I think you’ll be happier with what is still come in the collection.

I’ve got no prior Hemingway experience, and not all that much knowledge of his rep, either. So I didn’t know to look for subtext, nor was I primed to expect subtext and subtext. Which is good, I guess, because yeah, I didn’t find any.

I’ll agree with the unnecessaries — though I liked the way the lion POV’s were written, they didn’t fit the tale at all, and the telling of Macomber’s lion-inspired cowardice was so obviously unneeded that I actually forgot that Hemingway had prompted us that it was a flashback — I thought for part of it that I was reading about a second sad lion encounter. Either way, it makes no overall difference.

Maybe this is a story that would be better read with some better knowledge of the Hemingway way. Is he normally so mean to his characters? Macomber himself is, I think, fairly sympathetic in his cowardice (afraid of a charging lion? Yeah, what a sissy), but his wife is vile. While the wee bit of detail we get about the already-in-progress deterioration of their marriage was enough to keep me from shouting “misogyny,” she really comes off as written by someone who doesn’t think too highly of the ladies. A cruel, twist-the-knife wench.

The meanness towards Macomber is, of course, giving him his little victory then knocking his so very down. And Wilson is a cool enough guy, but a supreme dick, too.

For all the flaw and pointlessness of certain aspects of the story (the story as a whole, even), the talent and skill of the writer are nonetheless evident in individual lines, turns of phrase here and there. But that’s a pretty huge duh, to say that Ernest Hemingway has some chops. You know who else I hear is good? This Shakespeare guy.