Hemingway's Passions: His Women, His Wars, and His Writing

by Nancy W. Sindelar, Callie Beaulieu (Narrator), Mariel Hemingway - foreword

Ernest Hemingway's passion was writing, and he was inspired by a lifetime of daring adventures and encouraged by the many women in his life. His masculine, adventurous spirit appealed to women of all ages, including four wives and a long list of legendary actresses, and he frequently transformed the women in his life into memorable fictional characters.

In 1950, Hemingway told Marlene Dietrich that he truly loved only five women. Who were these women and why did he love them? Some of them may have included his wives, but there were others too, among them Agnes von Kurowsky. Through quotations from his works and personal letters, Hemingway scholar Nancy W. Sindelar captures Hemingway's life and romantic adventures, revealing his own feelings about his romantic relationships and the ways his experiences with women appear in his literary works.

Much has been written about Hemingway, but to date no book has linked the women he loved to his written work. The stories of Hemingway's romantic relationships reveal not only the influence these women had on his writing but also his personal ambition, heartbreak, and literary triumphs and trials. Sindelar's provocative analyses of Hemingway's literature give fresh insight into the life of a legendary author, outdoorsman, adventurer, and lover.

Genres: Biography, Biography Memoir, Nonfiction

Audible Audio

Published November 5, 2024

Reviews

[Nancy]

When I was a preteen I saw the movie The Sun Also Rises. I was moved but I didn’t understand it. A few years later I purchased the novel and read it several times. Then, in 2014 I read it again, and I finally ‘got’ it. It is about war and trauma. And of course, a woman. There is always a woman in his novels. But even she has been shattered by the war, losing a fiancée to the war and encountering the war wounded while volunteering as a nurse.

I also saw the movie of The Snows of Kilimanjaro, the image of Gregory Peck’s feverish recollections of his life and women haunting me.

What I didn’t realize was that all those women in Hemingway’s novels were inspired by the women he loved in life. Reading Hemingway’s Passions gave me a solid overview of his entire life and work. Sindelar explains, “Ernest’s personal experiences became the content of his writing,” his quest for adventure and new experiences usually bound up with a new love interest. He believed that men were wired to seek new sexual partners, even if he wished he had never been lured away from his first wife, Hadley.

Hemingway came from a supportive but conservative home in Chicago who vacationed at a primitive cabin in Northern Michigan. Like so many, an idealistic Hemingway went to war and returned broken in body and heart. The injured nineteen-year-old fell for his nurse. He turned her into the love interest in A Farewell to Arms, altering reality to sexual fulfillment via fiction.

But the book came later. He was totally flattened by her rejection. He wandered about Up North Michigan and went to Toronto before, at a Chicago party, he saw the older Hadley and fell for her. They married and moved to Paris where they hobnobbed with Gertrude Stein and the writers and artists she christened The Lost Generation. Ezra Pound influenced his iconic writing style.

In Spain, Hemingway meet Lady Duff Twysden who became Lady Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises. But the woman he became involved with was the wealthy heiress and journalist Pauline Pfeiffer. To marry her, he converted to Catholicism, thereby able to annul his marriage to Hadley. The newlyweds settled in Key West where he wrote many of his novels.

After his father’s suicide in 1928, Hemingway had to support his ex, his wife, his mother, three siblings, and his sons. You would think that all this responsibility would ground him. But, leaving his pregnant wife, he went abroad. On the way home met Jane Mason who lived in Cuba. Their friendship turned into another affair after Pauline’s difficulties giving birth resulted in restricted sexual activity.

A trip to Africa with Pauline became The Green Hills of Africa and The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

Hemingway became disgusted by the rich, including Pauline, and he needed a new adventure. So he was off to the Spanish Civil War, where he met the intrepid journalist Martha Gellhorn. If he was anti-fascist after observing Mussolini reading a dictionary upside down for a photo op, he was determedly anti-fascist witnessing the war now called “the dress rehearsal for World War II.”

For Whom the Bell Tolls came out of this experience; I have my grandfather’s copy on my shelf.

Hemingway pressured Martha into marriage, just two weeks after Pauline divorced him for desertion. Then, he was unhappy that Martha continued her active career instead of staying home and taking care of him. Plus, she was getting the good stories and he was jealous. They divorced. Hemingway had meet another journalist, the married Mary Welsh Monks, telling her he wanted to marry her at first meeting.

Mary was willing to put Hemingway’s needs first, caring for him and their Cuba house and his kids, even putting up with his infatuation with a teenager late in life. The teen ended up another heroine in a novel, but not in his bed. That novel was a failure.

The Old Man and the Sea, another Hemingway book on my teenage book shelf, didn’t have a female love interest, but garnered a Pulitzer Prize.

Political strife forced Hemingway and Mary to leave Cuba. By this time, Hemingway was struggling with health and mental health issues, underdoing shock therapy which disrupted his ability to write. Mary tried to prevent his suicide attempts, but he finally succeeded. She abily managed his literary estate, getting permission to return to Cuba for the papers they had left behind.

The stories of all the women is wrapped up at the end of the book.

Photographs, scanned documents, Hemingway’s letters and relationship with Marlene Dietrich, and a timeline complete the book.

