As most Hemingway it was amazing writing and many stories surrounding alcohol.

I enjoyed the stories. Recommend

بیشتر در ارتباط با زندگی و مرگ صحبت میکرد.
برای خود داستان صوتی رو گوش دادم اما بعدش مقدمه ترجمه شفا رو خوندم حرف‌های تو مقدمه‌اش هم جالب بود.
اسفند ۱۴۰۳

Clearly I am not an objective observer, but when I rate books I try to account for the literary/humanistic value of the work, and not how much I enjoyed it. For example, I would rate most Solzhenitsyn novels as a 5 even though I personally do not enjoy his books and do not agree with his diagnosis of the human condition. Hemingway, however, I find flawed on so many levels that I can barely muster up two stars--my rating is not 1 star simply because I wouldn't put him on the same level as Stephen King et al.

Primarily, Hemingway embodies all negative American stereotypes: his writing is arrogant, cliched, ostentatious, misogynistic, racist, banal, rambling, and on and on. It's very sad to me that HE is one of a few American authors deemed representative of the US and our literature by the Nobel Committee: it seems more like an insult to Americans than a distinction.

Take, for example, the Snows of Kilimanjaro: his metaphors are so obvious they absolutely reek, he might have as well just not written the story at all and instead penned a treatise on his theory of existential angst and morality. In the Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio, his blatant racism is clear not only in his constant labeling of Cayetano as "The Mexican" while calling Americans and other Anglo-Saxons by their proper name (though this also reeks) but in the way he portrays Mexican characters (such as Cayetano's three visitors, whose dialogue is inane and who are portrayed as stupid, docile, happy unnamed creatures--animals). Also, women play almost no role in his stories other than objects of sexual desire, fascination, or repulsion. His descriptions are ostentatious and do not serve to bring the reader closer to an understanding of a phenomenon, or do not serve to foster productive confusion, although he aims, VERY (too) hard, for poeticism of language (he goes on and on describing surroundings, for example, which many others have figured out how to do remarkably well, but his descriptions do not give any sense of Atmosphere, rather, they are trite and one is compelled to skim through them rather than absorb and ponder them).

There is so much more than could be said, but why waste my time and be annoyed in the process? UGH.

You know it’s funny. It’s funny how differently various people react to books.


I seem to be much more a fan of Hemingway’s short stories than his full length books.

I really don’t know why that is. I admit, I had not read much by him but these last couple of years though, I have been trying to read various great writers, and so I have read close to half a dozen of his short stories, as well as a couple of his full length novels.


The old Man and the Sea really had a tough time holding my attention. I gave it a four less because of personal enjoyment, and more because I recognize how great the book is.

I did not like The sun also rises at all, but I gave it a three for much the same reason, because I recognize that Hemingway was a superb writer, but maybe his novels are not for me.


But I can’t say that about the short stories.

With the exception of one, I have enjoyed every short story I’ve read from him so far and this one was no different.

And yet, if I’d read this as a child, I think my reaction would have been to pucker, my lips, and forget about it as soon as possible. Even though it’s a short story, it’s really heavy as the subject and the plot is about a man, a very cynical man, facing death and his regrets and ruminations and cynical observations.

I had a really hard time as a kid thinking about death. I refused to even talk about it to family and friends . That’s not to say I didn’t read about it ,

My two favorite books of all time. Interestingly, enough, are all about loss and death. I read both as a child, not as an adult.

These books are A tree grows in Brooklyn and I Cleopatra. Both are considered classics, and both are very dark in their own individual Ways and there is lots of loss and death in them.


Even though I couldn’t talk about death, I did not seem to have a problem reading about it. But I think this story would have been too much for my younger self. It is easy to dislike the narrator and the way he views life and the people around him.

His whole aura is that of a world weary cynic, he doesn’t strike me as a particularly happy man, and he probably wasn’t very happy even before he realized that death was coming for him.


I have to say that the two things that were done incredibly flawlessly here was the introduction of death as a character first of all.

Now this is not a horror story, but at times you wouldn’t know it. You definitely know when death makes its arrival as a character, and as the story goes on, you may, in fact get goosebumps at what this character does.


The second thing was the ending which I really can’t give away so I won’t say anything about it, but it was extremely intense and so well done.

I can’t say that I felt happy reading this, but it stuck.

I’m still thinking about it even though I read it yesterday. You know there are some books that evaporate from one’s mind five minutes after one reads them.

One can say a lot about this story, but you can’t say that it fades very quickly.


I plan on continuing to read Hemingway’s seemingly endless and vast amount of short stories.

