The Torrents Of Spring: A Romantic Novel in Honor of the Passing of a Great Race by Ernest Hemingway

by Ernest Hemingway

First published in 1926, The Torrents of Spring is a hilarious parody of the Chicago school of literature. Poking fun at that "great race" of writers, it depicts a vogue that Hemingway himself refused to follow. In style and substance, The Torrents of Spring is a burlesque of Sherwood Anderson's Dark Laughter, but in the course of the narrative, other literary tendencies associated with American and British writers akin to Anderson -- such as D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and John Dos Passos -- come in for satirical comment. A highly entertaining story, The Torrents of Spring offers a rare glimpse into Hemingway's early career as a storyteller and stylist.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literature, American, Novels, 20th Century, Audiobook

Paperback

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle, and outspoken and blunt public image. Most of Hemingway's works were published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works. His writings have become classics of American literature; he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, while three of his novels, four short-story collections and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.

Reviews

[Brian Willis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hemingway wrote this book in ten days in order to opt out of a dissatisfying contract and to sign with Scribner at the urging of F. Scott Fitzgerald (who makes a hilarious appearance in the book). Some have dismissed it as a satirical skewering of the the styles of the modern realists such as Anderson and dos Passos. And yes, while those elements are present, they do not come at the expense of Hemingway himself. For this is also Hemingway's own farewell to his roots: to Illinois and to his debt to Sherwood Anderson. Frustrated that reviewers continued to pin him into Anderson's court, Hemingway declared his independence in this book that is really about the "smallness" of suburban American life (read: Anderson's "Winesburg, OH" and Hemingway's own Oak Park) as opposed to the cosmopolitan experience of expatriate Left Bank Paris and the recent War in Europe. The character of Scripps O'Neil represents the former, and Yogi Johnson is the latter. Scripps has never left his small area of Michigan, and Yogi has been to Europe, participated in the war, and inhaled Paris. Scripps is a dullard who knows nothing of life outside of the beanery where he falls in love twice in a short span to women who talk of high literature but know nothing of experiencing it (an absurd inconsistency present in the authors Hemingway skewers here) while Yogi has fought in the Great War with his right side injured (Hemingway), been to and loved a mysterious woman in Paris (Hemingway), and is looked up to as a good storyteller by two "Indians" who speak absurdly hokey and bad native American speech. While not a masterpiece by any means, it is a quick and humorous read, deeper than it seems at first glance. In it, Hemingway declares independence from his publisher as well as his literary roots, clearing the way for Scribner to publish The Sun Also Rises and establish Hemingway's place in the pantheon of Great American Writers. Recommended for the Hemingway devotee or completist, but probably not for casual readers.

[Nina (ninjasbooks) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found my mind drifting off while reading. Hemingway always hinted in the authors note that something interesting would happen next, but it didn’t feel very exciting to me.

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was no use now. It was no use trying to capture what had gone. What had fled.

[Paul Haspel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The torture of being a rising American literary star in the tumultuous 1920’s must have been too much for poor young Ernest Hemingway. I can think of no other reason why an author of Hemingway’s enormous talent would have written and published the singularly curious, if entertaining, little book that is The Torrents of Spring.

The Torrents of Spring was published in 1926, the same year in which Hemingway published his classic novel The Sun Also Rises – a wrenching study of powerlessness, both physical and spiritual, among American and British expatriates in post-Great War Spain. And yet The Torrents of Spring could not be more different from The Sun Also Rises. The best way to try to explain The Torrents of Spring may be to tell you that it is an extended satire of a literary movement that you may have heard of, and of a specific novel that may not be at all familiar to you.

Let’s look, first, at the literary movement that Hemingway was interested in when he wrote The Torrents of Spring – the “Chicago School of Literature.” Chicago’s explosive growth as a commercial and industrial center in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was accompanied by a comparable artistic and cultural growth. Chicago was the “City of the Big Shoulders,” a place where life was vivid and fast-moving. It was a city where big dreams were dreamed, where vast fortunes were made - but it was also a place of crime and violence, of profound racial and socioeconomic division. In short, Chicago personified, for many, the nation of which it was “the Second City.”

And the city nurtured the growth of a great many talented writers – Nelson Algren, Sherwood Anderson, Gwendolyn Brooks, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, James T. Farrell, Frank Norris, Carl Sandburg, Upton Sinclair, Richard Wright. Hemingway was himself from suburban Oak Park, and he followed the work of the Chicago School of writers with interest, and often with respect – as when he said of Algren’s tough, hard-bitten work that “No one should read Nelson Algren if they can’t take a punch.”

One of the most important writers of the Chicago School, for Hemingway, was Sherwood Anderson – and it is in Hemingway’s complex relationship with Anderson that The Torrents of Spring begins to take shape. Hemingway admired Anderson’s short-story cycle Winesburg, Ohio (1919) for its muscular, no-nonsense prose style, and for the courageous, uncompromising manner in which Anderson peered behind the nice, wholesome, gee-whiz/aw-shucks surface of Midwestern U.S. life to reveal the ugly realities hiding behind that “all-American” façade. Anderson in turn saw Hemingway’s talent and promise, and tried to help the young author along.

