Yesterday evening I finished (more or less) “The Nick Adams Stories” by Ernest Hemingway. This is a collection of short stories based around the famous Nick Adams character.
The interesting thing about this collection is that they are all in one book, published this way after Hemingway’s death. Many of the Nick Adams stories appeared in other short story collections, but never all together, and in chronological order of Adams’ life.
Nick Adams’ life closely follows that of Papa’s own life. Father is a doctor. Spent summers as a kid in the northern half of Michigan’s lower peninsula. Fishing for trout. Served during World War I in Milan, Italy. Fishing for trout. Getting married in Vienna. Fishing for trout.
Some of these stories feel incomplete, because essentially they are. Many were never intended to be published, and only were for this collection. Also, many of these were written very early in Papa’s career. At times I found some of these stories really cool and interesting. One for instance was “The Last Good Country” which unfortunately does really come to a conclusion. Other stories were rather boring, or confusing, not knowing to what extent Hemingway was going because they were not really finished.
Some have said this is a good introduction to Hemingway’s work, because you are not committing yourself to a whole novel. And from what I read I am interested in reading more.
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