Yeah, my Hemingway experiment may have reached an end. I read his second short-story collection, Men Without Women, and I'm glad I did because I just learned that Murakami Haruki borrowed the title for his latest collection. So, now I'll get the reference, which is half of why I read literature anyway.
But honestly that's all I got out of this book. It just felt like more of the same. Macho bullshit. Crisis of masculinity. I'm not sure he's saying anything new with it. And I suspect he was worried about that, too, because more of these stories are extroverted, flirting with genres - the bullfighting story, but also the boxing story and the gangster story. But at least with the latter, I found myself almost crying with frustration, because Hemingway's contemporary Dashiell Hammett - who I was reading immediately after this - does it so much better.
So I should quit, right? Cut my losses, life's too short, right? I may not be able to, though. In the interest of getting the reference, I may end up feeling like I have to read two or three more. Fair warning.
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