| Title | : | The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0684843323 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780684843322 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 650 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1987 |
In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and will discover seven new tales published for the first time in this collection. For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway Reviews
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The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway
In this definitive collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, readers will delight in the author's most beloved classics such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and will discover seven new tales published for the first time in this collection. For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هفدهم ماه نوامبر سال 2006میلادی
عنوان: بهترین داستانهای کوتاه ارنست میلر همینگوی؛ نویسنده: ارنست همینگوی؛ برگزینش، ترجمه و مقدمه احمد گلشیری؛ تهران، نگله، 1385، در438ص؛ شابک 9643512967؛ چاپ پنجم 1392؛ موضوع داستانهای کوتاه از نویسندگان ایالات متحده امریکا - سده 20م
فهرست: مقدمه مترجم؛ از مجموعه در زمان ما: اردوگاه سرخپوستان؛ خانه سرباز؛ دکتر و همسر دکتر؛ پایان یک ماجرا؛ طوفان سه روزه؛ گربه زیر باران؛
از مجموعه مردان بدون زنان: تپه هایی چون فیلهای سفید؛ ده نفر سرخپوست؛ قناری سوغاتی؛ در سرزمین دیگر؛ شکست ناخورده؛ آدمکشها؛ پنجاه هزار دلار؛
از مجموعه برنده سهمی نمیبرد: یک گوشه پاک و پرنور؛ پیرمرد بر سر پل؛ دگرگونی دریا؛ زندگی خوش و کوتاه فرانسیس مکومبر؛ قمارباز راهبه و رادیو؛
و برفهای کلیمانجارو؛
این کتاب شامل «هجده داستان برگزیده» از سه مجموعه ی «در زمان ما (سال 1925میلادی)»، «مردان بدون زنان (سال 1927میلادی)» و «برنده سهمی نمیبرد (سال 1933میلادی)»، و نیز داستان کوتاه و نام آشنای «برفهای کلیمانجارو» است؛ بسیاری از داستان‌ها، پیشتر با چند ترجمه ی گوناگون منتشر شده اند، اما چاپ این کتاب، که می‌توان آن را عصاره ی سال‌های سال تلاش «ارنست همینگوی»، در عرصه ی داستان کوتاه دانست، فرصتی است، برای بازخوانی «همینگوی»، و آموختن شگردهایی که نثر، و سبک ایشان را، برای همگان پر خواستار کرده، و بر داستان‌نویسی نسل پس از جنگ جهانی دوم، تاثیری شگرف بگذاشته است؛ «همینگوی» نویسنده ای بودند، که بیشتر داستانهای ایشان از تجربیات و خواسته های شخصی خود ایشان، مایه بگرفته اند؛ شاید یکی از رموز موفقیتش نیز همین باشد؛ ایشان از چیزهایی می‌نویسند، که با پوست و استخوان خویش تجربه شان کرده، و شناخت کافی از آن‌ها دارند؛ ناآشنایی با بیوگرافی، و زندگی پرفراز و نشیب «همینگوی»، چیزی از جذابیت داستانهای ایشان کم نمی‌کند، اما به یقین، شناخت ایشان نیز، بر لذت خوانش داستان‌هایش می‌افزاید، و بسا که برای دریافت گوشه و کنایه های نهفته، در زیر لایه ی برخی از نوشتارهای ایشان نیز، شرط لازم باشد؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 09/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 26/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی -
This Finca Vigía edition of the Complete Short Stories includes every former collection, from
In Our Time (1925), to
Men Without Women (1927), to
Winner Take Nothing (1933), and other late or previously unpublished works of short fiction (e.g., “Three Shots”, the removed first section of “Indian Camp”).
Many of these stories deal with recurring themes: chiefly the violence and traumas of the Great War (“A Very Short Story”, “Soldier’s Home”, “In Another Country”, “A Way You’ll Never Be”) and the complicated and often unhappy romantic relationships (“The End of Something”, “Out of Season”, “Cat in the Rain”, “Hills Like White Elephants”, “A Canary for One”, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”). Other significant subjects include physical, often borderline masochistic, activities, like hunting (“The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, “The Short Happy Life”), fishing (“Indian Camp”, “Big Two-Hearted River”), bullfighting (the inset vignettes from In Our Time), boxing (“The Battler”, “The Killers”, “Fifty Grands”), skiing (“Cross-Country Snow”), horse-riding (“My Old Man”), or binge drinking (“The Three-Day Blow”, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”).
One of the primary trademarks of Hemingway’s stories is that they encapsulate a moment, a tranche de vie, often semi-autobiographical; Nick Adams, the author’s alter ego is a recurring character. But, contrary to a common preconception, Hemingway’s protagonists aren’t the burly alpha males one might expect; these men are broken, wounded, weak, even a bit daft, and try to find refuge in sports, the outdoors, male camaraderie, and drinking. The female characters, however, are often relatively more assertive and level-headed, if not castrating and predatory (e.g., the mother in “Soldier’s Home”, Margot in “The Short Happy Life”).
As everyone knows, Hemingway’s style is uncomplicated, economical, “journalistic”, flat, almost ascetic—in line with the works of
Stephen Crane,
Jack London or
Isaac Babel, for instance. The stories often begin in medias res, lack any plot, and end ambiguously—perhaps like a literary equivalent to
Edward Hopper’s melancholic pictures of anonymous common people.
Still, simplicity of expression doesn’t necessarily equate with clarity of intention. Another essential aspect of Hemingway’s writing technique is the use of “objective correlatives” (external focalisation and concrete imagery instead of the description of feelings) and his “theory of omission” or “iceberg theory”:If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.
(
Death in the Afternoon)
Hemingway was probably pushed in that direction by his early mentors,
Ezra Pound and
Gertrude Stein, and used it persistently in his stories. Hence, presumably, his decision to edit “Three Shots” out of “Indian Camp”, thus cloaking the initial topic of the protagonist’s fear of death in the final anecdote and elevating the story to a mini-masterpiece. Ditto with the magnificent “Big Two-Hearted River”, where Nick Adams’ attempt to heal his war traumas is literally submerged in the detailed description of physical, tactile sensations throughout his fishing expedition in the wilderness. Such a technique has been incredibly influential on American writers since then (e.g., Cormac McCarthy’s
The Road).
This “beating about the bush”, so to speak, by focusing on incidental facts, inconsequential conversations, and concrete imagery while avoiding the essential point, demonstrates a sense of self-restraint, understatement, and constant sobriety on the author’s part. It can do wonders when the underlying subject matter is brutal, as is sometimes the case. Yet, it doesn’t always work with the same degree of success: in “Hills Like White Elephant”, the couple’s conversation is unintelligible and frankly frustrating if one doesn’t guess that they are talking about abortion—it’s like eavesdropping on a random conversation in a public space. Similarly, the reader may wonder what the point actually is in a story like “A Canary for One”. In cases like these, one cannot but remember what Nietzsche said of poets: “they all muddle their water that it may seem deep.” (
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, II,39). -
Nobody does short stories like Hemingway. Moving between African savannahs, Spanish and French cities and various American settings, he always gets to the point. Human hope and happiness followed by disappointment and loss.
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One time there was a bull and his name was not Ferdinand and he cared nothing for flowers.
Hemingway’s reputation precedes him: a misogynistic, alcoholic, macho author whose maximum sentence length was five words. Given all this, it is difficult to understand why feminist, vegetarian, and highbrow folks often end up reading and enjoying his work—as I’ve seen happen. Clearly there is more to Hemingway than his myth; but separating the man from his reputation is especially difficult in his case, since the myth, however simplifying, has a substantial grain of truth.
