Home (1925) Tim O’Brien, Tobias Wolff
9. Big Two-Hearted River (1925) Tim O’Brien
10. The Undefeated (1925) Tobias Wolff
11. In Another Country (1927) Michael Katakis
12. Hills Like White Elephants (1927) Edna O’Brien
13. The Killers (1927) Mario Vargas Llosa, Edna O’Brien
14. Now I Lay Me (1927) Tobias Wolff
15. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (1933) Tim O’Brien
16. A Way You’ll Never Be (1933) Tim O’Brien
17. The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1936) Abraham Vergese, Mary Karr
18. Under the Ridge (1939) Tobias Wolff, Leonardo Padura
19. The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936) Tim O’Brien, Abraham Vergese
Trivia and Links
There are several articles, interviews and events related to the upcoming TV documentary at:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-18/ken-burns-hemingway-documentary-review-papa-as-millennial-avatar
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/03/ken-burns-ernest-hemingway-pbs-novick
https://mynorth.com/2021/03/ken-burns-hemingway-documentary-includes-michigan-summers/
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/hemingway/events/
Review of the Scribner Kindle eBook edition (March 2021) collected from various earlier publications (1923-1939) with an added introduction & commentaries
Scribner's new edition of selected Hemingway short stories is released in conjunction with the upcoming Ken Burns PBS TV documentary Hemingway (April 5-7, 2021) and is edited by Tobias Wolff with individual story commentary by Wolff and several other authors. This is an excellent 'best of' selection even though fans will inevitably lament the absence of 1 or 2 favourites (I definitely missed seeing Cat in the Rain and The Sea Change).
Over the years, I have probably read each of these a dozen times or more, but I still find new nuances to appreciate every single time. The selected commentaries were excellent as well. I especially enjoyed those by [a:Edna O'Brien|7184|Edna O'Brien|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1615660470p2/7184.jpg].
Many women feel that Hemingway hated women and wrote adversely about them. I would ask his detractors, female or male, to read this story. Could you in all honor say that this was a writer who didn’t understand women’s emotions and who hated women? —Edna O’Brien on Up in Michigan
You get a picture of the whole relationship without Hemingway spelling out the words. What’s not said is so wonderful. The control that he mastered is one of his signature strokes of genius. It’s a sad story, but Hemingway pretends not to shed a tear during it. We shed a tear. I’d like to meet Hemingway when he finished that story. I’d like him to read it to me. - Edna O’Brien on Hills Like White Elephants
One of the greatest stories I have ever read about tension, and a masterpiece of withholding. Hemingway “withheld.” It was in his genes, it was in his chemical makeup. He knew what it was to be afraid all the time and wrote about that. He gets to the heart of the matter, absolutely and unflinchingly. —Edna O’Brien on The Killers
Table of Contents
Introduction by Tobias Wolff.
1. Up in Michigan (1923) commentary by Edna O’Brien
2. Out of Season (1923) Tobias Wolff
3. Indian Camp (1924) Tim O’Brien, Tobias Wolff, Abraham Vergese
4. Cross-Country Snow (1924) Tobias Wolff
5. The End of Something (1925) Tobias Wolff
6. The Three-Day Blow (1925) Amanda Vaill
7. Vignette (While the bombardment...) from in our time (1924), later the Chapter 7 interchapter before Soldier's Home (1925) Tim O’Brien
8. Soldier’s Home (1925) Tim O’Brien, Tobias Wolff
9. Big Two-Hearted River (1925) Tim O’Brien
10. The Undefeated (1925) Tobias Wolff
11. In Another Country (1927) Michael Katakis
12. Hills Like White Elephants (1927) Edna O’Brien
13. The Killers (1927) Mario Vargas Llosa, Edna O’Brien
14. Now I Lay Me (1927) Tobias Wolff
15. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (1933) Tim O’Brien
16. A Way You’ll Never Be (1933) Tim O’Brien
17. The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1936) Abraham Vergese, Mary Karr
18. Under the Ridge (1939) Tobias Wolff, Leonardo Padura
19. The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936) Tim O’Brien, Abraham Vergese
Trivia and Links
There are several articles, interviews and events related to the upcoming TV documentary at:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-18/ken-burns-hemingway-documentary-review-papa-as-millennial-avatar
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/03/ken-burns-ernest-hemingway-pbs-novick
https://mynorth.com/2021/03/ken-burns-hemingway-documentary-includes-michigan-summers/
https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/hemingway/events/
i'm one of those people that think hemingway was never as good as he was in these stories. i'm not really a fan of his novels, but i really liked most all of these. i think this is high watermark of his writing.
