Men Without Women, by Ernest Hemingway
Men Without Women (Ernest Hemingway, 1927). A collection of 14 short stories from early in Hemingway’s career. I bought it because I wanted to see the trademarked Hemingway prose and because I wanted to read some good short stories. I was not disappointed in any way.
Hemingway was absolutely fascinated in different ways of hurting animals, something that doesn’t appeal to me at all. He tells stories of bull fighting, big game hunting and fishing, and doesn’t manage to make any of them beautiful to me in the way he intends. His stories also focus on tough men and the human condition, stoically meeting whatever life throws at them. This focus is a lot more interesting, and the dialogues between these tough-guys are wonderful.
Hemingway’s literary style is usually described as being sparse and simple, and sometimes it’s almost ridiculously so. Here’s the first couple of sentences from the first short story, “The Undefeated”:
“Manuel Garcia climbed the stairs to Don Miguel Retana’s office. He set down his suitcase and knocked on the door. There was no answer. Manuel, standing in the hallway felt there was someone in the room. He felt it through the door.”
And so on. Really simple, but in a great way it describes these simple men. A lot is left unsaid, and when you read the dialogue a lot is left to the reader. The context in which things are said matters a lot, and is usually the only way you have of reading the inner life of the characters.
I feel inspired to imitate the style when I’m writing now, which is stupid because everyone else is already doing it.