Hemingway's fame seems to rest largely on being the anti-Joyce & on his boisterous lifestyle.  At a time when authors like James Joyce were using denser & denser thickets of language & increasingly nonlinear plots to obfuscate the novel, Hemingway brought a direct reportorial style to his writing.  But, to what end?

This is the story of a loose group of American & British expatriates in Paris & Spain in the 1920's.
They lounge about cafes, drinking wine, bickering, brawling & lusting after Lady Bret Ashley.  None of the characters are at all likable and nothing really happens.

Without delving too deeply into psychobabble, the most interesting facet of the book is that the first person narrator, Jake Barnes, was emasculated during WWI.  Considering the absurdly self-destructive ends to which Hemingway went to prove that he was macho & the widespread perception that his suicide was fueled by self-loathing over his repressed homosexuality, the book is perhaps most interesting as an artifact of his tortured psyche.

(Reviewed:)

Grade: (C-) Orrin C. Judd

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Ernest Hemingway Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Ernest Hemingway
    -ENTRY: Ernest Hemingway (Nobel Prize)
    -ENTRY: Ernest Hemingway American writer (Phillip Young, Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    -FEATURED AUTHOR: Ernest Hemingway (NY Times Book Review)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Ernest Hemingway (IMDB)
    -The Hemingway Society
    -The Hemingway Project
    -VIDEO INDEX: Ernest Hemingway (YouTube)
    -INDEX: Ernest Hemingway (LitHub)
    -PAPERS: Ernest Hemingway Collection (John F. Kennedy Library)
    -INDEX: ‘ernest hemingway” (Commentary)
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    -INTERVIEW: Ernest Hemingway, The Art of Fiction No. 21 (Interviewed by George Plimpton, Issue 18, Spring 1958, Paris Review)
    -WIKIPEDIA: Big Two-Hearted River
    -WIKIPEDIA: Nick Adams (character)
    -WIKIPEDIA: Iceberg Theory
    -STORY: Big Two-Hearted River by Ernest Hemingway
    -GOOD READS: Big Two-Hearted River
    -AUDIO: Big Two-Hearted River (neuralsurfer)
    -VIDEO INDEX: Big Two-Hearted River (YouTube)
    -PODCAST: James Plath on "Big Two-Hearted River" (One True Podcast, The Hemingway Society)
    -ESSAY: The Art of the Short Story (Ernest Hemingway)
    -ESSAY: “My Life in the Bull Ring with Donald Ogden Stewart” (Ernest Hemingway on October 25, 2013, Vanity Fair)
    -RADIO DRAMA: Ernest Hemingway The Old Man And The Sea (The Friday Play, 11th Jun 1999, 21:00 on BBC Radio 4)
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    -FILM: Hemingway (Ken Burns, PBS)
    -INTRODUCTION: Solving the Mystery of Hemingway’s ‘Big Two-Hearted River’: John Maclean writes the foreword to Hemingway’s early masterpiece in the recently published ‘Centennial Edition' (John N. Maclean, 5/26/23, Mountain Journal)
    -ESSAY: Revisiting Hemingway’s pre-novel musings: Ernest Hemingway had a lifelong passion for fly fishing, the subject of his fictional short story “Big Two-Hearted River,” which was recently reissued with a foreword by author John N. Maclean and art by illustrator Chris Wormell for its centennial anniversary. (BILL CASTANIER, 7/07/23, Lansing City Pulse)
    -ESSAY: Haunting On the Big Two-Hearted (Richard Behm, May 3, 2022, Sporting Classics Daily)
    -ESSAY: One-hundred years on: Ernest Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” (Mike Dillon, Dappled Things)
    -ESSAY: FISHING FOR STORIES: WHAT "BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER" IS REALLY ABOUT (Robert Paul Lamb, Summer 1991, Modern Fiction Studies)
    -ESSAY: ANALYSIS: “Big Two-Hearted River” (1925) ( Michael Hollister, AmerLit)
    -ESSAY: Annotation by Olivia Dubiel
    -ESSAY: Hemingway 100: Fishing the Big Two-Hearted River (Dan Rodricks, 7/10/19)
    -ESSAY: Landscapes of the Mind: "Big Two-Hearted River" (William Adair, Spring 1977, College Literature)
    -ESSAY: Hemingway as Craftsman: Revising "Big Two-Hearted River" (John Beall, Spring 2017, Hemingway Review)