But that mutually reinforcing literary friendship underwent a reversal when Anderson published his novel Dark Laughter (1925). The book, a sexually frank exploration of life in early-20th-century New Orleans, was widely banned, and (perhaps not coincidentally) was a best-seller. But Hemingway disliked the James Joyce-style experimentalism of some of the novel’s passages. Perhaps he thought that Anderson was deliberately separating himself from the Winesburg, Ohio-style realism that made Anderson an important writer.

Whatever the reason, Hemingway deliberately wrote The Torrents of Spring as an extended satire of Dark Laughter. Readers of the time could not have doubted Hemingway’s intent, as the first section of the book is titled “Red and Black Laughter.”

At its beginnings, The Torrents of Spring seems as if it will be the story of two men, Scripps O’Neil and Yogi Johnson, both of whom are working at a pump factory in northern Michigan. So far, it might seem as if we are in familiar Hemingway territory – the land of the Nick Adams stories that reflected details of the young Hemingway’s own youthful experiences in Michigan. Hemingway’s stories that featured the Nick Adams character were first presented to the American reading public via the short-story collection In Our Time (1925). A reader in 1926, knowledgeable of In Our Time and taking up The Torrents of Spring for the first time, might have been forgiven for assuming that Scripps O’Neil and Yogi Johnson were going to meet young Nick Adams sometime in the next couple of pages, especially after reading a passage like this one, from the beginning of Chapter 6:

Scripps O’Neil was looking for employment. It would be good to work with his hands. He walked down the street, away from the beanery and past McCarthy’s barber shop. He did not go into the barber shop. It looked as inviting as ever, but it was employment Scripps wanted. He turned sharply around the corner of the barber shop and onto the main street of Petoskey. It was a handsome, broad street, lined on either side with brick and pressed-stone buildings. Scripps walked along it toward the part of town where the pump-factory stood. At the door of the pump-factory, he was embarrassed. Could this really be the pump-factory? (p. 27)

The theoretical reader mentioned above might well have expected, at this point, to see young Nick Adams walking down that Petoskey street, and providing, in response to a question from Scripps, a reassuring, “Yes, sir, that’s the pump-factory, all right.”

But Nick Adams is nowhere to be found here, and The Torrents of Spring strays a long way from the no-nonsense, down-to-earth realism of the In Our Time stories. For one thing, there are scattered references to Sherwood Anderson throughout the book. Yogi Johnson reflects at one point that “There was a chap in that fellow Anderson’s book that the librarian had given him at the library that night”, and further reflects, as a veteran of the Great War, that “This chap in the book by Anderson. He had been a soldier, too” (p. 53). It seems to have worked, back then, the same way it might work today if a contemporary author were to incorporate sarcastic references to the work of Dan Brown or Nicholas Sparks.

Hemingway is even more overt in his sarcastic or satirical intent elsewhere in The Torrents of Spring. At times, he steps right out of the story and engages in a bit of literary name-dropping, in the course of which he lampoons absurdism and metafiction and whatever else writers of the time might have been doing that he might not approve of. For instance, Chapter 13 ends with Yogi chatting and walking with a group of Native Americans. And then, out of nowhere, there is an “Author’s Note to Reader” that states, in a perfectly offhand and routine manner, that “It was at this point in the story, reader, that Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald came to our home one afternoon, and after remaining for quite a while suddenly sat down in the fireplace and would not (or was it could not, reader?) get up and let the fire burn something else so as to keep the room warm” (p. 76).

Really, Ernest? Really?

But wait, there’s still more! Hemingway apologizes: “If you should think this part of the story is not as good as it might have been, remember, reader, that day in and day out all over the world, things like this are happening” (p. 76). Truly, Mr. Hemingway? People are sitting down in fireplaces and refusing to get up out of them?

And then Hemingway assures the reader “that I have the utmost respect for Mr. Fitzgerald, and let anybody else attack him and I would be the first to spring to his defense! And that includes you too, reader, though I hate to speak out bluntly like this, and take the risk of breaking up a friendship of the sort that ours has gotten to be” (p. 76).

And as if all that weren’t enough, a “P.S. – To the Reader” expresses Hemingway’s hope that the reader will like the chapter in spite of any possible shortcomings, asks the reader to get their friends to buy a copy of the book, and reminds the reader that he only gets 20 cents for each book that is sold! He even offers to read anything the reader has written and help with rewrites! And he closes with the following conversational bit:

If there is anything you do not like in the book, just write to Mr. Scribner’s Sons at the home office. They’ll change it for you. Or, if you would rather, I will change it myself. You know what I think of you, reader. And you’re not angry or upset about what I said about Scott Fitzgerald either, are you? I hope not. Now I am going to write the next chapter. Mr. Fitzgerald is gone and Mr. Dos Passos had gone to England, and I think I can promise you that it will be a bully chapter. At least, it will be just as good as I can write it. We both know how good that can be, if we read the blurbs, eh, reader? (p. 77)

Well, what the hell, Ernest?

