Winner Take Nothing is a 1933 collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway’s third and final collection of stories, it was published four years after A Farewell to Arms (1929), and a year after his non-fiction book about bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon (1932).
Content
Winner Take Nothing was published on 27 October 1933 by Scribner’s with a first edition print-run of approximately 20,000 copies. The volume included the following stories:
«After the Storm»
The story is based on an account told to Ernest Hemingway in 1928 about the sinking off the Florida Keys, in the late summer of 1919, of the Spanish steamer, the SS Valbanera.
«After the Storm» involves a treasure hunter who takes his ship out from the Florida Keys following a major storm, searching for boats which had been wrecked in the storm, in order to loot any valuables. The man eventually finds an untouched cruise ship filled with valuables, as well as corpses, but he is unable to gain entry to the ship or collect anything of value. The treasure hunter returns to the site later, but by that time the cruise ship had already been looted by others.
«A Clean, Well-Lighted Place»
«A Clean, Well-Lighted Place» is a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway, first published in Scribner’s Magazine in 1933; it was also included in his collection Winner Take Nothing (1933).
Plot synopsis
Late at night, a deaf old man is the sole patron in a cafe. Nearby, two waiters, one young, the other older, talk about him. When the old man orders another brandy, the young waiter purposely overfills his glass. The waiters speculate about the old man’s recent suicide attempt. The young waiter wants the patron to go home, and complains that he never gets to bed before three o’clock, while the older waiter is more understanding of the old man’s plight. Again the old man asks for another brandy, but this time the young man tells him the cafe is closed. After he leaves, the waiters resume their discussion.
The young waiter wants to hurry home to his wife; the older waiter is more thoughtful. He muses on youth and observes that he is now one «of those who like to stay late in the cafe,» likening himself to the old man. He mentions the importance to some people of having «a clean, well-lighted place» in which they can spend time. After the young waiter leaves, the older waiter reflects on the emptiness of his own life and returns to his home and his insomnia.
Historical reaction by other authors
James Joyce once remarked: «He Hemingway has reduced the veil between literature and life, which is what every writer strives to do. Have you read ‘A Clean Well-Lighted Place’?…It is masterly. Indeed, it is one of the best short stories ever written…»
Trivia
In A.E. Hotchner’s biography Papa Hemingway, Hemingway is quoted saying that this might be his favorite story.
«The Light of the World»
«The Light of the World» is one of Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories. It deals with Nick Adams who, along with a friend, enter a train station in Michigan. At the station are various figures who converse with the narrator and his friend, including five prostitutes. The story includes references to Stanley Ketchel, a Michigan-born boxer who had been murdered.
«God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen»
«God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen» takes place during Christmastime, taking its name from the famous Christmas carol. The story centers around a hospital and its staff. A local boy comes to the hospital and indicates that he had been having feelings of lust, which the boy believed was a sin; the boy asks the doctors at the hospital to castrate him. The doctors refuse, indicating that there was nothing wrong with him. On Christmas Day, the boy is brought to the hospital after having attempted to castrate himself, though it is revealed the boy did not understand what castration was.
«The Sea Change»
«The Sea Change» deals with a married couple having an argument in a bar. While never explicitly stated, it is clear that the wife had an affair with another woman, and that the husband is wrestling with the idea of divorcing her.
«A Way You’ll Never Be»
«A Way You’ll Never Be» is a 1933 short story by Ernest Hemingway, published by Charles Scribner in the short story collection Winner Take Nothing. It features the character Nick Adams as he recovers from a traumatic head wound.
Synopsis
Nick Adams has been wounded in Italy during World War I and is suffering from shell-shock, or post-traumatic stress syndrome. He is plagued by nightmares, in which he sees the eyes of an Austrian soldier shooting at him, a yellow house, and a river. Nick’s friend, the Italian Captain Paravicini, believes that Nick’s head wound should have been trepanned; he worries about Nick’s bouts of «craziness.»
