What do you think?
Rate this book
Big Two-Hearted River: The Centennial Edition
Ernest Hemingway's landmark short story of a veteran's solo fishing trip in Michigan's rugged Upper Peninsula, featuring a revelatory foreword by John N. Maclean. "A century since its publication in the collection In Our Time , "Big Two-Hearted River" has helped shape language and literature in America and across the globe, and its magnetic pull continues to draw readers, writers, and critics. The story is the best early example of Ernest Hemingway's now-familiar writing short sentences, punchy nouns and verbs, few adjectives and adverbs, and a seductive cadence. Easy to imitate, difficult to match. The subject matter of the story has inspired generations of writers to believe that fly fishing can be literature. More than any of his stories, it depends on his ‘iceberg theory' of literature, the notion that leaving essential parts of a story unsaid, the underwater portion of the iceberg, adds to its power. Taken in context with his other work, it marks Hemingway's passage from boyish writer to accomplished nothing big came before it, novels and stories poured out after it." --from the foreword by John N. Maclean
1 pages, Audio CD
Published May 9, 2023
9 people are currently reading
103 people want to read
About the author
Ernest Hemingway
2,169 books32.1k followersErnest 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.
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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
February 8, 2025
Fun, quick little story
April 9, 2024
(4 star)
Beautiful language in a soft melancholic story.
Beautiful language in a soft melancholic story.
October 25, 2024
Short, simple story of a man going fishing. Seems to have even shorter sentences than other Hemingway stories.
January 4, 2025
Really great, short, and easy read with a great introduction!
May 25, 2024
With Hemingway short stories, you either love or hate the style, prose, economic storytelling. If you are in the “love it” camp, then “Big Two-Hearted River, The Centennial Edition” is a perfect example of all that Ernest Hemingway is. If you are in the “hate it” camp, then this is a waste of time. I happen to love it.
This is a short story about Nick, who has gone off on his own to go fishing in Michigan. It starts with the train dropping him off, a burned-out town surrounding him. Nick makes his way to the river and hikes to a place farther along, where he knows the fishing will be good. He sets up his camp, enjoys his dinner, and goes to sleep. The next day he goes fishing.
And that’s it, that’s the entire story. The beauty is not in the plot, but in the telling of the story, the descriptions, and all that is left to fill in by the reader. With short, insignificant remarks Hemingway makes you ask questions, makes you think about the backstory, makes you wonder what drove Nick to this place, this time. And that is the beauty of Hemingway.
The forward by John N. Maclean is a perfect complement to the story, telling us of how this affected him and a bit of the background of this simple story.
I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from Mariner Books, Mariner Books Classics via NetGalley. Thank you!
This is a short story about Nick, who has gone off on his own to go fishing in Michigan. It starts with the train dropping him off, a burned-out town surrounding him. Nick makes his way to the river and hikes to a place farther along, where he knows the fishing will be good. He sets up his camp, enjoys his dinner, and goes to sleep. The next day he goes fishing.
And that’s it, that’s the entire story. The beauty is not in the plot, but in the telling of the story, the descriptions, and all that is left to fill in by the reader. With short, insignificant remarks Hemingway makes you ask questions, makes you think about the backstory, makes you wonder what drove Nick to this place, this time. And that is the beauty of Hemingway.
The forward by John N. Maclean is a perfect complement to the story, telling us of how this affected him and a bit of the background of this simple story.
I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from Mariner Books, Mariner Books Classics via NetGalley. Thank you!
January 25, 2024
I loved this story when I first read it years ago. I loved the setting and how it set tone and drove emotions as much as place. I had never read Hemingway prior to picking up Big Two-hearted River it served as the perfect introduction to his tight, gripping prose.
Decades later I received the centennial release for Christmas and I can truly say my appreciation for this story has only grown. The new forward by John N. Maclean adds to the edition. Do yourself a favor, read this story and if you can start with the forward. Savor simple, bare feelings along with our hero Nick. Walk with him through the burned landscape where nothing escaped unscathed but the river, and feel with him as he enters the new growth in the meadow and fights fish in the river unscathed by the cataclysmic fire. There is no better story to illustrate the power of the outdoors and its simple ability to engage, impact, move, and if given the chance to even heal us.
