Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
They are a highly readable feast, these 172 articles written by Hemingway for the Toronto Star between early 1920 and late 1924. They range from amusing sketches of everyday life in Toronto to firsthand and sometimes quite lengthly reports on the social and political scene in postwar Europe. Whether the subjects are Lloyd George's visit to Canada, the behavior of women at prize-fights, Christmas in Paris, bullfighting in Pamplona, France's political woes, Mussolini's Fascists or Toronto's young Communists, the pieces invariably exhibit Hemingway's expertise at digging out the facts, his uncanny grasp of dialogue and his shining simplicity of style. They also contain a surprisingly strong element of humor. Here is Hemingway ironically knowing, skilled in his craft and very wide awake, a literary apprentice who hardly seems an apprentice. November 18
Library Journal
Hemingway undervalued his journal ism, insisting it was ``timely rather than permanent.'' But many of the 172 arti cles he wrote for the Toronto Star merit attention and admiration. On assign ment in post-war Europe, Hemingway observed and absorbed many of the subjects (war and love, courage and sham, cruelty and injustice) that were to shape his fiction. His prose style also began to assume its distinctive rhythms and diction. Several of these dispatches would reappear,shrewdly altered, as vi gnettes in In Our Time (the thrill of trout and tuna fishing; the conscious ness of bullfighting as more than sport``a very great tragedy''). In By - line: Ernest Hemingway (Scribner, 1967), William White included only 29 of these pieces. The full edition is most welcome. Arthur Waldhorn, English Dept., City Coll., CUNY
From the Publisher
"The finest story of the outdoors in American literature." — Sports Illustrated
"'Big Two-Hearted River' may be the finest piece of fiction ever written about the experience of the veteran." — The Guardian
"Matchlessly eloquent in its evocation of the pleasures of the senses and of the feeling of place. ... In 'Big Two-Hearted River,' there are moments that are not just constructed like a Cézanne painting; they look like a Cézanne painting." — Adam Gopnick, The New Yorker
"Some of the best English prose of the twentieth century." — Larry McMurtry, The New York Review of Books
"In Hemingway, fishing was always and infinitely metaphorical; Nick Adams plumbs the depths of his soul as he dangles a line." — Jay Parini, New York Times Book Review
“A masterpiece, one of those rare instances when a superb writer reaches a level reserved only for those extraordinary talents with a nose for what is fundamental but not entirely clear and rational in human existence.” — Claremont Review of Books
“Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Big Two-Hearted River’ retains its hold on me, some 40 years after my first reading. It is a story that can be recited and revealed—like currents in a beloved stream—as fresh as each spring day.” — James F. Vesely, Seattle Times
DECEMBER 2023 - AudioFile
If you are a fly fisherman or have a fly fisherman in your life, this early Hemingway short story is a must-listen. Kyle Soller transports the listener to an out-of-the-way river in Michigan where one can practically hear the water flowing, the insects buzzing, and the wind whispering through the trees. Soller never tries to do too much with his narration of this brief story of a young man who is trying to find peace in the backwoods. Instead, he lets Hemingway's words paint such a glorious picture that even those who don't fly-fish will want to grab a rod and reel and try to land big trout. J.P.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
