A Clean Well Lighted Place

Didn't land the first time. Five years later it does. Kinda wish it didn't!

This 1933 short story was published in 1933 in Scribner Magazine. It is only a few short pages long.
The characters are in an open-air cafe in Spain, probably a small town, pre-Spanish Revolution. Two waiters talk, while an old man, deaf and in his eighties, drinks brandy alone at his table.

While wealthy, the man is not happy and had attempted suicide the week prior, and the waiters share that he is regular, and regularly drinks himself drunk, quietly at his table in the shadows. The mans niece cut him down, ending his suicide attempt, to ‘save his soul'.

While one waiter is young and bemoans the fact the man stays late, keeping him from his wife and bed, the other waiter, who is older, says the cafe offers a place for people to be if they wish, (a clean and well-lighted place), and he has nothing to hurry home to.

It is a very short but contemplative story, with Hemingway's typical economy of words. It does little to resolve it itself, it is more a glimpse of peoples lives than a story as such.

3.5 stars, rounded down.

A tale so short yet so beautiful! Hemingway strikes the issue of loneliness of the human soul through this brilliant story. Three men, who seek to escape the grip of solitude and nothingness, in their own little ways. Hemingway sure knows his way with the words. This short story is simple yet so profound. Classic Hemingway!

I get the symbolism. And though I get the idea of the old man and the older waiter's feelings of loneliness, I felt the story fell flat on an emotional level. I've tried to fall in love with Hemingway time and again, and I've just got to come to terms with the fact that his style of writing just doesn't do it for me.