Decades later I received the centennial release for Christmas and I can truly say my appreciation for this story has only grown. The new forward by John N. Maclean adds to the edition. Do yourself a favor, read this story and if you can start with the forward. Savor simple, bare feelings along with our hero Nick. Walk with him through the burned landscape where nothing escaped unscathed but the river, and feel with him as he enters the new growth in the meadow and fights fish in the river unscathed by the cataclysmic fire. There is no better story to illustrate the power of the outdoors and its simple ability to engage, impact, move, and if given the chance to even heal us.
September 11, 2024
Context, Place, and Setting
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2023
Art functions on many and varied levels. Art that an age and a nation identify with is particularly nuanced. There are so many places it calls us into, so many spaces it calls us out of, so many things it awakens in us, and so much it gives back and returns to us (like the sound waves of echolocation) over the years. Is this not the raw beauty and attraction of art that draws us in again and again. We never know how we will enter a piece or how we will be when we leave. But, we know we will be changed. This story is that for me.
I love what this very short and singular piece of Americana has opened me to - across the full length of my days. What it put me in touch with – and us; what it demanded of me – and us. For those of us in our 60's and 70’s - this stuff was required reading, and we were forced to wrestle with it to get a grade. I am sure other generations had to as well, but for them I cannot speak. Many of us fell in love with the ambience of the outdoorsperson, writer, and traveler. It shaped identities. Hemingway made it archetypal. But it is more than that, there is that whole underside to Hemingway. The stuff John N. Maclean reminds us, is like Hemingway’s “iceberg theory”, where there are unsaid and essential parts below the surface. Parts that contain a lot of the power of the art and of life. The deep undercurrent and feeling that was beneath everything he wrote. Sometimes you knew what it was - because he told you, and then, at other times you were driven by its unnamed force. But he was good at it.
Seeing the story emerge again in this Centennial Edition, with some sensational engravings by Chris Wormell, has been a treat. I value the research John N. Maclean put into the foreword. Research that helped me understand more about the context, place, and setting – not simply of the story, but of Hemingway both inside and out, and of the community that Hemingway tried to find himself in and out of – all his days. For, if there is anything I have learned about art in general - and writing in particular – is that when we scratch the surface of the context, the place, and the setting we find not just anecdotal soundings (think Hemingway’s sub-surface iceberg and the echolocation that returns to us telling us of it and all that we cannot see) but places in ourselves that respond, react and connect to the art – in this case as readers. These three give us new ways to hold the art. A new way to be because of the art.
Maclean leans into the un-moored life of Hemingway by reminding us that he also (Maclean) had a life-split (in location) he was trying to reconcile early on in his life. Maclean is pulling us directly into the Hemingway narrative and the massive metaphor Hemingway wrote at for his entire career, by reminding us that we are all seeking to resolve the splits of life in our own lives. For surely, everyone has splits in their lives; places where things just don’t come “quite together”. Right there, at the beginning Maclean has given us a peak into iceberg below.
Maclean gives us some fresh detail by giving us the finds he unearthed as he mulled over letters, drafts, and edits from Hemingway at the myriad of libraries he haunted to pull the pieces together for the foreword. This ability of Maclean’s is a gift of his countless years as a dedicated journalist for The Chicago Tribune. This journalistic research is throughout the foreword. One of my favorite streams of supporting material is around the correspondences between Sterling S. Sanford and Donald M. St. John; and then St. John with John J. “Jack” Riordan. This section is essentially a paragraph for the reader. It is “journalese” for, “look here for more information these people corresponded and that correspondence is a trail.” Maclean is a master at leaving us scent.
All of this may seem unnecessary when approaching a piece of art, but context, place, and setting has always been important in art. Not simply for telling us how the art got here, what it may mean, and what the artist was after. But, for giving us clues and a map - both ways in which we may approach and access the true human experience here revealed.
Maclean has related personal touchpoints with the piece, has gotten out into weeds of the river and her branches, has brought together primary source material; and, perhaps his greatest skill as a journalist – given us a peak into the sequence of things (whether events in Hemingway’s life, his stories, and even the Seney fire) and how that sequence opens for us the vista of understanding context, place, and setting. Maclean has given us some amazing ways in which to approach and access this masterpiece of art; this piece of Americana. I know I am the richer for it, and hold Hemingway’s story in a new way.
