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Ah, yes. Ernest Hemingway. The writer with "economical and understated style," who "did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the 20th century," and who "wrote in short, declarative sentences and was known for his tough, terse prose." When you read about Ernest Hemingway it's never the quality of his stories you'll see praised, or his brilliant characters, or his creativity, or his intelligence, or his imaginative worlds, or his ability to pull you into a distant land, or his thoughtful philosophy, or his engaging style, or his brilliant plots, or his visionary concepts, or his biting wit, or his insightful nature, or his challenging ideas, or his evocative sense of reality. No, because none of this at all describes Ernest Hemingway. The only thing you'll read about him is that his supposedly groundbreaking prose makes him an important writer. That's too bad, because of all the bad things that can be said about Hemingway, his dry, formulaic, boring, absolutely uninteresting prose is perhaps the thing most easily criticized. If his dull and lifeless narration doesn't put you to sleep, the dialogue of his utilitarian, flat characters might make you laugh. Not because it's funny, but because it's stupid and unbelievable.

Many of his readers try to find deep meaning in his stories the same way a conspiracy theorist finds threats of mind-control and blood poisoning in the clouds in the sky. If you enjoy theorizing and speculating about the presence of imagined deeper meaning in his work, that is fine. It's even fine to grasp at straws to force together a contrived interpretation that no one will agree on unless they've all read the same literary critic synopsis of the work. But unlike a conspiracy theorist, some just see the clouds as masses of droplets of water and other harmless atmospheric chemicals, and aren't interested in doing Hemingway's work for him.

I could go on about Hemingway's insipid prose forever. I'll leave it alone and move on to the rest.

When I read fiction I look for at least one of the following traits to keep me interested: Piercing of the soul, examination of reality and unreality, an exploration of human and inhuman concerns, enticing plot, exciting ideas, imaginative and creative concepts, worlds I can feel and experience, alluring and interesting characters, stimulating action, finely crafted suspense or mystery or tension, capable humor, captivating dialogue, great prose, emotional turmoil, mind-opening perspectives, some kind of payoff or satisfying resolution or hard-hitting finale, insightful commentary, a significant, resonating idea, a new way of looking at something, a lyrical delivery, and a few other things not on the top of my head. Any of these things. Something worth writing will have some of these traits.

Hemingway offers none of these features in any of his stories. Not one. Even his fans will surely admit this. Many say the "understated" and dry, dull nature of Hemingway's writing is part of his appeal, and that a more attentive, thoughtful reading is required to fully digest it. This is false. A more attentive reading will reveal only too plainly the uninspired vapidity below Hemingway's words, and will open to any thoughtful reader a hundred hidden doorways of personal interpretation that Hemingway never intended, but that all work just as well because his writing wasn't direct and wasn't put together in a way to craft a real meaning. Shallow ideas, shallow characters, shallow everything, all covered over with a trick style designed to imply there's more to it than the writer put in. Hemingway is in no way a thinking-man's writer, nor does his understated, formulaic prose make his writing worthwhile. This is the illusion he crafted and perpetuated, giving nothing in the hope that readers would assume there's more to it, saving him the trouble of actually developing anything on his own. While this isn't the easiest form of writing, it's a lot easier than actually writing content and thinking through your story.

When you read a work of fiction, you enter the imagination of the author. If one has made a career of writing, or even has a serious passion about it, it should be expected that the imagination you're entering should be worth entering, and should show you things you wouldn't have seen on your own. Such is not the case with Hemingway. When you read his work and are sucked into his head, you find you're right back in the world around you, only it's more staged, colorless, less interesting, and without purpose. Not a hint of imaginative invention awaits you, not a glimpse of adventure or enchantment or excitement or thought provoking content greets you. You are in a head more boring than your own, less observant than your own, with a delirious fixation on machismo and posturing and flatness that seem like a sad step down. You rightfully feel cheated for it. You interact with cardboard cutouts who try to pass as people, you spend your time on a beach looking at waves and talking about vague things. You sip on your beer and you wonder why any of this exists. It may be that you enjoy slice of life fiction. In that case, you're better off sticking to life, not entering the unimpressive imagination of America's dullest prose-etician.

There are millions of books to read, and hundreds of millions of stories to explore. There are no more hours in my life I can afford to waste on Hemingway. Even the most trite trash out there has more to offer than Hemingway. At least something that makes me laugh or scrunch up my face in revulsion gets a response out of me that's stronger than a yawn.

If you're interested in Hemingway for his prose, there are others who did it first, who did it better, and who had more to offer. Ambrose Bierce, John Steinbeck, Dashiell Hammett. Go to them. The reason you don't hear about their 'terse, tight prose' that predated Hemingway is because there was a lot more to these authors than their prose, despite their prose also being quite good, and those things are what you will hear about instead. It's the same reason you don't hear about the winning touchdown in the last high school football game of professional athletes, but you'll hear all about it from men whose athletics never took them past that point.

If you're interested in Hemingway for his actual stories, there are others who sometimes wrote on similar topics or themes, but did it a lot better, did it first, and had a lot more to offer. Guy de Maupassant, Herman Melville, Nikolai Gogol, Franz Kafka. Go to them. They also had excellent prose, which in many cases became a living part of the story, a means of immersion and involvement and insight that Hemingway never achieved with his words.

This is the perfect collection to drop you into the delicate confines of slumber.