The Nick Adams Stories

To me, this book is so eloquent I am reluctant to review it because it will be impossible to do it justice. It is a collection of short stories from earlier works of Hemingway. In each of them, a thoughtful reader can gain insight into Hemingway and him/herself.The following is from "Indian Camp." In it, Nick is a very young boy, and, with his physician father, he has been present at a difficult childbirth and found the victim of a suicide. Dawn is approaching and he is in the canoe with his father rowing back across the lake.Quote:"Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?""Not very many, Nick."..."Is dying hard, Daddy?""No, I think it's pretty easy Nick. It all depends."They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.UnquoteRegardless of how you feel about Hemingway, this is a poignant look into the soul of the man, and ourselves. Hemingway's family was plagued by suicide, including that of his physician father, and, like all of us, Hemingway was once a young child coming to grips with the idea of mortality, in a world still fresh and fascinating and frightening.Other stories deal with the joys of a life full-lived, an appreciation of the natural world around us, and our "quiet desperation," in love, life, and death."The Nick Adams Stories" is high on my "Top Ten List."

Here they are, all of them, in order. The Nick Adams short stories were originally published in several books. They were not offered in the chronological sequence of Nick's life. This book puts them in order. It adds 8 additional pieces that were left in manuscript form when Hemingway died. Placed together in one book, and in this order, the stories form an attractive narrative. In many ways Nick's life paralleled Hemingway's. Nick was an action man, and damaged. He saw the world through knowing eyes. These stories can be read and savored one at a time, each forming a complete part of a larger whole.

This collection of short stories includes the most effective use of symbology that I have ever read. As such, it is important to find the deeper meaning behind Hemimgway's words when reading The Nick Adams Stories. For example, look for the psychological significance of the fish, river, backpack, and swamp in Big Two-Hearted River. The collection is highly emjoyable and is an excellent introduction to other works by Hemingway.

The Nick Adams Stories is the most satisfying read of my life. With the end of each story you first think that there has to be more; then you sit back and realize how much Hemingway has truly said with such short, simple, yet fluid language. This book, along with For Whom The Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms negates any criticism for his recieving the Nobel Prize.When you finish this book, as you do when you finish each story, you can only sit back and smack your lips. Even your saliva tastes more pure. Reading this book is like bathing your mind and spirit in the cleanest spring. Highly inspirational and without any faults. This is the perfect collection of short stories, plain and simple. Yes, plain and simple.Mr. Hemingway, God bless you.

Though Hemingway did not, strictly speaking, write this book, he did write every word in it: except of course for the preface. The stories about Nick Adams originally appeared in the Hemingway collections, In Our Time, Men Without Women, and Winner Take Nothing, all published before Papa was 40. Here they have been assembled in "chronological" order, i.e. in an order based upon Nick's apparent age in the stories, and have been "supplemented" with 8 pieces of Nick Adams material which Hemingway never published. The best of these "new" pieces is "Summer People," a moving and evocative story involving young lust. The most fascinating piece, for those interested in Hemingway the writer, as writer, and in his opinions on other writers, is the piece "On Writing." Perhaps the most provocative "might have been" is the unfinished novella, "The Last Good Country," in which Nick runs away from home to avoid arrest by game wardens, and is accompanied by his younger sister, "Littless." This assemblage does not, to be sure, create a Nick Adams novel, but it does allow the stories to build and accumulate, and to create thereby, perhaps, the semblance of a life. And yes, of course I had to use the information in the preface to assemble this review. I'm not a Hemingway scholar, you know.