Hemingway on Hunting

If you are a fan of Hemingway or just adventure and hunting this is a worthy read. It is an easy read and not filled with a bunch of superfluous language. They have pulled together various excerpts from Hemingway on his hunting adventures. It gives you insight to the times he lived and adventures long past. Certainly an easy read. I personally feel Earnest Hemingway is the best American Author of the 20th Century. He lived quite the life and it shows in his writings. Do not judge him by our time but his. Someone will surely get "butt hurt"; however, he was truly a "Man's Man". Give the book a try.

Re-print of various classic Hemingway writings on hunting, or I should say, where hunting is involved. This is a Hemingway book NOT necessarily a HUNTING book! Hemingway like most contemporaries viewed hunting as a normal part of life unlike today where it's marginalized and mentioned only in negative terms in "polite society." This latter day treatment is to bad for current literature as well as society since hunting - as can be seen in this book - can involve all the human emotions. Hemingway did a great job capturing the feelings of the hunt on every level. Taken in the time-context it was written, with different views on such things as eagles (for instance) one can experience the emotion of life on a much more guttural level in the ageless "man-against-nature" struggle. He does a good job of showing that even with all the modern conveniences, that struggle can still be visceral on an individual level without actually concurring nature. One man against one animal. It's not the killing of the animal, but the hunt. The man has the advantage in the former, but the animal has the advantage in the latter and Hemingway explains it well enough.

my only disappointment was that there wasn't more on hemingway himself, who was an excellent hunter, rather than excerpts form his fiction. But still, cracking good stories.

I love Hemingway because he loved the smells, sounds and adrenalin rush of the chase. At the same time he had deep respect for the game and for the powerful life lessons that come through hunting. This book was a thrill to read and very descriptive. I felt I was there beside Hemingway, feeling the excitement of the hunt and the beauty of the outdoors. When a skilled writer pens true to life tales of the hunt, hunters everywhere benefit because the writer can put into words much of what we hunters feel in our hearts.

An amazing collection if you are a sportsman. Written with eloquence and taut pacing. A must have.

Great book for the Hemingway fan

Hemingway was one of the great descriptive writers of the Twentieth Century. He tells hunting stories as few others ever have.

The handsome book contains no new material but is a compilation of hunting-oriented short stories, non-fiction pieces and excerpts from novels. There's a very good scene from "Across the River and Into the Trees" about duck hunting from blinds near Venice. There is a nice selection of photographs of the author with various trophies. One in particular is spectacular showing Hemingway about to fire his rifle at a huge charging lion. The perspective is from just behind Hemingway, his rifle is raised to his shoulder and the onrushing lion appears to be only a few feet away. Another shows Hemingway standing next to same lion, now very dead. The longish short story The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" which is arguably his best short story is included. It tells the story of wealthy American and his beautiful wife on safari in Africa. The title character behaves shamefully during a lion hunt. That night, his wife sleeps with the white hunter to show her displeasure. The next day while hunting buffalo, he redeems himself and proves that he is not a coward, both to himself and to the onlookers. The short happy life of the title refers to that fact that soon after redeeming his injured manhood against the buffalo, his wife accidentally (or perhaps not accidentally) shoots him in the head as a wounded buffalo charges. If you are a fan of Hemingway's you've probably read much of this stuff before elsewhere, the non-fiction pieces may be hardest to find elsewhere. This book makes a great gift for a hunting enthusiast who is not especially literary oriented.

It was free. Who can argue