Published in the same year as Hemingway’s death, this collection of ten previously released short stories comprises some of his very best short work.

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" first published in 1936 is a strange and thoughtful account at the end of a life with many regrets.

"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" first published in 1933, this is one of my favorite of his short stories. Describing a time and place and mood of introspection, isolation and solitude.

"A Day's Wait" first published in 1933, this is a touching scene of interactions between a father and son, revealing a very human side to Hemingway’s writing.

"The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio" earlier published in 1933, this is a tragi-comic story reminiscent in the setting and style to something John Steinbeck may have written.

"Fathers and Sons" was first published in 1933 and features Hemingway’s recurring protagonist Nick Adams. Telling of three generations of men, this explores themes of relationships, race and sex, leadership and influence. Like many of Hemingway’s most illuminating work, this centers around outdoor activities like hunting and fishing.

"In Another Country" first published in 1927 and the unnamed protagonist is likely Nick Adams, who is an injured American officer serving with the Italians during WWI. This is an exploration of courage, fear and loss.


"The Killers" first published in 1927, this is another Nick Adams story but one set in Illinois and describes a tense scene where two assassins seek to kill a local prize fighter and Adams’ talk with the target, Ole Anderson. This scene, where Adams seeks to warn Anderson of the plot against him, is one of existential ennui and hopelessness.

"A Way You'll Never Be" was earlier published in 1933 and describes Nick Adams recovering from a head wound in Italy during the first world war. Interestingly, this describes an illuminating scene of post-traumatic stress disorder decades before that condition was explained in medical science.

"Fifty Grand" first published in 1927 and centers around an aging boxer training for his final fight. Like hunting and fishing, boxing was a theme for which Hemingway revealed not just an affinity but also a sophisticated depth of understanding. A good sports story, this also expounds and illustrates Hemingway’s moral code.

"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" was first published in 1936 and is perhaps my favorite Hemingway story. In his economical style, Hemingway packs a novel amount of content into a short story length. The reader is guided through explorations of wealth, value, relationships, fear, courage, betrayal and redemption. Margot, like Lady Britt from The Sun Also Rises, is one of Hemingway’s most villainous women. The hunter Robert Wilson, in his narrative asides, reveals Hemingway’s moral code and an eagerness to live a principled, heroic life.

This would be an excellent introduction to Hemingway’s great work for a new reader.

I really enjoyed the title story TSOK, but some other I didn't love as much! Hemingway if definitely hit or miss, usually a hit with me. This one if in between a hit and a miss! 4th book of the Rory Gilmore Readathon!!!

When I was young, I wanted to put my experiences and accomplishments against those of the greats. Hemingway was among those who biography I read, hoping to get a glimpse of "what it took" to become a writer. Hemingway is one of the reasons I considered journalism as a career...later, I would decide not to do journalism. Later, I would decide to have other role models. And that would be okay too. Hemingway as a role model was as sparse as his writing.

But going back to Hemingway helps burn some of the fat off my soul. In this short story, Hemingway writes, "They had made this safari with the minimum of comfort. There was no hardship; but there was no luxury and he had thought that he could get back into training that way. That in some way he could work the fat off his soul the way a fighter went into the mountains to work and train in order to burn it out of his body."

Come to a foreign town.
Read books in abundance.
Live as simply as possible.
Write in abundance.
Truly this is a model to follow.
Has the fat from my soul been burned?

As I read this short story, I see hints of regret...a writer's regret. The writer's temptation is always to avoid the work. To find some reason, the void in which he/she writes, the apathy of those who don't read and certainly don't want to read his/her work, a business opportunity, a chance to socialize, anything to avoid the humbling work of actually putting words to page. Dying in a tent in Africa...one more way to avoid the work of writing...

When asked by George Plimpton about the function of his art, Hemingway proved once again to be a master of the "one true sentence": "From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality."

I should mention that I watched the movie version of this short story with my mom as she was dying of an illness. I did this without realizing what the movie was about. But my mother enjoyed the movie. In fact, she loved watching Gregory Peck and the old-style of film took her back to her childhood. The short story somehow feels diminished compared with the movie version...I can't say exactly why...I think the movie had more substance...

I would recommend Hemingway as a sparse model for how to live as a writer and how to do the work. I would recommend you return to him when there is fat that needs burning from your soul. I don't recommend him as a role model for manhood, but I would recommend his writing to understand the toxicity of manhood.

What else is there to say? Time to let this review die? The howling of the hyena tells me that it is over...