Read the foreword first. I know others have chosen not to, but read it first. Hemingway’s style which, “is easy to imitate, difficult to match” (Maclean) is covered in simplicity and not often understood for what is unsaid – or below the surface. And maybe that is Hemingway’s fault, who can say. But, his simplicity is not an empty or dumb simplicity. As I heard Maclean say at a recent lecture, “It is a profound, piercing simplicity.” I think it will help you get at a central theme of so much of Hemingway and Hemingway’s Nick Adams, “He felt all the old feeling.”
One of the great ways we connect with this particular piece of art is around a constellation of human thoughts and feelings about what it means to try to process and understand the very lives we have lived; about our striving, desiring, and trying to make sense of life amid all of the conflict it offers up. Hemingway gives us that, Maclean helps us see how Hemingway pulled that off and how it impacts us.
10 people found this helpful
Edit
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2023
Art functions on many and varied levels. Art that an age and a nation identify with is particularly nuanced. There are so many places it calls us into, so many spaces it calls us out of, so many things it awakens in us, and so much it gives back and returns to us (like the sound waves of echolocation) over the years. Is this not the raw beauty and attraction of art that draws us in again and again. We never know how we will enter a piece or how we will be when we leave. But, we know we will be changed. This story is that for me.
I love what this very short and singular piece of Americana has opened me to - across the full length of my days. What it put me in touch with – and us; what it demanded of me – and us. For those of us in our 60's and 70’s - this stuff was required reading, and we were forced to wrestle with it to get a grade. I am sure other generations had to as well, but for them I cannot speak. Many of us fell in love with the ambience of the outdoorsperson, writer, and traveler. It shaped identities. Hemingway made it archetypal. But it is more than that, there is that whole underside to Hemingway. The stuff John N. Maclean reminds us, is like Hemingway’s “iceberg theory”, where there are unsaid and essential parts below the surface. Parts that contain a lot of the power of the art and of life. The deep undercurrent and feeling that was beneath everything he wrote. Sometimes you knew what it was - because he told you, and then, at other times you were driven by its unnamed force. But he was good at it.
Seeing the story emerge again in this Centennial Edition, with some sensational engravings by Chris Wormell, has been a treat. I value the research John N. Maclean put into the foreword. Research that helped me understand more about the context, place, and setting – not simply of the story, but of Hemingway both inside and out, and of the community that Hemingway tried to find himself in and out of – all his days. For, if there is anything I have learned about art in general - and writing in particular – is that when we scratch the surface of the context, the place, and the setting we find not just anecdotal soundings (think Hemingway’s sub-surface iceberg and the echolocation that returns to us telling us of it and all that we cannot see) but places in ourselves that respond, react and connect to the art – in this case as readers. These three give us new ways to hold the art. A new way to be because of the art.
Maclean leans into the un-moored life of Hemingway by reminding us that he also (Maclean) had a life-split (in location) he was trying to reconcile early on in his life. Maclean is pulling us directly into the Hemingway narrative and the massive metaphor Hemingway wrote at for his entire career, by reminding us that we are all seeking to resolve the splits of life in our own lives. For surely, everyone has splits in their lives; places where things just don’t come “quite together”. Right there, at the beginning Maclean has given us a peak into iceberg below.
Maclean gives us some fresh detail by giving us the finds he unearthed as he mulled over letters, drafts, and edits from Hemingway at the myriad of libraries he haunted to pull the pieces together for the foreword. This ability of Maclean’s is a gift of his countless years as a dedicated journalist for The Chicago Tribune. This journalistic research is throughout the foreword. One of my favorite streams of supporting material is around the correspondences between Sterling S. Sanford and Donald M. St. John; and then St. John with John J. “Jack” Riordan. This section is essentially a paragraph for the reader. It is “journalese” for, “look here for more information these people corresponded and that correspondence is a trail.” Maclean is a master at leaving us scent.
All of this may seem unnecessary when approaching a piece of art, but context, place, and setting has always been important in art. Not simply for telling us how the art got here, what it may mean, and what the artist was after. But, for giving us clues and a map - both ways in which we may approach and access the true human experience here revealed.
Maclean has related personal touchpoints with the piece, has gotten out into weeds of the river and her branches, has brought together primary source material; and, perhaps his greatest skill as a journalist – given us a peak into the sequence of things (whether events in Hemingway’s life, his stories, and even the Seney fire) and how that sequence opens for us the vista of understanding context, place, and setting. Maclean has given us some amazing ways in which to approach and access this masterpiece of art; this piece of Americana. I know I am the richer for it, and hold Hemingway’s story in a new way.
