65000

A truly poor collection. Uninspired writing, pointless stories. There is one good one in the book titled "Fifty Grand", otherwise a total waste of time. ( )

These 14 short stories from Ernest Hemingway, first published collectively in 1927, are not entirely devoid of women, but they certainly are bent towards the masculine. There is a certain rugged pathos to stories about an aging bullfighter (“The Undefeated”), a boxer who decides to throw a fight (“Fifty Grand”), soldiers maimed in WW1 (“In Another Country”), a drug addict (“A Pursuit Race”), and hitmen terrorizing a diner while waiting for their target (“The Killers”, my overall favorite). Hemingway gets in a direct critique of Mussolini and the fascists effect on Italy (“Che Ti Dice La Patria?”), and more subtly given the era, also touches on homosexuality (“A Simple Enquiry”) and abortion (“Hills Like White Elephants”).

As with his other work, there is great economy with language, and I liked how what some of the stories were really trying to say required thought and interpretation. There are times when Hemingway provides contrasts without directly linking things, such as that between characters thinking of “Them Indians” as drunken trouble-makers, and a boy secretly loving one of them (“Ten Indians”). In another story, characters view peasants as “beasts,” whereas a couple of skiers had a carefree winter while a poor peasant was snowed in with his wife’s corpse in a shed (“An Alpine Idyll”). In a third, we get the lightweight reporting of a magazine on various topics which also seems like empty chatter, followed by the gravitas of a dying bullfighter known for his courage (“Banal Story”).

Overall, I don’t think there are any masterpieces here, but the quality level is uniformly high, and it’s worth reading. ( )

The short-story compilation called "Men Without Women" is one of Hemingway's earlier collections of short stories. These stories cover most things that were going on at that time in Hemingway's life. Covered in the stories, are things like bull-fighting, boxing, war, relationships between men and women and even a story about Chicago gangsters. There are 14 stories in this collection. Whenever I read a collection of short stories I like to pick my favourite of the bunch. Even though I don't like bullfighting and don't understand it, Hemingway's tribute to famous matador Maera, is the story that I liked the most. In his usual spare writing style, Hemingway describes what it must have been like for a famous and beloved matador to realize that he is too old to fight anymore. It's all he knows, so he signs up for a lesser fight, fully understanding in his heart that this will be his last. He does the best he can, and when the inevitable happens, he accepts the fate that he chose for himself. Hemingway says so much in so few words, but he always get his message across by the end of each story. My journey of wading through all of Hemingway's works is proceeding nicely with the addition of this book. I look forward to the next book from Hemingway's impressive backlist. ( )

I truly do not understand this book, definitely not my cup of tea. By chapter 6, I've given it up.

Here's my full review:
http://www.sholee.net/2016/11/mpov-men-without-women.html