The best place to begin this disentanglement may be his short stories. Hemingway was an excellent writer of short stories, perhaps even better than he was a novelist, and these stories display his qualities in concentrated form. More than that, the succession of tales allows the reader to see Hemingway in all his favorite attitudes, which makes this an ideal place for the critic to set to work.
The most conspicuous aspect of Hemingway’s writing is his style. He was, above all, a stylist; and his prose has probably been the most influential of the previous century. He uses simple words and avoids grammatical subordination; instead of commas, parentheses, or semicolons he simply uses the word “and.” The final affect is staccato, lean, and blunt: the sentences tumble forward in a series of broken images, accumulating into a disjointed pile. The tone is deadpan: neither rising to a crescendo nor ascending into lyricism. One imagines most lines read by someone who has been hypnotized, in a subdued monotone.
On the level of story and structure, too, Hemingway is a stylist. He developed characteristic ways of omitting material and splicing scenes to disorient the reader. Between two lines of conversation, for example, many minutes may have elapsed. Characters typically talk around the issue, only eluding vaguely to the principle event that determined the story, thus leaving readers to grasp at straws. The most famous example of this may be “Hills Like White Elephants,” a sparse conversation between a couple in which they make (or don't) a decision to do something (or other).
Hemingway’s most typical plot strategy is to fill a story with atmospheric descriptions and seemingly pointless conversations until everything suddenly explodes right before the end. My favorite example of this is “The Capital of the World,” which is hardly a story at all until the final moments. His protagonists (who are, to my knowledge, exclusively male) are most often harboring some traumatic memory and find themselves drifting towards the next traumatic event that ends the narrative. The uncomfortable darkness surrounding their past creates an anxious sense of foreboding about their future (which the events usually justify)—and this is how Hemingway keeps up the tension that gets readers to the end.
Hemingway is certainly not a writer of characters. An experiment will make this very clear. Read the dialogue of any of his protagonists out loud, and even Hemingway fans will have difficulty saying who is doing the talking. In short, all of his protagonists sound the same—like Hemingway himself. You might say that Hemingway had one big character with many different manifestations. Luckily this character is compelling—damaged but tough, proud but sensitive, capable of both callousness and tenderness—and, most important, highly original. A much underappreciated aspect of this character, by the way, is the humor. Hemingway had a dry and occasionally absurdist comedic sense, which can be seen most clearly in this collection in “The Good Lion” (a story about a lion who only eats Italian food).
His stories circle tightly around the same subjects: war, boxing, bullfighting, fishing, hunting, and desperate love affairs—with alcohol ever-present. Without doubt Hemingway was attracted to violence. But he is not a Tarantino, an aficionado of the aesthetics of violence. Rather, violence for Hemingway is not beautiful in itself but a kind of necessary crucible to reduce life to its barest elements. For with life, like prose, Hemingway was a minimalist and a purist. And the essential question of life, for him, was what a man did when faced with an overpowering force—whether this came in the form of a bull, a marlin, a war, or nature itself. And the typical Hemingway response to this conundrum is to go down swinging with a kind of grim resolve, even if you’d rather just not bother with the whole ordeal.
Nature plays an interesting double role in Hemingway’s fiction: as adversary and comforter. Sometimes characters escape into nature, like Nick Adams going fishing. Other times they must face it down, like Francis Macomber with his buffalo. Yet nature is never to be passively enjoyed, as a bird watcher or a naturalist, but must always be engaged with—as either predator or prey. Of course you always end up as the prey in the end; that’s not the question. The question is whether these roles are performed with dignity—bravery, resolve, skill—or without. Writing itself, for him, is a kind of hunting, a hunting inside of yourself for the cold truth, and must also be done bravely or the writer will end up producing rubbish. And even the writer ends up prey in the end—eaten by his own demons.
This, as far as I can tell, is Hemingway’s insistent theme—the central thread that ties his other interests together. And one's final reaction to his work will thus rest on the extent to which one thinks that this view encapsulates reality. For me, and I believe for many readers, Hemingway at his best does capture an essential part of life, one that is usually missed or ignored. But such a universally cannibalistic world is difficult to stomach in large doses.
Even within the boundaries of his own style, Hemingway has some notable defects. He most often gets into trouble nowadays for his portrayal of women. And it is true that none of them, to my memory, are three-dimensional. What most puts me off is the cloyingly subordinate way that many of the women speak to their partners. But what I found even more uncomfortable was Hemingway’s racist treatment of black characters, which was hard to take at times. And as I mentioned in another review, I can also do with fewer mentions of food and drink.
These criticisms are just small sample of what can be lodged at him. Yet even the harshest critic, if they are a sensitive reader, must admit that he is a writer who cuts deeply. When Hemingway’s story and his style hit their stride, the effect is powerful and unforgettable. My personal favorite is the paragraphs in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” when the narration switches to the lion’s point of view:Macomber stepped out of the curved opening at the side of the front seat, onto the step and down onto the ground. The lion still stood looking majestically and coolly toward this object that his eyes only showed in silhouette, bulking like some super-rhino. There was no man smell carried toward him and he watched the object, moving his great head a little from side to side. Then watching the object, not afraid, but hesitating before going down the bank to drink with such a thing opposite him, he saw a man figure detach itself from it and he turned his heavy head and swung away toward the cover of the trees as he heard a cracking crash and felt the slam of a .30-06 220-grain solid bullet that bit his flank and ripped in sudden hot scalding nausea through his stomach.
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It is hard to overstate how absolutely wonderful and powerful a writer of short stories that Hemingway was. This collection contains so many wonderful sketches full of spit, vinegar, blood, and whiskey stains. Through them we experience attempted murder on a train, the Spanish Civil War in Madrid, the First and Second World Wars in Italy and France respectively, fishing, hunting, fucking, and drinking. The prose is always terse but incredibly saturated in description and meaning. Who else could describe sex thus:
“In the dark he went into the strange country and it was very strange indeed, hard to enter, suddenly perilously difficult, then blindingly, happily, safely, encompassed; free of all doubts, all perils and all dreads, held unholdingly, to hold, to hold increasingly, unholdingly still to hold, taking away all things before, and all to come, bringing the beginning of bright happiness in darkness, closer, closer, closer now closer and ever closer, to go on past all belief, longer, finer, further, finer higher and higher to drive towards happiness suddenly, scaldingly achieved.” (p. 615)
I am reading Meyers' masterful biography
Hemingway: A Biography and it is fascinating to see how each of these stories encapsulates a piece of Hemingway's personal experience. His life was particularly exciting and turbulent: WWI ambulance driver (where he met John Dos Passos), Parisian journalist, Parisian bohemian writer, Spanish Civil War participant, bull-fighting aficionado, big game hunter, sport fisherman, and inveterate ladies' man, these stories all pull from his catalog of sensations and memories. It is important to note going in that in his writing technique, Hemingway felt that it was equally important to leave out some information so that the reader has to fill in the blanks. He thought of stories as icebergs with 90% of the content left unsaid. This leaves a considerable amount of ambiguity to many of the stories because no moral conclusion is drawn; his goal is to dive as deep into the experience itself so that the reader feels personally involved in the story.
If you have never read Hemingway, it is possible to start here before heading on San Fermin to Basque Country where The Sun Also Rises. But if you have read his novels, please don’t miss the opportunity to revel on his stupendous writing. He might be the US’ all-time greatest writer of short stories. They are nothing less than marvelous.