Read the foreword first. I know others have chosen not to, but read it first. Hemingway’s style which, “is easy to imitate, difficult to match” (Maclean) is covered in simplicity and not often understood for what is unsaid – or below the surface. And maybe that is Hemingway’s fault, who can say. But, his simplicity is not an empty or dumb simplicity. As I heard Maclean say at a recent lecture, “It is a profound, piercing simplicity.” I think it will help you get at a central theme of so much of Hemingway and Hemingway’s Nick Adams, “He felt all the old feeling.”
One of the great ways we connect with this particular piece of art is around a constellation of human thoughts and feelings about what it means to try to process and understand the very lives we have lived; about our striving, desiring, and trying to make sense of life amid all of the conflict it offers up. Hemingway gives us that, Maclean helps us see how Hemingway pulled that off and how it impacts us.
10 people found this helpful
Edit
May 25, 2023
Sometimes when I've read something a little too flowery, I'll return right away to the opposite: straight, no chaser prose from Hemingway. The danger with Hemingway is that something that's built up and hyped as omniscient and deeply resonant actually appears quite elemental and basic. And that's how I took "Big Two-Hearted River" on this reading. Very good. Enjoyable. But it didn't set off a firestorm -- or in this case, deep pool -- of analysis on every word, every comma. What was Papa trying to say? How did his time in WWI and the "Lost Generation" affect the prose. It's there, sure. But taken on its surface, "Big Two-Hearted River" is a story about silence, simplicity, contentment. And that's good enough for me.
October 26, 2025
Disappointing and unimpressive.
When I heard the title many years ago, I was intrigued. When I discovered that a river, about 5 hours from my home, and one that I intended to explore for a future paddle, was the very river this book was titled after, I was further intrigued. So I read it.
When I discovered that the story takes place not on the Two-Hearted River, but on another river in the general vicinity, I was disappointed. I mean this was fiction, he could have set the story on any river, why not the nearby one after the title.
And it is a very, very, short story. The forward for this edition is longer than the story, and more interesting too. The forward was written by the son of Norman Maclean, the writer of a “River Runs Through It”, a literary fisherman himself.
Now I’ve read Hemingway before, and I am used to his terse writing style, but there is “nothing” elaborate about this story.
Spoiler… And I give that warning somewhat ironically, because there really is nothing to spoil.
A young man eats a sandwich and catches a few fish, then feels better. There really isn’t much more there. There are no detailed or romantic descriptions of the scene. This is Hemingway, a man of few adjectives and adverbs. But you would expect maybe a little character development, or a story, but this lacks both.
Whoever you are reading this, you could write a better story.
When I heard the title many years ago, I was intrigued. When I discovered that a river, about 5 hours from my home, and one that I intended to explore for a future paddle, was the very river this book was titled after, I was further intrigued. So I read it.
When I discovered that the story takes place not on the Two-Hearted River, but on another river in the general vicinity, I was disappointed. I mean this was fiction, he could have set the story on any river, why not the nearby one after the title.
And it is a very, very, short story. The forward for this edition is longer than the story, and more interesting too. The forward was written by the son of Norman Maclean, the writer of a “River Runs Through It”, a literary fisherman himself.
Now I’ve read Hemingway before, and I am used to his terse writing style, but there is “nothing” elaborate about this story.
Spoiler… And I give that warning somewhat ironically, because there really is nothing to spoil.
A young man eats a sandwich and catches a few fish, then feels better. There really isn’t much more there. There are no detailed or romantic descriptions of the scene. This is Hemingway, a man of few adjectives and adverbs. But you would expect maybe a little character development, or a story, but this lacks both.
Whoever you are reading this, you could write a better story.
May 9, 2024
Funny that I selected this book only because I thought it may inspire my new fishing hobby. It is a great intro to Hemingway. The short story is enjoyable, relaxing, and Hemingway is able to put you there — almost as if you were the character fly fishing. The forward by John Maclean is fantastic as he discuss Hemingway and the metaphors in the story.
I am eager to learn more of Ernest Hemingway plus read more of his works as a result of this casual read. I’m already browsing the net to see what I will read next.
I am also curious to learn more about John Maclean (and his father who wrote ‘A River Runs Through It’ that became one of my favorite movies.