    -ESSAY: Short Story Wednesdays: “Big Two-Hearted River” by Hemingway (Will McDavid, 1.30.13, Mockingbird)
    -ESSAY: “There Were Many Indians in the Story”: Hidden History in Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” (Philip Melling, Spring 2009, Hemingway Review)
    -ESSAY: Everything Old Is New Again: A Century of Ernest Hemingway's "Big Two Hearted River" (Bob DeMott, 1 July 2024, Upland Almanac)
    -ESSAY: Inventing Nature in “Big Two-Hearted River” (Marie-Christine Agosto, Autumn 2007, Journal of the Short Story in English)
    -LECTURE: Under the Surface-Hemingway's Short Stories: Big Two Hearted River: In the last of a three-part series highlighting Ernest Hemingway’s short stories, scholar Ted Dyer looks under the surface to examine three thematically linked Nick Adams stories. (Ted Dyer. Hailey Public Library)
    -ESSAY: Life and Death on the Big Two Hearted River: A young veteran seeks relief from PTSD in the Michigan wilderness (Dr. Lorin Swinehart, October 2021, El Ojo del Lago)
    -ESSAY: Ready-Made Boys: A Collision of Food and Gender in Ernest Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” (Eijun SENAHA, 2010, The Japanese Journal of American Studies)
    -ESSAY: Feeling Transcends Language In Hemingway’s “BigTwo-Hearted River” (Ryder Lamb, 2009, Prologue)
    -ESSAY: 10 CRITICS DISCUSS: “Big Two-Hearted River” (1925)
    -ESSAY: Returning to Nature: An Eco-critical Study of “Big Two-Hearted River” (Yufeng Wang, July 2019, Journal of Language Teaching and Research)
    -ESSAY: In Pursuit of Papa (Roger Pinckney, Feb 17, 2025, Sporting Classics Daily)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: A Good Weapon: Hemingway’s Men at War (Jeffrey Meyers, London Magazine)
    -POEM: An Elegy For Ernest Hemingway (Thomas Merton)
    -ESSAY: A Great and Tainted Genius: There’s the greatest writer of the last century and wanderings across the continents with gun and rod, and it begins in 1951 just outside Havana (Roger Pinckney | Jun 5, 2023, Sporting Classics Daily)
    -ESSAY: 11 Brilliant Hemingway Quotes: Hunting & Fishing (Sporting Classics Daily | Sep 23, 2021)
    -ESSAY: Hemingway on War and Its Aftermath (Thomas Putnam, Spring 2006, Prologue)
    -ESSAY: Hemmingway’s Tip Of The Iceberg: Omit What the Reader Knows (FC Malby, 2/01/13)
    -ESSAY: The “Theory of Omission” in Writing | Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory (Sara A. Noë, October 31, 2021, On the Cobblestone Road)
    -ESSAY: Writing Matters: Hemmingway’s Iceberg Theory (Rachel Funk Heller)
    -ESSAY: The War in “Big Two-Hearted River” (Professor Allen Josephs, The Hemingway Project)
    -ESSAY: A Story of Regeneration - Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River" (Brandon Caro, World War 1 Centennial)
    -ESSAY: Recuperative Power of Nature and Recollection: Analysis of 'Big Two-Hearted River' by Ernest Hemingway (Muhammad Furqan, 17 Jun 2020, Electronic Research Journal of Literature)
    -ESSAY: Form and Idea in Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River" (Barbara Korn, October 1967, The English Journal)
    -ESSAY: Big Two-Hearted River – Hemingway Revisited (Mikel B. Classen On The Road)
    -ESSAY: Hemingway as Craftsman: Revising “Big Two-Hearted River” (John Beall, Spring 2017, The Hemingway Review)
    -ESSAY: “I, Also, Am in Michigan”: Pastoralism of Mind in Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” (Sarah Mary O’Brien, Spring 2009, The Hemingway Review)
    -ESSAY: Nick's Story in Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River" (Paul Victor Anderson, Fall 1970,? Studies in Short Fiction)
    -ESSAY: Hemingway's "big two-hearted river": nick's psychology of mental control (Mark Cirino, Spring 2011, Papers on Language & Literature)
    -ESSAY: “A War of Righteousness”: The Disillusionment of Ernest Hemingway (Miles Smith, November 17th, 2014, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Hedonism in Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” (Christine Norvell, March 5th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Ernest Hemingway was a brilliant writer and a terrible person. Discuss. (Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, April 09, 2021, America)
