THE Nick Adams STORIES

Read THE Nick Adams STORIES Online

Authors: ERNEST HEMINGWAY

BOOK: THE Nick Adams STORIES

2.64Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

THE Nick Adams STORIES

By
ERNEST HEMINGWAY

PREFACE BY PHILIP YOUNG

SCRIBNER
New YorkÂ Â LondonÂ Â TorontoÂ Â Sydney

1972 The Ernest Hemingway Foundation

1972 Charles Scribner's Sons

1969 Mary Hemingway

1933 Charles Scribner's Sons;

1961 Mary Hemingway

1925 Charles Scribner's Sons;

1953 Ernest Hemingway

1927 Charles Scribner's Sons;

1955

1927 Charles Scribner's Sons;

1955 Ernest Hemingway

1927 Macaulay Company

1955 Ernest Hemingway

First Scribner trade paperback edition 2003

THE NICK ADAMS STORIES

BOOKS BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY

NOVELS

The Torrents of Spring

The Sun Also Rises

A Farewell to Arms

To Have and Have Not

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Across the River and Into the Trees

The Old Man and the Sea

Islands in the Stream

The Garden of Eden

True at First Light

A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition

STORIES

In Our Time

Men Without Women

Winner Take Nothing

The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War

The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories

The Nick Adams Stories

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

NONFICTION

Death in the Afternoon

Green Hills of Africa

Selected Letters 1917-1961

A Moveable Feast

The Dangerous Summer

Dateline: Toronto

By-Line: Ernest Hemingway

A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition

ANTHOLOGIES

On Writing

Hemingway on Fishing

Hemingway on Hunting

Hemingway on War

SCRIBNER
1230 Avenue of the Americas
NewYork, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living ordead, is entirely coincidental.

Preface by Philip Young

Publication of the eight previously unpublished pieces in this book is the result of a gift of the English-language rights by Mary Hemingway to The Ernest Hemingway Foundation.

First Scribner trade paperback edition 2003

SCRIBNER
and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales: 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected]

Manufactured in the United States of America

37Â Â 39Â Â 40Â Â 38Â Â 36

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 77-159759

ISBN-13: 978-0-684-16940-8

eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-8842-2

ISBN-10: Â Â Â 0-684-16940-1

Half-title page decoration by Walter Ferro

PREFACE

“Of the place where he had been a boy he had written well enough. As well as he could then.” So thought a dying writer in an early version of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” The writer of course was Hemingway. The place was the Michigan of his boyhood summers, where he remembered himself as Nick Adams. As well as he could write then was very well indeed.

Until now, however, the stories involving Nick have always appeared so many to a book, in jumbled sequence. As a result the coherence of his adventures has been obscured, and their impact fragmented. In
Men Without Women
, Hemingway's second collection of stories, Nick appears first as a soldier in Italy, next as an adolescent in Summit, Illinois, then in turn as a younger boy in Michigan, a married man in Austria, and a soldier back in Italy. Or consider the trouble with “Big Two-Hearted River,” one of the best-known Hemingway stories. Placed where it wasâat the end of
In Our Time
, the first collectionâit puzzled a good many readers. Put where it goes chronologically, following the stories of World War I, its submerged tensionsâthe impression that Nick is exorcising some nameless anxietyâbecome perfectly understandable. But “A Way You'll Never Be,” which precedes “Big Two-Hearted River” in time and explains it, was published eight years and several books after it.

Arranged in chronological sequence, the events of Nick's life make up a meaningful narrative in which a memorable character grows from child to adolescent to soldier, veteran, writer, and
parentâa sequence closely paralleling the events of Hemingway's own life. In this arrangement Nick Adams, who for a long time was not widely recognized as a consistent character at all, emerges clearly as the first in a long line of Hemingway's fictional selves. Later versions, from Jake Barnes and Frederic Henry to Richard Cantwell and Thomas Hudson, were all to have behind them part of Nick's history and, correspondingly, part of Hemingway's.

As is true for many writers of fiction, the relationship between Hemingway's work and the events of his own life is an immediate and intricate one. In some stories he appears to report details of actual experience as faithfully as he might have entered them in a diary. In others the play of his imagination has transformed experience into a new and different reality. Exploring the connections between actuality and fiction in Hemingway can be an absorbing activity, and readers who wish to pursue it are referred to the biographical studies listed at the end of this preface. But Hemingway naturally intended his stories to be understood and enjoyed without regard for such considerationsâas they have been for a long time.

The first Nick Adams fiction appeared almost a half-century ago, the last in 1933, and over the years a great deal has been written about it. Among the unpublished manuscripts Hemingway left behind him, however, eight new contributions to the over-all narrative were discovered. Presented here for the first time, inserted in the places in time where the events fall, they are varied in length and apparent purpose. Three accountsâof how the Indians left the country of Nick's boyhood, of his first sight of the Mississippi, and of what happened just before and after his weddingâare quite brief. If the author had larger plans for any of them, such are unknown; they might be read simply as sketches in an artist's notebook. In two other cases his plans are self-evident, for here we have the beginnings of works that were never completed. Nick on board the
Chicago
, bound for France during World War I, was the start of a novel called
Along with Youth
that was abandoned long ago. Similarly, though much later, the plot of “The Last Good Country” was left in mid-air, and many pages would have been required to resolve it. Two other pieces are known to have originated in Nick
stories already published. “Three Shots” tells how the young boy became frightened while on a camping trip. It once preceded the story called “Indian Camp.” And Nick's “stream of consciousness” reflections on his writing career once (anachronistically) concluded “Big Two-Hearted River.” Of these new works only “Summer People,” very likely the first fiction Hemingway wrote about Nick Adams, can be regarded as a full-length, completed story.

To distinguish them from previously published works, all the new materials in this book have been printed in a special “oblique” type. If the decision to publish them at all is questioned, justification is available. For one thing, the plan for rearranging the Nick Adams stories coherently benefits from material that fills substantial gaps in the narrative. Further, all this new fiction relates in one way or another to events in the author's life, in which his readers continue to be interested. Last and most important is the fact that these pieces throw new light on the work and personality of one of our foremost writers and genuinely increase our understanding of him. The typography suggests an oblique introduction, but a warm reception is expected.

â
PHILIPYOUNG

BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES

BAKER, CARLOS
.
Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story
. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969.

HEMINGWAY, LEICESTER
.
My Brother, Ernest Hemingway
. New York: World Publishing Company,1962.

MONTGOMERY, CONSTANCE CAPPEL
.
Hemingway in Michigan
. New York: Fleet Press Corporation,1966.

SANFORD, MARCELLINE HEMINGWAY
.
At the Hemingways: A Family Portrait
. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1962.

CONTENTS

The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife