Men Without Women (short story collection)
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| Author | Ernest Hemingway |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Short stories |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
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Publication date
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1927 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| OCLC | 564429937 |
Men Without Women (1927) is the second collection of short stories written by American author Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961). The volume consists of fourteen stories, ten of which had been previously published in magazines. It was published in October 1927, with a first print-run of approximately 7600 copies at $2.
The subject matter of the stories in the collection includes bullfighting, prizefighting, infidelity, divorce, and death. "The Killers", "Hills Like White Elephants", and "In Another Country" are considered to be among Hemingway's best work.
The volume includes the following stories:
Men Without Women was variously received by critics. Cosmopolitan magazine editor-in-chief Ray Long praised the story "Fifty Grand", calling it, "one of the best short stories that ever came to my hands...the best prize-fight story I ever read...a remarkable piece of realism."
Some critics, however—among them Wilson Lee Dodd whose article entitled "Simple Annals of the Callous" appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature—found Hemingway's subjects lacking. Joseph Wood Krutch called the stories in Men Without Women "Sordid little catastrophes", involving "very vulgar people."
Hemingway responded to the less favorable reviews with a poem published in The Little Review in May 1929:
Valentine
(For a Mr. Lee Wilson Dodd and Any of His Friends Who Want It)
Sing a song of critics
pockets full of lye
four and twenty critics
hope that you will die
hope that you will peter out
hope that you will fail
so they can be the first one
be the first to hail
any happy weakening or sign of quick decay.
(All very much alike, weariness too great,
sordid small catastrophes, stack the cards on fate,
very vulgar people, annals of the callous,
dope fiends, soldiers, prostitutes,
men without a gallus)
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