An odd piece of writing if you take it up unawares. That it is a parody of the Chicago School of writing, in particular a Sherwood Anderson novel, is helpful to know. In this edition, an introduction by David Garnett provides some background. It is mildly funny one hundred years later. The novel and introduction can be read at one sitting, (or even at one setting), but no one will ever kick himself for not reading it.

Contract Breaker
Review of the Dreamscape LLC audiobook edition (February 1, 2022) of the Scribner hardcover original (1926)

Bruce Dudley stood near a window that was covered with flecks of paint and through which could be faintly seen, first a pile of empty boxes, then a more or less littered factory yard running down to a steep bluff, and beyond the brown waters of the Ohio River. - opening sentence of Dark Laughter (1925) by Sherwood Anderson.

Yogi Johnson stood looking out of the window of a big pump-factory in Michigan. Spring would soon be here. Could it be that what this writing fellow Hutchinson* had said, “If winter comes can spring be far behind?**” would be true again this year? - opening sentences of "The Torrents of Spring" (1926) by Ernest Hemingway.

The background story of Hemingway submitting his quickie parody novella The Torrents of Spring to his first major publisher Boni & Liveright in order to break his contract with them, is a lot more interesting than the book itself. Unsatisfied with Liveright's promotion of the 1925 version of In Our Time and tempted by F. Scott Fitzgerald to join him in being also published by Scribner, Hemingway saw a path forward. By writing an insulting parody of Liveright's author Sherwood Anderson's then popular Dark Laughter, Liveright would take offense and reject the work. This rejection would then allow Hemingway to exercise his contractual option to leave Liveright and sign with whomever else he wanted to. Of course Scribner had to then follow through and publish the minor work The Torrents of Spring in order to gain access to Hemingway's breakthrough novel The Sun Also Rises (Oct. 1926).

The work itself is only of slight interest today. Hemingway steals his title from Turgenev's Spring Torrents (1872) and proceeds to insult or mock not only Sherwood Anderson but other early supporters such as F. Scott Fitzgerald (with a story of Scott sitting in a fireplace) and Gertrude Stein (titling a section of Torrents as "The Making and Marring of Americans", after Stein's The Making of Americans (1925). Doubling down on Anderson's demeaning views of Negro Americans and their 'dark laughter', Hemingway demeans Native Americans as well with Hollywood-stylized dialogue of 'heap big trouble' etc. It is cringe upon cringe, and the first major blot on a career that was to have several other missteps alongside the greater works.

I listened to The Torrents of Spring in the recent audiobook edition issued by Dreamscape LLC. To the best of my knowledge, Hemingway house publisher Scribner has never issued an audiobook of this least of the author's works, but Dreamscape presumably snapped it up through its entering the public domain. The reading by Pete Cross was adequate.

Trivia and Links
* Hemingway misattributes (presumably intentionally as a further insider joke) Shelley's line to A.S.M. Hutchinson (1879-1971), presumably based on the title of his novel If Winter Comes (1921).
** The line is actually from the poem Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).

The Torrents of Spring is in the public domain and can be read or downloaded online from Faded Pages.

See print art at https://i.pinimg.com/564x/c3/b2/27/c3b227c57d2f0d1c9ad811b98f305c03.jpg
The cover art for the Dreamscape LLC audiobook is cropped from the print "Romance at the Gate" by Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886) which was originally used as an illustration in the book Come Lasses and Lads (1884). Image sourced from Pinterest. ( )

Well that's a few hours of my reading time I've never getting back. ( )

It isn't my favorite book by Hemingway, but I am now curious to read something by Sherwood Anderson, the main author(his mentor and friend) whom he was parodying. When a book introduces me to a new idea, or author, or forces me to look up information, I consider it worth reading, even if the story was a little strange, or the characters unlikable, as was the case in "Torrents". ( )

I need to read more of the British and American literature of the times to understand the burlesque nature of this work. Looks like I will have to re-read this one at a later date. ( )