Ernest Hemingway's short stories cast a long shadow over the work of the writers who followed him, but the inevitable revision of a reputation after the author's death has reduced Hemingway's reputation from its mid-twentieth century godlike stature, and many new modes of fiction (like the work of Barth, Barthelme, and Oates) have made the "Hemingway story" seem a little old-fashioned to some. Nevertheless, the power of his best work—"Hills Like White Elephants," "In Another Country," "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"—has not been diminished by the passage of time, and Stone's interest in men who must stand alone, men who are tested by their ability in a physically demanding situation, men who are struggling to act with decency and honor echoes some of Hemingway's central concerns. Stone also uses the sea as an important setting and symbol, carrying on the line of Melville...