But do not be unduly alarmed, friend reader (if you will pardon me for speaking directly to you, as Hemingway does in these passages from The Torrents of Spring): I think I know what’s going on.

We all know that the heyday of literary modernism was a time of wide-open experimentation. Some of those experiments, like what Joyce tried in Ulysses (1922), were wildly successful; others, not so much. Hemingway, I think, felt that some of this experimentation – e.g., what Anderson was trying for in Dark Laughter – was unnecessary and self-important, and was taking away from what good literature should do.

Therefore, Hemingway pokes fun at absurdism, with F. Scott Fitzgerald sitting down in the fireplace. He mocks the tendency of some authors to “break the fourth wall,” stepping out of their customary narratorial role and addressing the reader directly – and his use, as chapter epigraphs, of passages from the work of Henry Fielding (who did the same thing all the time back in the mid-18th century, in books like his 1749 novel Tom Jones) may be there to remind the reader that that sort of literary experimentation is not nearly so “new” as some writers of the time may have wanted their readers to believe.

Hemingway also seems to have lost patience with the literary celebrity culture of the time – a time when the doings of major writers were avidly followed, within a small coterie of what might be called literary fan culture, just as movie stars were followed by readers of the glossy Hollywood magazines. This may explain Hemingway’s indulgence in name-dropping throughout The Torrents of Spring -- Fitzgerald, Joyce, John Dos Passos, and others – and it may also explain one of the major plotlines of the novel, in which Scripps O’Neill, shortly after his arrival in Petoskey, meets and quickly marries an older waitress named Diana, and then almost immediately takes up with another, younger waitress named Mandy! What brings Scripps, a writer, close to Mandy? Why, Mandy’s regaling him with anecdotes of “writer gossip” from the literary magazines, of course!

Hemingway paid a bit of a price for publishing The Torrents of Spring. Gertrude Stein, who had done so much to nurture Hemingway’s literary career, knew that Anderson had been comparably generous to young Hemingway, and felt that Hemingway had responded to Anderson's generosity with an act of literary back-stabbing. There were even rumours that Hemingway had deliberately published a “bad book” in order to get out of one book contract and into a more generous one.

Personally, I don’t think that was the case. Even a writer as serious as Hemingway could have his whimsical moments, and I believe that The Torrents of Spring was written and published in that spirit. While it will never replace classics like A Farewell to Arms (1929) or For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) in the minds and hearts of Hemingway’s legions of admirers, The Torrents of Spring certainly gives us an example of Ernest Hemingway trying something different.

[Ben · Rating 1 out of 5]

I first read this book in college, when I was consuming everything that Hemingway wrote and thought everything he wrote was spun gold. Even in that Hemingway hysteria, I hated this book. I thought that as an adult with a better appreciation for the literary world that Hemingway was lampooning I would like it more, and after reading it for a second time, I have no idea why I thought that and want to yell at me from five days ago. It's far worse than I remember it.

Do you need to spend a few hours reading a takedown of Sherwood Anderson? Have you been waiting for Sherwood Anderson to be taken down a few pegs? Do you like reading the phrase, "She was losing him" fifty thousand times? Are you comfortable with lines like "the haunting sound of a Negro laughing"? I mean, sure, you can place this book in some kind of historical context - Hem was trying to get out of his contract and wrote something that would get rejected, it was the twenties, on and on. But how many "historical context" excuses do you need to make this book make sense? Hemingway was meticulous and wrote draft after draft of his work. His drafts and edits by Fitzgerald and Max Perkins are legendary. But, he wrote this supposedly in ten days. There is no chance it was going to be good. He didn't want it to be good. Stop saying it is good. It reads like a college improv comedy sketch with a flimsy premise that drones on for three hours. It's kind of a bummer to see people on Goodreads saying, "This is my first book by Hemingway" and you want to message all of them and tell them about all the great stuff he wrote later, but hey, Hem published the stupid thing. I hope the twenty cents per copy that he brags about in one of the idiotic author's notes was worth it.

Boooooooo

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is Hemingway publicly mocking his friend and mentor, Sherwood Anderson. It is a harsh thing to insult the person to which you owe your first publishing deal, as well as much of your writing style, but if you have read much of the biographical material on Hemingway, you will know that he was a hugely selfish and egotistical person. The manuscript was later used to break from his publisher (the same as Anderson's) for a better deal from Scribner's.

But it is funny. Funny mostly due to it's absurd quality, not because it is a good critique of Anderson.