Don't miss my review of the Meyer biography of Hemingway:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... -
Night Before Battle -- I was thinking last night, while we were watching M*A*S*H*, about Hemingway's preoccupation with war.
There is an episode of M*A*S*H*, not the one we were watching, where they make a thinly veiled attack on Hemingway's war writing. A famous journalist/author with a red beard and huge physical presence comes to the 4077th and has a run in of philosophy with Hawkeye and BJ (I think it was BJ), and he's written off as a bloodthirsty exploiter of warfare.
As a take on Hemingway, I think M*A*S*H* was pretty unfair, but it has made me seriously consider -- both in the past and again last night -- what Hemingway saw in war that made it such an important part of his writing.
And I think we see much of what motivates Hemingway in "Night Before Battle." Hemingway is interested, above all things, on what motivates people's emotions, and there are few more powerful settings for overwhelming emotion than war. And since war is an experience that Hemingway was familiar with at first hand (he was a genuine hero in the First World War, after all), it makes sense that Hemingway would focus on war and its aftermath as the background upon which to set his examinations of human emotion.
In "Night Before Battle," Hemingway is dealing most poignantly with the emotions of Al Wagner, the Tank Commander who's convinced he will die the next day in an attack that he knows should not be made. Al moves from feeling "wet," sure that he will die and genuinely afraid of what's to come, to an acceptance of his fate. But all around Al swirls a cast of wounded people making their way the best they can while fighting what most of them know is a lost cause. We get glimpses of the emotional lives of a number of people: the divisive Comrade in the bar, Manolita, a Spanish girl flirting with the English newspaperman, Baldy, the drunken pilot, and Henry the filmmaker. None are as thoroughly drawn as Wagner, but they're all dealing with their own emotional despairs in whatever way they can.
For a man who so many people imagine as the very symbol of American masculinity, Hemingway's stories reveal a sensitivity to emotions and understanding of pain that is unparalleled by his peers. He just happens to use war as the touchstone for his examination of emotion, and it is difficult for me, in the face of a story like "Night Before Battle," to see his work as a glorification of war.
Hemingway didn't love war, he just happened to know it. What Hemingway loved was how people responded to the horrors of war, so...if anything...he's glorifying the human spirit in times of adversity. -
So, I didn’t read the Complete short stories of Hemingway. I wanted an introduction, I’d always thought of Hemingway as..well, I’d never really given him much thought. He was just someone I wasn’t interested in reading. Lord help me, I can be dense.
I’ve read about a dozen of the stories in this anthology. I asked my husband for his opinion on which ones I should start with and I think that I’ve read a fair sampling, I’ll probably continue to pick this up every now and then and throw another one down. Some of these stories are what I expected of Hemingway. When I think of him, I see a large man, with a gun and a cigar and hell bent on killing something. I see wilderness and war, I see the old sea captain and the disillusioned writer in the euro café. And sometimes I see my grandfather but that just might be the Gary Cooper influence.
I was expecting the hunting, fishing, wilderness angle and The Big Two Hearted River Part I & II delivered with a yawn. The morality of The Good Lion and The Faithful Bull was fine and dandy and the cleverness of Homage to Switzerland wasn't lacking. These stories didn't give me that jaw dropping, must read everything effect that I so often hope for, but they were well written and entertaining.. Mostly, they were short and bearable.
Now the ones that I can truly say blew my Havana lovin', Zelda hatin', Hemingway image apart were A Day's Wait, a quick 4 page story about a child thinking he is about to die and how he prepares for this. I was impressed with the emotion that was so quickly and brilliantly emoted. I remember when I was about six or so, I swallowed a penny and thought I was going to die. It's not a good feeling, people. I remember standing over my parent's bed trying to prep them for this. I totally relate to Schatz.
And the acerbic tone in The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, The Seeing-Eyed Dog, Hills like White Elephants, and The Snows of Kilamanjaro were awesome. I've always been down with the cynical, the mean-spiritedness, and this somewhat frightens me that I'm so attracted to it, because I'm really trying to be a better person. Hell if I can't enjoy some of the nastiness.
My favorite of the bunch is the first story that I was told to read.. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. I'm sure many of you goodreaders are already aware of this gem, but I have to say even late to the game, I was just stunned by it. So short and so poignant. So beautiful. It makes me want to take on a sugar daddy so I can sit in European cafés mumbling nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada.
I'm such a girl.
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مجموعه‌ای از داستانهای کوتاه همینگوی به انتخاب و ترجمه احمد گلشیری.
نکته‌ی خوب این کتاب، زندگی‌نامه کاملیه که گلشیری اول کتاب اورده. حدود ۱۰۰ صفحه فقط زندگی‌نامه کامل و با جزئیات همینگوی رو داریم که وقتی خوندمش خیلی هیجان‌زده شدم. و چیزهایی هم برام روشن شد. وقتی خوندم که چه زندگی پرهیجان و پرماجرایی داشته، که چقدر از این ور به اون ور رفته، فهمیدم که نثرش، سبک نوشتنش از کجا اومده. دیدم که چقدر چیز دیده و اون چیزها تبدیل شدن به این داستان‌ها.
طبیعت رو توی داستان‌هاش خیلی دوست دارم. و چون توصیف‌کننده خوبی هم هست، با خوندن داستان‌ها فضاها سریع توی ذهنم شکل می گرفتن و می‌رفتم توی جنگل یا آفریقا یا رودخونه.
داستان‌ها هم همه جذاب بودن. نمی‌دونم بقیه داستانهای همینگوی هم همینقدر خوبن یا این مجموعه چون از بین خوب‌ها انتخاب شده این‌طوریه.
تنها داستانی که کمتر باهاش حال کردم،«قمارباز، راهبه، رادیو» بود. باقی داستان‌ها به نظرم همه جذاب بودن.
داستان‌هایی که حول آدم‌ها یا طبیعت می‌گذشت رو بیشتر از دو داستانی که درباره مسابقات مشت‌زنی و گاوبازی بود دوست داشتم.
این دو داستان بیشتر شبیه گزارش‌هایی بودن از مسابقات. اما بقیه داستان‌هاش مایه‌ها و موضوعاتی جذاب‌تر و موقعیت‌هایی دراما-دار-تر داشتند و مساله‌های مشترک بیشتری باهاشون حس می‌کردم.
کمی خاطره:
دقیقا چهارسال پیش بود که این کتاب رو شروع کردم. گذاشته بودمش توی ماشین، بغل در، که هروقت تو ماشین منتظرم یه داستان بخونم. یکی دو یا سه تا داستان خوندم و بعد دیگه کتاب دست‌نخورده باقی‌موند. تا این که امسال شد و شروع کردم به خوندنش. اول زندگی‌نامه رو خوندم و بسیار به هیجان اومدم و مشتاق شدم که بقیه داستان‌ها رو بخونم. تا این که اصلا نفهمیدم چطوری تموم شد. کتابی که بخاطر حجمش شاید کمتر می‌رفتم سمت‌اش و همیشه می‌گفتم بعدا خواهم خوند.
ترجمه:
ترجمه خوبی داشت. من به ندرت حس می‌کردم که متوجه نشدم جایی رو، و متن اصلی رو چک می‌کردم و اکثرا مشکلی از نظر ترجمه نداشت. از لحاظ سانسور هم داستان‌هایی رو که فکر می‌کردم ممک��ه سانسور کرده باشن رو از روی متن اصلی می‌خوندم و جالب اینجا بود که اصلا سانسور نداشت. در نتیجه تا جایی که من بررسی کردم سانسور نداشت، و در کل ۵۰۰ صفحه یک غلط توی ترجمه پیدا کردم که معنی رو کمی عوض می‌کرد و احتمالا از زیر دست مترجم در رفته بود.
