Men Without Women

First published in 1927, Men Without Women is a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway. This collection offers vignettes of life, snippets fleetingly seen as though we were travelling through the scenes of the stories.

This was my first time reading Hemingway, I had always wanted to but had been put off by the reputation of this literary great. I was surprised at how accessible his writing was. Almost brutishly simple yet evocative with an underlying sensitivity and sympathy for his protagonists and the scenes he describes. This writing style disarmed me, unexpected but immediately likeable. Here, I believe, he explores the themes that dominated much of his life, what defines a man? Still relevant today. Hemingway’s definition may be out of date – brutish and toxic –¬ but it does offer us a starting point to ask ourselves the same questions. Every story allows us to peer into the male psyche and question.

Duty and honour are explored in stories such as ‘Fifty Grand’ where the aging boxer is torn between what he sees as his duty as a father and husband and his honour as a successful boxer. In ‘The Undefeated’, the bullfighter Manuel Garcia’s honour spurs him to fight in a doomed arena which, in an almost Kafka moment, sees the bull and the fighter reflected in each other. The straight backed ‘Signor Maggiore’ of ‘In Another Country’ shows us how the constraints of living up to the expectations of being a man, carry their own weight. His many medals cannot stop the inevitable feeling of loss, weakness and despair, he is ashamed of these non-masculine feelings. Even though they are just as much of being a man as are his medals for bravery. I’m not sure he would understand. The expectations of society are just as weighty; the American lady in ‘A Canary for One’ gleefully claims American men to be paragons among men for the loyalty, duty and honor they display, making them perfect husbands. Meanwhile the American man listening to her knows full well that he would not pass her stringent standards. Being a man does not come down to nationality.


CONTENTS
The Undefeated
In Another Country
Hills Like White Elephants
The Killers
Che Ti Dice La Patria?
Fifty Grand
A Simple Enquiry
Ten Indians
A Canary for One
An Alpine Idyll
A Pursuit Race
To-day Is Friday
Banal Story
Now I Lay Me
The Undefeated
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