This is one of his very few books set in America. He was not very inspired by the place, not often at least, which is a shame, because the Nick Adams tales are the best writing I have read of his. But here we have a more farcical view of Indians than those found in the Nick Adams tales. He clearly saw the Indians as crude, dangerous, idiots - or if they were girls: convenient fuck objects. Well, his characters are usually great charmers of the girls anyway, civilized and savage. Hemingway views the ideas of Anderson as trite and poorly formed. But to my mind, Anderson was simply a man who believed in simplicity, and much of his writing was a striving against the industrial revolution, a brave attempt to notice anything beautiful in the common. Anderson might've overdone it at times, but Hemingway went on to write 'The Old Man And The Sea', a book I admire, but anyone could parody and insult that straightforward story in the same form Hemingway uses to insult his early champion.

Anyway, the book is a little funny, but I notice Hemingway is funniest when he is insulting things, as many authors are I guess. Maybe there was something that happened between them that we will never know about.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a bizarre disjointed story. Albeit with satire of the literary heroes of that era. There is humor. This was Hemingway’s second book and is no masterpiece but did keep my attention.

I am not sure what to make of it. Indians, chinook’s, pump factories, a mysterious bird that miraculously survives. The characters of Yogi Johnson and Scripp’s O’Neil in the cold town of Petoskey in their search of the perfect woman.

[Haytham ⚜️ · Rating 2 out of 5]

رواية همنجواي الأولى صدرت عام 1926، كان قد أصدر قبلها عدة قصص قصيرة. كتبها في عشرة أيام وهي عبارة عن محاكاة ساخرة Parody لبعض الكتاب والأدباء الذين تعامل معهم همنجواي وكانوا مرشديه مثل: شيروود أندرسن وروايته الشهيرة "الضحكة السوداء"، وجيرترود شتاين.

الرواية تعتمد على الجمل القصيرة والأسماء الكثيرة والمغزى الخفي وراء كل جملة وكلمة، تكرار بعض الجمل طوال السرد، بعض الفقرات يتحدث همنجواي مع القارئ! ويطلب منه المشورة. همنجواي كان يهذر ويسخر من البعض ورسالة رفض وانعتاق همنجواي من أساتذته وناصحيه من الأدباء فترة مكوثه في باريس. يعتبرها بعض النقاد ليست ذات أهمية مثل روايته في نفس العام " الشمس أيضًا تشرق"، ولكن يرى البعض الآخر أنها مهدت له الطريق للانتشار في الولايات المتحدة، وكانت حجر الأساس لبقية أعمال الكاتب الكبير، بل تلقي ضوءًا على أعماله التالية.

إذا كنت مثلي تهتم بقراءة جميع الأعمال وبالترتيب الزمني عليك بها؛ غير ذلك لا تهتم ولن تفقد الكثير.

[Roxana Chirilă · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've rated this one star not based on what I think of its literary quality, but based on the enjoyment I felt reading it.

I'm sure it was better when it was written, but this book is a parody - and parody is a very demanding genre. Just like fanfiction, it requires you to know the source material, and well enough to recognize it between the lines. And "The Torrents of Spring" is a parody, something which I would have probably figured out eventually, but which I was happily told from the introduction to the volume, written by David Garnett - a man I've never heard of before today, but who seems to be a decent fellow. Google tells me he was a British writer and publisher who lived between 1892 and 1981.

Anyway, his introduction begins thus:

Thirty-one years ago when I read 'The Torrents of Spring' and wrote an introduction to it, I thought it was screamingly funny. I do not think it so funny now. The reason is that the literary approach and style which Hemingway was parodying had imposed itself on us then and we were delighted to find it ridiculed. Now the joke needs explanation, so that it has lost its topical point.

There's no mention of when the introduction itself was written, but as "The Torrents of Spring" was first published in 1926 and first published in the UK in 1964, I'll assume that Garnett's introduction was written around 1964 - and he would have been around and old enough to read the authors Hemingway parodied back when they were getting published. Even so, thirty-forty years later, the joke had lost a great part of its fun even for him.

Nearly a century after it was first published, I have no idea what the original texts were. I don't think I've heard of Sherwood Anderson before. I certainly haven't read anything written by him - perhaps, had I been American, or had I been more interested in the literature of the early 20th century, I might have, but as it is, I'd need a goddamn companion to the literature and literary atmosphere of the 1920's to understand the finer points.

So what's the book about, when you don't know what it's about? Aka, when you don't know the source material?

Well. It's absurdist. There's a man who likes drinking with his wife and watching trains go by. One night, when they do this, she vanishes, so he just walks off into another town, leaving his daughter behind. You might think this is a touching story. But the sentences are clipped. There's no emotional involvement. He shouts after her. She's not there. Maybe she's gone somewhere. Maybe not. So he walks off. The train tracks are there. He walks. He comes across a bird. He stuffs the bird down his shirt. They walk to a town. The town sign says "Petoskey". He wonders if the town is Petoskey. He looks at the sign. The sign says "Petoskey". Could it be Petoskey? He asks someone. It's Petoskey.

I swear, the second half of the paragraph is exactly what most of the book sounds like. I'm sure it's a parody of something, but I have no reference point. People do all sorts of things and tell weird stories, but it feels like I'm constantly missing the joke and/or not understanding what's said on page.

So, the man who lost his wife gets another wife, but the moment he does, he's attracted by another woman - and apparently, he finds women attractive based on how well-acquainted they are with stories about literature.