I am eager to learn more of Ernest Hemingway plus read more of his works as a result of this casual read. I’m already browsing the net to see what I will read next.
I am also curious to learn more about John Maclean (and his father who wrote ‘A River Runs Through It’ that became one of my favorite movies.
August 8, 2023
Hemingway’s short story of a colloquial fishing trip, taken by a young man wishing nothing but simple escape, has become a heralded piece of classic American literature.
The foreword of this centennial edition is a must read to gauge an in-depth understanding of the real power of the story. I knew almost none of what it covered, and found it incredibly insightful.
From onion sandwiches to simple campfire cooking, I will also always enjoy Hemingway’s descriptions of food!
The foreword of this centennial edition is a must read to gauge an in-depth understanding of the real power of the story. I knew almost none of what it covered, and found it incredibly insightful.
From onion sandwiches to simple campfire cooking, I will also always enjoy Hemingway’s descriptions of food!
August 4, 2024
Short and sweet, with everything powerful floating above the surface. I loved the brief descriptions of northern michigan, and feel as though I could use this as a tutorial for fly fishing. I loved The attentiveness of thought from one who is trying to forget everything besides their current action. He wants to write, he wants to forget the war. He wants he wants he wants. But he steps off of the train and he forgets and he feels again. It is him and the river and the trout.
February 22, 2025
This edition of Big Two-Hearted River is almost half forward by John MacLean. Although Maclean's insights bring much to the reader, I urge you to first read the story, then read the forward. I enjoyed coming up with my own stories about Nick's river while I read, and then got a new pleasure from hearing what the experts thought. There is a peace from nature described well here that can be hard to put on paper.
June 3, 2024
A brief story by Hemingway that celebrates his love of fishing. The centennial edition has a forward by John MacLean (son of Norman MacLean, of River Runs Through It fame). Although very brief, Hemingway's unique style is on display. This is a short good read for fishing fans and Hemingway fans alike.
September 8, 2024
I have not revisited Hemingway’s short stories in decades. I came across this illustrated edition of one of my favorites and had to dive in. Boy am I glad I did. Lyrical and poetic in Papa’s style. Beautiful introduction to boot. Time to go back up to the UP
August 4, 2023
didn’t care for this but it would make a really good drinking game
October 24, 2023
Beautifully presentation of one of Hemingway’s short stories about finishing, complimented by Chris Wormell’s illustrations which add to the sense of time and place.
November 11, 2023
It’s nothing. Nick pitches a tent and catches trout. A fine way to spend an hour, but it’s nothing.
December 21, 2023
Poetic fishing wandering
January 7, 2024
Classic and the foreword by John Maclean enhances the experience. Despite Hemingway’s so-called simple style I had to look up several words.
March 17, 2024
A great quick read, my first book I have read by Mr. Hemingway. The way he describes the character and the natural aspects of fly fishing.
June 1, 2024
A peaceful little short story
August 25, 2024
Poetic. Peaceful. Meditative. ❤️
November 20, 2024
Not a bad story, just not really my type of book. This is my second Hemingway book I’ve read. I’m starting to think he’s just not my style.
January 22, 2025
Didn’t know this book was one until I visited the Hemingway House. Love a story of time spent outside in Michigan.
February 24, 2025
Short story by Hemingway. Filled with relatable emotions and events
March 10, 2025
Great Hemingway short story, second only to old man and the sea.
August 7, 2025
This edition was a good read. I read the main story first and went back to read the foreword. There is a lot of history behind the short simple story.
November 5, 2025
Great short story. Honestly a perfect story about fishing. Captures the beauty of being on the river alone out for trout.
October 6, 2023
Hemingway's experience during The Great War had him visiting the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to the Two Hearted and Fox Rivers. I visited the Upper Peninsula earlier this summer and I can see why he would choose such a location. This although the story contains no plot, it does however have a reader following along in a steady and good spirited pace.
It reminds us that sometimes, after an excursion of stress and fatigue, the best thing to do is to slow down our lives and to delight in the taking part in the mundane. For Hemingway, fishing, catching grasshoppers and preparing meals in the U.P. wilderness demonstrates this.
It reminds us that sometimes, after an excursion of stress and fatigue, the best thing to do is to slow down our lives and to delight in the taking part in the mundane. For Hemingway, fishing, catching grasshoppers and preparing meals in the U.P. wilderness demonstrates this.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews