Hemingway on Hunting

Rating:
Summary: One for the book, but constellation for the author
Review: As Hemingway the Zen master said, "Some are hunters, some are not." Several Hemingway scholars have treid to explain EH's lifelong affinity for blood sports (notably Bredahl and Drake's 1990 exegesis of Green Hills Of Africa) -- this "package of Papa" is content to just push whole chunks and raw excerpts of Hemingway onto a marketing skewer without any comment. Using "hunting" as a marketing criterion forces together the most flaccid posthumous Hemingway and some of his purest fiction and livliest reportage. It's obvious Hemingway wrote about hunting (and fishing) in the same sense the Homer wrote about Mediterranean tourism. Lazy readers may like the way this editor rearranged Hemingway's cabin furniture, but most of the writing actually seem the duller for being re-packaged to a less spontaneous purpose. Sad to see a great prose turned as a license for 'designer books,' and by his own kin. Some are artists, others are not.

Rating:
Summary: One for the book, but constellation for the author
Review: As Hemingway the Zen master said, "Some are hunters, some are not." Several Hemingway scholars have treid to explain EH's lifelong affinity for blood sports (notably Bredahl and Drake's 1990 exegesis of Green Hills Of Africa) -- this "package of Papa" is content to just push whole chunks and raw excerpts of Hemingway onto a marketing skewer without any comment. Using "hunting" as a marketing criterion forces together the most flaccid posthumous Hemingway and some of his purest fiction and livliest reportage. It's obvious Hemingway wrote about hunting (and fishing) in the same sense the Homer wrote about Mediterranean tourism. Lazy readers may like the way this editor rearranged Hemingway's cabin furniture, but most of the writing actually seem the duller for being re-packaged to a less spontaneous purpose. Sad to see a great prose turned as a license for 'designer books,' and by his own kin. Some are artists, others are not.

Rating:
Summary: Hemingway hunting related fiction and nonfiction compilation
Review: The handsome book contains no new material but is a compilation of hunting-oriented short stories, non-fiction pieces and excerpts from novels. There's a very good scene from "Across the River and Into the Trees" about duck hunting from blinds near Venice. There is a nice selection of photographs of the author with various trophies. One in particular is spectacular showing Hemingway about to fire his rifle at a huge charging lion. The perspective is from just behind Hemingway, his rifle is raised to his shoulder and the onrushing lion appears to be only a few feet away. Another shows Hemingway standing next to same lion, now very dead.

The longish short story The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" which is arguably his best short story is included. It tells the story of wealthy American and his beautiful wife on safari in Africa. The title character behaves shamefully during a lion hunt. That night, his wife sleeps with the white hunter to show her displeasure. The next day while hunting buffalo, he redeems himself and proves that he is not a coward, both to himself and to the onlookers. The short happy life of the title refers to that fact that soon after redeeming his injured manhood against the buffalo, his wife accidentally (or perhaps not accidentally) shoots him in the head as a wounded buffalo charges.

If you are a fan of Hemingway's you've probably read much of this stuff before elsewhere, the non-fiction pieces may be hardest to find elsewhere. This book makes a great gift for a hunting enthusiast who is not especially literary oriented.