Another guy has been in the war and it's left a huge mark on him. He walks around with two Indians (the Native American kind), talking about the war and thinking that he can't get it up anymore, until he sees a naked Indian woman walk into a restaurant.

Occasionally, chapters end with things like "Borne on the wind, there came to Scripps's ears the sound of a far-off Indian war-whoop."

Occasionally, Hemingway adds "Author's notes" addressing the reader and describing things like Scott Fitzgerald coming to his house and sitting down in the fireplace and not allowing the fire to be lit for hours (which, ok, was funny), or begging readers to read and recommend his novel, and promising to read the reader's own writings. I'm not sure where the inspiration to add this stuff came from back in 1926, but it felt oddly familiar to me from reading online stories whose authors often beg for comments, maybe in exchange for leaving comments of their own on the readers' texts. If this had anything to do with what Hemingway was parodying, it would be an interesting instance of author practices coming full circle, but I somehow can't be bothered to find out.

[pedro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well it was quite alright book. it is, according to mighty Wikipedia (God bless it) it was Ernie's first novel. Suffice to say, that a 10 day book, not written with anywhere close to the amounts of Benzedrine Kerouac used to write On the Raod, it's a quite alright book, depicting a part of America, most at the time (I believe) was neglected and deliberately forgotten.

Thanks Ernie, old chap. Looking forward to read more from your work, with a lot more maturity.

[Peiman · Rating 2 out of 5]

خیلی سخته برام راجع به این کتاب نوشتن، تا میخوام بنویسم دوست نداشتم این کتاب رو چشمم میخوره به اسم همینگوی شرمنده میشم :)))) به هر حال من ارتباط برقرار نکردم با این کتاب و لذت نبردم. یه حرفایی زد یه جاهایی جالب بود ولی کم بود. با عرض شرمندگی هر کار کردم نتونستم 3 تا ستاره بدم

[Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder · Rating 2 out of 5]

Contract Breaker
Review of the Dreamscape LLC audiobook edition (February 1, 2022) of the Scribner hardcover original (1926)

Bruce Dudley stood near a window that was covered with flecks of paint and through which could be faintly seen, first a pile of empty boxes, then a more or less littered factory yard running down to a steep bluff, and beyond the brown waters of the Ohio River. - opening sentence of Dark Laughter (1925) by Sherwood Anderson.

Yogi Johnson stood looking out of the window of a big pump-factory in Michigan. Spring would soon be here. Could it be that what this writing fellow Hutchinson* had said, “If winter comes can spring be far behind?**” would be true again this year? - opening sentences of "The Torrents of Spring" (1926) by Ernest Hemingway.

The background story of Hemingway submitting his quickie parody novella The Torrents of Spring to his first major publisher Boni & Liveright in order to break his contract with them, is a lot more interesting than the book itself. Unsatisfied with Liveright's promotion of the 1925 version of In Our Time and tempted by F. Scott Fitzgerald to join him in being also published by Scribner, Hemingway saw a path forward. By writing an insulting parody of Liveright's author Sherwood Anderson's then popular Dark Laughter, Liveright would take offense and reject the work. This rejection would then allow Hemingway to exercise his contractual option to leave Liveright and sign with whomever else he wanted to. Of course Scribner had to then follow through and publish the minor work The Torrents of Spring in order to gain access to Hemingway's breakthrough novel The Sun Also Rises (Oct. 1926).

The work itself is only of slight interest today. Hemingway steals his title from Turgenev's Spring Torrents (1872) and proceeds to insult or mock not only Sherwood Anderson but other early friends and supporters such as F. Scott Fitzgerald (with a story of Scott sitting in a fireplace) and Gertrude Stein (titling a section of Torrents as "The Making and Marring of Americans", after Stein's The Making of Americans (1925). Doubling down on Anderson's demeaning views of Negro Americans and their 'dark laughter', Hemingway demeans Native Americans as well with Hollywood-stylized dialogue of 'heap big trouble' etc. It is cringe upon cringe, and the first major blot on a career that was to have several other missteps alongside the greater works.

I listened to The Torrents of Spring in the recent audiobook edition issued by Dreamscape LLC. To the best of my knowledge, Hemingway house publisher Scribner has never issued an audiobook of this least of the author's works, but Dreamscape presumably snapped it up through its entering the public domain. The reading by Pete Cross was adequate.

Trivia and Links
* Hemingway misattributes (presumably intentionally, as a further insider joke) Shelley's line to A.S.M. Hutchinson (1879-1971), based on the title of his novel If Winter Comes (1921).
** The line is actually from the poem Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).

The Torrents of Spring is in the public domain and can be read or downloaded online from Faded Pages.


The cover art for the Dreamscape LLC audiobook is cropped from the print "Romance at the Gate" by Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886) which was originally used as an illustration in the book Come Lasses and Lads (1884). Image sourced from Pinterest.

[Moniek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jesteś dla mnie całą Ameryką.

