The Snows Of Kilimanjaro And Other Stories (1999) - Plot & Excerpts
Ernest HemingwayThe Snows of Kilimanjaro:Six StoriesReclam, Paperback, 2011. 12mo. 176 pp. Edited by Bettina Drawe and Herbert Geisen with notes, Bibliography [pp. 144-145], and Afterword [pp. 146-176].Stories first published, 1925-38.All included in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, 1938.Half included in The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories, 1961 [10 pieces].All included in The Complete Short Stories, 1987.This collection first published by Reclam, 2004.Inhalt [Contents]*The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber [1938]The Snows of Kilimanjaro [1938]Old Man at the Bridge [1938]A Very Short Story [1925]Cat in the Rain [1925]The Killers [1927]Editorische Notiz [Editor's Note]Literaturhinweise [Bibliography]Nachwort [Afterword]*In square brackets: year of first publication.=======================================To begin with an important bibliographical note, this is not at all the same collection as The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories (1961). This Reclam edition contains only six pieces (as opposed to ten), and only three of them overlap with the old edition (the first two and the last one). So far as can be ascertained online, this particular selection appears to have been first published by Reclam in 2004. There are many fascinating things to discuss about this German publisher, but let's first deal with the elusive and controversial figure of the author.Hemingway continues to baffle me. Admittedly, I have read very little of his works – indeed, this collection and just one story more. But what a difference in length and quality! The first two stories in this volume take over half of its length. Both are near masterpieces. Of the rest four pieces, only ''The Killers'' may be said to have some merit. It's hardly a story, but at least it provides some material to make one yourself. And the oppressive atmosphere of violence, hopelessness and death comes off rather vividly, especially with the vacuous dialogue as a counterpoint.But the rest of the ''stories'' belong to the same category as the only one I have read which is – thankfully! – not included in this volume: ''The Three-Day Blow''. These pieces are unique in the worst sense of the word. Never have I come across writing that is so uniformly atrocious: shoddy, crude, lame, confused, repetitive, barely coherent linguistic butchery. It passes belief that such extremely pedestrian, nearly incoherent and downright superficial vignettes could be thought worthy of reprinting, nay even representative of their author.I should like to believe that I do get the point of these stories. That's their real tragedy: they show much promise, all of it criminally unrealized. ''Old Man at the Bridge'' might have been a poignant sketch from the Spanish Civil War about an old man who was just ''taking care of the animals'' but now is forced to flee his home and can hardly stand on his feet. ''Cat in the Rain'' could have been a penetrating study of American superiority in Latin countries and intra-marital tension, including perhaps the inherent loneliness that lurks in any of us. And ''A Very Short Story'' does deal with the disintegration of a wartime relationship, if highly unconvincingly and crowned with amusingly shocking surprise ending out of the blue.Yes, we do have potential here, do we! Alas, Hemingway did nothing to develop it further than mere and very faint suggestion. And he did so in just about the most horrendously deplorable writing imaginable. Even the strongest words can't quite convey what shock it is to read these pieces and to try to remember that they were written by somebody who actually did win the Nobel Prize for literature and who is today considered one of the greatest writers of the last century. Well, I don't know about his oeuvre on the whole, but these three careless exercises in stupendous tedium give the impression of something written on the spur of the moment, probably while drinking the morning coffee still half-asleep, and never even read later.Surely, Hemingway must have written better stories? Indeed he did. It may – or may not – be significant that there are full thirteen years between the first publication of the aforementioned monstrosities and the first two stories in this book. The latter are infinitely superior in every way. As you might guess, they are entirely responsible for the bizarre rating of the volume as a whole. After all, ''The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'' and ''The Snows of Kilimanjaro'' together occupy more than 100 pages. What an improvement these two stories are! The writing is clear, precise, blunt, powerful and perceptive. There are some crude and confused moments, but the former are put to a fine dramatic use and the latter occur but seldom. The dialogue is well-nigh flawless. The ''African'' plots are impeccably constructed and perfectly paced. None of the characters is likeable, but all of them are remarkably alive and, considering the severe limitations of the short story, rather complex.More on these two stories and on the edition: http://www.librarything.com/work/1318...
