Hemingway Lives!

by Clancy Sigal

"With the release of a flurry of feature and TV films about his life and work, and the publication of new books looking at his correspondence, his boat and even his favorite cocktails, Ernest Hemingway is once again center stage of contemporary culture. There’s something about Papa that makes any retirement to the wings only fleeting.

Now, in this concise and sparkling account of the life and work of America’s most storied writer, Clancy Sigal, himself a National Book Award runner-up, presents a persuasive case for the relevance of Ernest Hemingway to readers today.

Sigal breaks new ground in celebrating Hemingway’s passionate and unapologetic political partisanship, his stunningly concise, no-frills writing style, and an attitude to sex and sexuality much more nuanced than he is traditionally credited with. Simply for the pleasure provided by a consummate story teller, Hemingway is as much a must-read author as ever.

Though Hemingway Lives! will provide plenty that’s new for those already familiar with Papa’s oeuvre, including substantial forays into his political commitments, the women in his life, and the astonishing range of his short stories, it assumes no prior knowledge of his work. Those venturing into Hemingway’s writing for the first time will find in Sigal an inspirational and erudite guide."

--OR Books

Genres: Literary Fiction, Nonfiction

238 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2013

About the author

Clancy Sigal was the child of a love affair between two idealists. His parents Jennie Persily and Leo Sigal were labor organizers. Jennie, a single mother, raised Clancy on her own. Chicago-born, he was an ordinary street kid until the army sent him overseas. He attended the Nuremberg war crimes trial, and then enrolled at UCLA where his classmates included the later Watergate conspirators, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Blacklisted by a movie studio, and chased by the FBI, he lucked into a job as a Hollywood talent agent for clients like Humphrey Bogart. He slipped into Great Britain as an illegal immigrant and had a years-long affair with the writer Doris Lessing. Intending only a tourist weekend, he stayed in London for 30 years where, as well as broadcasting for BBC, he collaborated with the ‘anti psychiatrist’ R.D. Laing in the care and feeding of “incurable” schizophrenics. Relocating to Hollywood, he co-wrote “Frida” (Kahlo) and the Hemingway love story “In Love and War”.

Reviews

[Özlem Güzelharcan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hemingway okuru olun ya da olmayın, bu kitabı okumanızı tavsiye ediyorum. Sadece güzel bir biyografi romanı değil, aynı zamanda zavallı, eski dünyanın bitmeyen savaşlarından bir kaçını da (I. ve II. Dünya Savaşları, İspanyol İç Savaşı) konu alıyor bu kitap. Yazarın araştırması, Hemingway eserlerini ele alışı muazzam. Aynı zamanda Hemingway'in iç dünyasına ve aile ve arkadaşlık ilişkilerine de bir kapı aralamış yazar. O kapıdan girmek güzeldi ama fırsatım olsaydı Hemingway ile asla arkadaş olmak istemezdim sanırım!

[Alan (on December semi-hiatus) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about Clancy Sigal’s 2013 “Hemingway Lives! Why Reading Ernest Hemingway Matters Today” but still want to give it a generally positive review. On the one hand, it is a very compact and easy to read life and career overview of Hemingway that discusses almost all of the full-length books and a few dozen of the short stories. On the other hand, the views expressed are Sigal’s own personal readings and although these often have a interesting slant and take they often seem to be the result of mis-readings or mis-remembered details. I noticed this about a dozen times but there were enough instances of it that I began to wonder how much of it I may have overlooked. So the book left me feeling slightly mistrustful. Sigal also has a tendency to put quote marks around words or passages which of course leads you to think that they are direct Hemingway quotes but some of them are definitely paraphrases* or outright fabrications.

So this is a qualified recommendation. If you are new to Hemingway, Sigal does present him in a very compelling way and his passion for the writing can be quite addictive. You should just be prepared to make your own readings of the books and come to your own conclusions. If you are already an old Hemingway hand, Sigal will likely renew your enthusiasm but you will be kept busy leafing/scrolling through your copies of the books to seek to either confirm or dispute what Sigal said or quoted. In that sense, the book pays off as it will cause you to rethink and reexamine your own conclusions about Hemingway.