Ernest Hemingway napisał pierwszą powieść i już na samym początku przedstawił się ludziom w biznesie jako autor wredny, okrutny, kapryśny i bezczelny. I było to frustrująco świetne pierwsze wrażenie.

Młody autor dokonuje parodii powieści swego mistrza i starego przyjaciela. Opowiada historię dwóch mężczyzn pracujących w fabryce pomp - weterana zmagającego się z impotencją i niespełnionego pisarza nieubłaganie tracącego swe żony.

Dotąd nie trafił w moje ręce Dark Laughter Sherwooda Andersona, więc nie potrafię ocenić, jak satyra i parodia Hemingwaya prezentuje się w cieniu oryginału. Wiem jednak, jak wielką burzę w środowisku literackim wywołała jej publikacja; to książka, która spaliła mosty, ale również pozwoliła młodemu autorowi odrodzić się na nowo. Tłumacz odpowiedzialny za nowy przekład, Adam Pluszka (który nota bene wykonał świetną pracę, wrócę do tego wątku później), w posłowiu odkrywa przed nami historię relacji dwóch pisarzy oraz tło, z którego wyrosły Wiosenne wody. Zwraca uwagę na takie podobieństwa między dziełami, jak wzorowanie męskich bohaterów na typowych postaciach andersonowskich, bliźniacze zabiegi językowe i stylistyczne czy dygresje dotyczące innych pisarzy. Zwraca też lecz uwagę na to, że Hemingway zrobił krok naprzód i dodał do historii i schematu cechy wyłącznie jego. Wiecie, nawet jeśli nie zna się pierwowzoru i tła kulturowego, ta powieść wciąż wywołuje bardzo dobre wrażenie; chociaż chyba nie było to zamierzone.

Wiosenne wody, wraz z tym mrocznym śmiechem odczuwanym w tle, są intrygującą, urokliwą i wyjątkowo dowcipną historię o przemijaniu i niespełnieniu. Bohaterowie znajdują się na granicy absurdu i tragedii, wywołują śmiech, ależ przecież bywają tak ludzcy i po ludzku zagubieni; dokonują naiwnych, niezrozumiałych i dzikich czynów, a czytelnik obserwuje tylko, jak coraz bardziej się oddalają w poszukiwaniu satysfakcji. Hemingway wplata tu wątki, które potem znów będą wracać w jego twórczości, takie jak śmierć, doświadczenia wojenne, impotencja czy nawiązania do społeczności queer. Mimo upartego naśladowania cudzego stylu, znawca nadal rozpozna tutaj Ernesta, nie potrafi się ukryć ze swoją osobowością oraz dialogami jakby wyciągniętymi prosto z serca; jego bohaterowie zawsze są tak pięknie bezbronni. Dodatkowo powieść okraszona jest urokliwymi wspominkami o legendarnych literatach i postaciach kultury; anegdoty o znajomych pisarzach są przezabawne i chwytają za serce. Wiosenne wody są pełne humoru, autoironii, niepowtarzalnej witalności młodego autora oraz jego postawą, wskazującą, że nic tutaj nie jest na poważnie. Unosi się na fali swej opowieści i puszcza do nas oko, bo to na wpół żart. Tylko ukryty w naprawdę dobrej historii.

Zwróciłam wcześniej uwagę na całkiem nowy przekład Adama Pluszki i nie mogę nacieszyć się jego dokonaniem. Jako zagorzała miłośniczka Hemingwaya spotkałam się z tą powieścią już kilka razy i zawsze wydawała mi się bardzo surowa, z kątami ostrymi jakby ciosanymi kamieniem, z potencjałem, ale nie wystarczająco dobrym wykonaniem. Miałam wrażenie, że może jest to kwestia tłumaczenia, i nowe wydanie udowodniło moją rację. Tym razem Wiosenne wody czytało mi się całkiem inaczej; zdania nabrały właściwego, naturalnego rytmu, pobudziła mnie moc środków stylistycznych i zdołałam bardziej niż kiedykolwiek zapaść się w tę historię. Dodatkowo odniosłam wrażenie, że ta wersja jest trochę dłuższa, a niektórych fragmentów wcale nie pamiętałam; zastanawiam się, jakie jeszcze istnieją różnice między przekładami i czy tkwi w moich przeczuciach trochę racji. Bardzo dziękuję tłumaczowi wydawnictwa Marginesy, bo po raz pierwszy tak pokochałam tę powieść.

A po każdym spotkaniu z Hemingwayem miejsce dla niego w mojej głowie i sercu jeszcze bardziej się powiększa. I już tak od 10 lat.

[Mitchelle Rozario · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that gets your heart racing and then suddenly the author cuts you off ruining the moment.
I hated the beginning.... but as the book progressed, I must say, Hemingway and his antics paid off.

[Joseph Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a novella and is extremely short weighing in at 90 pages. The story is dreamlike and surreal. The characters are strange, to say the least. Most of the story is spent in a beanery where characters like Yogi Johnson enjoy hot bowls of beans and odd conversation. It kind of feels like a David Lynch film, especially the Americana of it all...old factories, railroad tracks, and Beans. I loved it.

