Rereading the In Our Time portion here. Funny, while all the stories are in their proper order, the editors do not add an extra page to name the collection. Nor is it separated out in the TOC. Doesn't this omit an authorial decision? The stories are knockouts, but that packaging call is bad. By the way, I've always been intrigued by the interstitial fragments that appear in italics between the stories.

I am only commenting here on "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber".

Why happy moments in ones life are so cruelly short and why this happiness for some is difficult to keep ?
Why price to pay for those few happy moments yet is so deadly steep ?

While Hemingway was in love-hate *relationship* with Lady Brett Ashly ("Fiesta"), here the wife of Francis Macomber is presented as the *final* Hemingway's outlook on the typical woman's character: domineering, lusty bitch, which enjoyed humiliating her husband so much, that she killed him, when he finally succeeded in freeing himself from her oppressive possession and became a real man.
....
I am returning to this review to say that many Hemingway's man characters are (IMHO) influenced by the male heroes, depicted by Jack London.

The story in this collection is very much of the time which they were writing. This is both a good and bad thing, as the way people look at one another in that day was far from perfect.

Past that, the stories gave a detailed look at how life was in Hemingway’s day. The stories we unique and original. It was easy to get a hook on each story and lost in the book going from one story to the next always wanting more!

It only took me 32 months to read.

Whew, it took me over a year to read through this collection of stories. There are some masterpieces in the mix. And many stories are funny, albeit frequently in a dark way (e.g., “An Alpine Idyll” and “A Pursuit Race”).

“Dear sheet … pretty sheet. You love me, don’t you, sheet? … I can kiss this sheet and see right through it at the same time.” (p. 269)

“There ought to be something you could do for the Princeton, Yale and Harvard virgins, though. Why weren’t there any virgins in state universities?” (p. 497)

Unfortunately, however, there is also way too much of Papa Ernest showing off his hypermasculinity. I sometimes wish Hemingway had been born without a Y chromosome. What a literary counterfactual to think about! In that alternative world, the stories in this collection would almost certainly have had fewer descriptions of bullfighting and hunting, and I probably would have enjoyed them much more. For example, I didn’t like reading about stuff like this:

“The horse’s entrails hung down in a blue bunch and swung backward and forward as he began to canter, the monos whacking him on the back of his legs with the rods … Blood pumped regularly from between the horse’s front legs.” (p. 127)

“Nick took him by the head and held him while he threaded the slim hook under his chin, down through his thorax and into the last segments of his abdomen. The grass hopper took hold of the hook with his front feet, spitting tobacco juice on it.” (p. 175)

“Shoot him in the earhole with the three oh three … The eye of the elephant had opened wide on the first shot and then started to glaze and blood came out of the ear and ran in two bright streams down the wrinkled gray hide.” (p. 552)

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)

To me, these Nick Addams stories were Hemingway at his best. I didn't really enjoy most of his novels that much. But these stories struck nerve with me. Maybe the great writer was better in the short story realm.

the stories are often meditative, with a variance in length. These stories made me want to become a writer.

I think people who are interested in creative writing, this book would definitely help them learn more about the art form.

And this book is just for anyone who enjoys reading great writing.

Started June 9, 2016; set aside about a year later until I can get back in the mood.

This is one of those books that I return to during different stages of life. What I love best about Hemingway's writing is how he handles dialogue. I'm a huge Hemingway fan so I should admit here that I love everything he writes. If you're looking for a great collection of short stories, definitely check out this book.

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'm not sure there is much I can say other than this is a complete collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories, including several previously unpublished stories.

Prior to reading this I had only read The Old Man and the Sea, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

His short stories, for the most part, are well-written and engaging, although a large chunk were just a tad too masculine for my tastes as he often wrote about war, safari adventures, bull-fighting, and other "manly" topics.

However, whether or not always my cup of tea, this is an inclusive collection that is bound to appeal to both current fans of Hemingway and those who simply want to see what made him so great.

At over 650 very long pages, this is not a quick read, however, the short stories lend themselves to a slower and progressive digestion.

Though Hemingway is not a personal favorite, after reading this collection I definitely understand his popularity and respect his accomplishments as a writer.

Another common theme in his stories was loss, so not too many happy endings. Unfortunately, it's hard to miss the irony of his suicide, which seems to mirror the sense of tragedy that made his stories so powerful.

The story is about two American couple, who are unnamed, staying in a hotel on the Italian coast on a rainy day, the woman spots a cat outside, goes down to fetch for it but does not find it. That is pretty much what goes down in the story, or is it?

As for Hemingway being Hemingway we are bound to think that there is something more, something deeper. While reading the story we understand the woman is trying to express her yearning for a lot of things. The cat that she keeps repeating that she wants is merely a symbol for stability and security, a symbol for a 'child'.
She wants a home, a chance to be a woman (whatever the way Hemingway wishes to define what a woman is), she basically wants a life where she can no longer feel isolated and unsatisfied.

It was an ok read.