One hot summer day, Nick bicycles from the village of Fornaci to Captain Paravicini’s encampment. He sees many bloated corpses and scattered pieces of paper. When Nick reaches camp, an Italian second lieutenant questions Nick’s identification papers before Paravicini intervenes and coaxes Nick to lie down and rest before he returns to Fornaci. He shows concern about Nick’s mental state. After lying down and dreaming, Nick leaves Paravicini’s encampment and goes to find his bike.
Reception
Hemingway listed «A Way You’ll Never Be» as one of his seven favorite of his short stories, but the collection Winner Take Nothing received generally negative reviews from contemporary critics and the short story itself was largely ignored. The short story was published in 1933.
«The Mother of a Queen»
«The Mother of a Queen» is a story about a bullfighter who is referred to as a «queen,» and the narrator, who is both the bullfighter’s friend and his manager. The bullfighter is a miser to the point he stops paying upkeep on his mother’s grave, leading to her bones being thrown in the local communal grave. The narrator ending his friendship with the bullfighter because the bullfighter refuses to pay a debt to the narrator.
«One Reader Writes»
«One Reader Writes» is written in the form of a letter to an advice column. The reader writes that her husband had contracted syphilis while stationed in Shanghai, and she asks the columnist whether the «malady» could be cured.
«Homage to Switzerland»
«Homage to Switzerland» is a story in three parts, each part telling the story of a different man in the same Swiss train station. The beginning of each story follows an identical story line: the character is sitting in a train station cafe when he discovers that the train is running an hour late; the waitress asks if he wants coffee, and each man asks the waitress whether she will sit and drink with them. Then, each story goes in a different direction.
The first man propositions the waitress, offering her money to have sex with him; it is then revealed that the man had never intended to have sex with the waitress and understood that she would refuse. The second man is revealed to be facing an impending divorce from his wife, and is depicted buying expensive champagne for himself and the train station attendants. The final man is shown speaking to an older man sitting at the cafe and discussing the National Geographic Society. The older man is revealed to be a member of the society, while the other man’s father had been prior to his death; it is then revealed that the man’s father had recently committed suicide.
«A Day’s Wait»
«A Day’s Wait» is a short story by Ernest Hemingway published in his 1933 short story collection Winner Take Nothing, which portrays a young boy’s reaction to becoming ill.
Plot
The story is narrated in first person by the father, who calls his boy Schatz (German, meaning darling).[5] When the boy gets a fever, a doctor prescribes three medicines and tells the boy’s father that his temperature is 102 degrees. The boy is quiet and does not listen when his father reads to him Howard Pyle’s book about pirates. Later, when the father returns from hunting game, the boy asks when he will die. He had believed his temperature to be lethal because he heard in France (where Celsius is used) that one cannot live with a temperature over 44 degrees. When the father explains to him the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius, the boy relaxes. The next day, «he cried very easily at little things that were of no importance.»
Reception
Sheldon Norman Grebstein Junior said Hemingway handled «a potentially sentimental situation without expressing feeling in overt terms and without calling directly upon the reader’s sense of pathos. We surmise the father’s love and concern for his sick son not from any declaration of it in exposition or dialogue but rather from a series of observations, gestures and dramatic metaphors».
«A Natural History of the Dead»
«A Natural History of the Dead» is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. The story first appeared in Hemingway’s 1932 novel Death in the Afternoon as the conclusion of Chapter 12. It was later included in the 1933 short story collection Winner Take Nothing.
The short story is influenced by Hemingway’s time spent on the Italian Front during World War I as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross.
Plot summary
The story parodies natural history by recounting events of WWI, specifically those involving death, the way a naturalist would examine nature. Naturalist Mungo Park is often referred to in that context. The story details the appearance of corpses on the battlefield, and includes several anecdotes regarding specific events and deaths. The final scene of the story involves a gravely injured man who is put among the dead while still alive, and the reactions of the men at