[Carl Bluesy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was one bad book. It would have been one star if I don’t find it interesting on way its so bad. You get a good look at how big of a jerk I Ernest Hemingway is capable of being in this text. He goes back on promises made by making this story and those people who is helped him in the past under the bus within its text. Anytime I talk about the story I’m sure it will have to do with the story surrounding this novella rather than the story itself.

[Sylvie Spraakman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just funny! I don't even get all the references, because I'm not a 1920s era author, but poking fun at establishment and pretentiousness resonates with all generations.

[Camelia · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5

My small bus book.

All the metaphors in this book went right over my head. I don't think I was the right audience for this. Niche for 1920s pop culture followers...

And one too many author's note for such a small book.

[Wally Flangers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1926 (great year for “Padron” smokers), “The Torrents of Spring” is a short novella and one of Ernest Hemingway’s first books ever published. Written as a parody to Sherwood Anderson’s “Dark Laughter”, this book has had its share of critics and heat from other writers. Even his own wife at the time wasn’t fond of it. According to the “Author’s Notes” within the story (sporadic notes where Hemingway speaks directly to the reader (you and I), providing explanation of various instances that have taken place to help prepare you for whatever is coming up next), he claims he wrote this book in ten days. According to various sources, Hemingway pissed this book out so he could fulfill his obligation with his publisher to end his contract so he could sign with “Scribner”. I never met the guy, so I have no idea if this is true or not. Personally, I don’t really give a shit either way…. I read it, regardless, and enjoyed it for what it was.

The story follows two grown men, who work at a pump factory in Michigan…. The first, a World War I vet named Yogi Johnson…. The second, a literary craving bipolar writer named Scripps O’Neill. Both of these men share one thing in common…. They are romantically desperate as hell and searching for love.

Yogi is free spirited, naïve, and destined to live the rest of his days without a mate. He befriends a couple Indians he runs into on the streets during a night stroll around town and ends up finding himself in a little pinch. Trouble always seems to find guys like Yogi (this applies to real life, as well)…. Perhaps that is why he makes the story interesting.

Scripps comes home from the library one day and finds out that his wife and daughter have bailed on him and he hasn’t been the same since. Although the guy’s portrayed as a douchebag who hasn’t learned there’s no such thing as a flawless woman, keep in mind that his world was turned upside down and that kind of life altering experience is enough to mess up anyone’s line of thinking from thereon out. His desperation and desire to find suitable companionship increasingly grows to great measures to the point where I don’t think even HE knows what he is looking for in a mate.

The two men eventually cross paths at a place called, “The Beanery”…. A place where single women seem to be on the prowl for musclebound studs, but will settle for whatever they can get! It is at this time when one man believes he’s finally found what he’s looking for and the other learns that he THOUGHT he already did, but now realizes he is on the hunt again.

The comical aspects, aside from Yogi getting his ass kicked by a bunch of Indians, are mostly on Scripps end…. As I mentioned, the dude’s bipolar…. He goes from “love at first sight” to “get me the hell away from this boring old hag” within a millisecond. You end up feeling sorry for the women who come into his life and soon realize his ex-wife probably had good reasons for leaving his ass.

I will say this…. If you are heading into this book thinking your gearing up for a literary classic, don’t set yourself up for disappointment. Keep an open mind, and read “The Torrents of Spring” objectively. A lot of people have labeled this book as being dull, amateur, and a waste of time…. But read the book with an open mind, forgetting who the author is or the reviews you have read prior. Pretend it was written by Harley Weewax or someone you’ve never heard of and THEN decide how you feel about it afterward…. Personally, I enjoyed it. I liked the mood, the atmosphere, the coldness of the winter air when Scripps is taking his long walks, the background stories you learn of each character, and the small town life captured around Christmas time. The story was a bit depressing, but then so is life! Look at it this way…. You can read the entire book in one session so even if you don’t like it, it’s not like you wasted weeks of your time in the end. Give it a chance.

FINAL VERDICT: I give this book 3 out of 5 stars. It’s not “The Old Man and the Sea”…. But it’s not meant to be…. If it was longer than 150 pages, I would dropping this rating down to 2 stars. The fact that you can read this entire book on a Sunday morning, sitting on the couch with your coffee in hand and be somewhat entertained, justifies a 3 star rating.

[Michael Bohli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Das nennt man wohl, mit dem falschen Buch in das neue Jahr gestartet. Hemingway war schon lange auf meiner Liste, doch "Die Sturmfluten des Frühlings" war eindeutig keine gute Wahl um in das Schaffen des Herrn einzusteigen. Dieser kurze Roman ist nämliche eine satirische Abhandlung und ein Angriff des Autors auf seinen damaligen Verleger, seine Kollegen und eine Abrechnung mit Teilen seiner eigenen Herkunft. Somit gestaltet sich der Genuss sehr schmal, wenn man die Biografie von Ernest nicht kennt.

