A clean well-lighted place
by Ernest Hemingway · first published 1990
6mentions
5recommended by
6HN commenters
2010–2023first – last mentioned
83% recommend17% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A short, spare story set in a late-night cafe. It is a compact piece of fiction that rewards a quick read, and it sits alongside other brief works worth your time.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
As a Spanish café closes for the night, two waiters and a lonely customer confront the concept of nothingness.
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The great cafe short story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" by Hemingway. http://www.mrbauld.com/hemclean.html
on “Writing in Cafés: A Personal History” ↗…reading things challenging the author. [1] The Last Question - Isaac Asimov (http://www.physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf) [2] Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5200) [3] A Clean, Well-Lighted Place - Ernest Hemingway (http://www.url-der.org/a_clean_well_lighted_place.pdf) [4] On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense - Friedrich Nietzsche (http://www.jpcatholic.com/NCUpdf/Nietzsche.pdf) I've often…
on “A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning” ↗…underrated, because it is explicitly mentioned in the Nobel citation. Anything longer (all the novels) were overrated and now out of favour. Anything shorter will reward your time. For example... Fiction: A Clean Well-Lighted Place and The Capital of the World. Non-fiction: coverage of the Greco-Turkish war (1919-22), especially Refugees From Thrace and On the Quai at Smyrna.
on “Ask HN: Underrated Music, Books, Movies?” ↗Hemingway's A Clean, Well-Lighted Place Pynchon's Entropy
on “Ask HN: What's a favorite short story of yours?” ↗…Larkin: he didn't write much; read the complete poems (if nothing else, look at "Born yesterday") T.S. Eliot: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", "Return of the Magi", "Hollow men" Ernest Hemmingway: A Clean Well-Lighted Place Herman Melville: Bartleby, the Scrivener Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary George Orwell: Any and all of the essays, but especially "Shooting an…
on “Becoming "well read"” ↗Couldn't resist the temptation. I grabbed the opening paragraph of Hemingway's own short story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" -- and put it to the test. Danger alert! Danger alert! The master himself opens with a 110-word, two-sentence paragraph. The first sentence is flagged yellow. The second one is flagged red. By the…
on “Hemingway Editor” ↗