"Big Two-Hearted River" is a two-part short story written by American author Ernest Hemingway (pictured), published in the 1925 Boni & Liveright edition of In Our Time, the first American volume of Hemingway's short stories. It features a single protagonist, Hemingway's recurrent autobiographical character Nick Adams, whose speaking voice is heard just twice. The story explores the destructive qualities of war which is countered by the healing and regenerative powers of nature. When published, critics praised Hemingway's sparse writing style and it became an important work in his canon. The story is one of Hemingway's earliest to employ his iceberg theory of writing; a modernist approach to prose in which the underlying meaning is hinted at, rather than explicitly stated. "Big Two-Hearted River" is almost exclusively descriptive and intentionally devoid of plot. Hemingway was influenced by the visual innovations of Cézanne's paintings and adapted the painter's idea of presenting background minutiae in lower focus than the main image. In this story, the small details of a fishing trip are explored in great depth, while the landscape setting, and most obviously the swamp, are given cursory attention.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Two-Hearted_River

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1782:

Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, a leading British Whig Party statesman, began his second non-consecutive term as Prime Minister of Great Britain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Watson-Wentworth,_2nd_Marquess_of_Rockingham

1836:

Texas Revolution: Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna ordered the execution of about 400 Texian prisoners of war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_massacre

1899:

Philippine–American War: Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo led the troops himself against the US for the only time in the war in the Battle of Marilao River. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marilao_River

1958:

Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the Soviet Union following the death of Joseph Stalin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_Khrushchev

2002:

A suicide bomber killed about 30 Israeli civilians and injured about 140 others at the Park Hotel in Netanya, triggering Operation Defensive Shield, a large-scale counter-terrorist Israeli military incursion into the West Bank, two days later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover_massacre

2009:

The dam holding Situ Gintung, an artificial lake in Tangerang District, Indonesia, failed, resulting in floods killing at least 100 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situ_Gintung

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

fan death: The urban legend originating in South Korea that if an electric fan is left running overnight in a closed room it can cause the death of those inside. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fan_death

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

It has become extremely questionable whether, in the flux of life, it is a genuinely worthwhile intellectual problem to seek to discover fixed and immutable ideas or absolutes. It is a more worthy intellectual task perhaps to learn to think dynamically and relationally rather than statically. ... When the empirical investigator glories in his refusal to go beyond the specialized observation dictated by the traditions of his discipline, be they ever so inclusive, he is making a virtue out of a defense mechanism which insures him against questioning his presuppositions.   --Karl Mannheim https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Mannheim