Nick Adams was Ernest Hemingway’s first major literary protagonist. In some twenty stories and two vignettes Hemingway created a character that was in many respects a product of his own youth. In their published order those stories tell the story of Nick Adams as he develops in a world very like to real one.

From age to age human nature and human reality are ever the same. We live in an imperfect world; we are flawed creatures. The glory of being alive in a beautiful world is compromised by the complexities of existence and the proclivities to which we are all vulnerable. Greek myths advise us of these truths; contemporary realities continually inform us of our checkered condition.

Are you comfortable living on the surface of life, or do you strive to explore life’s enigmatic deeper core? Are you conscious of the possible immense insignificance of life when viewed as a tiny splinter in the fabric of a multi-universe some astrophysicists speak of? Can that realization be grounded in an existential sound sense that might make for communal coherence?