Big Two-Hearted River

Hemingway, Ernest and M.D. Ryus (Illustrator)

Published by Coyote Love Press, 2002

About this Item

First edition thus. As new. #30/85 copies, 32 pages. Letterpress printed from Monotype Bodoni on clean white Rives de Lin paper with retained deckle at each fore edge. Illustrations are archival inkjet prints. The book is bound in an Indian paper which has the appearance of a muddy river bottom. It is tab sewn onto strips of reeds. A small, inset photograph appears as a window in the front cover. One of the best of the Nick Adams short stories. Nick leaves the train and traverses the burned out landscape, heading cross-country, orienting himself, from memory, toward the river. We track his interior awareness as Hemingway depicts the details of finding and setting camp, of fishing. In reading, we travel also, if the landscape of camping is familiar to us, to the slowing solitariness of man, woods, and river, to the simple tasks of daily survival highlighted by time in nature. Publisher George Bennington points out that "There is a kind of foreboding at the end [of the story], as well as a darkness throughout." He perceives Hemingway's intention to comment on the horrors of war, as evoked in the description of the burned-out forest land, and on one man's way of dealing with those horrors. Ryus' photographs fit the same dimension and depict a placid river surface, recalling Nick's observation: "The river made no sound. It was too fast and smooth." Ryus' prints appear almost sepia-tone, the originals having been painted upon, their surfaces worked and then varnished to create the unusual coloring. Signed by Ryus at the colophon, as issued.

Seller Inventory # 218

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Big Two-Hearted River
• Publisher: Coyote Love Press
• Publication Date: 2002
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)