He was a brilliant short story author.

Con Hemingway me pasa algo curioso. A priori, no es el estilo que más me gusta. Suelo ser algo más recargado. Sin embargo, el estilo de este autor me fascina, me atrae de forma inexorable, y a mí mismo me sorprende. Su economía a la hora de escribir, su empleo abundante de diálogos, debería ser algo que provocara mi rechazo; sin embargo, ocurre todo lo contrario. Desde mis primeros contactos con Hemingway, adoré su forma de escribir, y algunos de sus relatos, como el de “El gato bajo la lluvia”, “Las nieves del Kilimanjaro”, “La breve vida feliz de Francis Macomber”, “En el muelle de Esmirna”, o ¨Los asesinos”, son de mis favoritos de todos los tiempos. Recomiendo esta colección de relatos a todos los que, independientemente de si les gusta un estilo más austero o más recargado, aman el relato corto. Creo que el Hemingway cuentista es, sin duda y como dice García Márquez —un autor al que adoro— en su maravillosa introducción, el Maestro.

Wonderful . . . indescribable. Quintessential Hemingway. Dark, funny, quirky, unexpected. Great shorts and vignettes.

A lot of great stories, but some of my favorites were:

-The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
-The Snows of Kilimanjaro
-The Doctor and The Doctor's Wife
-Big Two-Hearted River Parts I/II
-The Undefeated
-After The Storm
-The Sea Change

And most of the Nick Adams stories, really.

As a collection of short stories it fulfilled it's purpose. I found the content of the stories both varied, colourful and frustrating. Many of them were as if they had been a chapter plucked from a book and called a story seemingly to have no beginning or ending which made it difficult at times. But within the confines of this there were wonderfully descriptive passages of text in which the essence of the author's experiences came through. Perhaps I should have read a couple of stories, then another book, then another couple of stories and it may have seemed a bit different, rather than reading it as one book. Generally both wondrous, and a bit of a trial.

Este libro es equivalente al manual del buen relato. Es un menú que se cata poco a poco, sin prisas. Cada cuento se debe degustar, saborear y digerir a su tiempo. Un libro sobrio, vivo, preciso y lleno de un sin fin de emociones, historias y sensaciones. Es un recuento de lo mejor de sus obras breves, con cuentos magistrales, algunos, sin duda tallados con fino cincel sobre el mármol literario de la eternidad. Porque así son sus cuentos, pequeñas-grandes obras de arte que perdurarán mientras exista el buen lector, aquel que aprecia lo bueno y lo exquisito del hermoso, misterioso y vasto género del cuento.

Ci ho messo un sacco per finire questo libro. Non che non mi sia piaciuto, gli ho dato cinque stelle, scritto magistralmente, da Hemingway non ci si potrebbe aspettare di meno.
Erano le trame, ad essere angoscianti. Alla fine di ogni racconto qualcuno muore, qualcuno fa una brutta fine, qualcuna viene violentata, qualcuno vede i propri sogni scomparire eterei, qualcuno non ha neanche la forza per averne, di sogni.
Le scene di caccia poi, sono veramente insostenibili, per un'amante degli animali come me.
Bisogna leggerne un pò ogni tanto, quando non si è troppo depressi, altrimenti questo libro fa l'effetto delle prime canzoni di Masini.

I remember trying to read Old Man and the Sea in high school and feeling uninspired, despite being in awe of the expat, 1920s Paris literary movement that he was such an influential part of. But last year, while staying at a Airbnb cabin in the Sequoia forest, I found this collection and read “Indian Camp"; the surrounding towns had a lot of Native American historical monuments, so it left a deep impression to me. Then I found it again at a thrift store a couple months later. I felt called to it.

Now, 15 years later, after reading 49 of his short stories I can see why I didn’t “get him” as a teen girl growing up in SoCal.

His stories have obvious themes, the most overarching one, in my opinion, being masculinity, but I think people get fooled by the macho bravado found in his stories. Personally, I don’t find hunting, fishing, horse-racing, war, boxing, bullfighting, gambling, etc. etc. that interesting, but binding all of these superficially masculine storylines is Hemingway’s true fascination: the frailty of man—the reality of death. If male-hood is the tip of the iceberg, fear of death is the behemoth beneath the surface.

His best stories are rich with empathy and sensitivity, and an eagle-eye for nature’s details. My favorites usually left me hanging at the end of a cliff feeling like, “Oh, *this* is what death means,” while staring at the depths below. 

They were:

All the Nick Adams stories (with Big Two-Hearted River and Fathers and Sons at the top) (If you want to read any bundle of his stories, read these.)
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (If I could recommend one, it would be this.)
Now I Lay Me

There were many clear misses for me, and I probably won’t seek out Hemingway's writing for a long time, but I can see why he was groundbreaking in the 1920s and throughout the 20th century. I respect him as a literary figure who created a style that is so commonplace it’s easy to take for granted, and who painstakingly humanized generations of men who were ravaged, displaced, and isolated by the horrors of war (inner and outer). I was less impressed by his pitch-perfect way with words (I think even he knew this and was insecure about it) than by the sheer breadth of what he wrote about: He lived many lives and had so much to say. And then he actually said it.

This quote by him sums up how I feel about this collection: “In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused. Now it is necessary to get to the grindstone again.”

All the good ones are in the first half of the volume.

The best.
Breve la vita felice di Francis Macomber.

Nu mi-am imaginat vreodata ca ma pot impresiona asa mult povestile despre curse de cai, box sau safari.

Quick short stories.