در نهایت:
این کتاب رو خیلی پیشنهاد می‌کنم به علاقه‌مندها به داستان کوتاه. داستان‌هاش از موقعیت‌های ظریف ساخته شدن، موقعیت‌هایی خیلی درونی و واکنش‌های خیلی انسانی و ناخودآگاه، که در نهایت منجر به «مساله» می‌شن. مثلا، مردی که موقع شکار شیر یهو می‌ترسه و فرار می‌کنه و زنش این رو می‌بینه و این روی رابطه‌شون تاثیر می‌ذاره.
یا موقعیت‌های خیلی ساکت‌ترِ دیگه، مثل داستان معروف «یک گوشه پاک پرنور» که یه پیرمردی توی یه کافه‌ست و کل داستان در هاله‌ای از سکوت و نورِ آباژورمانند می‌گذره. -
Gelmiş geçmiş en büyüklerden biridir Hemingway. Taklit edilemez, yaptığı bir daha yapılamaz. Onunla başlamış ve bitmiştir. İlk okuyuşumuzda çoğumuz "peh, bu mu yani?" der. Araya yıllar ve bambaşka yazarlar girer. Sonra bir dürtü ile Hemingway tekrar okunur. Hissettiğimiz, yıllar önce asi ve küstah bir genç olarak evin kapısını çarpıp giden ve yıllar sonra başı utançla hafif öne eğik bir şekilde geri dönen kişinin hissettiğine yakındır.
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In a way, it's almost an injustice to read these stories straight through, from cover-to-cover. Each story offers a unique experience in transforming words into imagery in a way that is unique to Hemingway. To simply read one story and then continue on to the next without time for reflection deprives the reader of some Top-Chef caliber, food-for-thought. Even now, my initial reading of this collection comes back to haunt me, from time-to-time, with ah-ha moments.
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The Germans we saw coming now were on bicycles. There were four of them and they were in a hurry too but they were very tired. They were not cyclist troops. They were just Germans on stolen bicycles. The leading rider saw the fresh blood on the road and then he turned his head and saw the vehicle and he put his weight hard down on his right pedal with his right boot and we opened on him and on the others. A man shot off a bicycle is always a sad thing to see, although not as sad as a horse shot with a man riding him nor a milk cow gut-shot when she walks into a fire fight
Of course it’s Hemingway so there are lots of great stories in this comprehensive collection and I certainly gained a greater appreciation of his writing style. Some of the best stories were published posthumously and his early stories still feel pretty fresh even after 80 years since their first publication.
Here are the stories from this collection that I enjoyed most.
1. The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Perhaps Hemingway’s most famous short story and for good reason. This story feels both personal and visceral as we witness a man dealing with the advanced stages of gangrene - all in the shadow of Africa’s highest peak.
2. On the Quai at Smyrna
This terror filled sketch doubles as a history lesson. It takes place over a few hours on the Quai as Greek citizens are being evacuated in 1922 from Smyrna after they were abandoned by the Allies and defeated in their war with Turkey.
3. Indian Camp
A well known Nick Adams story. When Nick is young an Indian man approaches his father for help. They all travel by canoe to find out what has happened at the Indian village. Nick’s father is not happy with what he finds at the camp. A coming of age story.
4. Big Two-Hearted River Part I and II
Hemingway’s most beautiful story although really more of a sketch. A man is fly fishing in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and is trying to escape his PTSD. It is almost as if this story was written by a naturalist. Hemingway takes great care in his writing to describe both the landscape and fly fishing in minute detail.
5. The Killers
Possibly the most dramatic short story in the collection and one of Hemingway’s most imaginative. This was required reading in my high school lit class and I was on the edge of my seat from the time the killers first walked into the diner.
6. The Denunciation
Takes place during Spain’s Civil War which Hemingway saw first hand. In this story the protagonist meets a friend at a Republican bar. While chatting the protagonist notices that there is an also an old schoolmate who is there in disguise and the man is one of Franco's fascists. So the protagonist is faced with a dilemma of whether to report his old classmate to the authorities. If he does the man will most likely be shot .
7. Under the Ridge
Also set in the Spanish Civil War, this story involves a Spanish soldier who doesn’t like any foreigners including the American who is fighting along side him against the Fascists.
8. Black Ass at the Crossroads
An American platoon sets up an ambush against Germans at a road crossing. Graphic story that takes place near the end of WWII.
I recently upgraded my rating to 5 stars (originally 4 stars). Many of these stories are too special.
5 stars -
***Review of short story "Cat in the Rain", which record Goodreads has merged with the complete short stories--don't ask me why.***
I'm not sure why this story affects me so much more than anything else by Hemingway I've read. There isn't much to it--just a brief conversation that is barely any conversation at all, a passing encounter with a hotel owner and a maid, a stray cat out in the rain. And yet there is also a world of loneliness and displacement and isolation there, never explicit but bleeding between the lines so heavily that one can taste it. As always with Hemingway, the impact of the story lies in the accumulation of little details. The unnamed "American Girl" doesn't know any other guests--she and her husband are the only Americans (and presumably the only English-speakers; being abroad has taught me how isolating that is, even if one speaks the local language).
Add to that displacement the fact that she expresses great fondness for a near stranger, the elderly hotel owner, but all interactions with her young husband (are they on their honeymoon?) are decidedly cold--their marriage in a nutshell right there. There is something about that image of the "poor little kitty," out in the rain, trying to stay dry, which somehow sums up all that loneliness and near-despair, and it's more than she can handle, more than I can handle. Wanting to bring that cat in out of the rain quickly moves beyond an act of pity (and, perhaps, boredom) as that lost cat becomes a symbol of everything the American girl desperately desires.
"‘I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I can feel,’ she said. ‘I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her... And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.’
‘Oh, shut up and get something to read,’ George said. He was reading again."
I've seen this outburst interpreted as an expression of American materialism, but I don't think that's it at all. She doesn't really just want silverware and candles and clothes; these are the trappings of the quiet, old-fashioned domesticity that she has done away with when she cut her hair short and went to Italy, but that now seems a haven. To wear her hair in a heavy bun the way her mother and grandmother did, to have a house of her own to rule over and something small and warm to cuddle: this is to have an established Place, a sense of belonging somewhere.
To be deprived of all this and be stuck in a strange place with a husband who doesn't hear her is bad enough; to lose the cat, who would bring some small comfort, on top of it all just seems cruelly unfair. "I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can’t have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat."
It is beautiful that the story ends with the maid bringing in the tortoise-shell cat, before we see how either of the Americans react, because it leaves the question dangling--does having a cat actually make the sadness go away?
When I first read this story in college, during a peculiarly lonely time for me, it was like a lightning bolt through my soul. Because I GET what the American Wife is feeling. I want to go and get that kitty out of the rain and bring it inside and feel it purr when I stroke it; and somehow, it seems, that will make everything all better. -
This is Hemingway at his best: pointed, witty, captivating a complex world in a few pages, and very suggestive. He offers a wide variety of topics: war stories without heroism, and heroism without frills, adolescents on the loose, and especially nuptial emptiness. And of course, sarcasm and cynicism are all around. I liked this even more than his novels. (3.5 stars)
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Away from Romance and Walter Scott through Twain to Ernest Hemingway, who was/is a main influence on the generation of writers trying to escape or outdo him.
Harsh, brutal, accurate, stylistically pure to himself.