I don't like to continually bash famous authors. I worry that it might make me look as though I'm just jealous, when really I am. That being said, there isn't much to The Snows of Kilimanjaro to make it worthy of a recommendation. These stories by Hemmingway feel as though each had been pulled at random from a longer story--as if there was something I had missed earlier and, in eight out of ten of the stories, as if there was definitely something I was going to miss later, by which I mean to say that I felt left up in the air. At the conclusion of each I kept asking myself, "Is that it?"Perhaps what was worse was how he wrote conversations. They were annoyingly repetitive with characters saying the same line over and over again in rather short conversations. Here is an example:When offered alcohol the 'thin one' says--"Thanks no. It mounts to my head."--half a page later when there's a second round--"Not me. It mounts to my head." On the next page he adds, just in case you missed it the first two times, "It is alcohol that mounts to my head." and on the next page, after a number of lines that are so meaningless as to be absolutely chalk full of hidden meaning that only literature professors could interpret, he reminds us, "I can't take it. It goes right to my head." I get the feeling he's not into alcohol. It's subtle, but it's there.Here's a line that is so repetitive all by itself that nothing can save it: "No. No. No. No. No. No. No. I'm going right down to the church to pray." That was seven Nos! All in response to an invitation to listen to a football game on the radio. I would have to work very, very, very, very, very, very, very hard to write so badlier as this. (You see? It's not easy.)Now for the only thing I actually liked about the book. The smell. The copy I read was over fifty years old and the musty aroma brought back memories of shabby little book shops I used to frequent as a teen in New York City. You'd see a sign that only read "Books" and through the door with its little bell above, there would be stacks as high as the ceiling and shelves where the word unkempt wouldn't do to describe. I always went with Unruly, as if the thousands of stories fought to be seen and read. In these shops, it seemed alphabetizing was seen as a sign of weakness and the only order came from the endless war between truth and make believe. For me, always make believe won out, and how could it not? Where can truth ever compete with imagination? It can't...except for maybe when it comes to the sense of smell. The smell of that book, that was truth, it's one redeeming truth.
What do You think about The Snows Of Kilimanjaro And Other Stories (1999)?
I am always inspired by how Hemingway writes. I love how a few concise words turn into a very vivid picture in my mind. However,this is also a problem because one of these stories, "The Killers", became so vivid that I got really scared to continue and had to stop for a bit. "The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber" made me sick at heart to be so close to a big game hunt. I was disgusted by how they killed all the animals. I know that is not the point of the story but it had a big impact on me. I really liked "A Clean Well Lighted Place" and how skillfully the characters of the two waiters were portrayed.Hemingway is a genius at putting you inside the minds of the men he writes about. It is a rare glimpse into another time and way of life. While I appreciate that, I'm glad I didn't live at that time and that I don't share those views (especially of women and animals).
—Andrea
I did not enjoy Hemingway's fiction for many years. But I teach his work now and find great pleasure in his short stories. I do like the paratactic style and "anti-metronomic" dialogue. I can linger on a Hemingway paragraph for a long time. Pared down as it is, the apparent gaps and leaps between his sentences make me wonder about what he chiseled away. His prose is deceptively simple. No scraps left, but there's real work there, real thought. I sense this because after I finish reading a story like "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," I know that Hemingway is illuminating something dark and human in me.As far as characters go, empty people who are full of themselves deserve empty prose and stunted conversation. I mean for 'emptiness' to be a genuine compliment in fictional prose and verse. In that respect, I appreciate Hemingway the way that I do Samuel Beckett, or perhaps Dickinson, too. Conveying spiritual and moral emptiness in literature is hard to do well--authors who try too hard annoy me by saying too much. I think I am annoying myself now."The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is the opening story, but I teach it last. All the trademark literary features in the other stories are perfectly orchestrated in Kilimanjaro. I believe that this particular story is a kind of mis en abyme, a real emblem for "nada." Embedded in a story that has two ambiguous endings are memories and unfinished sketches that Harry, a writer with a rotting, stinking leg, claims he never wrote. Harry "gets wasted" for sure--his literary talents are wasted, he claims. His leg is wasting away from gangrene. His time is being wasted waiting for something, someone to "save" him. His marriage is trashed with bickering and stupid conversation. There is a hyena and some vultures lurking around, scavenging for dead animals. I see all of the above in many of the characters and stories in this collection. Like the dialogue between characters, his stories do "speak to each other," but in an elliptical way, of course. When I read him carefully, I listen hard for what they each could be saying to me and to each other.
—MG
I've always found Hemingway's virility alien and faintly annoying. His novels offer too much of that, but his short stories are masterpieces of what is left unsaid. You can spend hours analysing each paragraph. This is prose as precise and crisp as the day it was written and whittled down to a perfect little gem. I am not sure how that rather unlikeable person managed to capture such sensitivity and ambiguity, but he did. Ultimately, it feels like his masculinity was a mask for something much more vulnerable.
—Marina Sofia