In a world of prolixity and superlatives, the simple sentence is king.
The best stories are found in other books, so this compilation has you read some from books that you may not like so much. Hemingway covers a pretty wide swath of territory in his writing -- and I've just never loved his hunting/safari stuff. The Nick Adams stories, however, totally capture my interest. I'd say stick to the individual books of his stories unless you love everything Hemingway, of course.
This collection of seventy short stories, mostly about war, many about everyday life and relationships. Most of the stories were very short. Many of these stories are basically vignettes, lacking the characteristic twist or humor or surprise which I love about a great short story. As such, I thought most of the stories were ok, but not particularly memorable. I'm not the biggest Hemingway fan, so this was more of an intellectual experience rather than absorbing entertainment.
adventurous
reflective
fast-paced
Some of his short stories are, like, the best fiction ever written, and some of them are a bit more slow and boring and I didn’t care for them! Love the guy to death.
Went to dinner with my gf’s friends and they were yapping about books (they read BookTok girl stuff) and asked me what I was reading. I said the word’s “Ernest Hemingway” and everyone groaned at me. One of them said “Didn’t he, like, hate women?” How do you respond to that? Poor guy doesn’t deserve such a bad wrap. Truly one of my top 5 all time great writers— and dare I say, with some of the most complex and beautifully written female characters of the 20th century… But TikTok say he bad ://
Went to dinner with my gf’s friends and they were yapping about books (they read BookTok girl stuff) and asked me what I was reading. I said the word’s “Ernest Hemingway” and everyone groaned at me. One of them said “Didn’t he, like, hate women?” How do you respond to that? Poor guy doesn’t deserve such a bad wrap. Truly one of my top 5 all time great writers— and dare I say, with some of the most complex and beautifully written female characters of the 20th century… But TikTok say he bad ://
adventurous
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Again, I can't sit with the book I've read and formulate a clever repartee about what it wholly encompassed. Maybe I'm feeling a sort of way, and have less to share I suppose or I just don't find the words to come easy. Ernest Hemingway now is like the mist over the Sierra Madres, it's always hot when it is snowing, everything he writes just about takes place in the wild outdoors and related to sport; hunting sport, especially. I especially appreciated the story "Fathers and Sons", the only rifle hunting my Dad and I ever did, because we'd rather shoot Animals with a lens, capturing them with a camera 📸 instead of a gun, though my Uncle and I did kill some sparrows, and I had to go retrieve them, stiff from the buckshot, that trip we came back and watched a little movie called "Tall Tale" back in our family van complete with a television installation. But my father and I once went through a trail along the ol' blackjack ♣️ mountains just west of Silver City, NM, and we silent hunters took scope of the terrain more than a while for snakes, but for this one trip I had inquired about real game, I think I wanted to do quail, but we would conquer the tree squirrel 🐿️ in Lieu of, since we weren't going to eat it really, though I must say there were more than a few of these irascible creatures scaling up the tree 🌲 to elude us, finally, I myself shot down one that was hanging on a limb, he fell down near the base of the deciduous pine, 🌳 then I had to pry him off the tree where he had clawed himself in. It was really sticky work with blood involved. I didn't like it. We fed them to our boa constrictor, I guess, we might've had a gamey stew 🍲 a couple times.
Now, some quotes:
"I dedicate this bull to you, Mr. President."
"Live the life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual."
"I have worked all my life. In all that remains of my life I must work. I have no complaints against work. To work is normal."
"I had a new thing to think about and I lay in the dark with my eyes open and thought of all the girls I had ever known and what kind of wives they would make."
Now, some quotes:
"I dedicate this bull to you, Mr. President."
"Live the life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual."
"I have worked all my life. In all that remains of my life I must work. I have no complaints against work. To work is normal."
"I had a new thing to think about and I lay in the dark with my eyes open and thought of all the girls I had ever known and what kind of wives they would make."