Book Description
Returning from a Kenyan safari in 1932, Ernest Hemingway quickly devised a literary trophy to add to his stash of buffalo hides and rhino horns. To this day, Green Hills of Africa seems an almost perverse paean to the thrills of bloodshed, in which the author cuts one notch after another in his gun barrel and declares, "I did not mind killing anything." Four years later, however, Hemingway came up with a more accomplished spin on his African experiences--a pair of them, in fact, which he collected with eight other tales in The Snows of Kilimanjaro. The title story is a meditation on corruption and mortality, two subjects that were already beginning to preoccupy the 37-year-old author. As the protagonist perishes of gangrene out in the bush, he recognizes his own failure of nerve as a writer:
Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.
In the story, at least, the hero gets some points for stoic acceptance, as well as an epiphanic vision of Kilimanjaro's summit, "wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun." (The movie version is another matter: Gregory Peck makes it back to the hospital, loses a leg, and is a better person for it.) But Hemingway's other great white hunter, in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," is granted a less dignified exit. This time the issue is cowardice, another of Papa's bugaboos: poor Francis is too wimpy to face down a wounded lion, let alone satisfy his treacherous wife in bed. Yet he does manage a last-minute triumph before dying--an absolute assertion of courage--which makes the title a hair less ironic than it initially seems. No wonder these are two of the highest-caliber (so to speak) tales in the Hemingway canon.

Book details
Paperback: 154 pages; Publisher: Collier (1986); ISBN: 0020518307

Nach meinem 'Status AVL'-Aufruf im Forum hat sich eine Leserin und ein Leser für das Buch gemeldet. Das Buch wird am Mittwoch den 5. Oktober 2005 seine Reise antreten:

1. hank-chinaski
2. Aldawen
3. Release nach belieben...

CU... CT

Came with the mail today, great many thanx to CrazyTabasco for sharing this book!

Phew, this little book was much harder work than I first expected. With Hemingway, every detail is important, and if you miss a single word, you might easily find yourself hopelessly lost. But it was well worth the effort. This is a collection of stories about failure and dying and the way people try to cope with it, and most of them are excellent. My personal favorites are In Another Country and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.

Damn fine book, off by snailmail to Aldawen, enjoy!

Mr. Hemingway's Daiquiri is already mixed, so I think he wouldn't mind to wait a little bit for my attention :-)

Thanks to CrazyTabasco and hank-chinaski for providing me with this book.

After finally reading the last stories I gave it to friend of mine who was interested in getting an impression of Mr Hemingway's oeuvre.