One notable thing about Hemingway’s influence: not only does he inform “workshop” fiction and autofiction—you know, these folks who think they’re not doing “genre”—he also informs genre fiction! American crime fiction, thrillers in general and, I would say, espionage fiction in general would not exist as we know them without him. Hammett basically took the atmosphere and conventions of pulp fiction and combined them with Hemingway-esque prose style and … attitude, I guess you’d say. For the most part, the crime fiction genre as practiced in America flows from that.
He is great and not cancelled. I also don’t think he hated women but he had serious questions about what it means to be a man in a world ping-ponging between the expectations set by war and an emerging professional class. When a Hemingway man isn’t injured by war, he is injured by missing a war. I’m reminded of the Princeton boxer who savages the bull fight in TSAR, because he can’t tell the difference between bullying and courage/artistry.
I think I have noted before that when I revisited him by reading the Garden of Eden I was shocked to find a female character who was in my judgment well written and fully fleshed. Hemingway’s own myth eclipsed him and he very much let it/made it happen but there was a sensitive and thoughtful observant mind in there and when it wasn’t pummeled too hard by other stimulus it produced some very good work.
There are two LOA volumes, spanning 1918-1926 and 1927-1932. LOA doesn’t ever come out and say it but you are correct that it have only recently been able to issue these (the second one came out last year I think) due to it entering the public domain. Unlike Faulkner, which was both vintage and LOA in the same re-edited versions finalized after his death, it appears the Hemingway family wanted to keep the supply under control in order to maintain the maximum profit.
Separate comment but related to collections, there was a collection made long after publication but which I thought was original, called The Snows of Kilimanjaro which is just perfect. Every story a banger. And they used to also collect the Nick Adams ones because they work better read together (or so the logic went). It’s interesting that you found the ordering and sequences to be somewhat disorienting and off-putting.
LOA republishes stories on original collections like for instance Barthelme, and it can really give a better sense of what people valued at the time of reception.
My rec is that people who set out with the collected stories look up the original published collections and read the stories that way rather in the haphazard sequencing Naomi describes.
There is an author who wrote good stuff in the 90s and dissapeared, because of his substance problems. Thom Jones, he wrote three collections of stories. "The Pugilist at Rest" is incredible. He's closer to Hemingway than most contemporary writers.
a "new and selected" just came out at the end of last year, "Night Train." He's been dead almost 10 years so it's good to see him still returning to print. Was not published until his forties.
I mentioned James Baldwin and Stephen King in the chat, but you're right, no one from the 20th Century touches Hemingway. I remember getting to the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls and thinking it was the perfect novel. I should read it again. Soon.
Hemingway’s letters are fun to read, revealing a humorous side to him that we don’t get in the fiction. He loved to write long letters (the better to receive long letters), perhaps because he was so isolated from the literary world down in Key West and Cuba.
And he was quite taken with Gertrude Stein in the early years. For example, in a 1922 letter to Sherwood Anderson: “Gertrude Stein and me are just brothers and we see a lot of her. […] We love Gertrude Stein.” Some of Hemingway’s friends, like the poet Archibald MacLeish, avoided Stein because they weren’t interested in experimental writing. But Hemingway was, he was very much a part of Stein’s world. (And a footnote to one of the letters mentions how when young he admired quite a few older women, not just Stein.)
Hemingway’s finances are interesting. Other than the early newspaper days, he never held a proper job. He really could never stop writing until the 50s. The letters show that he had to be vigilant about money, where it was coming from, what pieces he could sell to magazines.
And even after Lillian Ross’s New Yorker profile, he writes “I am still fond of Lillian.”
Yes, I believe the Selected Letters (almost a thousand pages), published in 1981, was the first volume of Hemingway’s letters, although I think there have been others since then. Used book stores are a good place to look for things like this, which are fairly popular when they first come out, so quite a few copies available.
Interesting opinion. I am amazed that Steinbeck isn’t being discussed here. They say comparison is the thief of joy, so I’ll go back to rereading East of Eden. Encourage everyone to do the same. Let me know how you enjoy it!
