The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories

I'd read these stories decades ago as a youth and something told me to go back to them once again. Oddly there were no real surprises. It remains a potent if grim collection of short, sharp stories.

"In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more."

Both "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" and "In Another Country" are still among the strongest stories I think I've ever read. My life has shown me these people and these experiences, and Hemingway nailed it. Even "The Gambler, The Nun, and the Radio" plays very familiar and even ruefully funny.

Life takes its toll, and there are ways people find to deal with it. Or, as in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," not to deal with it.

The real clunker here is "The Killers." I show more thought it stupid when I read it at 18 and, lo, I still think it stupid. Sorry, Ernie. show less

I always smile when I read reviews criticizing Hemingway for cumbersome style. In fact, he was one of the most economical with words among the major American writers. This collection is a bit difficult to get around, sure, so maybe as a first sampling of Papa's writings this isn't the best, but go read The Sun Also Rises where he was at the height of his powers, then come back to this.

The title story is worth the price of admission - a tale told primarily from a first person perspective as a man lays dying from gangrene during a hunting expedition in Africa. But the perspective sometimes slips into the narrator's fever-fueled delusions and reminiscences. It's a technique to which Hemingway returns in the final story - The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, another set on an African hunting expedition - having the perspective slip into the supporting cast so that the narrator's self perception is weighed agains how others see him. The sliding perspectives make for much richer characters and story. In between, Hemingway revisits his alter-ego, Nick Adams. Nick Adams stories appear in other collection, and I found show more the ones in [In Our Time] superior to these. But a couple in this collection reveal the more doubtful and fearful Nick and, hence, Hemingway. In these, Nick/Hemingway are more vulnerable, more human - the Uber-masculine caricature abandoned for a truth. show less

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place was my favorite. I remember it from a grade school reader and think it was my first Hemmingway story. What crack-pot put it in an elementary school reader? It's about booze, suicide, and disaffection with work and life. Not something most kids can identify with, and if they can they need more help than Hemmingway.

Holy toxic masculinity Batman!

The last story, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, is filled with BS. A rich man goes big game hunting in Africa with his wife. He wounds a lion and when his guide brow beats him into pursuing it into the bush he panics and runs as it charges him. He is unmanned as thoroughly as if he had been castrated on the spot. His wife promptly cuckholds him with the show more British guide. Things seem pretty grim. He/the narrator flashes over his good qualities: Rich, educated, able to wisely mange his money and grow even richer. All of these now amount to jack-shit as he can't hold his ground against a wounded lion.

The next day, following the cuckholding, the group drives out to shoot some buffalo. Francis is overcome by excitement and bloodlust and sprays bullets at the beasts, dropping three. This magically glues his balls back on. When one buffalo gets up and limps off into the bush, the manly Francis stalks it and stalwartly fires into its charge. His testosterone moment ends when his wife sends a bullet crashing into his skull. Was she trying to help, killing him for growing a pair, both? Who knows. This story is bad, but its get in your head bad rather than forget after reading bad. show less

The title story, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, is one of Hemingway’s most famous and no doubt garners such appeal because it deals with the essence of every man’s life...what he has accomplished before he dies. Some see it as a treatise on procrastination, but I do not. I believe it is every man’s lot to die with things undone, hopes unrealized, opportunities missed, and I think Hemingway is making that point as well. We are busy living our lives and these things slip by us, sometimes without a thought, but often with the idea that we will come back to them, do them later, and then life runs out, as life always does. We all die in the midst of living. A secondary, but important theme, would seem to me to be that of isolation. No show more matter who is there holding our hands, soothing our brows, we die alone. No one can take that journey with us, and those who will continue to live after we are gone do not truly understand our going as we understand it, as an end of second chances, a startling realization that whatever we might have done is lost to us now, forever.

A Day’s Wait is an amazing bit of literature, packed into three scant pages. It is about waiting for death, and the wonder of being spared. I found it very striking and all the more so because of the childish perspective from which it is told.

Fathers and Sons A Way You’ll Never Be and The Killers are Nick Adams stories. Nick is a recurring character for Hemingway, and every time I encounter him in Hemingway’s writing, I feel I have added a piece to a puzzle that I have been working on for decades. Someday I would like to read all the Nick Adams stories together and see if the entire puzzle comes into focus.

In the Fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. Thus begins In Another Country, which is about the unexpected nature of death and the elusiveness of bravery, and this line seemed to set up the story so perfectly for me. Another line I loved, The three with the metals were like hunting-hawks; and I was not a hawk, although I might have seemed a hawk to those who had never hunted; they, the three, knew better, and so we drifted apart.

Fifty Grand registered nothing with me. I do not like prize fighting and I was surprised to find my mind wandering even in the midst of the story.

Finally, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber is an astounding story about cowardice, sex and marriage, set against the backdrop of a safari. The descriptions of the hunting were difficult to read, they were so stark and from my view senseless, but they served to draw pictures of Macomber, his wife and the Great White Hunter, Wilson. The end was a shocker for me, and I loved the uncertainty surrounding what had happened.

Hemingway is a deceptive storyteller. His stories seem so straightforward and simple, but they are extremely complex and he mines the depths of a man’s soul and often makes you grimace at what you find there. He sometimes seems to be saying that we are all the same...just carrion headed for death...but there in the details you find the devil, we are all exceedingly individual and unique and alone in the journey from cradle to grave. show less

It is no surprise that Hemingway took his life. It was a miserable mind to be in. Men are not men until they prove their invulnerability and lack of real interest in living. In Hemingwayland any sign of connection to others is read as weakness. Women filled with scorn are just waiting to (figuratively) castrate the men in their lives. But that man was the shit when it comes to crafting perfect elegant prose, telling the reader everything she needs to know with heart-stopping beauty and relentless economy. In the short stories the reader can engage in the situation with excitement and fascination and be done before the characters' vapidity and compulsiveness gets boring and vulgar. Reading Hemingway's novels is kind of like watching the show more Kardashians. For 10 minutes its amazing and you can't look away. Then, like a switch has been flipped, all the watcher feels is boredom and contempt and occasionally a sprinkling of sadness. "Kim Kardashian IS Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises!" But I digress. My point is that the short stories are filled with interest, and substance and beauty, and stunning craft where the books often feel to me like writing exercises. I had read most of these stories before in other collections, but this is well curated and a great way to return and remind myself why I used to really like Ernie. show less

An uneven collection of stories. The title story and The Short Life of Francis MacComber were very good, but most of the others were a chore to finish. Doesn't make me want to rush and read more Hemmingway just yet. A real sense of Machismo runs through the book. Men are Men when they fight in War...Against Men. Men like to hunt, in the company of men. Hmm, Does being a man also mean fostering a family value of suicide? I don't mean to be cruel but finding a man in this book who has a sensitive thought or an emotion that is not done in a shade of Red or Black is impossible. I feel like Hemmingway's prose hides behind a facade of pompous bravado. And even though we cannot expect to get the depth of character we would expect to fing in a show more novel, his characters, to me at least, often come off as insecure, knuckle dragging, Neanderthals who are afraid to express what they really might be feeling show less