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THE ULTIMATE ‘WRITER’S BLOCK’ TALE
What’s So Great About Hemingway’s Most Famous Short Story?
Join the conversation in my classic-short-stories club
Critics disagree about which of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories is his best, but there’s little doubt about which is the most famous: “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” which draws on his experiences in Africa and had a movie version with an all-star cast.
The hero of “Snows” laments his lost ability to write as he lies dying of gangrene on an African safari, where he hadn’t properly treated a wound from a thorn. Harry at first blames his literary decline on his wife’s money, which made it easy for him to avoid work.
But what’s really going on here? Is “Snows” just a tale of extreme form of writer’s block, set against the backdrop of one the world’s most celebrated mountains? Or is it about much more than that?
These are some of the questions we’ll be talking about in June in the free classic-short-stories club Susan Lowell and I co-lead at Jansplaining on Substack. You’ll find a link to the full text “Snows” in our introductory post about it, and you can leave your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear your ideas about this classic or our earlier selections, Anton Chekhov’s “The Bishop” and…