*e.g. Harry Morgan’s last words in “To Have and Have Not” are 'No matter how a man alone ain't got no bloody chance.’ and not Sigal's “No man alone now has got a bloody fucking chance."

[Fatih · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hemingway ile yolum yanlış hatırlamıyorsam Yaşlı Adam ve Deniz ile kesişmişti, orada az çok Jack Londonvari bir yaşanmışlık ve birikimin olduğunu anlamıştım ama doğrusu bu biyografiyi okurken hem yalın ve anlaşılır dilinin kaynağının bu yaşanmışlık ve birikimin olduğunu ama bir yandan Hemingway'in hiç çekilmez bir adam olduğunu öğrenmiş oldum.

Sigal, kitabın başında bir not düşmüş okurların dikkatine diye. Şöyle demiş: "Hemingway'i ilk kez okumak sağlık sorunlarına sebep olabilir."

Tam anlamıyla psikoloji biliminin üstüne düşmesi gereken bir yazar Hemingway, çocukken etek giyen kahramanımız zamanla dünyaca ünlü bir maçoya (zaman zaman iğrendirecek kadar) evrilir. Ernest, içinde bulunduğu savaşlarda ve yolculuklarında defalarca ölümün kıyısından döner.

Hemingway'ı yazar, savurgan olmayan bir üslup, kısa cümleler, "güzel" ya da gösterişli sözcüklerden ibaret olarak tanımlar.

Bu kitap, az buçuk Hemingway'i tanıma fırsatı ve sıradaki kitabımın "Çanlar Kimin İçin Çalıyor" olmasını sağlamış oldu.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I may have a little crush on Ernest Hemingway. And, not just because he was so incredibly good-looking, although he was incredibly good-looking (I mean look at the cover of this book!) and, even at 60, he had that rugged man thing going on. I'm sure he would have been fun to talk to while guzzling daiquiris in Cuba. The crush comes more from the life of the man who wrote one of my favorite books of all time.

I wish I would have learned all about Hemingway, the man, earlier in my life. I would have read more of his books/read more about his personal life/mourned his passing appropriately...

Anyway, it would seem that there are only two kinds of people who talk about Hemingway, those who love him (I think it's those people who 'get' that he was more than this animal killing/Castro loving caricature that's been built up over the years) and those who loathe him (I think you can count all his ex-wives in this category and anyone who only sees Hemingway as a thump your chest, club your women man's man).

Clancy Sigal is all about some deep Hemingway love. He's felt this way since the young age of 15 when he stole a copy of A Farewell to Arms and loved it. Read this book...fall in love with Hemingway the writer and the man, and, if you are like me at all you'll become a little bit obsessed and will then try to make up for lost time by reading all the Hemingway you hadn't yet. By the end of Sigal's book I had hopped on the Hemingway love bus as well.

It was easy.

First Sigal tells you that to understand why Hemingway matters today we must first understand the man, Ernest Hemingway. We have to understand his foundation.

So...

Read the right books:
King Solomon's Mines H. Rider Haggard
The Four Feathers AEW Mason
Just So Stories and The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain
Westward Ho and Hereward the Wake by Charles Kingsley
Tom Brown's School Days Thomas Hughes
Ernest Hemingway on Writing Larry Phillips

Watch all the movies:
Even the Hemingway big screen productions...even though he didn't really like the adaptions and neither does Sigal, concerning A Farewell to Arms he says, "With luck Hollywood won't remake the first two films of this wonderful novel again." He goes on to talk about how Hemingway viewed the whole business, "Hemingway famously said that the best way for a writer to deal with the movie business was to arrange a quick meeting at the California state line: 'You throw them your book, they throw you the money. Then you jump into your car and drive like hell back the way you came'" (138).
Charlie Chan
Four Feathers (I think he's talking about the old version, but I'm sure the latest one would do)
Midnight in Paris
Hemingway and Gellhorn

Try to...
Be Teddy Roosevelt
Be white
Be upper middle class
Be able to fish and hunt and survive in the wilderness
Be a devout follower of 'muscular Christianity'
Be courageous and brave
Be unwavering; practice what you preach
Be on the side that fights for the rights of the individual
Be a journalist
Be an alcoholic
Be the best man
Be a good father

and, above all...

