The Hemingway Stories by Ernest Hemingway, selected and introduced by Tobias Wolff
I am embarrassed by how little Hemingway I had read before this year and I’m so glad to have finally caught up. I read The Sun Also Rises in college and The Old Man and the Sea in high school. And I remember reading one short story, “Hills Like White Elephants”, also in college. I liked it all well enough, but I didn’t have a sense that he was a writer for me.
A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls, which I read earlier this year are excellent novels. I found them both thrilling and beautiful. A Farewell to Arms is horrible and romantic. For Whom the Bell Tolls is tense and tragic. A Moveable Feast is slighter, but charming. Now I’ve read through his short stories.
This particular collection includes all of the major stories, or at least all of the ones whose titles I recognize. Tobias Wolff, writer of his own short stories and creative writing teacher, chose the collection and provided an introduction. Each story is also introduced with a short epigraph or two by another writer; Tim O’Brien did many of them, giving an admiring take on the story to follow.
The stories are dated from 1923 to 1939 and arranged chronologically with the exception that the last two stories, “Under the Ridge” (1939) and “The Snows of Kilamanjaro” (1936) are flipped, presumably so the more famous story can be the final entry. All but two of Hemingway’s stories prior to 1923 were lost when his wife, Hadley Richardson, packed the typewritten manuscripts along with the carbon copies in a suitcase to bring to Hemingway who was meeting with an editor in Lausanne, then lost the bag. One of the two that survived, “Up in Michigan” is the first story in this collection. Hemingway had stuffed it in a drawer away from the others because Gertrude Stein had declared it unpublishable. (The other surviving story, “My Old Man” had already been sent to a publisher.) Some of the stories from 1923 might be recreations of the lost stories.
Wolff says some fine things in his Introduction about Hemingway’s distinctive, spare style. Less often remarked upon is Hemingway’s sensitivity, he sees men’s doubts and fears as well as their courage. The stories have the hallmarks of Hemingway: bullfights, fishing and big game hunting, and war stories, but there’s also tenderness, and loneliness, and personal-scaled drama. The authors who provide the epigrams introducing each story do a good job of pointing these out. All that I’ve learned to love about Hemingway from reading his novels earlier this year are here, too. His world is exciting. It’s also heartbreaking. Hemingway always strived to write, “one true sentence”. His stories are filled with truth.
Here they are:
Up in Michigan (1923). A young girl in a small town has a crush on an older man. The men come back from a hunting trip and drink together in the girl’s home. She waits up so she can see him again when he leaves. When he does leave he invites her for a walk. Romance, though, turns dark, as he takes advantage of her attraction to him (apparently he noticed) and forces her into sex which she wants but doesn’t want. This is the story Gertrude Stein declared unpublishable.
Out of Season (1923). A young married couple are on vacation in Italy. They hire a local man to take them fishing. The fishing is “out of season” so it’s illegal, but the local man is a drunk who wants their money to buy his liquor.
Indian Camp (1924). A “Nick Adams” story, who seems to be a stand-in for Hemingway. Nick and his father, a doctor, take a canoe into Indian territory to help a woman in the midst of a difficult childbirth. Nick learns about life and death. It’s very short and the ending is devastating.
Cross-Country Snow (1924). Two young men on a ski-trip. They stop at a hut and have a conversation about their lives. One of them is newly married with a baby coming. The future is beginning to close in on them.
The End of Something (1925). Nick (again) chooses a fishing trip as the occasion to break-up with his girlfriend.
The Three-Day Blow (1925). Nick (again). This story follows the last one as Nick and a friend are hanging out at Nick’s house. They drink a little and talk about baseball and the books they’re reading. The friend mentions Nick’s recent break-up but Nick wants to put it behind him.
From In Our Time (1925) a “vignette”, just a paragraph, one of several that were included between the stories in Hemingway’s first book of short stories. This one is about a soldier praying that he not be killed.
Soldier’s Home (1925). A young soldier returns from the war, wanting to talk about it, unable to talk about it. His family is sympathetic and helpful, to a point, but also are impatient for him to just get on with his life, like all the other young folks in town.
Big Two-Hearted River (1925). Nick Adams, again. He’s the only character in the story, which is a simple story of Nick hiking, setting up camp, and fishing. That’s all that happens, but it’s wonderful. All the camping work is described in detail. The story is in two parts, the first part is the hiking in and setting up the camp. The second part is the following morning fishing in the stream.
The Undefeated (1925). A great story. This one is about an aging bullfighter who was probably never that good but is certainly mediocre now. He’s hanging on at the end of his career but can’t give it up. Just coming out of the hospital from a bad experience at his last fight he signs up for another. As in “Big Two-Hearted River” the details are precise. Hemingway knew his stuff. I kept thinking of classical ballet, the way that each of the bullfighter’s movements have a name. Hemingway also includes a newspaper sportswriter, composing his column from the stands and commenting on the bullfighter’s performance. It’s bloody, and awful, and also beautiful, and also pathetic.
In Another Country (1927). A soldier recovers from his wounds in the hospital. Though a stand alone story this is clearly a cousin to A Farewell to Arms (published two years later).
Hills Like White Elephants (1927). A couple at a train station having an oblique conversation about an abortion.
The Killers (1927). Nick (again) is having lunch at a diner run by a man named George. There’s also a cook in the kitchen. Two men come in who act rude and start causing trouble. They threaten George and Nick and eventually force Nick into the kitchen where one of them ties up Nick and the cook. The men are waiting for a man who often eats dinner at the diner and when he shows up they’re going to kill him. The victim doesn’t show. The killers leave. George unties Nick and the cook. And then Nick goes to warn the intended victim at the boarding house where the man lives. The man is a former prize-fighter. He thanks Nick but seems resigned. Nick returns to the diner. For all the frightening action the story is extremely understated. It’s very odd, and very interesting for that.
Now I Lay Me (1927). Another story that could be an outtake, or a preparatory sketch, for A Farewell to Arms. Nick (again), now a soldier, is recovering from wounds in some kind of a camp infirmary . He can’t sleep because he’s afraid he will die if he sleeps. So he keeps himself awake recalling his life: fishing trips, and the streams, and all the people he ever knew, and praying for each one of them as he remembers.
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (1933). This is a story of an old man alone, a widower, drinking glass after glass of brandy late into the evening in a cafe. Two waiters are ready to close but can’t leave until he finishes. One waiter is impatient to get home to his own wife. The other is sympathetic.
A Way You’ll Never Be (1933). One more Nick Adams story, and one more from the First World War, in Italy, where Hemingway served in the ambulance corps. Nick is at the front. He’s suffering from some kind of brain trauma that comes and goes and affects his thinking. He’s the only American and he’s been assigned just to walk up and down the lines in his American uniform to make the Italian troops think they are being supported by the American forces more than they actually are.
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1936) The longest story in the collection. The setting is an African safari. The characters are an American married couple, Francis and Margaret, and the guide they hired, an Englishman named Robert Wilson. The story starts in the afternoon at the camp. Francis is embarrassed about the way the morning’s hunt had gone; he had run from a lion that Robert ended up having to kill. Margaret is disgusted with her husband and attracted to Robert. That night, Francis repeats in his head the events from earlier, including the night before when he felt frightened listening to the lion making noises in the dark outside the camp. In this way, Hemingway, through Francis’ memory and while preserving the linearity of the story is also able to give us the entire narrative of the earlier episode. They had tracked the lion. Francis shot it, twice, but didn’t kill it and the lion hid in tall grass. They had to follow it in, knowing that the wounded animal would charge as soon as it saw them. The lion charged. Francis fled. Robert killed it. Now, that night, Francis is interrupted in his thoughts by his wife returning to their tent. It’s clear that she’s come from having sex with Robert. The next morning they get up very early to track buffalo. They find three animals and go after them. Francis shoots well. He feels powerful, confidant, courageous, happy. Again there’s a problem, though. The first animal they thought they had killed hadn’t died and they have to return to finish it off. Again, it’s hidden in trees that make it difficult to find and dangerous. It’s a chance to rewrite the catastrophe of the event with the lion. The buffalo charges, Francis holds his ground and fires. But Margaret, from the car, shoots also. She misses the buffalo but hits Francis, thus ending his life and his brief morning of happiness. Whether Margaret’s shot was an accident or deliberate, or a little of both, is unclear. Although Hemingway did do some big game hunting, this story feels the most purely fiction of all of his stories. It’s expertly made.
Under the Ridge (1939) Another war story, but this one from the Spanish civil war. The main character is an American war correspondent assigned to write stories accompanied by a film photographer. The setting is a ridge that the revolutionary forces had failed in taking earlier that day. The writer is hunkered down with the soldiers. They are disgusted and despairing at the war. A Frenchman from the International forces deserts his post, is tracked down, and executed. A Spaniard tells a story of a young, frightened soldier who shot his own hand in order to avoid the battle. The story ends with Hemingway comparing the heroism of war as it appears in the film footage with the pathetic reality.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936). And another African safari story. Another married couple, Harry and Helen, bickering, but not murderous. Harry is dying of an infection in his leg he received after being scratched by a thorn and leaving it untreated. Helen hopes that the rescue plane will arrive in time, but Harry is sure it won’t. As Harry dies his mind wanders through his life. Harry is a writer and he frames his reminiscences as all the stories that he was waiting to write until he was good enough, or knew enough, and now they never will be written. It’s much the same idea as in “Now I Lay Me” where Nick Adams mentally reviews his life in order to avoid sleep. The reminiscences, quick, multiple, and briefly sketched, alternate with scenes at the camp. As he dies, Harry imagines the rescue plane arriving and the pilot taking him up but turning away from the closest town and toward the peak of Kilimanjaro, above the snow line, the place the natives call the House of God. Then we’re back at the camp and Helen can’t wake her husband and realizes that he’s gone.