Sometimes pleasant to read and sometimes unbearable. I think his style, sometimes so simple, at those times emphasizes the horror of humans as perpetual children, seeing war and corruption. -
As I begin this immense work, I feel as Philippe Petit must have felt as he began the high wire walk between the Twin Towers on August 7, 1974: I know I can do it but it surely is a long way. But, as has been said many times, “The longest journey begins with a single step.” So I begin.
I am not a bull fighting kind of person. Watching a bull tortured and killed for the pleasure of the crowd is not my idea of a good time. "In Our Time" is an early story that includes bullfighting and bullfighters. If I am going to read much Hemingway, maybe I will have to learn something about men fighting bulls.
It is hard to admit it, but I do not remember ever reading any Hemingway in my 65 years. To run through the well known titles of some of his stories makes it even more amazing (or distressing). So to begin reading Hemingway with his Collected Stories might seem odd. My rationale is that I enjoy short stories and it seems one way to take Hemingway a little bit at a time. But I understand that there is a lot packed into even the shortest of his stories.
Sports play a role in many Hemingway stories: bullfighting, fishing, skiing, steeplechase, boxing, bicycle racing, big-game hunting. He usually has more to say about the participants than the sport itself. However, in the short story "Undefeated" (written in 1925-26) there are twenty-five pages of bloody bullfighting. You can watch some bullfighting on YouTube, but I don’t recommend it. Hemingway’s description of bullfighting here is just as unsettling to me as the video. On the other hand, his descriptions of the people associated with bullfighting are interesting to me. It is a negative factor to me that the author Hemingway has a love of bullfighting and that he presents it as something noble. I would say the same thing about his love of big-game hunting. Gross.When Hemingway saw his first bullfight in Pamplona in 1923, he brought his wife Hadley along because he hoped the event would have a positive influence on the unborn son she then carried. The sport certainly affected the budding writer. It became one of the reigning passions of his life.
Source:
http://www.pbs.org/hemingwayadventure...
In 1932 Hemingway’s
Death in the Afternoon , a non-fiction book about bullfighting, was published. Bullfighting is also prominently featured in
The Sun Also Rises .
This is not to say that I object to writers dealing with things I find abhorrent. Or even the graphic description of those things. But I do get to decide what I read. It is easy to decide to skip bullfighting.
Speaking of abhorrent, Hemingway has another topic that he loves: war. A “Natural History of the Dead” is an eight page short story that is somewhere between humor and horror. It is Jonathan Swift.An interesting aspect of war, too, is that it is only there that the naturalist has an opportunity to observe the dead of mules. In twenty years of observation in civil life I had never seen a dead mule and had begun to entertain doubts as to whether these animals were really mortal.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, a phrase that those who know Hemingway are wont to send in his direction. He must have gotten very tired of this.
When you read the short story "The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio," you are confronted with more Hemingway humor. It is a story about a Mexican who is shot and in a hospital. Doesn’t sound funny to you?One morning the doctor wanted to show Mr. Frazer two pheasants that were out there in the snow, and pulling the bed toward the window, the reading light fell off the iron bedstead and hit Mr. Frazer on the head. This does not sound so funny now but it was very funny then.
Like Hemingway said, It was very funny then. You might find yourself laughing out loud! N.B. The radio has seven tubes in it. Does anyone remember when radios had tubes? So there it is: humor and nostalgia. It makes me smile just to think about it.
“The Snows of Kilimanjaro” was first published in 1936 in Esquire magazine. I have known this title seemingly my entire life without knowing the story. Now I have finally read it. It is the story of a man on safari in Africa who is slowly dying from gangrene of a leg. He spars with death and with his wife, recalling events of his life and feeling that he has not managed to live his life as he intended.
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The Spanish Civil War was from July 1936 through March 1939.
The Hemingway short stories that involved this war:
The Denunciation 1938
The Butterfly and the Tank 1938
Night before Battle 1939
Under the Ridge 1939
The war in a nutshell: The socialists clearly won an election in 1936 to govern Spain. The right wing Nationalists attempted to overthrow the elected government and was successful in taking over some cities where the government Civil Guard was not strong. Mussolini and Hitler aided the Nationalists; the Soviet Union supported the Republican government militia. International Brigades fought on the side of the Republicans. France provided some support, the British none. The Republican army was defeated in their strongholds of Barcelona, Catalonia, Valencia and Madrid by the end of March 1939. The right wing Nationalists had won and the Franco rein began.
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Although some of the topics (bullfighting, boxing, big-game hunting) in this book were not to my liking, the writing shines through almost everywhere. I thought I would read some of the stories in The Collected Stories but now that I think about it I am not sure how I would have decided which stories to read. But it will be easier to go back one day and reread the ones I need to spend more time with: “The Strange Country” would have to be at the top of that list. But, then, the more I think about it, I could spend more time with any one of Hemingway’s short stories. And then there are always the many books about Hemingway. Much more about the author at
http://www.ernest.hemingway.com/ .
I give The Collected Stories four stars. Many individual stories would rate five stars and none would be lower than three. The lower ratings are more due to the topics rather than the writing. I have to admit to being somewhat star struck by this most famous author whom I have never managed to read before this.
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Ah, yes. Ernest Hemingway. The writer with "economical and understated style," who "did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the 20th century," and who "wrote in short, declarative sentences and was known for his tough, terse prose." When you read about Ernest Hemingway it's never the quality of his stories you'll see praised, or his brilliant characters, or his creativity, or his intelligence, or his imaginative worlds, or his ability to pull you into a distant land, or his thoughtful philosophy, or his engaging style, or his brilliant plots, or his visionary concepts, or his biting wit, or his insightful nature, or his challenging ideas, or his evocative sense of reality. No, because none of this at all describes Ernest Hemingway. The only thing you'll read about him is that his supposedly groundbreaking prose makes him an important writer. That's too bad, because of all the bad things that can be said about Hemingway, his dry, formulaic, boring, absolutely uninteresting prose is perhaps the thing most easily criticized. If his dull and lifeless narration doesn't put you to sleep, the dialogue of his utilitarian, flat characters might make you laugh. Not because it's funny, but because it's stupid and unbelievable.
Many of his readers try to find deep meaning in his stories the same way a conspiracy theorist finds threats of mind-control and blood poisoning in the clouds in the sky. If you enjoy theorizing and speculating about the presence of imagined deeper meaning in his work, that is fine. It's even fine to grasp at straws to force together a contrived interpretation that no one will agree on unless they've all read the same literary critic synopsis of the work. But unlike a conspiracy theorist, some just see the clouds as masses of droplets of water and other harmless atmospheric chemicals, and aren't interested in doing Hemingway's work for him.
I could go on about Hemingway's insipid prose forever. I'll leave it alone and move on to the rest.
When I read fiction I look for at least one of the following traits to keep me interested: Piercing of the soul, examination of reality and unreality, an exploration of human and inhuman concerns, enticing plot, exciting ideas, imaginative and creative concepts, worlds I can feel and experience, alluring and interesting characters, stimulating action, finely crafted suspense or mystery or tension, capable humor, captivating dialogue, great prose, emotional turmoil, mind-opening perspectives, some kind of payoff or satisfying resolution or hard-hitting finale, insightful commentary, a significant, resonating idea, a new way of looking at something, a lyrical delivery, and a few other things not on the top of my head. Any of these things. Something worth writing will have some of these traits.
