The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

(1987). I used these stories as a way of talking to my young sons about writing. It was fascinating to hear their responses. After reading “The Killers,” about two thugs who go to a small town to hunt down a boxer, my older son wondered why anyone would want to be a boxer in the first place—don’t they get hit in the head? It wasn’t what Hemingway intended him to think about, but the reader brings his or her own concerns to a story. The author can only control so much.