It is a short biography, quickly read, both entertaining and enlightening. I especially appreciated the encapsulation of the novels, detailing how Hemingway used the people and events of his life for fiction.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

[Erika Robuck]

Blurb TK

[MKF]

DNF.

I am marking this as DNF because I had hoped to read a few of Hemingway's novels one day in the future. In the first chapter the author tells you almost everything that happens in a A Farewell to Arms so it seems like I don't need to read it. I don't know if the author does this in every chapter but it seems safer to set it aside so I don't have her spoiled the books.

[Erica]

I had the pleasure of listening to Nancy Sindelar talk about this book at an event for The Ketchum Community Library. I am a huge Hemingway fan and loved learning more about him. This book focused on the women in his life, both the wives and the affairs. I especially liked the details of how Hemingway’s women made appearances or inspired his writing.

[Judy]

Hemmingway had four wives, all of whom supported him, some financially and all emotionally. The main focus of his life was his writing. He challenged himself physically in war, and in the trips he took to feed his writing. His wives, friends and travels all fed his writing. Often book characters were clearly identified from his life. Besides a biography, it is also a psychological study.

[Bargain Sleuth Book Reviews]

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Thanks to Lyons Press and Edelweiss for the ARC of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Hadley Richardson, who gave birth to a son, Pauline Pfeiffer, who gave birth to two sons, Martha Gellhorn, who gave him the boot because he undermined her career, and Mary Welsh, who knew she was signing on to be a wife and nursemaid and did so until the end of his life. Besides his wives, the book concentrates on some affairs Hemingway had, some while he was married, so there’s that. And it’s important to note that Hemingway had one woman in the wings all while being involved with another.

I feel I got to know the women in Hemingway’s life a little better than in other biographies I’ve read or seen about the American author. He was the descendant of great authors from the United States, a direct line from Mark Twain to Hemingway, changing the way prose would be written for generations. But as I’ve found when reading about professional geniuses, Hemingway the man was a complete jerk. A charming, misogynistic, man’s man, who treated women badly, even though he loved enough of them.

[Hal]

An entertaining short volume discussing primarily Hemingway's loves and marriages, it also depicts his interactions on the war fronts that provided significant material to his writings. Considered on of our greatest writers, not mine by a stretch, yet his books were read by millions and somehow became classics of sorts.

His wives, Hadley, Pauline, Martha, and Mary each influenced him during each period of his life and fit his needs at the time. He moved on to the next when he seemed to tire of this and on to his next adventure. Certainly an adrenaline junkie the same came be said of his war adventures. The book will take you through each of these in a very readable and entertaining way.

[Sharon Brewer]

I enjoyed this book about Hemingway. It was a little different because it focused on the women in his life and how they influenced his work and his thinking. He was married four times as well as becoming friends with a lot of other women along the way. It was a fast-moving biography with lots of details. I liked the way the author included photographs, personal letters and quotation from his work to tell the story. I think the use of his own words gives the reader a better sense of what kind of man he was. Recommend to all Hemingway fans!

[Christine]

This was very interesting even though I already knew a lot about Hemingway! The non fiction book showed very clearly Hemingway 's passions : women , war and death. It also focuses on moral issues faced by Ernest such as courage, duty as regards fighting. Comparing various wars, he will refine/redefine such concepts leading to some of the best novels I have ever read. A great informative book!
I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley and I have voluntarily written an honest review.

[Floyd Garrett]

To summarize:

Hemingway marries. He gets bored. He moves on. He marries again.

Maybe the most telling part of the book was a picture toward the end of Hemingway's life. He is at a dinner where he is photographed looking at and enamored by a teenage girl. The one that got away. But, oh how he tried.

Not a bad book. Just not one that makes you want to go out and read all of Hemingway's works. He was a cad and a womanizer.

Today, he would be President.

[Dale Dewitt]

I enjoyed this book, Ms Sindelar uses Hemingway's life and letters to construct a narrative that highlights both the highs and lows of his life and the impact he had on other. While many of the facts are re-told from other books, i felt that this book condensed those other books and made for a quick and enjoyable read.

[Christie Saxton]

I became a little fascinated with Hemingway after recently visiting Key West. This book tells of his life & loves and has made me even more fascinated in him. If you enjoy biographies and/or Hemingway himself, I recommend you read this!

[Lisa of Hopewell]

I learned of this book via this post: https://theliteratequilter.wordpress.....

[Barb]

Interesting book that would have benefitted from editing for typos, random symbols, odd arrangement of rehashing in the epilogue. Annoying to read past those.

[Oxford]

A breezy, entertaining, summary of Hemingway's life and work, using his relationships as an anchor point.

It is very difficult to summarize such a complex man and career, and the author must be commended for her efforts. Though at times the summary is so brisk inaccuracies are created, and bold assertions are made without any reference to sources.

The book shows signs of being hastily written and sloppily edited: there are both sentences and entire paragraphs repeated verbatim within the same page or within a few pages, also there are numerous spelling errors.

It is on the whole a fun read for someone new to Hemingway studies, though I recomend reading all his work first as this book includes major spoilers for many of his stories.
2.5 out of 5