Гемінґвей

by Mary V. Dearborn, Геннадій Шпак (translator)

Ернест Гемінґвей, поза сумнівами, один із найвидатніших американських прозаїків. Він познайомив читачів з іншим Парижем, особливою Америкою, Африкою, Кубою. А головне — показав світ яскравішим, стихійнішим, пристраснішим та романтичнішим місцем. На кожному етапі його життя ми бачили нового Гемінґвея — довготелесого хронікера «утраченого покоління», мужнього мандрівника, що описував подвиги на арені для кориди, репортера на фронтах Громадянської війни в Іспанії і врешті-решт — легенду повоєнних років на Кубі. Однак трагедію, що сталася з ним, до кінця так і не зрозуміли.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, Literature, Literary Fiction, Audiobook

640 pages, Hardcover

First published May 16, 2017

About the author

Biographer and author.

Reviews

[Quo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Dearborn's Ernest Hemingway: A Biography represents a masterful & revealing profile of a highly gifted & exceedingly complex American literary figure, perhaps the 1st Hemingway biography by a woman, at least the 1st one I am aware of. This is a book I meant to skim while reading Hemingway's A Moveable Feast but which quickly captured my interest in spite of its 600+ page length.

And curiously, it began with an amazingly well-conceived preface by the author, one in which Mary Dearborn managed to encapsulate so much of the Hemingway aura in a way that seemed quite insightful. As Dearborn puts it while reviewing his early life in Paris, "Everyone would be drawn to this young man--eager to be part of his energy field. He would be more curious than anyone you'd met & the life before him would take on the outlines of a great adventure."



Dearborn goes on to say that Hemingway became "a symbol of male potentiality, with the landscape he occupied gaining color & dimension & it seemed that the world did not stop noticing him even with his tragic death in 1961." But while he captured & held the public imagination, "always it seemed a different Hemingway", with the portrait seeming to change shape from the WWI young man on crutches to the personification of the "Lost Generation", in time shifting to his exploits with bullfighting in Spain, a politically engaged reporter detailing the Spanish Civil War, a "fighting journalist" during WWII, the big game hunter in the African bush & finally transforming into "Papa", the bearded, white-haired legend of the post-war Cuban years.

But with Hemingway's literary output, his quest to relate stories with a different vision & a voice that is "true" (his definitive word), at some point in the midst of "unfolding his brilliant career, a tragedy began to take shape". As Mary Dearborn relates it:

Ernest seemed to find it difficult to give & receive love, to be a faithful friend, and perhaps most tragically, to tell the truth, even to himself. While still in his 40s, he had done himself out of many of the rewards of the good life: he had 3 failed marriages, few good friends, was not writing well & had surrounded himself with flunkies & sycophants. He was burdened by serious physical injuries, including multiple concussions--which would today be called traumatic brain injuries, whose scope & variety are only now beginning to be understood.

The dangers of retrospective diagnosis are duly acknowledged but it seems that E.H. suffered from mental illness that included mania & depression so severe that at times it became psychotic. His habits of mind, the limits of the psychopharmacology of his day & the desire to avoid embarrassing himself as a public figure made it impossible for him to get the help he needed. His later fiction indicated a persistent confusion about gender identity, or to put it more positively & progressively, an openness to fluidity in gender boundaries.

Dearborn takes us at great length through Hemingway's life & times, his struggles to fit in with his family & the Chicago suburb of Oak Park as well as the beloved summer home in Michigan, to be a good son & "a good Christian." However, a great deal of Hemingway's personality seems to take a clear path when he leaves home, initially to work as a reporter in Kansas City & particularly after E.H. marries Hadley & they steam off to Europe, living as "starving artists" while benefiting from Hadley's trust fund, the 1st of numerous contradictions.

The biographer also notes that while Hemingway is cast as one of the pioneers of modernism, "he was never a modern man when it came to psychology--his characters exhibiting plenty of neurosis, imbalances & derangements but never seeking psychological explanations."

There are many references to Hemingway's "hair fetish" & its evidence within novels, something seen as a lifelong preoccupation with testing the boundaries between sexes, perhaps partly the result of his mother's "forced twinship" with his sister Marcelline. (She was a year older but Hemingway's mother wanted twins & so kept her daughter out of school for a year so that they could be in the same class.) Dearborn calls E.H. a "serial monogamist", not particularly given to affairs or womanizing.

She mentions that Hemingway was a visionary writer & always seemed to observe more than others did. His near death while serving in the ambulance corps in Italy during WWI is reckoned to have had an extreme impact, perhaps akin to Dostoyevsky's mock execution, a life-altering moment for both authors. Hemingway seemed to strive to be above politics & abhorred the loss of life in the Spanish Civil War, sensing in it the coming of a much greater European conflagration. While very taken by the things wealth can bring, he disliked rich people, suggesting that all classes were his province.

In late middle age & particularly after a jeep crash resulting in another serious head injury while reporting on & taking part in WWII invasions, Hemingway's charisma remains but his behavior becomes increasingly irascible and his speech patterns begin to change. E.H. becomes fixated on the use of the words true, truly & truth, using them with "metronomic regularity" at times.

Most of Hemingway's novels continue to sell well but he becomes increasingly adverse to criticism and oddly for a most public of figures, to public speaking. Hemingway is awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954 but is too frail to attend the award ceremony at that point. In the interval following WWII, there have been more concussions, one the result of a fall and two crashes while he & his wife were passengers in small aircraft while touring East Africa, one of which caused the press to assert that the author had perished.

