Short Fiction by Ernest Hemingway (best free ebook reader for android .txt) ๐
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Ernest Hemingway is perhaps the most influential American writer of the twentieth century. Though known mostly for his longer works, he began his writing career with the publication of short stories which helped develop his often-imitated concise, simple, and straightforward style, which stood in stark contrast to the more elaborate prose of many of his contemporaries.
In 1947, during a University of Mississippi creative writing class, William Faulkner remarked that Hemingway โhas never been known to use a word that might cause the reader to check with a dictionary to see if it is properly used.โ Hemingway famously responded: โPoor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I donโt know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.โ
Besides his writing style, Hemingwayโs most well-known contribution to the literary landscape was the iceberg theory of writing, developed while composing the short story โOut of Season.โ Hemingway later said of the story: โI had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.โ
This collection comprises all of the public domain stories published in Hemingwayโs short story collections, some miscellaneous stories published in various magazines, and his novellas. With the exception of stories within collections with a thematic link, such as In Our Time, they are arranged in publication order.
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- Author: Ernest Hemingway
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Everybody was drunk. The whole battery was drunk going along the road in the dark. We were going to the Champagne. The lieutenant kept riding his horse out into the fields and saying to him, โIโm drunk, I tell you, mon vieux. Oh, I am so soused.โ We went along the road all night in the dark and the adjutant kept riding up alongside my kitchen and saying, โYou must put it out. It is dangerous. It will be observed.โ We were fifty kilometers from the front, but the adjutant worried about the fire in my kitchen. It was funny going along that road. That was when I was a kitchen Corporal.
Indian CampAt the lake shore there was another rowboat drawn up. The two Indians stood waiting.
Nick and his father got in the stern of the boat and the Indians shoved it off and one of them got in to row. Uncle George sat in the stern of the camp rowboat. The young Indian shoved the camp boat off and got in to row Uncle George.
The two boats started off in the dark. Nick heard the oarlocks of the other boat quite a way ahead of them in the mist. The Indians rowed with quick choppy strokes. Nick lay back with his fatherโs arm around him. It was cold on the water. The Indian who was rowing them was working very hard, but the other boat moved further ahead in the mist all the time.
โWhere are we going, Dad?โ Nick asked.
โOver to the Indian camp. There is an Indian lady very sick.โ
โOh,โ said Nick.
Across the bay they found the other boat beached. Uncle George was smoking a cigar in the dark. The young Indian pulled the boat way up the beach. Uncle George gave both the Indians cigars.
They walked up from the beach through a meadow that was soaking wet with dew, following the young Indian who carried a lantern. Then they went into the woods and followed a trail that led to the logging road that ran back into the hills. It was much lighter on the logging road as the timber was cut away on both sides. The young Indian stopped and blew out his lantern and they all walked on along the road.
They came around a bend and a dog came out barking. Ahead were the lights of the shanties where the Indian bark-peelers lived. More dogs rushed out at them. The two Indians sent them back to the shanties. In the shanty nearest the road there was a light in the window. An old woman stood in the doorway holding a lamp.
Inside on a wooden bunk lay a young Indian woman. She had been trying to have her baby for two days. All the old women in the camp had been helping her. The men had moved off up the road to sit in the dark and smoke out of range of the noise she made. She screamed just as Nick and the two Indians followed his father and Uncle George into the shanty. She lay in the lower bunk, very big under a quilt. Her head was turned to one side. In the upper bunk was her husband. He had cut his foot very badly with an ax three days before. He was smoking a pipe. The room smelled very bad.
Nickโs father ordered some water to be put on the stove, and while it was heating he spoke to Nick.
โThis lady is going to have a baby, Nick,โ he said.
โI know,โ said Nick.
โYou donโt know,โ said his father. โListen to me. What she is going through is called being in labor. The baby wants to be born and she wants it to be born. All her muscles are trying to get the baby born. That is what is happening when she screams.โ
โI see,โ Nick said.
Just then the woman cried out.
โOh, Daddy, canโt you give her something to make her stop screaming?โ asked Nick.
โNo. I havenโt any anaesthetic,โ his father said. โBut her screams are not important. I donโt hear them because they are not important.โ
The husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall.
The woman in the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the water was hot. Nickโs father went into the kitchen and poured about half of the water out of the big kettle into a basin. Into the water left in the kettle he put several things he unwrapped from a handkerchief.
โThose must boil,โ he said, and began to scrub his hands in the basin of hot water with a cake of soap he had brought from the camp. Nick watched his fatherโs hands scrubbing each other with the soap. While his father washed his hands very carefully and thoroughly, he talked.
โYou see, Nick, babies are supposed to be born head first but sometimes theyโre not. When theyโre not they make a lot of trouble for everybody. Maybe Iโll have to operate on this lady. Weโll know in a little while.โ
When he was satisfied with his hands he went in and went to work.
โPull back that quilt, will you, George?โ he said. โIโd rather not touch it.โ
Later when he started to operate Uncle George and three Indian men held the woman still. She bit Uncle George on the arm and Uncle George said, โDamn squaw bitch!โ and the young Indian who had rowed Uncle George over laughed at him. Nick held the basin for his father. It all took a long time.
His father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it to the old woman.
โSee, itโs a boy, Nick,โ he said. โHow do you like being an interne?โ
Nick said, โAll right.โ He was looking away so as not to see what his father was doing.
โThere. That gets it,โ said his father and put something into the basin.
Nick didnโt look at it.
โNow,โ his father said,
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