Trotzdem, die Geschichte ist irgendwie faszinierend in ihrer Form - mit den kurzen und knappen Sätzen, den Wiederholungen, dem schrägen Umgang mit den Figuren und den angriffigen Bemerkungen des Autoren an die Leser. All dies will sich nicht wirklich zusammenfügen, sperrt sich gegen die Normen und landet dann leider auch etwas zu stark im Rassismus. Klar, die Geschichte muss im Zeitkontext gesehen werden, aber viele Passagen waren für mich etwas zu viel des Guten.

Aber keine Angst, ich gebe Hemingway nicht auf - das wäre hier nicht fair.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an odd, un-Hemingwayesque novella. At times I thought I had fallen into a Nathanael West absurdist comedy. I know Papa wrote it as a parody of Sherwood Anderson, but, not knowing Anderson's work well enough to 'get it,' I still thought this slim book a droll delight.

[Steven R. Kraaijeveld · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious.

[Lewis Woolston · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read a bit of Hemingway now and it seems there are two main categories his work falls into.
There are the brilliant big novels full of action, war, love, life and death. These i love.
Then there is....whatever this was. I do not like this at all.
I don't know if he was just trying to be too clever for his own good or what exactly was going on but this is not essential Hemingway for me. You'd be better off re-reading 'A Farewell to Arms" again than wasting your time on this.
Maybe i'm being overly harsh but when i think about how much i loved his other work i get annoyed that this was so bad.

[Irmak ☾ · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars.

"It was no use trying to capture what was gone. What had fled."

[Anne Menegaux · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was awful, sometimes funny, mostly awful

[Teo · Rating 2 out of 5]

-Scriitura cam fragmentata.(Nu stiu daca e de vina traducerea sau textul in original)

-Din cele 16 capitole ale cartii,pot spune ca mi-au placut doar ultimele 2-3,celelalte nu prea m-au impresionat.Ma asteptam ca,fiind o carte scrisa de Hemingway,sa fie mult mai buna.

[معتز عناني · Rating 4 out of 5]

ارنست همنجواي رمز في قصته بأسلوب رائع الي انسان الفطرة (الهندي ) الذي يأتي ويستبدله سكريسس اونيل في وطنه وهو انسان فقد مبادئه ( هجرتني زوجتي ) فيحتضن الحلم الامريكي ( الطائر الصغير ) برفعة الانسان الذي سريعاً ما يقابل في المطعم ( شهوة الانسان ) الاوروبيين الهاربين من حضارتهم البالية بسبب الحرب ( النادلة البريطانية ) اما عن الأم المفقودة ( الحضارة الانسانية ) واستبدالها بالرجل العسكري (الحضارة العسكرية ) . ثم يذهب سكريسس للعمل في مصنع المضحات العظيمة( الرأسمالية المتوحشة ) التي تنتج الطلقات بجانب المضخات ( الأسلحة والخراب ) الي ان يتحول الطائر الصغير الي صقر !! وتحول الحلم الي كابوس

وتنتهي الرواية دون ان نرى سيول الربيع الأمريكي .. كحقيقة لناهية العرق العظيم الذي تكلم عنه همنجواي على غلاف الرواية

* كان عجيب من الكاتب مخاطبة القارئ مباشرة في فصول الروايةوكان بها بعض الشرح ربما لأنه كجزء من رسالته يريد ان يوصل بان الانسانية لم تعد تفهم كما اعتادت ،،وانطمست الحقائق !! ربما


نقدي هنا يبدو عجيب لمن لم يقرأ الرواية ولكن من قرأها سيتفهم تماماً هذه السرعة والرمزية وعدم استكمال الجمل مع تكرار البعض هو محاولة شخصية مني لاستنساخ طريقة همنجواي في كتابة الرواية

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me laugh outloud, numerous times. It's quite different then most Hemingway. It's not a serious book, it's kinda goofy,and I thought it was great fun.

[Kostiantyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

“What was it about?” is the first question you’ll ask after reading this book. “Oh, it was Hemingway’s first book, it’s blah blah blah…” would be the answer.

Alright. So you need to know the context and at least some of the writings of other authors to understand this short book. Fair enough. Go and learn some more.

But if we talk about the rating of this book, it is interesting for about 1 star. If Hemingway had not written it, it probably would not have been republished. It may not have survived to this day at all.

Well. I’m happy that Maestro rose higher after a low start.

[Jeff Koeppen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was quite the odd little novella. Simply written, and the author / narrator regularly left the events of the book to address the reader in the first person and explain certain points and sometimes go off with non sequiturs. Very odd. The blub states that this book was a parody of The Chicago School of Literature but not being familiar with what that refers to this was lost on me. I could only take this at its face value.

The plot bounces back and forth between two fellows who work at a pump factory and are searching for love in 1920s Michigan. The story is thin and light and felt repetitive at times. It was quirky and never boring, but not much happened. Overall I would say it was just OK. I enjoyed his later works which I’ve read much better.