Men Without Women

It's a bunch of short stories. Very enjoyable to read, the whole lot of them. Not exactly mind blowing though. At this point I prefer the author's full length books such as old man and the sea or the sun also rises.

Men Without Women is an anthology of short stories that are often ironic and dryly humorous. They're about boxers, bullfighters, and old prize fighters or reflect Hemingway's own experiences in WW1 and the Spanish Civil War. I really enjoyed the man's man material, but behind Hemingway's machismo subjects there are simple observations of humans and how they interact. In old fiction this gives a nice look into what kind of lives people lived (the early 20th/ late 19th century in this case). I personally enjoy getting the historical insight and parsing through what I call artifacts, which are just words or phrasing I don't understand because how they're being used no longer make sense in my modern senses.

About Hemingway's writing, I think he's very skilled at giving just enough information to make a scene work. I would even describe his writing as terse. It's also heavy on dialogue, and an interesting feature of his dialogue is that he puts in repeated phrases or utterances that aren't usually included in writing. I suppose that conflicts with my claim that he has terse prose, but Hemingway's repetitive and circular dialogue feels like it's used as a literary device rather than any kind of bloat.

Not all Hemingway short stories are equal, but this collection of them is good. “Hills Like White Elephants” is one of his better known stories. A real unsung hero here is “Che Ti Dice La Patria,” a glimpse into some adventures at a restaurant and with a fascist in Italy.