This short story may seem like one of man versus nature, and it is, but it also turns into a story of man versus himself, a theme Hemingway repeatedly analyzed and returned to throughout his career. Harry, a writer, and his wife, Helen, are stranded while on safari in Africa. Harry, lies on his cot, and in a series of flashbacks recalls the mountains of Bulgaria and Constantinople, as well as the suddenly hollow, sick feeling of being alone in Paris among other things. He is fully aware vultures are stalking around around his small camp, whilst a hyena lurks in the shadows. Knowing that he will most likely die before he wakes, Harry goes to sleep and dreams that the rescue plane is taking him to a snow covered summit of Kilimanjaro and the hope of seeing the legendary leopard there. Concerning the structure of the story, Hemingway uses six sections, each of these sections inserts a flashback that appears in italic, continually juxtaposing the hopeless, harrowing present with the past, which often seemed full of promise. The flashbacks themselves center around concerns about the erosion of values: lost love, loose sex, drinking, revenge, and war.

Both Harry and Hemingway were of a Lost Generation during World War I and had to rebuild their lives after being wounded in combat and seeing the horrors of war. This particular work, some have asserted, seems to reflect Hemingway's concerns about leaving unfinished business behind as a writer and the proper lifestyle for a writer that is conducive to writing on a daily basis, so even though it's fiction, Hemingway definitely uses his life as mold for the story. He was quoted as saying once that "politics, women, drink, money, and ambition" ruin writers.
A decent read, that turned out better than I thought, and in a short space of time only it was easy to see why Hemingway was regarded as one of the 20th century's most important writers.

همینگوی خیلی خوب نوشته این داستان رو. از اینکه حاشیه نمیره و به کوتاهی حرفشو میزنه خوشم میاد.
مردی در آستانه مرگ در آفریقا، گذشته زندگیش رو مرور می‌کنه. روایت زمان حال هم مکالماتش با همسرش هست که گاهی چنان تلخ حقایق رو به زبون میاورد که دلم برای زن میسوخت.

I accept Hemingway's writing for what it is. Not the greatest to get into. It can really be out there sometimes. This collection of short stories is a case in point. "Snows" was really good along with most of the others. A few were befuddling.

Reading Hemingway, for me, feels like panning for gold. At the beginning I am really enthusiastic. People have told me about the gold, I believe in the gold, and I want to find it. After the first couple stony pages, my excitement starts to waver. Where is this aforesaid treasure? My attention wanders off. My interest is fading. I'm almost inclined to call it off. There's nothing there for me. But I keep panning, because of this disbelief that I may not be able to discover what so many have before me. And then - suddenly - I see a glimmer at the pebbly bottom of the river. The tiniest crumb of gold, I've found it. It's really there! Then it's back to stones and pebbles. Stones and pebbles. Stones and pebbles. What's that? Something shiny? You don't think - gold again?! Indeed! Several crumbs! A nugget! My first assessment was too hasty. There's gold in Hemingway. You just gotta be patient. How wonderful that my endeavours have paid off! I'm converted, the gold rush is justified! But why are the nuggets getting so rare again? Are they simply slipping my attention? Are they really there? And why is panning getting so frigging boring again?

Maybe the gold was just an illusion. Maybe I just don't see it. Maybe it's not the right time. I don't know.

Judging a composite work, a short fiction anthology as an example, is a bit like isolating individual letters in an alphabet soup, a thankless task. I would assign Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro & Other Stories a score of 3.5 if it were possible but 2 (perhaps 3) of the stories are excellent, worthy of a 4+ rating! The collection covers a long period of time & some of the tales seem experimental, unfinished, considerably less than robust.



It has been said that with Hemingway, one often gets more than is apparent at first glance, in part because his prose seems so simple, even formulaic at times & thus often parodied but upon rereading the short story or novel, it appears much-enhanced. Hemingway has a way of conveying inner fears & contrasting emotions within the human condition that can on some occasions seem almost banal but at other times seem quite riveting.

Beyond that, these stories--at least in my Hudson River Edition for Scribners--portray a period when frequent use of the N-word for black people & a pejorative epithet for Jews was probably commonplace but which now seem quite out-of-place & even distinctly offensive. One story also describes a bloody, gruesome slaughter of African animals, much at odds with the views of many preservation-minded readers today.

The title story, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" represents the tale of a dying man named Harry, suffering from gangrene while in the midst of a big game hunt in East Africa, haunted by the sight of vultures as well as the sounds of hyenas & malignant odors that accentuate the feeling of decay. But beyond that, it is the lament of a man who senses not just time dwindling away but time wasted, a 2nd form of decay because..."now he'd never write the things he'd saved to write until he knew enough to write them well."



