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The Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway : The Finca Vigia Edition by Ernest Hemingway "IT WAS NOW LUNCH TIME AND THEY WERE all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened..."

From Publishers Weekly - The subtitle of this monumental collection refers to the home (Lookout Farm) that Hemingway owned in Cuba from 1939 to 1959. That time frame accounts for most of the short fiction, published and unpublished, that followed the major collection issued in 1938, The First Forty-Nine. There are 60 stories in all. Of the 21 not included in the 1938 collection, the seven heretofore unpublished pieces will interest readers most. Three are especially good. "A Train Trip" and "The Porter" are self-contained excerpts from an abandoned novel that match in tone and appeal the early Hemingway work in which he explored the adolescent sensibility exposed to an adult world that is exciting but at the same time threatening and morally complex. Drawing from the author's experiences in Europe during World War II, "Black Ass at the Crossroads" is excellent in its detailing of violent action, portraying an ambush of German soldiers from the point of view of an American infantry officer, depressed and angry over the suffering he has inflicted in the course of battle. The other previously unpublished pieces include a Spanish Civil War story reminiscent of Hemingway's play, The Fifth Column; two quite touching stories about a father's disappointments with a troubled son; and a long section comprising four chapters from an early version of the novel, Islands in the Stream. Intrinsically readable, the collection is also significant in drawing together much that was unavailable or difficult to access. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hemingway by Kenneth Schuyler Lynn

Ingram: Ernest Hemingway was a mythic figure of overt masculinity and vibrant literary genius. He lived life on an epic scale, presenting to the world a character as compelling as the fiction he created. But behind it all lurked an insecure, troubled man. Now, in this immensely powerful and revealing study, Kenneth S. Lynn penetrates the Hemingway persona and explores the many tragic facets that both nurtured his work and eroded his life.

Picturing Hemingway: A Writer in His Time by Frederick Voss, Michael S. Reynolds

Amazon.com : He wrote some of the best and most influential American prose of the 20th century. But even a cursory look at the marvelous photos, drawings, and paintings assembled for a National Portrait Gallery exhibition honoring Ernest Hemingway's centennial reminds readers that the author's enduring fame has at least as much to do with his riveting good looks, virile charisma, and macho lifestyle. This book of photos is buoyed by intelligent essays by curator Frederick Voss and Hemingway biographer Michael Reynolds that serve as cogent minibiographies of the man. They cover all the salient points: the great fiction, from The Sun Also Rises to The Old Man and the Sea; the four wives, subservient Hadley Richardson and Mary Welsh and Martha Gelhorn, the feminist exception; the energetic outdoor and public life that couldn't stave off bouts of depression that prompted his suicide in 1961. All the famous pictures are here: the 1934 shot of a cocky, mustachioed Hemingway kneeling with the horns of his kill from an African safari. The classic 1957 Karsh portrait of the writer as bearded éminence grise in a turtleneck sweater. But he isn't visible in the most haunting of all--a photo of his funeral, with a small group of mourners huddled against desolate hills and a pitch-black Idaho sky--an image whose existential starkness equals that of Hemingway's masterpieces. --Wendy Smith

Hemingway: The Paris Years by Michael Reynolds

Amazon.com: In the second of his series of five biographies of Ernest Hemingway, Michael Reynolds turns to the years that formed the writer's distinctive style and critical intelligence. He exhaustively chronicles the particular literary influences on Hemingway, oftentimes even recounting the reading lists that the writer received from particular individuals. "Reading The Wasteland with Ezra Pound at one's elbow is no bad way to pick up a thing or two," he dryly observes at one point. He also pays close attention to Hemingway's conversations with, and studying the literature of, Pound, James Joyce, and particularly Gertrude Stein, who later complained that for all of Hemingway's talent, "He looks like a modern and he smells of the museums." Reynolds's sympathy for his subject is so complete that at times his own stylistic voice becomes a sort of homage to Hemingway's--colloquial, declarative, and wry. At times, however, he too liberally assumes the inner thoughts of his subjects. The substantial research and period analysis he commands turn such repeated phrases as "he must have thought" or "it must have seemed to him" into an unnecessary striving for authority. At his best, though, Reynolds not only uses his extensive source material with a critical eye but provides a wealth of information about the social, political, and literary backgrounds of a time and place that were in many ways the dawn of the 20th century's intellectual tradition. --John Longenbaugh