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Table of Contents
About The Book
Ernest Hemingway is a cultural icon—an archetype of rugged masculinity, a romantic ideal of the intellectual in perpetual exile—but, to his countless readers, Hemingway remains a literary force much greater than his image. Of all of Hemingway’s canonical fictions, perhaps none demonstrate so forcefully the power of the author’s revolutionary style as his short stories. In classics like “Hills like White Elephants,” “The Butterfly in the Tank,” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” Hemingway shows us great literature compressed to its most potent essentials. We also see, in Hemingway’s short fiction, the tales that created the legend: these are stories of men and women in love and in war and on the hunt, stories of a lost generation born into a fractured time.
The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway presents many of Hemingway’s most famous classics alongside rare and unpublished material: Hemingway’s early drafts and correspondence, his dazzling out-of-print essay on the art of the short story, and two marvelous examples of his earliest work—his first published story, “The Judgment of Manitou,” which Hemingway wrote when still a high school student, and a never-before-published story, written when the author was recovering from a war injury in Milan after WWI. This work offers vital insight into the artistic development of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. It is a perfect introduction for a new generation of Hemingway readers, and it belongs in the collection of any true Hemingway fan.
Excerpt
1916
Dick Haywood buttoned the collar of his mackinaw up about his ears, took down his rifle from the deer horns above the fireplace of the cabin and pulled on his heavy fur mittens. “I’ll go and run that line toward Loon River, Pierre,” he said. “Holy quill pigs, but it’s cold.” He glanced at the thermometer. “Forty-two below!” “Well, so long, Pierre.” Pierre merely grunted, as, twisting on his snow shoes, Dick started out over the crust with the swinging snowshoe stride of the traveler of the barren grounds.
In the doorway of the cabin Pierre stood looking after Dick as he swung along. He grinned evilly to himself, “De tief will tink it a blame sight cooler when he swingin’ by one leg in the air like Wah-boy, the rabbit; he would steal my money, would he!” Pierre slammed the heavy door shut, threw some wood on the fire and crawled into his bunk.
As Dick Haywood strode along he talked to himself as to the traveler’s of the “silent places.” “Wonder why Pierre is so grouchy just because he lost that money? Bet he just misplaced it somewhere. All he does now is to grunt like a surly pig and every once in a while I catch him leering at me behind my back. If he thinks I stole his money why don’t he say so and have it out with me! Why, he used to be so cheerful and jolly; when we agreed at Missainabal to be partners and trap up here in the Ungava district, I thought he’d be a jolly good companion, but now he hasn’t spoken to me for the last week, except to grunt or swear in that Cree lingo.”
It was a cold day, but it was the dry, invigorating cold of the northland and Dick enjoyed the crisp air. He was a good traveler on snowshoes and rapidly covered the first five miles of the trap line, but somehow he felt that something was following him and he glanced around several times only to be disappointed each time. “I guess it’s only the Koutzie-ootzie,” he muttered to himself, for in the North whenever men do not understand a thing they blame it on the “little bad god of the Crees.” Suddenly, as Dick entered a growth of spruce, he was jerked off his feet, high into the air. When his head had cleared from the bang it had received by striking the icy crust, he saw that he was suspended in the air by a rope that was attached to a spruce tree, which had been bent over to form the spring for a snare, such as is used to capture rabbits. His fingers barely touched the crust, and as he struggled and the cord grew tighter on his leg, he saw what he had sensed to be following him. Slowly out of the woods trotted a band of gaunt, white, hungry timber wolves, and squatted on their haunches in a circle round him.
Back in the cabin Pierre as he lay in his bunk was awakened by a gnawing sound overhead, and idly looking up at the rafter he saw a red squirrel busily gnawing away at the leather of his lost wallet. He thought of the trap he had set for Dick, and springing from his bunk he seized his rifle, and coatless and gloveless ran madly out along the trail. After a gasping, breathless, choking run he came upon the spruce grove. Two ravens left off picking at the shapeless something that had once been Dick Haywood, and flapped lazily into a neighboring spruce. All over the bloody snow were the tracks of My-in-gau, the timber wolf.
As he took a step forward Pierre felt the clanking grip of the toothed bear trap, that Dick had come to tend, close on his feet. He fell forward, and as he lay on the snow he said, “it is the judgment of Manitou; I will save My-in-gau, the wolf, the trouble.”
And he reached for the rifle.
Product Details
- Publisher: Scribner (July 17, 2018)
- Length: 384 pages
- ISBN13: 9781476787671
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Raves and Reviews
“Illuminating . . . to read it is to be shocked again by the fecundity of his genius. Writing one story that takes root in literary history is remarkable, but here is classic after classic.”
– Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Essential for students of modern literature, offering insight into the mind and methods of one of the greatest practitioners of the story form."
– Kirkus
“Illuminating. . . it is undeniably fascinating to see how Hemingway swapped one word for another, or sliced and diced sentences.”
– Christian Science Monitor
“An essential book for consumers and aesthetes.”
– Idaho Statesman
“Serves as a fine introduction to readers unfamiliar with Hemingway… [and] also makes a fine addition to the libraries of Ernest Hemingway’s many admirers.”
– Washington Times
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- Author Photo (jpg): Ernest Hemingway Earl Theisen, 1953(0.5 MB)
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