The Hemingway Stories 

A new collection selected and introduced by Tobias Wolff
Published March 2, 2021
320 pages

There’s a reason why so many writers of Hemingway’s generation are no longer read much, but he still is.

One of my most esteemed colleagues tells me that Hemingway’s work bores him. He’s also despised by some for being a misogynist – in his life and in his fiction. His literary style is sometimes mocked for its simplicity and run-on sentences. And yet, there is no doubt that Hemingway was perhaps the most important literary stylist of the second half of the 20th century.

I keep those thoughts in mind every time I pick up one of his books, usually to read it for the second or third time. And each time I do, I am enthralled by the stories themselves and humbled by what seem to me to be his impeccable sentences. (That is a distinction some poets-turned-fiction-writers have claimed. Hemingway’s poetry was not very good.)

This collection, which was put together by Tobias Wolff to showcase the stories featured in the six-part PBS documentary about Hemingway, includes many of my favorites (Out of Season, Indian Camp, The End of Something, Big Two-Hearted River, The Killers, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, Hills of White Elephants, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro), as well as additional stories that demonstrate Hemingway’s talent and range. As a bonus, each one is accompanied by insights from other important writers.

Here’s the thing. We all have authors that we admire and others that we consume like candy. And then we have a handful of authors that give us something more. Authors that, every time and however many times you go back to them, you can feel the pieces of your heart and bone that life has broken being put back together. Restoring you, page by page, to the way they were when you were at the height of your ambition and potential – young, brave, indefatigable, and undefeatable.

Hemingway has that effect on me.