Hemingway offers none of these features in any of his stories. Not one. Even his fans will surely admit this. Many say the "understated" and dry, dull nature of Hemingway's writing is part of his appeal, and that a more attentive, thoughtful reading is required to fully digest it. This is false. A more attentive reading will reveal only too plainly the uninspired vapidity below Hemingway's words, and will open to any thoughtful reader a hundred hidden doorways of personal interpretation that Hemingway never intended, but that all work just as well because his writing wasn't direct and wasn't put together in a way to craft a real meaning. Shallow ideas, shallow characters, shallow everything, all covered over with a trick style designed to imply there's more to it than the writer put in. Hemingway is in no way a thinking-man's writer, nor does his understated, formulaic prose make his writing worthwhile. This is the illusion he crafted and perpetuated, giving nothing in the hope that readers would assume there's more to it, saving him the trouble of actually developing anything on his own. While this isn't the easiest form of writing, it's a lot easier than actually writing content and thinking through your story.
When you read a work of fiction, you enter the imagination of the author. If one has made a career of writing, or even has a serious passion about it, it should be expected that the imagination you're entering should be worth entering, and should show you things you wouldn't have seen on your own. Such is not the case with Hemingway. When you read his work and are sucked into his head, you find you're right back in the world around you, only it's more staged, colorless, less interesting, and without purpose. Not a hint of imaginative invention awaits you, not a glimpse of adventure or enchantment or excitement or thought provoking content greets you. You are in a head more boring than your own, less observant than your own, with a delirious fixation on machismo and posturing and flatness that seem like a sad step down. You rightfully feel cheated for it. You interact with cardboard cutouts who try to pass as people, you spend your time on a beach looking at waves and talking about vague things. You sip on your beer and you wonder why any of this exists. It may be that you enjoy slice of life fiction. In that case, you're better off sticking to life, not entering the unimpressive imagination of America's dullest prose-etician.
There are millions of books to read, and hundreds of millions of stories to explore. There are no more hours in my life I can afford to waste on Hemingway. Even the most trite trash out there has more to offer than Hemingway. At least something that makes me laugh or scrunch up my face in revulsion gets a response out of me that's stronger than a yawn.
If you're interested in Hemingway for his prose, there are others who did it first, who did it better, and who had more to offer. Ambrose Bierce, John Steinbeck, Dashiell Hammett. Go to them. The reason you don't hear about their 'terse, tight prose' that predated Hemingway is because there was a lot more to these authors than their prose, despite their prose also being quite good, and those things are what you will hear about instead. It's the same reason you don't hear about the winning touchdown in the last high school football game of professional athletes, but you'll hear all about it from men whose athletics never took them past that point.
If you're interested in Hemingway for his actual stories, there are others who sometimes wrote on similar topics or themes, but did it a lot better, did it first, and had a lot more to offer. Guy de Maupassant, Herman Melville, Nikolai Gogol, Franz Kafka. Go to them. They also had excellent prose, which in many cases became a living part of the story, a means of immersion and involvement and insight that Hemingway never achieved with his words.
This is the perfect collection to drop you into the delicate confines of slumber. -
I took it slowly, reading a few stories in between a novel, to keep this feast forever going. Today I've read the last story of this brilliant collection of a book. And I just realized it has been exactly a year since I opened this gem. And along the way, I've finished 34 books this year, not that numbers matter, but for a novice reader like myself this is impressive.
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⛰️ Superb. He was a master of the short story. Treat yourself. Though they do pack a visceral punch for sure. Try The Short Happy Life, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, any of the Nick Adams stories, and Big Two Hearted River. You will feel it.
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ارنست قصّه‌ها
همینگوی هیچ‌گاه نویسندۀ محبوبم نبوده است و خودم هم چندان دلیلش را نمی‌دانم (شاید به خاطر نوع نگاهی باشد که به زندگی دارد.) امّا عدم محبوبیّت او دلیل نمی‌شود که به استاد بودنش در داستان‌نویسی اذعان نداشته باشم. قبلاً هم در مرورم بر مجموعه داستانش «در زمان ما» نوشته بودم که آنچه نثر همینگوی را از دیگران متمایز می‌سازد این است که با ا��ن که جملات را خیلی ساده و بی‌آلایش کنار هم ردیف می‌کند، تقلید از او کار دشواری است. طبیعتاً وقتی تقلید از کسی دشوار باشد و به راحتی نتوان آثاری مانند آثار او را خلق کرد، آثار او خود‌به‌خود نایاب می‌شوند و ارزشمند. به نظرم سرّ استادی همینگوی در همین است.
امّا این مجموعه‌داستان برگزیدۀ داستانهای همینگوی است که گلشیری آن را انتخاب و ترجمه کرده است. بااین‌حال، درخشان‌تر از انتخاب و ترجمه‌ای که او انجام داده، مقدّمۀ بی‌نظیری است که در ابتدای کتاب آورده. یک بیوگرافی داستانی از همینگوی با روایتی غیرخطّی که علاوه بر نشان دادن کامل زیروبم زندگی او خسته‌کننده نیست و خواننده را صد و بیست صفحه به‌راحتی با خود همراه می‌سازد. اگر کتاب جز همینگوی حاوی آثار نویسندۀ دیگری بود، قطعاً می‌گفتم تمام کتاب یک طرف و مقدّمۀ مترجم آن یک طرف. بنابراین پیشنهاد اکید می‌کنم به هیچ عنوان این مقدّمه را از دست ندهید.
داستانهای کتاب (به جز برفهای کلیمانجارو) از سه مجموعه‌داستان «در زمان ما،» « مردان بدون زنان» و «برنده سهمی نمیبرد» همینگوی انتخاب شده‌اند. از این مجموعه‌ها قبلاً تنها «در زمان ما» را خوانده بودم و با خواندن همان مجموعه بود که به قوّت قلم همینگوی پی برده بودم (حتّی بیش از پیرمرد و دریا.) نکته‌ای که دربارۀ این مجموعه وجود دارد این است که اکثر مرورهایی که بر آن خوانده‌ام اصرار بر لزوم پیوستگی پی‌رنگ داستانهای آن (خصوصاً داستانهای نیک) داشته‌اند. برای مثال داستانی مثل «طوفان سه‌روزه» را دنباله‌ای از داستان «پایان یک ماجرا» می‌دانستند و آن دو را در امتداد یک‌دیگر تفسیر می‌کردند. من نظری متفاوت دارم. به نظرم صرف هم‌نامی شخصیّت داستان‌ها و حتّی اتّحاد وجودی‌شان دلیلی بر این نیست که لزوماً داستانهای متوالی حاوی آن‌ها را با همان توالی در ارتباط و مکمّل یک‌دیگر بدانیم. با چه مبنایی باید لزوماً اذعان داشت که «طوفان سه‌روزه» پس از «پایان یک ماجرا» رخ داده است؟ چون اوّلی در صفحۀ بیست آمده و دوّمی در صفحۀ بیست و پنج؟ به‌هرحال با این نگاه می‌توان برداشت‌های متفاوتی از داستان‌ها داشت و همین خود به زیبایی آن‌ها می‌افزاید و اصلاً طراوت ادبیّات در همین است.
