Review of The Hemingway Stories

Selected and edited by Tobias Wolff, The Hemingway Stories is a collection of some of the best of Hemingway’s short stories that are specifically discussed in the PBS documentary on Hemingway by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. I am a big Hemingway fan but it had been awhile since I had read his short stories. This collection contains several of my favorites including: Up in Michigan, Indian Camp, Soldier’s Home, The Killers, Hills Like White Elephants, The Short Happy Live of Francis Macomber, and the Snows of Kilimanjaro. These stories illustrate the deceptive complexity of his short stories and that while reading them it is just as important what Hemingway does not write as to what he does write in his stories. They also illustrate how Hemingway focuses on the immediate, the closeness and the nearness, rather than the big picture view of what is happening. All of his themes are here...violence, war, death, nature, love, hate, and relations between men and women. It was great to revisit these stories while I watch the documentary.