Hemingway on Fishing Book

Even for a Hemingway fanatic like myself who already has the primary sources, this anthology collection of stories, articles and novel excerpts was an enjoyable read.

It places the writing in roughly chronological order with the fishing sketches from the late Paris memoir "A Moveable Feast" becoming part of the first section with the short stories written during the early Paris years that relate to fresh water fishing. The Star & Esquire newspaper and magazine articles in the middle provide a transition from rivers & lakes to deep-sea fishing. The 3rd and final part provides excerpts from the late novels including The Garden of Eden, Islands in the Stream and The Old Man and the Sea.

There are many reasons to enjoy this collection as separate works from the source material. The masterpiece 2-part short story "Big Two-Hearted River" is a pleasure to read at any time. Being able to read the Irati River passage excerpted from "The Sun Also Rises" emphasizes its joyous nature even more than when it is the respite in the middle of the love & death dance of the novel. Having the several-hour struggle by middle son "David" (a roman-a-clef stand-in for real son Patrick) with a gigantic marlin excerpted from "Islands in the Stream" rescues the best passage of that otherwise relatively weak novel. 32 pages of photographs greatly add to the atmosphere.

Sadly, in what is packaged as a deluxe edition, there were still typos in something as often printed as "The Old Man and the Sea" e.g. <"Come on, fish," he sid. But the fish did not come.> on page 234. So points off for that.