Well, I did just bring up Steinbeck…who I discovered before Hemingway. But Steinbeck as a writer stylistically appeals to me more than Hemingway. I’m one of those middle school teachers who taught The Red Pony…to a Resource English class which combined struggling readers and Hispanic English Language Learner kids.
I focused a LOT on symbolism, figurative language, foreshadowing, but…another reason why I taught that story to those kids was the lush beauty of the description. We read it out loud and talked about it. I was thrilled when one of my lowest-level readers suddenly burst out with “oh shit! The pony dies, doesn’t he?” due to symbolism and foreshadowing, when the pony first got sick.
But the kids really got the language. The sense of place. Hemingway has a little bit of that, in a different manner from Steinbeck. I think it’s telling that I own a lot of Steinbeck’s work…but only A Moveable Feast of Hemingway’s. That said, I’ve also read a lot about the literary politics of the era, first through Lillian Hellman and Dorothy Parker, then Josephine Herbst. Which…leaves me less inclined to favor Hemingway.
Thanks for this wonderfully detailed piece, Naomi. I’ve read a few of Hemingway’s novels, but I’ve never been especially drawn to his minimalist style. I tend to prefer more lyrical writers like Woolf, Joyce, or Proust, or the more stylized—and delightfully showy—prose of writers like Amis. That said, one day while driving I decided to listen to The Snows of Kilimanjaro on audiobook before a conference call. I became so absorbed in the story that I completely forgot about the call and ended up dialing in late, apologizing profusely. An amazing short story!
A terrific piece and I agree with Hemingway at least near the top of American writers across the 20th century. Would be a national restoration were more 13-20 year olds to read him in 2025.
When I was a teenager I was absolutely obsessed with Hemingway, I think I read almost all his novels and 90% of his short stories. He is a very good author for a boy--he appeals to your boyish sensibilities, but he is sophisticated enough that he plants the seed for you to grow out of it.
At the very least he makes you look forward to being a grown man, in a way that most young adult media doesn't. American culture idealizes a kind of eternal boyhood--being Batman, James Bond, any number of fictional men who are really boys. Hemingway, for his faults, idealizes manhood. Not always mature manhood, but manhood.
When I think about Hemingway, I think about the early fame + alcoholism situation. I remember reading Old Man and the Sea in my 40s and thinking, "he's drunk". Still, I read Moveable Feast every couple of years, as an aspiration life reflection. And the early stories, the one where he's like 15 and drunk and looking at himself in the mirror, and I think, that's the greatest thing I've ever read. Except maybe for Fitzgerald's stories about adolescents.
Moveable Feast is so good! My first Hemingway--read it at age 23 and loved it. I feel like MF proves that he hadn't entirely lost it, even in his old age.
This is a fantastic article, especially the connection between Ann Beattie’s style and Hemingway. The New Yorker has published a lot of lame fiction, but those Beattie stories are perplexingly bad.
Thank you. Always good to go back to the source. But good to let him rest in peace now too. The stories tell the tale - what a life ! What a world to bear witness to
I thought it was appropriate that you mostly concentrated on his short stories. His understated, ambiguous quality works better in short doses; across the length of a novel, I found that it doesn't carry quite as well.
I randomly started reading my never-read, 30-year-old copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls this summer, and I can still hardly process how brilliant it is. Including the female characters with their vivid, full, and devastating backstories.
I dunno…I think Steinbeck gives Hemingway a serious run for his money, though Steinbeck could be more erratic. However, when Steinbeck was hitting on all cylinders, he was amazing. His The Pastures of Heaven and The Long Valley short stories are well worth the time. And In Dubious Battle gets overshadowed by both Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath.
(We shall not speak of The Moon Is Down, Burning Bright, or a couple of other works in that vein. And alas, try though he would, he never quite nailed the Arthurian legends in the way he really wanted to do them.)
One notable thing about Hemingway’s influence: not only does he inform “workshop” fiction and autofiction—you know, these folks who think they’re not doing “genre”—he also informs genre fiction! American crime fiction, thrillers in general and, I would say, espionage fiction in general would not exist as we know them without him. Hammett basically took the atmosphere and conventions of pulp fiction and combined them with Hemingway-esque prose style and … attitude, I guess you’d say. For the most part, the crime fiction genre as practiced in America flows from that.
