the shorter EH

[Talking about Hemingway's short stories in sff.net . . . ]


Dave, my copy of The Nick Adams Stories is the 1972 Book Club Edition – interestingly enough, it was a "special" offering through the Science Fiction Book Club back then. I'm not a completist, and have never been motivated to buy a fancier version. It has all the words.

Some interesting words. For those who don't know, Nick Adams was the semi-autobiographical viewpoint character of about half of Hemingway's short stories. The 1972 book was the first offering of them in fictive chronological order, from Adams's childhood in "Indian Camp" to the melancholy and elegaic "Fathers and Sons," where Nick is telling his son about his own father. It also includes eight unfinished pieces EH left behind, some of them very good reading. I especially like "The Last Good Country," where young Nick runs away with his kid sister. I used a quotation from that to introduce The Hemingway Hoax –

"He had already learned there was only one day at a time and that was always the day you were in. It would be today until it was tonight and tomorrow would be today again. This was the main thing he had learned so far."

As for a collection of EH's short stories, I think the 1987 "Complete Short Stories of" – the Finca Vigia Edition – is essential. For a little book to carry around, I'd say Men Without Women, though In Our Time has the best feeling of what EH's original genius was.

By-Line Ernest Hemingway has most of his short nonfiction, and I think is an entertaining and readable book, not as important (or as oblique) as his fiction but still classy writing.

Joe