Ernest Hemingway’s reading list for a young writer

In April, 1934, Arnold Samuelson read a short story by Ernest Hemingway, “One Trip Across” that was later to become part of Hemingway’s fourth novel, To Have and Have Not.

Samuelson was so impressed with the story that he decided to travel 2,000 miles to meet Hemingway and ask him for advice. “It seemed a damn fool thing to do,” Samuelson would later write, “but a twenty-two-year-old tramp during the Great Depression didn’t have to have much reason for what he did.”

It is a fascinating first-person tale and you can read the list of of stories and books Hemingway wrote down for Samuelson.