I have occasionally wondered about an intersection between Hemingway and Robert A. Heinlein.
He is great and not cancelled. I also don’t think he hated women but he had serious questions about what it means to be a man in a world ping-ponging between the expectations set by war and an emerging professional class. When a Hemingway man isn’t injured by war, he is injured by missing a war. I’m reminded of the Princeton boxer who savages the bull fight in TSAR, because he can’t tell the difference between bullying and courage/artistry.
I’m a Fitzgerald man, though.
I think I have noted before that when I revisited him by reading the Garden of Eden I was shocked to find a female character who was in my judgment well written and fully fleshed. Hemingway’s own myth eclipsed him and he very much let it/made it happen but there was a sensitive and thoughtful observant mind in there and when it wasn’t pummeled too hard by other stimulus it produced some very good work.
I have to give that book another chance. People kind of pummeled it and I think I let myself be influenced.
Not saying you must like it, only that it was much better than my low expectations
There are two LOA volumes, spanning 1918-1926 and 1927-1932. LOA doesn’t ever come out and say it but you are correct that it have only recently been able to issue these (the second one came out last year I think) due to it entering the public domain. Unlike Faulkner, which was both vintage and LOA in the same re-edited versions finalized after his death, it appears the Hemingway family wanted to keep the supply under control in order to maintain the maximum profit.
Oops you're correct! Should've double-checked this
Separate comment but related to collections, there was a collection made long after publication but which I thought was original, called The Snows of Kilimanjaro which is just perfect. Every story a banger. And they used to also collect the Nick Adams ones because they work better read together (or so the logic went). It’s interesting that you found the ordering and sequences to be somewhat disorienting and off-putting.
LOA republishes stories on original collections like for instance Barthelme, and it can really give a better sense of what people valued at the time of reception.
My rec is that people who set out with the collected stories look up the original published collections and read the stories that way rather in the haphazard sequencing Naomi describes.
There is an author who wrote good stuff in the 90s and dissapeared, because of his substance problems. Thom Jones, he wrote three collections of stories. "The Pugilist at Rest" is incredible. He's closer to Hemingway than most contemporary writers.
a "new and selected" just came out at the end of last year, "Night Train." He's been dead almost 10 years so it's good to see him still returning to print. Was not published until his forties.
I mentioned James Baldwin and Stephen King in the chat, but you're right, no one from the 20th Century touches Hemingway. I remember getting to the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls and thinking it was the perfect novel. I should read it again. Soon.
I have always thought A Farewell to Arms is a perfect novel.
I thought The Sun Also Rises!
Hemingway’s letters are fun to read, revealing a humorous side to him that we don’t get in the fiction. He loved to write long letters (the better to receive long letters), perhaps because he was so isolated from the literary world down in Key West and Cuba.
And he was quite taken with Gertrude Stein in the early years. For example, in a 1922 letter to Sherwood Anderson: “Gertrude Stein and me are just brothers and we see a lot of her. […] We love Gertrude Stein.” Some of Hemingway’s friends, like the poet Archibald MacLeish, avoided Stein because they weren’t interested in experimental writing. But Hemingway was, he was very much a part of Stein’s world. (And a footnote to one of the letters mentions how when young he admired quite a few older women, not just Stein.)
Hemingway’s finances are interesting. Other than the early newspaper days, he never held a proper job. He really could never stop writing until the 50s. The letters show that he had to be vigilant about money, where it was coming from, what pieces he could sell to magazines.
And even after Lillian Ross’s New Yorker profile, he writes “I am still fond of Lillian.”
Fascinating! Is there a book that collects these letters?
Yes, I believe the Selected Letters (almost a thousand pages), published in 1981, was the first volume of Hemingway’s letters, although I think there have been others since then. Used book stores are a good place to look for things like this, which are fairly popular when they first come out, so quite a few copies available.
Interesting opinion. I am amazed that Steinbeck isn’t being discussed here. They say comparison is the thief of joy, so I’ll go back to rereading East of Eden. Encourage everyone to do the same. Let me know how you enjoy it!