    -ESSAY: Hemingway, Finally, or a Review of Some Basic Assumptions: Finally, in bocca al toro (Michael Fertik, Jun 21, 2022, Finally)
    -ESSAY: Ken Burns's Documentary Shines a New Light on Ernest Hemingway (The National Book Review)
    -ESSAY: Finding Hemingway: Seeing the Self Behind the Self-Mythologizer: Alex Thomas on Lynn Novick and Ken Burns’s New Documentary (Alex Thomas, April 14, 2021, LitHub)
    -ESSAY: The Analysis of Hemingway and His Tough Man Spirits (Desheng Chen, Zhihao Huang, Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Art Studies: Science, Experience, Education)
    -ESSAY: Jane Mason: Hemingway’s Femme Fatale (Tom Davis, Jan 28, 2025, Sporting Classics Daily)
    -ESSAY: Of Course It Kills Them: The secret inspiration for Ernest Hemingway’s greatest novel (Amanda Vaill, January 4, 2025, AirMail)
    -ESSAY: Executing the Ministers: the young Hemingway and a Greek tragedy (Jeffrey Meyers, 10/31/21, The Article)
    -ESSAY: The Old Writer and the Sea of Words: Hemingway’s Ultimate Metaphor (Robert Kmita, 6/11/24, Voegelin View)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Hemingway’s Consolations: It’s preposterous to think of Hemingway, with his best sellers and personal celebrity, as a writer’s writer. But is it possible that this might be the best description of his status today? (Elaine Blair, September 23, 2021 issue, NY Review of Books)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: HEMINGWAY'S POLITICS WERE NO SECRET—JUST READ HIS ONLY CRIME NOVEL: To Have and Have Not, Hemingway's patchwork Depression-era crime novel, was the story of one man's radicalization (DAVID MASCIOTRA, JANUARY 5, 2021, Crime Reads)
    -ESSAY: A Death in the Afternoon (Tobias Wolff, February 20, 2021, The New Yorker)
    -ESSAY: When Ernest Hemingway Hunted Nazi U-Boats in the Caribbean: Hemingway the novelist got the story he wanted, even if Hemingway the sub chaser failed to net his prey. (Warfare History Network, 2/05/21)
    -INTERVIEW: Ken Burns Talks to Jacobin About the Radical Ernest Hemingway: From fighting alongside communists in the Spanish Civil War to backing revolutionaries in Cuba, documentarian Ken Burns shows us the radical side of writer Ernest Hemingway in the new PBS docuseries Hemingway. Burns talks to Jacobin about Hemingway’s forgotten left-wing politics and why the writer still matters. (Ed Rampell, 3/23/21, Jacobin)
    -PROFILE: The Moods of Ernest Hemingway (Lillian Ross, May. 6th, 1950, The New Yorker)
    -ESSAY: Papa’s Cuba: Hemingway’s Home Away from Home (Wayne Curtis, Mar 7, 2025, Sporting Classics Daily)
    -ESSAY:Ernest Hemingway: The Early Years (1939-1948) (Dr. David M. Svinarich, Apr 5, 2024, Sporting Classics Daily)
    -ESSAY: William Faulkner’s Review of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1952) (Open Culture)
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    -STUDY GUIDE: Big Two-Hearted River (SuperSummary)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Big Two-Hearted River (Cliff Notes)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Big Two-Hearted River (SparkNotes)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Big Two-Hearted River (LitCharts)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Big Two-Hearted River (Quizlet)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Big Two-Hearted River (Novel Guide)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Big Two-Hearted River (eNotes)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Big Two-Hearted River (Schmoop)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Big Two-Hearted River (Course Hero)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Big Two-Hearted River (Study Corgi)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s Stories (NASRULLAH MAMBROL, November 27, 2019, Literary Theory and Criticism)
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    -REVIEW INDEX: Erenest Hemingway (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW INDEX: Ernest Hemingway (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of Big Two-Hearted River (Beer Thrillers)
