by Ernest Hemingway(New York: Scribner, 1986)
Paperback, 499 Pages, Short Fiction Anthology
ABCD Rating: BACKLIST
From the Cover: At the age of twenty-two, Ernest Hemingway wrote his first short story, “Up in Michigan.” Seventeen years and forty-eight stories later he was the undisputed master of the form and the leading American man of letters. The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, introduced here with a revealing preface by the author, chronicles Hemingway’s development as a writer, from his earliest attempts in the chapbook Three Stories and Ten Poems, published in Paris in 1923, to his more mature accomplishments in Winner Take Nothing. Originally published in 1938 along with “The Fifth Column,” this collected premiered “The Capital of the World” and “Old Man at the Bridge,” which derive from Hemingway’s experiences in Spain, as well as “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” among the finest of Hemingway’s short fictions. As Clifton Fadiman observed in The New Yorker: “I don’t see how you can go through this book without being convinced that Hemingway is the best short story writer … using English.”
This collection contains the following stories: “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “The Capital of the World,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “Old Man at the Bridge,” “Up in Michigan,” “On the Quai at Smyrna,” “Indian Camp,” “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” “The End of Something,” “The Three-Day Blow,” “The Battler,” “A Very Short Story,” “Soldier’s Home,” “The Revolutionist,” “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot,” “Cat in the Rain,” “Out of Season,” “Cross-Country Snow,” “My Old Man,” “Big Two-Hearted River: Part I,” “Big Two-Hearted River: Part II,” “The Undefeated,” “In Another Country,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” “The Killers,” “Che Ti Dice la Patria?,” “Fifty Grand,” “A Simple Enquiry,” “Ten Indians,” “A Canary for One,” “An Alpine Idyll,” “A Pursuit Race,” “Today is Friday,” “Banal Story,” “Now I Lay Me,” “After the Storm,” “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” “The Light of the World,” “God Rest You Merry Gentlemen,” “The Sea Change,” “A Way You’ll Never Be,” “The Mother of a Queen,” “One Reader Writes,” “Homage to Switzerland,” “A Day’s Wait,” “A Natural History of the Dead,” “Wine of Wyoming,” “The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio,” and “Fathers and Sons.”
My Review: In all honesty, what does one say about Ernest Hemingway? That is not just an affectation either. I am genuinely stumped. What could I possibly say that could constructively add to what has already been said about “Papa”? Minimalism? Of course Hemingway is minimalist in style (many of the Moderns were) but it is only textually that he is minimal. There is a wealth of meaning and description in the subtext of Hemingway’s writing that is enhanced by and outweighs his minimalist writing.
Bleak? Yes … and no. It’s bleak kind of hope that Hemingway offers in his writing. In his stories it is often termed as “The Nada,” or the idea that there might be something out there bigger than us, but what that is, no one can know. It is a strange kind of religion, so to speak, one that say’s it is indeed bleak in the world, but that we shouldn’t give up hope. For example, in his short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Hemingway writes: “Our nada who are in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee” (383). It is still a prayer but the God that it addresses is not one that the speaker expects an answer from. It is, at best, an indifferent god, but a god nonetheless. Thus, bleak hope.
Machismo? In spades, my friends. In spades. It is in his subjects as well as in his worldview. Horse racing, bullfighting, boxing, hunting, fishing, “The Strenuous Life,” these are Hemingway’s credo and concept of what constituted masculinity. Cynicism? Or is it just a realistic worldview and not one that is falsified or idealized. We had a long discussion (argument?) about whether or not Hemingway is cynical or just realistic in my Modern American Lit class, I come down on the Realistic side of the argument because, as with the bleakness in his writing, there is an element of hope that comes through, however small.
Irony, detachment, micro v. macro views of things, fragmentation, in medias res ... these are all things that Hemingway uses in his writing, but honestly, these would all amount to nothing if Hemingway was not as talented a writer as he is. Hemingway manages to use all of these elements in his stories and yet they never feel forced or formulaic. Hemingway’s short stories have a very organic and sincere feel to them. They are wonderful little vignettes that are simply amazing to peer in at.
My favorites? “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “The Capital of the World,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” and “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” are, to my mind, some of the best pieces of writing I have read in a very long time, and of these, “Macomber” and “Kilimanjaro” are the crème de la crème. The absolute genius with which the stories are constructed and the sense that Hemingway is taking on what it means to be a man (a topic that a lot of my undergrad research has dealt with).
While I love to read in all its many forms—novel, novella, chapbook, audiobook, drama—the short story is far and away my favorite form of the medium. There is just something about being able to sit down and read a complete story from start to finish in five to ten minutes. It is a truly satisfying experience, and made all the more satisfying when the short story is written by Ernest Hemingway, one of the real masters of the style in the 20th Century.
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