Big Two-Hearted River

Book Overview: Big Two-Hearted River

A gorgeous new centennial edition of Ernest Hemingway’s landmark short story of returning veteran Nick Adams’s solo fishing trip in Michigan’s rugged Upper Peninsula, illustrated with specially commissioned artwork by master engraver Chris Wormell and featuring a revelatory foreword by John N. Maclean.

“The finest story of the outdoors in American literature.” —Sports Illustrated

A century since its publication in the collection In Our Time, “Big Two-Hearted River” has helped shape language and literature in America and across the globe, and its magnetic pull continues to draw readers, writers, and critics. The story is the best early example of Ernest Hemingway’s now-familiar writing style: short sentences, punchy nouns and verbs, few adjectives and adverbs, and a seductive cadence. Easy to imitate, difficult to match. The subject matter of the story has inspired generations of writers to believe that fly fishing can be literature. More than any of his stories, it depends on his ‘iceberg theory’ of literature, the notion that leaving essential parts of a story unsaid, the underwater portion of the iceberg, adds to its power. Taken in context with his other work, it marks Hemingway’s passage from boyish writer to accomplished author: nothing big came before it, novels and stories poured out after it. –from the foreword by John N. Maclean

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Editorial Reviews

“The finest story of the outdoors in American literature.” — Sports Illustrated

“‘Big Two-Hearted River’ may be the finest piece of fiction ever written about the experience of the veteran.” — The Guardian

“Matchlessly eloquent in its evocation of the pleasures of the senses and of the feeling of place. … In ‘Big Two-Hearted River, ‘ there are moments that are not just constructed like a Cézanne painting; they look like a Cézanne painting.” — Adam Gopnick, The New Yorker

“Some of the best English prose of the twentieth century.” — Larry McMurtry, The New York Review of Books

“In Hemingway, fishing was always and infinitely metaphorical; Nick Adams plumbs the depths of his soul as he dangles a line.” — Jay Parini, New York Times Book Review

“A masterpiece, one of those rare instances when a superb writer reaches a level reserved only for those extraordinary talents with a nose for what is fundamental but not entirely clear and rational in human existence.” — Claremont Review of Books

“Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Big Two-Hearted River’ retains its hold on me, some 40 years after my first reading. It is a story that can be recited and revealed–like currents in a beloved stream–as fresh as each spring day.” — James F. Vesely, Seattle Times

About the Author

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway, a stalwart of American literature, was known for his succinct and straightforward writing style that starkly contrasted with the elaborate prose favored by many of his contemporaries. Born July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, Hemingway melded his experiences as an ambulance driver in World War I, a journalist during the Spanish Civil War, and a deep-sea fisher in Cuba and the Florida Keys, with a dramatist’s eye for narrative to produce works of enduring significance. His novels and stories—among them “The Old Man and the Sea,” “A Farewell to Arms,” and “The Sun Also Rises”—exhibit searing insights into the human condition and earned Hemingway a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Amidst his literary success, Hemingway led a lifestyle often as adventurous as those of his characters. His passion for outdoor pursuits, reflected in his love of fishing, hunting, and bullfighting, is passionately inscribed in much of his work. Later in life, Hemingway continued his adventures as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War and World War II, experiences that infused a dramatic sensibility and an acute awareness of mortality into his writings.

Despite battling physical decline and mental health issues towards the end of his life, Hemingway’s cultural impact as a writer remains profound. His discipline, knack for concise prose, and his ability to weave a compelling, honest tale continue to resonate with readers worldwide. Serving as an inspiration for countless authors, Ernest Hemingway, who tragically took his own life in 1961, leaves behind a literary legacy that continues to shape the landscape of American literature.

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Ernest Hemingway, a stalwart of American literature, was known for his succinct and straightforward writing style that starkly contrasted with...

Big Two-Hearted River

Book Overview: Big Two-Hearted River

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ernest Hemingway

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