Pack it next to your towel and sunscreen. This is, admittedly, a mouse-killer of an edition, a massive book that only the most die-hard fans will make it through. You can read one or five, put it down, and come back two weeks later, picking up right where you left off. Hemingway began his fiction life as a short-story writer, and he is arguably one of the masters of the form. Relish these, which are assembled from all of his published collections. Think of it as an accompaniment to that photo book you have on your coffee table: Pick it up at your leisure.
Those new to Hemingway might believe that he sprung fully formed onto the literary landscape, but the reality is that he hustled. Before he was a famed novelist, he was essentially a freelance writer, working on assignment for newspapers around the U.
But even with this seeming drudgery, Hemingway had that je ne sais quoi in his copy, and his editors and readers alike felt it. By-Line collects 77 of his nonfiction newspaper dispatches, and they have the same appeal as his fiction. Granted, this may be too in the weeds for some, but for any young man slogging his guts out for minimal pay and yet still fueled by a dream, this book gives courage and fortitude to stay the course.
A book considered seminal in the history of bullfighting, Hemingway dives deep into its culture and roots, as well as his own firsthand experience. Hint: Even for such a manly man, the writer is humbled when faced with the power of a young cow. Running with the bulls in Pamplona is something many men desire in order to test their mettle, but this tome is fascinating as a kind of pet project for the author.
Hemingway, as some may guess through some of his other works, revered and adored the bullfighting culture, and it responded by loving him back. Elevating it to both poetry and religion, he was given unfettered access to explain it for the first time in his own words, and as such, it belongs among some of the best sport-that-transcends-sports writing ever assembled. There is nothing in Mr.
Hemingway's story to indicate that Harry Morgan had ever tried to get his living by honest and lawful means. All he asked of a job was whether he could get away with it, with profit to himself.
Society, so far as we have his story, owed him nothing. And he got, in the end, precisely what was coming to him. There is no tragedy; there is no ground for compassion. Hemingway apparently would tell us, was numbered among the have-nots because he believed he could play the game alone.
As his wife thought of him after his death, he was "snotty and strong and quick, and like some kind of expensive animal. It would always get me just to watch him move. But if the have-nots haven't the strength, standing alone, to get what they want, let them stand together, then everything will be all right.
Harry Morgan's failure to feel an obligation to society is of no matter. There is no other possible thesis for Mr. Hemingway's tale. The human will, in Hemingway, as some percipient critics have already pointed out, approaches the vanishing point.
As Mr. John Peale Bishop wrote, in that brilliant analysis of Hemingway which appeared in "After the Genteel Tradition," in his novels "men and women do not plan; it is to them that things happen.
In the telling phrase of Wyndham Lewis, the 'I' in Hemingway's stories is 'the man that things are done to. Nor does Mr. Hemingway help his case by the introduction of his hand-picked specimens of the idle rich and their parasites, and of the morally rotten whom he shows us in brief close-ups, in their anchored yachts on the night that Harry Morgan died. They are people who, in one form or another, have existed in every age. They are not to be laid on the doorstep of economic royalism.
This is adolescent thinking, though the writing is maturely skilled. The expertness of the narrative is such that one wishes profoundly it could have been put to better use.
Immediately after graduation, the budding journalist went to work for the Kansas City Star , gaining experience that would later influence his distinctively stripped-down prose style. He once said, "On the Star you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence.
This is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time.
For his service, he was awarded the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery, but soon sustained injuries that landed him in a hospital in Milan. There he met a nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky, who soon accepted his proposal of marriage, but later left him for another man.
Still nursing his injury and recovering from the brutalities of war at the young age of 20, he returned to the United States and spent time in northern Michigan before taking a job at the Toronto Star. It was in Chicago that Hemingway met Hadley Richardson, the woman who would become his first wife.
The couple married and quickly moved to Paris, where Hemingway worked as a foreign correspondent for the Star. By this time, the writer had also begun frequenting the famous Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain.
In , the couple, joining a group of British and American expatriates, took a trip to the festival that would later provide the basis of Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises. The novel is widely considered Hemingway's greatest work, artfully examining the postwar disillusionment of his generation.
Soon after the publication of The Sun Also Rises , Hemingway and Hadley divorced, due in part to his affair with a woman named Pauline Pfeiffer, who would become Hemingway's second wife shortly after his divorce from Hadley was finalized. The author continued to work on his book of short stories, Men Without Women. Soon, Pauline became pregnant and the couple decided to move back to America.
During this time, Hemingway finished his celebrated World War I novel A Farewell to Arms , securing his lasting place in the literary canon. When he wasn't writing, Hemingway spent much of the s chasing adventure: big-game hunting in Africa, bullfighting in Spain and deep-sea fishing in Florida.
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