Well, I did just bring up Steinbeck…who I discovered before Hemingway. But Steinbeck as a writer stylistically appeals to me more than Hemingway. I’m one of those middle school teachers who taught The Red Pony…to a Resource English class which combined struggling readers and Hispanic English Language Learner kids.
I focused a LOT on symbolism, figurative language, foreshadowing, but…another reason why I taught that story to those kids was the lush beauty of the description. We read it out loud and talked about it. I was thrilled when one of my lowest-level readers suddenly burst out with “oh shit! The pony dies, doesn’t he?” due to symbolism and foreshadowing, when the pony first got sick.
But the kids really got the language. The sense of place. Hemingway has a little bit of that, in a different manner from Steinbeck. I think it’s telling that I own a lot of Steinbeck’s work…but only A Moveable Feast of Hemingway’s. That said, I’ve also read a lot about the literary politics of the era, first through Lillian Hellman and Dorothy Parker, then Josephine Herbst. Which…leaves me less inclined to favor Hemingway.
Thanks for this wonderfully detailed piece, Naomi. I’ve read a few of Hemingway’s novels, but I’ve never been especially drawn to his minimalist style. I tend to prefer more lyrical writers like Woolf, Joyce, or Proust, or the more stylized—and delightfully showy—prose of writers like Amis. That said, one day while driving I decided to listen to The Snows of Kilimanjaro on audiobook before a conference call. I became so absorbed in the story that I completely forgot about the call and ended up dialing in late, apologizing profusely. An amazing short story!
A terrific piece and I agree with Hemingway at least near the top of American writers across the 20th century. Would be a national restoration were more 13-20 year olds to read him in 2025.
When I was a teenager I was absolutely obsessed with Hemingway, I think I read almost all his novels and 90% of his short stories. He is a very good author for a boy--he appeals to your boyish sensibilities, but he is sophisticated enough that he plants the seed for you to grow out of it.
At the very least he makes you look forward to being a grown man, in a way that most young adult media doesn't. American culture idealizes a kind of eternal boyhood--being Batman, James Bond, any number of fictional men who are really boys. Hemingway, for his faults, idealizes manhood. Not always mature manhood, but manhood.
When I think about Hemingway, I think about the early fame + alcoholism situation. I remember reading Old Man and the Sea in my 40s and thinking, "he's drunk". Still, I read Moveable Feast every couple of years, as an aspiration life reflection. And the early stories, the one where he's like 15 and drunk and looking at himself in the mirror, and I think, that's the greatest thing I've ever read. Except maybe for Fitzgerald's stories about adolescents.
Moveable Feast is so good! My first Hemingway--read it at age 23 and loved it. I feel like MF proves that he hadn't entirely lost it, even in his old age.
Anyway, thank you for this essay. What a nice relaxing entertaining read.
Worth mention that harassment by The Man (FBI et al) was likely a factor in the decline of his mental health and eventual suicide.
This is a fantastic article, especially the connection between Ann Beattie’s style and Hemingway. The New Yorker has published a lot of lame fiction, but those Beattie stories are perplexingly bad.
Thank you. Always good to go back to the source. But good to let him rest in peace now too. The stories tell the tale - what a life ! What a world to bear witness to
I thought it was appropriate that you mostly concentrated on his short stories. His understated, ambiguous quality works better in short doses; across the length of a novel, I found that it doesn't carry quite as well.
I randomly started reading my never-read, 30-year-old copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls this summer, and I can still hardly process how brilliant it is. Including the female characters with their vivid, full, and devastating backstories.
I dunno…I think Steinbeck gives Hemingway a serious run for his money, though Steinbeck could be more erratic. However, when Steinbeck was hitting on all cylinders, he was amazing. His The Pastures of Heaven and The Long Valley short stories are well worth the time. And In Dubious Battle gets overshadowed by both Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath.
(We shall not speak of The Moon Is Down, Burning Bright, or a couple of other works in that vein. And alas, try though he would, he never quite nailed the Arthurian legends in the way he really wanted to do them.)