By Allan Sko

The literary world was rocked earlier this week with the news that Ernest Hemingway– master of the short story form and author of The Old Man and The Sea—announced that he would be releasing a series of new short prose.

This was a surprising announcement due to the widely held belief that the author died as far back as 2 July, 1961.

“Rumours of my demise have been greatly accurate,” he quipped, proving as enigmatic as ever.

Hemingway’s Lazerus-like literary comeback was not the only cause of shockwaves to ripple through the community, with his first release in over 60 years causing quite the stir.

The lead-up to the release saw speculation run rampant. With a whole digital age blooming and methods of communication changing drastically, how would Hemingway approach the written word?

And what, prey tell, would fall under the intimidating author’s purview? These were big questions.

A consummately contradictory man, Hemingway achieved a fame surpassed by few, if any, American authors of the 20th century. As stated in Britannica:

The virile nature of his writing, which attempted to re-create the exact physical sensations he experienced in wartime, big-game hunting, and bullfighting, in fact masked an aesthetic sensibility of great delicacy.

And so it was to the surprise of almost everyone that, rather than rejecting communication methods of the modern day, Hemingway enthusiastically embraced them, as seen here with this exclusive— hugely expensive—reprinting of his 2023 piece entitled: Office Party.

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The work was instantly praised for its economy of language and ocean of implied meaning. Hemingway soon followed this with an unabridged version of the story, adding a wedding emoji (or ‘story beat’, as he refers to them) followed by one of an empty liquor bottle.

His most powerful piece was to come, though. Only one month later, the author unleashed this untitled work onto the world.

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The work has already been shortlisted for the Pulitzer.

The full impact and influence of Hemingway’s return has yet to be measured. But don’t expect any more teeny tour de forces from Hemingway any time soon.

News recently broke that the man has been whisked away to an undisclosed government location for extensive medical testing.

We here at BMA, for one, can’t wait to see how this experience will ignite inspiration for his future works!