We need to take a flight back to the USA to pay our respect to this fabulous storyteller. Many of his works are considered as classics of English literature. Nobel laureate Hemingway is a fabulous storyteller who has mastered the craft of telling a story in very simple language, most of his writing is in simple sentences. He has developed a style of describing one thing through entirely different thing which occurs below the surface. Hemingway himself calls this style as an Iceberg Theory (also called a theory of omission). Hemingway liked to tell the story through subtexts, he will not describe the action in a straightforward way, but he will write the things happening around the action so that reader will understand it anyway while reading the story.
You will find a lot of this Iceberg writing in the storybook I am bringing to you as a part of my TBR. I want to read The Nick Adams Stories which is a collection volume of Hemingway’s 24 stories featuring Nick Adams. Though it is published in a single volume a decade after Hemingway’s death, the majority of the stories are previously published in various collections, there are 8 of them which are unpublished before this volume came out in 1972. The book is divided into 5 sections namely “Northern Woods”, “On His Own”, “War”, “Soldier Home” and “Company of Two”.
I reckon these sections will be based on the time in which the stories are written as Nick Adams is partly autobiographical character developed by Hemingway based on the experiences he had when he was serving in Red Cross Ambulance Core in World War 1. The collection spans throughout his writing carrier as it includes some of his earliest stories like “Indian Camp” as well as his best one “Big Two-Hearted River”
It is difficult to get the print copy here in India at a lower price. One available on Amazon is for Rs. 821/-. I am still looking for it in various libraries in the city if I can get my hands on it. I am eager to dive into this classic as it will unfold the entire lifespan of the character as well as Mr. Iceberg Author. Hope you will like the book too.