Don't Go Down to the Swamp Today
Review of the Mariner Classics Kindle ebook (May 9, 2023), with an Introduction by John N. Maclean with Illustrations by Chris Wormell, of the original short story written from 1923-24 and first published in the Boni & Liveright 1925 edition of 'In Our Time.'

In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down the stream any farther today.

Big Two-Hearted River is probably one of the most analyzed of Ernest Hemingway's short stories. It is a famous example of his 'iceberg theory' where the main subject of the story is hidden from the view of the reader, just as the bulk of an iceberg is hidden underwater. In this case, it is the story of a solo camping and fishing expedition by Nick Adams, a fictional proxy of the author, in which he seeks to blot out memories of his injuries and trauma from the First World War. The war itself is never mentioned, but at various times Nick views, but avoids, a nearby swamp, which stands as a metaphor for his wartime experiences.

This Centennial edition is enhanced by an extended introduction by journalist & writer John N. Maclean, son of Norman Maclean, author of A River Runs Through It, and Other Stories (1976) and a dozen commissioned prints by artist Chris Wormell which illustrate the story's events.

In Paris, he was an ocean and more away from his home waters in Michigan. The separation intensified the writing. While he worked on the story, he kept a map of northern Michigan posted in his apartment, with blue marks for significant locations. In succeeding drafts, he stripped the story down to one disturbed person moving through a dreamlike, almost hallucinatory landscape of distorted reality. Brown grasshoppers evolve to black in the fire’s footprint, a physical impossibility in the time between flames and green-up. Swamps are not known for being deep and full of swift currents; they are still and often shallow—the many swamps I saw around Seney certainly are. Words repeat, the rhythm pulses, and the prose becomes an incantation. - from the Introduction by John N. Maclean.

See image at https://i.pinimg.com/736x/db/fa/58/dbfa585a5c2ba5b084b0b793a4195834--printmaking...
A lino print of a rainbow trout by artist Chris Wormell. There are other Wormell black & white fish prints in this edition of 'Big Two-Hearted River,' but I could not locate an online link for any of those. This image is sourced from Pinterest.

Big Two-Hearted River is also an excellent example of writer and mentor Gertrude Stein's influence on early Hemingway. Her more experimental repetitive style (most famously exemplified by the quote "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose") is regularly adopted by Hemingway as words repeat or are echoed in the short declarative sentences which submerge you into a visceral experience of building a camp, cooking food and fishing a river.

Stein was also key in advising Hemingway to cut a major portion of the text, which later appeared as On Writing in various posthumous editions such as The Nick Adams stories (1972) and The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Hemingway Library Collector's Edition (2017). Stein's advice to make the cut was: "Hemingway, remarks are not literature."

I'll leave the last word to writer Tim O'Brien:

I identify with Nick Adams probably more than any other hero in American letters because of his fragility and vulnerability. Yes, he sometimes tries to disguise it, but it shines through. - Introduction by Tim O'Brien to the short story Big Two-Hearted River in the collection The Hemingway Stories (March 2021).

Trivia and Link
For some reason, my Kindle highlights for this book are not viewable or shareable on Goodreads, but I did enter them as status updates which you can view here. ( )