Best Hemingway book?

A Moveable Feast or The Sun Also Rises.

If you like either of these, you may also enjoy books by Graham Greene or James Salter. Similar style. I also disliked Old Man and the Sea.

The Sun Also Rises or Islands in the Stream

"A Moveable Feast" is worth reading just for an account of the writers of Hemingway's time.

Beyond that, your best get is just to try and get a good short story collection...stories like "Snows of Kilimanjaro," "The Killers" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" are excellent.

a farewell to arms. end of thread.

yeah sun also rises can be a little dry. ive never been hit emotionally by a book like a farewell to arms.

Sun Also Rises and Farewell to Arms are the consensus pick for his best novel. His short stories are superior. By the complete short fiction and read them all. They're much better if you read them very slowly. It seems like "Dick and Jane" writing, but he has precise control over his language.

I second the recommendation for Graham Greene. I've always thought of him as a writer who looked at the world, saw much of what Hemingway saw, but still managed to preserve a modicum of hope.

Greene is vastly superior to Hemingway. It's not even close.

Vintage Press wrote:

A Moveable Feast or The Sun Also Rises.

If you like either of these, you may also enjoy books by Graham Greene or James Salter. Similar style. I also disliked Old Man and the Sea.

A Moveable Feast was the first book published posthumously. Hemingway was not happy with the shape of it before he died and asked Scribner's not to publish it. Hemingway's fourth wife, Mary, edited the manuscript after Hemingway's death. While the book is excellent, some suspect Mary excised many passages that made Hemingway's second wife Pauline look more sympathetic. While Pauline and Mary were on friendly terms for years, they apparently had a falling out in the late '50s. As such, Scribner's is about to reissue a new version of a Moveable Feast, a version edited by Hemingway's grandson who worked from the original manuscripts kept at the JFK library in Boston.

'The Sun Also Rises' is a classic and a landmark achievement in American literature. Pay attention to the dialogue, particularly the double entendres and what is omitted. The book is very much about sex. But I believe 'A Farewell To Arms' is his best book.

'Islands In The Stream' was brought out in 1970 and arguably should have been left unpublished. It's not terrible, but certainly not great.

The best book brought out after Hemingway's death was probably 'The Garden of Eden' published in 1986 and 25 years after Hemingway's death. This writing is very good, and the subject matter is very provocative. Hemingway started the book in the early 1940s and worked on it on and off for almost 20 years. It deals with sex and some of Hemingway's obsessions (like androgeny) in a way he never attempted before. Quite interesting.

The Sun Also Rises is probably more readable than A Farewell To Arms, although I like both books very much.

I always make the mistake of liking Jake Barnes--every single time.

Yanqui wrote:

Greene is vastly superior to Hemingway. It's not even close.

I don't agree with that. But I do believe Greene was a great writer too. 'The Power and the Glory' was particularly good.

Some of Hemingway's work centers around war, and some of it centers around social interactions and food and drink. If you like to read about people going to cafes and drinking a lot and speaking clever dialogue and watching bullfights, you should read 'The Sun Also Rises' which is my favorite Hemingway book. 'A Moveable Feast' is also good along these lines. It's by no means the most 'literary' of his works but I really enjoy the portrait of the simple artist's lifestyle in Paris in the 20s, and I come back to this book more often than any Hemingway other than 'The Sun Also Rises.'

'A Farewell to Arms' and 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' are the more war-focused books, along with the story collection 'In Our Time' so if you like soldiers and army hospitals and talk about 'potting Germans' and post traumatic stress disorder (before it was called that), try one of these.

I agree that 'The Garden of Eden' is quite interesting and worth reading. Surprisingly pervy for old Hem.

I've never been a fan of Hemingway, but I'll cast a vote for "A Farewell to Arms" because of its final paragraphs.

The Bare Facts wrote:

Yanqui wrote:

Greene is vastly superior to Hemingway. It's not even close.

I don't agree with that. But I do believe Greene was a great writer too. 'The Power and the Glory' was particularly good.

I don't agree either, though I prefer to read Greene. I'm a big fan of his short fiction. Greene was better for a longer period of time, but Hemingway's best work is probably the most significant fiction of the 20th century. He changed the way we read and write.

I'd suggest "The Heart of the Matter" and "The End of the Affair" by Greene, for starters.

I liked his book about this kid who could not understand math in school. He kept flunking the course and had to take it over and over for many years before finally he got a passing grade. I think the name of it was (are you ready for this?) The Old Man And The 'C"

Thanks for the interesting info about the Moveable Feast update. Look forward to seeing the grandson's version, although I'm not sure how I feel about relatives messing with the originally published works. As much as I enjoyed the Garden of Eden, I didn't feel it could be considered true Hemingway given that someone else finished it off.

Vintage Press wrote:

Thanks for the interesting info about the Moveable Feast update. Look forward to seeing the grandson's version, although I'm not sure how I feel about relatives messing with the originally published works. As much as I enjoyed the Garden of Eden, I didn't feel it could be considered true Hemingway given that someone else finished it off.

That is true to some extent of all the posthumously published work. The last book brought out, 'True at First Light' , about his 1953 safari was probably more Patrick Hemingway's work than his father's. It was awful.

Ten years ago I had an opportunity to view the original manuscript of 'A Sun Also Rises' along with edited chapters by Maxwell Perkins. It was amazing how much Perkins changed. For starters, he completely cut the first 25 pages of the book. But it was still Hemingway's work. It was Hemingway's creation, his art. Perkins understood what he was trying to achieve and worked hard to make it better.

Why don't you like Jake?

I really like Hemingway. I love old man and the sea, but i like the sun also rises more. I have never read a farewell to arms or for whom the bell tolls because i don't like long books and i can't concentrate that long. I love his short stories though. I don't remember the names of the stories, but I have a big book of them and just randomly read them.

east of eden... oops wrong thread.