    -REVIEW: of Big Two-Hearted River (Can’t Explain)
    -REVIEW: of Big Two-Hearted River (Rick Risemberg, Crow Tree Books)
    -REVIEW: of Big Two-Hearted River (Ghislain Pfersdorff)
    -REVIEW: of Big Two-Heated River (Looking for a Good Book)
    -REVIEW: of Big Two-Heated River (Epicurean Dealmaker)
    -REVIEW: of Big Two-Heated River (Mike England, Outside Bozeman)
    -REVIEW: of Big Two-Heated River (Mirror with Clouds)
    -REVIEW: of The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway (RICHARD R. LINGEMAN, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of The Nick Adams Stories (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (Lotz in Translation)
    -REVIEW: of Complete Short Stories (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of The Complete Short Stories (Literary Fictions)
    -REVIEW: of The Complete Short Stories (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway (D. H. Lawrence)
    -REVIEW: of In Our Time (NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of In Our Time (Matthew J. Richardson)
    -REVIEW: of In Our Time (George Saunders, Center for Fiction)
    -REVIEW: of In Our Time (Bookshelves of Doom)
    -REVIEW: of In Our Time (Michael Hollister, AmerLit)
    -REVIEW: of In Our Time (
    -REVIEW: of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (Robert Gorham Davis, September 7, 1952, NY Times) )
    -REVIEW: of Across the River and into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway (Philip Rahv, Commentary)
    -REVIEW: of Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises & Other Writings, 1918–1926, Edited by Robert W. Trogdon (Frank Freeman, University Bookman)
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    -REVIEW: of Hemingway’s Art of Revision: The Making of the Short Fiction By John Beall (Sean C. Hadley, University Bookman)
FILM
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    -REVIEW: How to Tackle a Bullying, Alcoholic, Racist Named Hemingway: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick portray an insecure, vain, depressed, unfaithful, visionary modernist in PBS’s “Hemingway”, and reframe his complicated place in the literary canon. (Scott Porch, Daily Beast)
    -REVIEW: How Much Do We Still Owe to Ernest Hemingway?: He changed American fiction, and then America moved on. (LAURA MILLER, APRIL 05, 2021, Slate)
    -REVIEW: The Many Paradoxes of Ernest Hemingway (KYLE SMITH, National Review)
    -REVIEW: Finding Hemingway: Seeing the Self Behind the Self-Mythologizer: Alex Thomas on Lynn Novick and Ken Burns’s New Documentary (Alex Thomas, April 14, 2021, Lit Hub)
    -REVIEW: Hemingway’s American Life And Death: Ken Burns’s six-hour PBS documentary on the master of sparing prose misreads his relation to the nation and the world. (Declan Leary, American Conservative)
    -REVIEW: Busting the Hemingway myth: A new documentary breaks new ground by exploring the American writer’s mental health and gender fluidity—but it still doesn’t go far enough (Lucinda Smyth, June 29, 2021, Prospect)
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Book-related and General Links:
    -Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, IL
    -Timeless Hemingway
    -The Hemingway Resource Center, v2.0
    -G Files: Subject: Ernest Miller Hemingway (APB Online)
    -Michigan In Hemingway: A Sense of Place
    -Hemingway Sites on the Net
    -The Hemingway Collection
    -Kansas City Star Stories by Ernest Hemingway
    -The Papa Page
    -Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center
    -Hemingway Society
    -Authors Online: Ernest Hemingway  (Book Spot)
    -INTERVIEW: At Lunch with Ernest Hemingway (The Atlantic)
    -Tracking Hemingway: Atlantic articles from 1939 to 1983 -- by Edmund Wilson, Malcolm Cowley, Alfred Kazin, and others (The Atlantic)
    -ESSAY: The Private Hemingway (NY Times Magazine)
    -Wilfrid Sheed: Desperate Character (NY Review of Books)
    -Frederick Crews: Pressure Under Grace (NY Review of Books)