There is a story, probably apocryphal, that Hemingway once bet that he could write an entire short story in six words. He was taken up on that bet, and produced the following diminutive masterpiece: "For Sale: baby shoes. Never used."

I like to believe that story is true.

It's not possible to review the 49 stories in this book, which range in length from dozens of pages to a single paragraph. Actually, it is possible, but I'm just not the man to do it. So I'll just throw out some scattered thoughts:

- The Snows of Kilimanjaro was a little disappointing. I thought it was derivative of Bierce.

- The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber is still as brutally awesome as it was in high school. Hemingway at his bitter, drunken, misogynistic best.

- The stories dance around sexuality a lot. Sometimes Hemingway is so discrete, you have to read the story twice to see between the lines. For instance, A Simple Inquiry involves an Italian major trying to seduce his orderly (or at least that's what I got out of it). On the other hand, there's a semi-graphic rape in Up in Michigan, and an extended conversation with three, three-hundred pound prostitutes in The Light of the World. I'm not sure why I mention this, other than that I'm a literalist. That is, I prefer an author who telegraphs to me that sex is occurring. So I don't miss it.

- Hemingway's treatment of women is uniformly shabby. At their best (I'm thinking Lady Ashley in The Sun Also Rises or Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls) they either boldly use sex as a weapon or are paragons of Mary-like purity. Most of the time, in this collection, they are prostitutes, seductresses, or objects to be discarded (speaking of discarded, The End of Something is a realistic little break-up scene). This is probably part of the reason why I've never said this to a woman: I've lost my underwear, can I see yours? Hey, you should read something by Hemingway.

- There is some good STD humor. One story is written as a letter by a woman to a doctor. The woman is asking about her husband's syphilis, which he contracted during his time in the military. STD humor is always funny, unless you have an STD.

Or this line, from A Very Short Story:

The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.

What a great way to end a story!

- There is a lot of dark humor, especially in An Alpine Idyll, where a husband makes odd use of his wife's corpse. But you can still enjoy this collection, even if you don't find the comic-gold in Weekend at Bernies.

- A lot of these stories follows the adventures of Nick Adams, Michigan boy. These were my favorite stories, especially Big Two-Hearted River: Part 1 & 2. Here, Hemingway pulls himself away from the elitist, intellectually-disillusioned expatriate shtick (where his characters are inevitably drunk and disillusioned in Italy, Spain, or Greece) and gives us some nice, detailed stories about hiking, camping, fishing, and cooking food over an open fire. I enjoyed this. It was like reading a more misanthropic version of Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It.

For example:

Nick took the line in his left hand and pulled the trout, thumping tiredly against the current, to the surface. His back was mottled the clear, water-over-gravel color, his side flashing in the sun. The rod under his right arm, Nick stooped, dipping his right hand into the current. He held the trout, never still, with his moist right hand, while he unhooked the barb from his mouth, then dropped him back into the stream...He's all right, Nick thought. He was only tired.

Parting thoughts: This collection is the short story equivalent of a frat house. It's all men, all the time. The only real love shown in any of the passages are between male friends. Most of the time, its booze, shotguns, hunting, fishing, talking about women, bullfighting, and participating in revolutions. In other words, all the stuff that men use to filter their love for other men, without being thought gay.

Of course, Hemingway might have disagreed. He might have insisted that this is really all about booze, shotguns, hunting, fishing, talking about women, bullfighting, and participating in revolutions. To that end, it still succeeds on a certain level.

But that is just my opinion, and it should be noted that I love my male friends, but also like booze, shotguns, hunting, fishing, talking about women, bullfighting*, and participating in revolutions**. So I'm sort of the target audience.

* Bullfighting is when a man boxes a bull, right?

** I confess, I haven't actually participated in any revolutions. Oh, wait, does the sexual revolution count? Because I also did not participate in that either.

07/09/2020 (****)
Stile inconfondibile, in questi racconti brevi e brevissimi c'è la quintessenza di Hemingway.
Può non piacere, ovviamente, e come tutte le raccolte di racconti anche questa sconta la varietà di ambientazioni e generi e, più in generale, il fatto di presentare insieme cose più riuscite e altre meno.
La media qualitativa dei racconti rimane alta, altissima in alcuni per coinvolgimento emotivo del lettore e potenza narrativa.
Lo stile di Hemingway, come detto, è inconfondibile: sintassi secca, narrazione asciutta fino a mostrare il biancore delle ossa della trama, la quale svanisce e si stempera nell'indeterminatezza del contorno. L'attenzione è sempre rivolta e focalizzata, alternandosi con stacchi repentini dagli uni agli altri, ai dialoghi e ai paesaggi: i primi servono per inquadrare senza fronzoli o orpelli i personaggi e farne risaltare la psicologia; i secondi per far decantare e emergere nei pensieri dei personaggi stessi quanto emerso nel corso dei rapidi scambi di battute. Tutto avviene con secchezza, con economia di parole e emozioni, per non dire una virgola più di quanto si deve dire, in sequenze che alternano leggerezza e dramma, ironia e mestizia.

