What can one say of The Torrents of Spring…?

This is not a classic Hemingway book. For those who know him and have read his books, this is not going to be one of their favorite. That said, let’s get into the book details.

The Torrents of Spring is a hilarious parody of the Chicago school of literature. Poking fun at that “great race” of writers, it depicts a vogue that Hemingway himself refused to follow. Rumor has it, he practically written this book in ten days, a sloppy job, just to give him a reason to get out of his contract with his publisher Boni & Liveright. They held the right of first refusal for his next three books, one of which was to be a novel, with the proviso that the contract would be terminated if one of the three were rejected. This one was rejected, so the contract ended there.

Spring is coming to the small towns of Michigan, but the snow still covers the land when Scripps O’Neil sets off for Chicago, decides to stop a while in Petoskey, and meets up with Yogi Johnson. Their stories are a satire on the time’s fiction.

The novella received controversial criticism and it remains so until today.