Be a contradiction to those who don't bother to understand you, and don't care if they don't try. I think I believe and emulate this trait most of all.

Then we must understand Hemingway the person who became the writer.

When you...
marry, no matter how many times you marry, marry for love. Don't be afraid to cut ties when you realize that 'maybe' it wasn't love after all.
write, write simply, "short words, brief paragraphs, few or no adverbs" (62) and honestly about what you know and ignore the critics. Or, should I say try to ignore the critics.
love, love all living creatures and love life. These are not contradictions to how Hemingway lived and died. Sigal talks about how each of the women in Hemingway's life, in turn, became a muse for his books and stories. Sigal even used Hemingway's characters as role models for his own foray into adulthood and romance.
play, play hard. Hemingway lived his life well and that could be shown by his large amount of injuries and slashes and gashes and aches and pains.
speak, speak what you believe is truth and stick by what you say. Hemingway loved his father, hated his mother (more on that in Chapter 6: The Women in His Life) and he made no bones about either.

Finally, we must understand the writer.

So, why does reading Ernest Hemingway matter today?
He is one of the pillars of Modern America. Against his will, as Sigal notes, "If Hemingway had known as a young man that his fate would be as a classroom Assigned Great Writer he'd probably have shot himself long before he did in real life" (17).
Just typing and retyping his stories help writers get into the flow of his style. Just ask Joan Didion, Salinger, Vonnegut, Gore Vidal, Garcia Marquez, Ann Beatty, Charles Johnson, Terry Tempest Williams, Gordimer, Mailer, Elmore Leonard, Proulx, Russell Banks, Walter Mosley and I'm sure we could find more.

In each of his books, stories and essays we can find a person to emulate, to adhor, to immortalize. And, in true contradictory fashion, I'm just sad that his fourth wife loved him so much that she allowed him to have and be himself to his own peril. Sigal creatively constructs a book that delves into the man, by showing us the people around him and then showing us how those people created the writings that we still cherish and revere to this day. If you need proof read Chapter 7: It's Not Only Men Who are Victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder-The Sun Also Rises and get into this "thinly disguised autobiographical travelogue" (110).

Sigal has such a love for Hemingway that it shows in the way he writes about every aspect of the man.

[Ray Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad, though superficial biography and overview of Hemingway's life and writing. However, the title makes no sense. I thought this would be a scholarly argument for the relevance of Hemingway in our time. Not a sentence on the subject. Sigal begins with a few pages of praise which included several authors who claim influence from Hemingway, and then he get's into what I believed was a brief review of his work and life before making his case. I was wrong. He never made any case whatsoever. Unless the reason he matters is that he wrote stuff, the author simply gave the book a really bad name.

As biographies go, this isn't a bad one. Sigal does a nice job of outlining Hemingway's works relative to his life. If you are interested in a brief study of Hemingway's life and it's influence on his work, this is an easy read. If you want to know why Hemingway matters, don't look here.

[Lizzie Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was surprisingly good. It is a mixture of a biography and critical analysis of several of Hemingway's works. Sigal knows his stuff and his love for Hemingway is apparent. I read it while researching for a paper on "The Sun Also Rises."

Too bad I hate Hemingway with a fiery passion or I might think better of this book. But, alas, I loathe the man with all my soul.

[Michael Webb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marvelous. A really detailed, easy to read look at the man and his work.

[Deniz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sigal's historical work can lead many people to re-introduce themselves to Papa's work. Beautifully written!