Alcuni racconti emergono sugli altri, Le nevi del Kilimangiaro e quelli con protagonista l'alter ego di Hemingway, Nick Adams, in particolare.
C'è molta Spagna, e moltissime corride, e la cosa non stupirà: il modo in cui Hemingway racconta questo barbaro e tremendo passatempo rimane comunque affascinante e formidabile.
C'è anche molta Italia e, probabilmente, è l'Italia l'ambientazione che più volte ritorna dopo gli Stati Uniti. Anche qui, nessuna sorpresa, nemmeno sul fatto che molti di questi racconti narrino di fatti di guerra, ricordi giovanili del fronte del Piave.

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

An excellent introduction to this famous author. And his style. Each story is an interesting anecdote about a set of events about individuals in curious situations.

The stories by themselves appear to have no start or end but expose ways of thinking about each instance.

A lieutenant who wants to kill one of his soldiers who has ( in his mind ) been fatally wounded but the military doctor attending to him prevents him.

A Mexican who has been shot “accidentally 8 times” and does not know who may have done it. When he is a gambler who has just won a large amount recently.

Maybe it’s just the way writing was expected to be so - but almost every story had significant references to alcohol and drinking. I almost felt drunk with each story with frequent anecdotes about its effects and it’s need by the characters.

Piccole perle narrative.
La grandezza di un autore in storie brevi e fulminanti.
Uno stile non ancora eguagliato.

Excellent as ever.

Just what I wanted. Soldiers, boxers, betting, bulls, fishing, a cat, recurring character “Nick”, paragraph- long sentences, a lot of commas.

Please be aware that the following review may contain spoilers of the works of fiction being reviews. Continue reading at risk of having the story spoiled.



Overall, I moderately enjoyed reading the numerous stories within Hemingway’s collection, The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Most of the stories were both interesting enough to captivate the average reader and complex enough to be analyzed through numerous critical theories. Nevertheless, one aspect of this collection that I was not particularly fond of was the fact that most of these stories had similar social commentaries. A vast majority of the stories allude to Hemingway’s distaste for the role of enforced masculinity in society and how it can degrade relationships. Nick Addams, one of the only reoccurring characters among the short stories, develops from adolescence to adulthood showing the overall message that enforced masculinity can lead to the mental deterioration of both men and women.

One of my favorite characters in the collection is Paco from “The Capital of the World.” In the short amount of time we are exposed to Paco, he proves to be an ambitious young man who dreams of taking on the world. His passion for bullfighting–a sport in which he has never participated–is inspiring and reminds the reader of the hope and energy associated with youth. Paco’s life ends tragically with what I consider to be the most shocking scene in all of the stories. Paco tries to prove his love of bullfighting by having a mock-bull fight with his coworker armed with a chair with steak knives tied to it as horns. Paco starts off in the fight giving a performance on par to a professional matador, effortlessly dodging the chair while it is being aggressively shoved by his friend to imitate the movements of an angry bull. Right as the reader is filled with the raw passion in Paco’s rite of passage, Paco gets impaled by one of the knives and dies a painful death, alas. This scene is so memorable to me because I saw a bit of myself in Paco’s swift demise. Despite the idea that passion is all you need to succeed, it often leads to failure at the hands of unfavorable odds. While I, personally, have never been impaled by a faux-bull, I can certainly relate to the feeling of disappointment caused by being passionate for something that is just not meant to be.

In our discussions about the collection of short stories, the questions that inspired the most debate were “How does Hemmingway use ‘Indian Camp’ to comment about men’s control of femininity?” and “How does Hemmingway use many of his stories to comment about interpersonal relationships?” As a group, we came to the consensus that “Indian Camp” was a vessel that Hemingway used to comment on the fragility of women’s roles within society. Hemingway uses childbirth as a symbol of the ultimate struggle between a woman and her body. However, with the introduction of the male doctor, the woman in the story no longer has any control over her own childbirth. The fact that this woman so easily loses all of her power within the situation is indicative of the reality that the patriarchy makes it so easy for men to force women to forfeit control. Furthermore, the woman being held down by men during her sans-anesthetic cesarian section is meant to represent how women often feel as if they are being held down by their male counterparts. When discussing the interpersonal relationships shown within the stories, we decided that the reoccurring character Nick is Hemingway’s main outlet for expressing his opinions about the complexity of human connections. Nick is unable to connect with many people in his life: his father thinks lowly of him, and Nick is unable to have healthy relationships with his significant others. The only time Nick is shown to be at peace is when he is isolated from society and forced to contemplate his life alone. While humans are indeed social creatures, the constant presence of others can distract one from thinking clearly about their own lives.

I would recommend people read certain short stories in this collection. The diversity of the stories makes it highly probable that everyone can at least find one story they truly enjoy. I enjoyed “The Capital of the World”, “Indian Camp”, and “Cat in the Rain” the most, but this is just my personal opinion.

He was a brilliant short story author.

no bueno. dos o tres buenas historias y demasiados Nicks por todas partes. mucha guerra y toros y pesca y demasiados países. no había quién pudiera asentarse.

can safely admit hemingway is not for me. (im sorry kayla if ur reading this)! not into fishing and hunting and bullfighting and being drunk & bitter enough i think

Never understood why guys like to fish, but I do now.