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Out of Season
Three Stories & Ten Poems. A couple follows a guide to fish when they know the season is closed. The walk gives you time to hear what husband and wife will discuss with each other, and what they can only say when the guide is out of range. The point of the day keeps shifting between them.
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Up in Michigan
Three Stories & Ten Poems. Liz works at a boardinghouse and takes to watching the blacksmith who eats there. Stay with what she notices on the walk down to the dock and how he ignores her objections there. It’s a brief, painful story that gives weight to her attraction and to the coercion she faces.
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The Undefeated (2005)
Published
Men Without Women. Manuel asks for work in the bullring after getting only one fight that year. He bargains for the chance while the people around him figure their own odds. The negotiations give you a way into the story even if you know little about bullfighting.
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Fifty Grand
Men Without Women. Jack Brennan is preparing for a prizefight. His trainer notices the money talk and the jokes long before there’s much action in the ring. Read it if you want Hemingway’s ear for working men talking about a job they can’t afford to lose.
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The Capital of the World
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. A young waiter in Madrid practices bullfighting with another hotel worker and puts his moves to the test. The equipment tells you how much room the boy has to pursue what he wants. What starts as a makeshift rehearsal is one of Hemingway’s sharpest stories about taking play seriously.
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The Sea Change
Winner Take Nothing. A man and a woman talk in a bar with a change in their relationship already in motion. He keeps trying to find a name for what’s happening and she objects to the whole idea. A bartender thinking about a horse race gives their conversation an unexpected second angle.
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A Canary for One
Men Without Women. On a train to Paris, an American woman talks about the canary she’s bringing home to her daughter. Listen to how certain she is that she understands the people sitting with her. The bird makes a better traveling companion than anybody’s advice.
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A Natural History of the Dead
Winner Take Nothing. The narrator adopts a naturalist’s voice to describe battlefield deaths, then a doctor has to deal with someone who’s still alive. Try it for the moment a calm way of classifying what people see becomes harder to maintain.
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An Alpine Idyll
Men Without Women. Two skiers come down to a valley in spring, and the story they hear at the inn changes the feeling of the trip. It’s a good one for readers who like the awful part of a story to arrive through local gossip and a memorable object. The thaw matters more than the skiing.
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The Light of the World
Winner Take Nothing. Two young travelers walk into a railway station full of strangers and hear two women disagree about whether they knew a famous boxer. The loudest story commands the room first. Pay attention to the detail the narrator picks up from the woman sitting next to him.
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Fathers and Sons (1993)
Published
Winner Take Nothing. Nick is driving with his son when the landscape brings his own father to mind. Try it after “Indian Camp” if you want to hear the boy from that story think as a parent. His son has questions about his grandfather that bring those memories into the present.
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The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio
Winner Take Nothing. An injured writer in a hospital has a radio, a nun who cares for him, and a gambler who speaks of what brought him there. Listen to the way each tries to get through the day. The talk of what numbs pain is richer because the room already has several answers.
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Old Man at the Bridge
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. A man sits near a bridge while refugees cross it. The narrator needs him to think about moving on, and the old man can hardly think beyond the animals he’s left behind. Read it for how briefly Hemingway can show the weight of an evacuation from a single place.
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The Butterfly and the Tank
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. A visitor to a Madrid bar squirts people with a toy spray gun during a war. Most of what’s wrong is in the room before anybody reacts. Watch how quickly you stop being able to read the prank as harmless fun.
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