با نگاهی کلّی به داستانهای این مجموعه می‌توان به حضور همینگوی در بطن جامعۀ خود پی برد. توصیفات داستانی در ریزبه‌ریز وقایع زندگی انسان‌ها نشان از یک مشاهدۀ عمیق و همه‌جانبه توسّط نویسنده دارد. و البتّه تمام این‌ها را از مقدّمۀ کتاب نیز می‌توان دریافت. جدا از نگاهی که نویسنده برای برخی پدیده‌های اجتماعی و رفتاری (مانند آنچه در داستان «شکست‌ناخورده» دیده می‌شود) دارد، حوادث و وقایع به‌خوبی توسّط او به تصویر کشیده شده‌اند. همینگوی حامی حیوانات نیست، از تماشای گاوبازی اسپانیایی لذّت می‌برد، آن را نه یک نوع وحشی‌گری و خشونت علیه حیوانات، که یک هنر تمام‌عیار می‌پندارد و این جانب‌داری یک‌طرفۀ او کاملاً در «شکست‌ناخورده» مشهود است. امّا به صراحت می‌توان گفت کسی جز او نمی‌توانست به‌نحوی داستانی با زمینۀ گاوبازی بنویسد که تمام خوانندگانش، حتّی آن‌ها که یک بار هم در چنان جوّی نبوده‌اند، گاوبازی را به عینه تجربه کنند. بماند که در همین داستان حرف اصلی نویسنده طرد شدن سال‌خوردگان و مستهلکان جامعه توسّط نوپایان است که می‌توانست با تغییر نگاه همینگوی به رفتار با حیوانات کاملاً شکل و محتوای متفاوتی داشته باشد.
ردّ پای خود حقیقی نویسنده را، با توجّه به حوادث زندگی شخصی‌اش، می‌توان در اغلب (اگر نگوییم همه) داست��ن‌هایش مشاهده کرد. چه داستان‌هایی که از جنگ می‌گویند (خانۀ سرباز، در سرزمین دیگر، پیرمرد بر سر پل،) چه داستان‌هایی که در کشورهای خارجی می‌گذرند (شکست‌ناخورده، تپّه‌هایی چون فیلهای سفید، در سرزمین دیگر، برفهای کلیمانجارو و ...) چه آن‌ها که زمینۀ شکار و ماهی‌گیری دارند (پایان یک ماجرا، زندگی خوش و کوتاه فرانسیس مکومبر، برفهای کلیمانجارو) و چه آن‌ها که روابط زناشویی زوج‌ها را به چالش می‌کشند (دکتر و همسر دکتر، گربه زیر باران، زندگی خوش و کوتاه فرانسیس مکومبر، برفهای کلیمانجارو). از همین روست که می‌توان تقریباً اذعان داشت، اگر این تجربه‌های زیسته در زندگی همینگوی وجود نداشت شاید چیز دیگری برای ارائه در داستان‌هایش نداشت. این نه بدان معناست که قدرت خلق او زیر سؤال برود، بلکه بدین معناست که حکم بر معدوم ناممکن است.
با تمام این‌ها ادبیّات داستانی از آثار همینگوی به هیچ عنوان مستغنی نیست و خواندن داستانهای او به تمام داستان‌خوانان و داستان‌نویسان توصیۀ اکید می‌شود. داستان‌خوانان بخوانند و لذّت ببرند و داستان‌نویسان رونویسی و تقلید کنند و یاد بگیرند و سبک خود را به‌تدریج از سبک استاد بیرون بیاورند.
داستانهای برتر:
اردوگاه سرخپوستان
خانۀ سرباز
طوفان سه‌روزه
گربه زیر باران
تپّه‌هایی چون فیلهای سفید
شکست‌ناخورده
آدمکشها
پنجاه هزار دلار
زندگی خوش و کوتاه فرانسیس مکومبر
برفهای کلیمانجارو -
190202 from ???: ... now where is it? ah, found again. are you ready to read everything by the man? i like his short stories better than any of his novels, except maybe farewell to arms... by now i can appreciate some feminist criticism of his rampant misogyny, but then i read him as an innocent young man, i read him because i knew his rep, i did not know his persona (really? yes) and in later years (decades..) i have very much come to sympathize with this man who desperately endlessly performs his masculinity because he does not trust his masculinity... i know many men who do more or less the same things for similar reasons, and maybe this is more why he still speaks to the boy inside the man more than any woman..
there is his early work. there is his stylistic aspirations to clarity equals simplicity equals truth. there is the ‘just do it’ buried philosophical assertions, before nike corrupts it, there is that very male way of not talking when you have nothing to say until by default if becomes not talking when you have everything to say. not trusting words is hard when you live by words and there is that masculinist belief that words never say what is important so why say them. i think my absolute favorite hemingway is ‘a clean, well lighted place’ and in my usual lonely pondering as i would not sleep but wander the night streets the way only young big enough men can ever do, looking for that place... i never forget that three characters, three pages, so sad, so true short short story... this alone makes the collection worthwhile...
do i like bleak existential fables? do i think, contra say Jane eyr (or is it Austen?), that everything happens not over dinner parties but hanging and shooting the shit with the guys some lazy afternoon fishing, when you do not care what you catch... -
I read this from cover to cover on a beach in Aruba, which was just weird, because somebody dies every ten pages or so. It wasn't really in keeping with the carefree beach vibe we were going for. But you really can't deny Hemingway. I realize the man was a terrible husband and father, that his writing suffered in the end and that he didn't have the most highly evolved views of gender. But despite all that, in his prime, he wrote dozens of truly great stories.
At the small Midwestern evangelical liberal arts college that I attended, there was a lit professor who made the statement that Hemingway couldn't write emotion. We were reading "A Farewell to Arms," and the majority of students in the class (mostly young women who were aspiring elementary school teachers) agreed with her. I spent class after class defending Hemingway to these heartless women, who read "A Farewell to Arms" as some sort of failed romance novel. After reading through his short stories, I haven't changed my opinion. Hemingway writes emotion beautifully. His restraint makes it possible for him to convey the emotions of characters who for one reason or another don't demonstrate their emotions in obvious ways, much like huge segments of the human population. Not everybody breaks down and cries like a girl as soon as something goes wrong. I do, but not everybody. -
I'm a huge fan of all of Hemingway's works, but this one takes the top. The stories in here are so moving, so real, vividly portraying all kinds of manifestations of human nature. Could talk about these works forever. Each story has so much meaning packed as densely as possible into every bit of text. Any one could easily be analyzed for an entire semester in a college literature class. I'd love to suggest one, but to I wouldn't want to take away from any of the others; each story has something new to tell.
These works are an extensive philosophy and commentary on human nature. They are sobering, brutal, tragic, poignant and beautiful. You will learn more about yourself from reading these. As an even greater value, these works are a series of windows into Hemingway's mind and soul. You can here him in every character's dialog, feel his thrall with every irony.
I highly suggest this compilation for anyone, but especially for someone trying to better understand Hemingway, his contemporaries, or 20th century western culture. -
Fishing. Shooting. Bull-fighting. Boxing. Smuggling. War. Murder. Skiing. Big game hunting. Love-making.
Hemingway did most of these things. Some of them he just observed with a keen eye. In every case, his experience and/or observation pays off.
This is just a wonderful collection of stories. Even the unfinished pieces are well worth reading. -
Hemingway is known for his novels, but he is in fact an excellent short story writer, and is probably in fact even better at this form than he is at the novel. Hemingway's tendency towards paucity and short phrases works to his favour in a short form. Stories like "Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," capture a wide sense of atmosphere, while also revealing small tidbits about relatively average people, resulting in an extreme range of insight in a short space. My version of Complete Stories for example has highlights and circles all over the place, around those sentences where Hemingway did amazing things in just a few words, or in a set of dialogue. For anyone who hasn't gotten to Hemingway yet, or has been turned off due to the toxic masculinity of his persona, I'd recommend you turning through the pages of the complete stories, and trying your hardest to find at least one story that doesn't interest you. I think the breadth of topics, range of narratives, and accessibility of Hemingway's style would make it unlikely to be the case.
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Hem. writes wonderfully, wouldn't it be pretty to read so? And so I did and pretty fast too. How can these stories so rife w/racial epithets (Italians, Jews, Mexicans, African-Americans, Asians, etc.) pass those eliding censors of P.C. etiquette today? And even for its time F__you's & cock sucker! Atta boy Hem., tell it to us slant ol' sod! Now I know where Jim Harrison got his hankering for onion sandwiches. He even took a poke at Fitzgerald calling him a smoothie. Of course Zelda has him at odds saying about him 'a fairy with hair on his chest' & 'phony as a rubber check' haha!
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It's been a while since I've read Hemingway and I wanted to revisit some of the classics ("The Short and Happy Life of...", "The Snows of Kilimanjaro and especially the Nick Adams stories) and see how they held up for me. I wanted to see if they still moved me the way they did when I was a young man deeply impressed and obsessed with Mailer, HST, Bukowski, Hemingway---the larger than life American literary alphas with their brash prose, the booze, the guns, the women, the big game hunt for the perfect boiled down line of whiskey-soaked, testosterone-fueled bravado.
Hemingway's writing read a lot different to me now at 35 then it did at 19. The subject matter did not magically change over time; guns, booze, machismo and women but there is a lot more going on here than just that. Things that I couldn't have seen between the lines with much less life under my belt at age 19 or 20. The sorrow of failed relationships, the difficult ladders and pitfalls that people climb, descend and confuse when navigating the treacherous territory of pride, dignity, disgrace and regret, the sinking of the spirit to fully have lived in and of the world of your time and then witness it changing before your eyes into something you comprehend less and less.
When I was younger the prose seemed like a bold and masculine statement, an angry and burning defiance against the world, now they seem elegant and clean, a sorrowful reduced wisdom almost like minimalist poetry or Haiku. I found the author's heart to be much more open, melancholy and freely given in the white of the page between the black exacting lines of text. Perhaps I am simply more able to read "deeply" now than I was at 20, I'm sure that is true but Hemingway's work has also been so enduring in part because of this reflective quality. A work that you can come back to throughout your life and consistently find different kinds of wisdom in each time must surely be the watermark of a genius.
The Nick Adams stories are a timeless, collective masterpiece. They and much of the collected work here are a magical portal into another time in the world. The last moments of "the old world" before the 20th century grinds up to the speed of light. Most of the stories were written and set in the 20s and 30s before World War 2. From our vantage point in the 21st century they seem charged with the electricity of world-wide historical and cultural change that is welling up above them in an unseen tidal wave about to block out their particular sun and then crash down and wipe everything that came before clean and roaring into "a new world". The tales of growing up in the wild and barely settled territory of turn of the century Midwest America, of hunting charging Bull Elephants head-on with a rifle, jet setting in prop planes and ocean liners with great young artists and writers, the bull fights, the war trenches, mariticide in exotic locations, the adventures through "old Europe"--it's all so distant from the plugged in, dialed up, speed of light world we live in that in Hemingway's deep, still, clear water prose the locations and the subject matter feel almost like myth or magic now. It's a beautiful trip into another world, almost another dimension. -
مقدمه‌ي داستان گونه‌ي احمد گلشيري درباره‌ي زندگي همينگوي، خود به تنهايي مي توانست يك كتاب مستقل باشد. از طرفي، شناختي از زندگي همينگوي بدست مي‌دهد كه درك داستان‌هاي كوتاهش را ساده و در عين حال عميق‌تر مي‌كند. چرا كه نويسنده ناخودآگاه خودش را مي‌نويسد.
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The short happy life of Francis Macomber - 3/5 stars
The capital of the world - 4/5 stars
The snows of Kilimanjaro - 3/5 stars
Old man at the bridge - 3/5 stars
Up in Michigan - 2/5 stars
On the Quai at Smyrna - 1/5 stars
Indian Camp - 3/5 stars
The doctor and the doctor's wife - 2/5 stars
The end of something - 2/5 stars
The three-day blow - 3/5 stars
The battler - 3.5/5 stars
A very short story - 3/5 stars
Soldier's home - 4/5 stars
The revolutionist - 2/5 stars
Mr. and Mrs. Elliot - 3/5 stars
Cat in the rain - 2.5/5 stars
Out of season - 2/5 stars
Cross-country snow - 3/5 stars
My old man - 2/5 stars
Big two-hearted river: Part I - 4/5 stars
Big two-hearted river: Part II - 4/5 stars
The undefeated - 1/5 stars
In another country - 2/5 stars
Hills like white elephants - 2.5/5 stars
The killers - 3/5 stars
Che Ti Dice La Patria? - 1/5 stars
Fifty grand - 3/5 stars
A simple enquiry - 2/5 stars
Ten Indians - 2/5 stars
A canary for one - 4/5 stars
An alpine idyll - 2.5/5 stars
A pursuit race - 1/5 stars
Today is Friday - 4/5 stars
Banal story - 3.5/5 stars
Now I lay me - 3/5 stars
After the storm - 3/5 stars
A clean, well-lighted place - 4/5 stars
The light of the world - 3/5 stars
God rest you merry, gentlemen - 3/5 stars
The sea change - 2/5 stars
A way you'll never be - 2/5 stars
The mother of a Queen - 2/5 stars
One reader writes - 2/5 stars
Homage to Switzerland - 3/5 stars
A day's wait - 2/5 stars
A natural history of the dead - 3/5 stars
Wine of Wyoming - 2/5 stars
The gambler, the nun, and the radio - 2/5 stars
Fathers and sons - 1/5 stars
One trip across - 2/5 stars
The tradesman's return - 3/5 stars
The denunciation - 2/5 stars
The butterfly and the tank - 4/5 stars
Night before battle - 3/5 stars
Under the ridge - 2/5 stars
Nobody ever dies - 3/5 stars
The good lion - 4/5 stars
The faithful bull - 1/5 stars
Get a seeing-eyed dog - 3/5 stars
A man of the world - 2/5 stars
Summer people - 2.5/5 stars
The last good country - 3/5 stars
An African story - 1/5 stars
A train trip - 2/5 stars
The porter - 2.5/5 stars
Black ass at the crossroads - 1/5 stars
Landscape with figures - 2/5 stars
I guess everything reminds you of something - 1/5 stars
Great news from the mainland - 2/5 stars
The strange country - 3/5 stars -
How the heck did Hemingway win both a Nobel Prize and a Pulitzer Prize? His stories read like a collaboration between a child first learning sentence structure and an old man with severe dementia trying to recollect his past. Being from Michigan, I was especially interested in reading "Up in Michigan" but 4 pages of an insipid woman and her eventual rape was pretty damn awful. Plus, what's with the dialogue? Did Hemingway never hear actual people speak? Seriously, nobody has ever, in history, spoken the way that his characters speak. And the female characters...dear lord. I'm sensing that Hemingway didn't care for women too much. Well, I tried. I'm really glad that I didn't have to read him in high school or college, though.
Anyways, rant complete. Thanks for reading! -
I hate giving up on a book, especially after I'm 54% through it, as my kindle informs me. But this was just not for me. I hated it, myself and Hemingway. I loved Old Man and the Sea and expected more of the same. Alas not.
All this horrid abrasive men's stuff brought out the wus(s?) in me.
Tormenting and slowly killing bulls etc sucks. I realise I'm in the minority but don't really care about that. 2*s for what I've read so far and not a jot or a tiitle more