Yes, a rather common theme for E.H., particularly in a book like A Moveable Feast, a book not just about times past but time lost. The story set near Kilimanjaro details memories of Paris, Switzerland & Turkey, a wife who Harry apparently married for her money & who seems to love the man but who is accused of having destroyed his talent.

Often Hemingway preferred both the money that came from his first wife Hadley's trust fund thus magnifying his lifestyle, while also desiring to maintain the image of a starving artist. He admired money but not so much those who had it. In this story the main character has flashbacks while being stalked by death, even as his wife attempts to console & encourage him. Harry intones..."so this was how you died, with whispers that you do not quite hear." The story is quite poignant, detailing the manner in which an artist's talent can atrophy due to booze, lack of dedication & various distractions while using a man perishing of gangrene in sight of the snow-covered peak of Africa's largest mountain as a metaphor.

"The Short Happy Life of Francis McComber" is a 2nd excellent story within the collection. It again takes place on safari in Africa & portrays a very wealthy man who in this case married a beautiful woman, Margot, a "trophy wife". At the point of the tale, McComber is in search of big game, or trophies of a different sort. Francis experiences fright not once but twice, as many might in sight of an aggressive lion or a wounded cape buffalo, with the prey being stalked now very much on the attack.

McComber's wife finds her husband's lack of courage while on the hunt for big game trophies a defining moment in their marriage, taunts him & even shares intimacy late at night with the "white hunter" they have enlisted, Robert Wilson, who had to bail out Francis on 2 occasions. After the 1st unsuccessful bout, failing to stand fast in the face of danger, McComber reflects:

I'd like to clear away that lion business. It's not very pleasant to have your wife see you do something like that. That night, after a dinner and a whisky & soda by the fire, Francis McComber lay on his cot with the mosquito net over him & listened to the night noises.

He felt that it was neither all over nor was it beginning. It was exactly as it happened with some parts of it indelibly emphasized and he was miserably ashamed. But more than shame, he felt cold, hollow fear in him. The fear was still there like a cold, slimy emptiness where once his confidence had been & it made him feel sick.

And yet, partly in search of a way to redeem himself & his marriage, McComber endeavors to try again on the next day's hunt. It was said by some that their marriage, when viewed at a distance was "comparatively happy" but in reality was one "where divorce is often rumored but never occurs".

The ending of the story of Francis McComber's African safari is quite ambiguous & the lack of clarity about his demise adds to the appeal of this particular tale, with his wife as a potential culprit. Or was she merely intending to come to McComber's rescue? Or, perhaps did she see herself in competition with her husband in quest of her own misguided trophy? Come what may, this is one of Ernest Hemingway's profiles of "grace under pressure", or in this case, its absence.

"The Killers", written in 1927, portrays 2 would-be assassins of a man called Ole Andreson, hired guns named Max & Al, with Nick Adams as the overseer of the narrative that ultimately seems more of an outline than a meaningful story. In 1946, the story was greatly expanded to fill in gaps about why the killers had taken aim at Andreson. "It's a hell of a thing; it's an awful thing" says Nick Adams commenting at the diner where the assassins briefly converge. "Well, you'd better not think about it", says George, as he wipes down a counter at the diner after Max & Al have moved on when Ole Andreson fails to appear at his usual time. Perhaps, the lack of resolution adds something to the story but I found it lackluster.

Likewise, "Fifty Grand" the story of a prizefighter who is literally at the end of his ropes, an Irishman named Jack Brennan who has bet on his opponent, a well-regarded opponent named Walcott, in a boxing match while attempting to make a good show of the contest, seemed lacking in dramatic edge & not very compelling. "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" presents the image of a lonely, old man who comes nightly to a cafe, drinking to the point of insobriety, observed by 2 waiters who are forced to keep the cafe open until the man finally departs, while sharing in his ennui.

"Fathers & Sons" seems a story of alienation between a boy & his father, also involving the boy's sexual encounter with his Native-American friend's sister. "The Gamble, the Nun & the Radio" is a longer tableau with some interesting details but still seems incomplete. And, "A Way You'll Never Be" builds an image in the aftermath of WWI, with two soldiers reunited by chance and a considerable uncertainty about the background of one of them.

What the reader finds with many of the short tales in The Snows of Kilimanjaro & Other Stories is a young Hemingway exploring the framework for just how to structure a short work of fiction & eventually a novel, often building the skeletal background or literary scaffolding without always making the story concrete. Still, it was not unpleasant to reread some of the more familiar stories, most of which are also within the author's more comprehensive short story anthology, The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway.

*My version of the anthology including "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" did not seem to be listed at Goodreads but is the Hudson River hardcover edition, published by Charles Scribners & Sons.