cover image Hunting Hemingway's Trout: Stories

Hunting Hemingway's Trout: Stories

Lauri Anderson. Atheneum Books, $17.95 (165pp) ISBN 978-0-689-12103-6

This short collection of stories and sketches about Ernest Hemingway and an army of fictional characters who study his work is mildly interesting but lacks the order, tension and overarching theme necessary to form an exciting whole. The author ably surveys Hemingway's views on and experiences with women, other writers, sports, war and sexuality; still, these bits, together with other information provided on Hemingway, don't give pride of place to Hemingway as a major figure in the book. Anderson's stories, alternating with her brisk rundowns on Hemingway lore, detail the lives of Hemingway fans--professors, college lit majors, writers--who compare their families ( `` Pictures''), motivations (``A Short Unhappy Life''), professional lives and relationships (``In a Hot Season,'' ``By the Eggplants'') with those of Hemingway and his characters. Few characters actually learn from the parallels drawn between their experiences and Papa's, and significant ideas presented in his work are passed over here in favor of minor details from his short stories and the legends--exalting or damning--of his turbulent private life. (Sept.)