A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Ernest Hemingway · 1933 CE · Short Story · Modern / American · Modernist

Two waiters in a Spanish café wait out their last customer, a deaf old man who tried to hang himself the week before and now drinks brandy alone under the electric light. The younger wants to close and get home to his wife; the older understands why a man might need somewhere clean and well lit to sit at that hour. Four pages in which almost nothing happens, and among the most anthologised things Hemingway wrote.

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