(reviewed by Ed Gorman)
The Collected Stories of Ernest Hemingway
If you grew up in the Forties or Fifties it was impossible to imagine that the literary luster of Ernest Hemingway would ever dim. I've never known of a writer as imitated (usually badly) as ole Papa.
He loved it. He carefully crafted the public persona of adventurer and man's man the press and the people loved. Novels such as A Farewell To Arms and For Whom The Bell Tolls outsold the books of his contemporaries.
But time and taste caught up with him and we now see that Hemingway's novels weren't quite as good as we once thought. He certainly had no Gatsby to brag of nor even a Grapes of Wrath by the despised Steinbeck; Papa believed he was a terrible writer. For me the only novel of his worth reading now is The Sun Also Rises. It's not a great novel but it's fascinating one and much truer to the real Hemingway than the novels he wrote afterward.
But then there are the short stories. Back in the day his collected stories were referred to with great reverence as The First Forty-Nine.
Many of them were reprinted dozens if not hundreds of times around the world, textbooks included. They still deserve the reverence paid them back then.
From his story of death and dying ("A Clean, Well-Lighted Place") to his sad and ironic tale of a soldier who came back from the First World War too late for the parades ("Soldier's Home:) to the stories set in Upper Michigan this is American literature at its finest. This was Hemingway before he became Papa--the confused boy-man who went to war and then set himself up in Paris to write.
In numerous stories here he proves himself the equal of Faulkner (whom he saw as his main competition--he'd already arrogantly written off his old friend (and the guy who got him his Scribner contract) Fitzgerald) in experimenting with point of view. The line, as several critics
mentioned at the time, went from Stephen Crane to Mark Twain to Hemingway, that pure American voice. If you read Crane's "The Blue Hotel"
before you reading Hemingway's Collected Stories you'll hear the echoes throughout start the book.
For readers and writers alike, this is one book that should be in every serious collection. There was no more vital and powerful voice than
Hemingway's in his early stories (and I don't include The Old Man And The Sea, which I never much liked: way too self-consciously Important). Today they're just as pure and perfect as they were when first published. All hail Hemingway.
George Kelley
He loved it. He carefully crafted the public persona of adventurer and man's man the press and the people loved. Novels such as A Farewell To Arms and For Whom The Bell Tolls outsold the books of his contemporaries.
But time and taste caught up with him and we now see that Hemingway's novels weren't quite as good as we once thought. He certainly had no Gatsby to brag of nor even a Grapes of Wrath by the despised Steinbeck; Papa believed he was a terrible writer. For me the only novel of his worth reading now is The Sun Also Rises. It's not a great novel but it's fascinating one and much truer to the real Hemingway than the novels he wrote afterward.
But then there are the short stories. Back in the day his collected stories were referred to with great reverence as The First Forty-Nine.
Many of them were reprinted dozens if not hundreds of times around the world, textbooks included. They still deserve the reverence paid them back then.
From his story of death and dying ("A Clean, Well-Lighted Place") to his sad and ironic tale of a soldier who came back from the First World War too late for the parades ("Soldier's Home:) to the stories set in Upper Michigan this is American literature at its finest. This was Hemingway before he became Papa--the confused boy-man who went to war and then set himself up in Paris to write.
In numerous stories here he proves himself the equal of Faulkner (whom he saw as his main competition--he'd already arrogantly written off his old friend (and the guy who got him his Scribner contract) Fitzgerald) in experimenting with point of view. The line, as several critics
mentioned at the time, went from Stephen Crane to Mark Twain to Hemingway, that pure American voice. If you read Crane's "The Blue Hotel"
before you reading Hemingway's Collected Stories you'll hear the echoes throughout start the book.
For readers and writers alike, this is one book that should be in every serious collection. There was no more vital and powerful voice than
Hemingway's in his early stories (and I don't include The Old Man And The Sea, which I never much liked: way too self-consciously Important). Today they're just as pure and perfect as they were when first published. All hail Hemingway.
George Kelley
10 comments:
Apropos of nothing, but less than fifteen minutes before clicking on to this post, I had just finished reading "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Good story. Classic story. But not, I fear, Papa's best.
Lots of people think that Hemingway's short stories were even better than his novels. Either way, definitely worth experiencing them.
Thanks for reprinting this. I've read a lot of Hemingway over the years, and a lot about him (including a number of biographies), and I agree with Ed - THE SUN ALSO RISES is the novel that stands up (I loved FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS when I read it, but that was in high school), but nothing tops the short stories.
Current short story reading:
Greene & Adey, eds., DEATH LOCKED IN: An Anthology of Locked Room Stories
Philip K. Dick, PAYCHECK and Other Classic Stories
Gerald Kersh, NEITHER MAN NOR DOG
Toni L. P. Kelner, THE SKELETON RIDES A HORSE and Other Stories (latest Crippen & Landru collection)
It could easily be more, as I have three more collections from the library on the shelf.
Some worthwhile stories I read in the locked room collection last week:
Fredric Brown, The Spherical Ghoul ("impossible crime" - how could a body have been mutilated inside a locked and guarded morgue?)
Edward D. Hoch, The Magic Bullet (first of only two stories about Harry Ponder of the CIA; a typical Hoch "impossible crime" case)
Peter Godfrey, Out of This World (another "impossible crime" not unlike the Hoch, in that someone is killed in a moving vehicle - here a cable car, a car in the Hoch story - in a manner that it "could not happen" but did)
So, if some of the stories in the collection are a little dated, there are plenty of gems.
Always love the locked room stories. A favorite is the one by Sjowahl and Wahloo.
You're right, Margot. The Nick Adams stories are my favorites because they take place in Michigan.
I have never read THE SNOWS, Jerry.
I have always been partial to A MOVEABLE FEAST.
Patti, when I am finished with it, I will be happy to send you the locked room book, as long as you don't mind a 550 page hardback.
That is a very interesting review. I may have read one or two books by Hemingway when I was young, but it does sound like short stories would be the way to go. Maybe I will find a collection at the book sale.
Many critics consider THE NICK ADAMS STORIES published in 1972 as the Best of Hemingway. I prefer Hemingway's short stories to his novels.
Library of America wants to check in:
https://email.loa.org/t/i-e-fbpil-tihyltjrut-jt/
Hemingway’s Iceberg:
A Look Beneath the Surface of His Style
THE SNOWS OF K AND OTHER STORIES was the EH collection we did in high school.
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