Throughout Mary Dearborn's biography, she suggests that E.H. was "a man of great extremes, including depressions, moments of rage & great egotism". But E.H. Hotchner, who became a close & dear friend late in the author's life & wrote two excellent books on the author, including the wonderfully illustrated Hemingway & His World states that "Hemingway had the most inquiring mind of anyone I've ever seen."



However, by 1959 Hemingway had become increasingly paranoid, worrying that the CIA was stalking him. Hotchner comments that for the author "it was like living in a Kafka nightmare, with fear hanging over him like a black cape." Hemingway's 4th & final wife served increasingly as a caretaker, especially when the author lost almost all of his possessions, African trophies & manuscripts included, when his home in Cuba was seized following the coming of Castro, someone he had initially praised, much to the consternation of many American political figures.

I enjoyed Mary Dearborn's biography very much but felt that she became rather bogged down in chronicling each of Hemingway's many novels & retelling the family history, even though with something of a different perspective. I would rather that she had concentrated more on her own personal vision of the author, his head wounds & their possible impact on his life, interactions with friends & fellow authors & artists, the hair fetish, etc. saving perhaps 200 pages.

That said, I found the biography very compelling and written with an inviting neutrality I admire. So many potential readers become quickly distracted by the author's often boorish behavior, his four wives & other details of his life that they are sadly, unable to really consider the gift of his prose. At other moments, Hemingway took pains to befriend & to help many younger writers. Perhaps the complexity & the contradictions constituted an important facet of Hemingway's nature, something that allowed him to create memorable characters & to write in the manner he did.

Dearborn's preface is one of the most meaningful I have ever read & it ends this way, recasting a panel on Ernest Hemingway at New York's Mercantile Library, wherein near the end of a discussion of Hemingway's various novels, whether he & other "dead white males" should continue to be read, whether E.H. has any residual relevance for today's readers, when just as the session had begun to dissolve, an older professor got the attention of the moderator & stood up to announce:

"I would just like to say that Hemingway made it possible for me to do what I do." And then sat down. After some additional commentary, echoing the professor who had said earlier that Hemingway made it possible for him to do what he did, another person stood up & expressed that "Hemingway had made it possible for me to be who I am". And then sat down. It was difficult to determine the speaker's gender, only that it appeared to have recently changed. In the years to come, I would learn, in my study of Hemingway's life, what she or he meant.

Reading this & other thoughts on an author whose complex persona is indeed controversial but whose books continue to help readers to define themselves was part of the reason I found myself drawn into the Hemingway biography by Mary Dearborn and for that matter, why I read the books that I do.

*1st photo image within review is the author Mary Dearborn; the 2nd=E.H.

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ernest Hemingway: A Biography was a meticulously researched and comprehensive biography of a very complicated but charismatic man and one of America's greatest writers. Dearborn weaves Hemingway's life throughout with his literary efforts and achievements. She does not shrink from chronicling Hemingway's life and four marriages in excruciating detail that leaves one cold. This is the first biography of Hemingway by a woman in which Mary Dearborn does add a new and fresh perspective.

"Hemingway was without question one of the greatest American prose writers. He changed the way we think, what we look for in literature, how we choose to lead our lives. He changed how we see Paris, the American West, Spain, Africa, Key West, Cuba, northern Michigan. Even his place of birth, Oak Park. . . . was part of what made Hemingway, and we will always see it differently for his presence."

[Tanya Eby]

Narrating this was an extraordinary journey and made me feel, maybe for the first time, that I could connect with him not as a legend, or a male writer, but as a human being. Dearborn makes it clear that he was someone who was both flawed and perfect, burdened by mental illness and lifted by creative genius. What a fascinating story. A fascinating life, well lived.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now that's a hefty tome.

Better than the five volume Michael S. Reynolds biography. More psychological depth to her Hemingway, and more understanding of his gender dysphoria and head trauma. About the same on his writing, except she seems a little down on his work overall. It's great that she sees through the Hemingway myth, but why write about the guy at all if you only really like The Sun Also Rises and some of the short stories? Dearborn seems embarrassed of his politics and sweeps them aside as naïve, which they absolutely were but extremely heartfelt and important from the Spanish Civil War through to the end of his life. At 700 pages it still can't spend a whole lot of time on any one period of his life. For example, his meeting with Fidel Castro and conflicted feelings about revolutionary Cuba is rushed over. But these are all minor complaints. This does everything a good biography should: it lets us spend a few hundred pages living alongside someone who interests us and tries to figure out what made them tick.

I still want to finish the Reynolds' bios and maybe read some criticism on his work but for the moment I'm tapped out on Hemingway non-fiction.

Recommend this volume.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.” -Gertrude Stein

Besides being a phenomenally talented novelist and short story writer, Ernest Hemingway—along with contemporaries like Henry Miller and Norman Mailer—was the personification of American virility. But, as this biography illustrates, Ernest “had a robust capacity to find offense.”

I liked him a lot more before I read this book

The neglectful parenting, the domestic violence, the racism, the antisemitism, the boozing, the toxic machismo, the cruelty to animals, the narcissistic proclivities, all characterized this seemingly untenable douche—the same douche who, by the way, was arguably the greatest American writer of the twentieth century.

“Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald

[Carol Storm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a review of Ms. Dearborn's new biography, which I'm sure is a very valuable piece of Hemingway scholarship. This is a response to Irish author John Banville's vicious take down of Hemingway in THE NATION, which was ostensibly a review of this undoubtedly fine biography.

https://www.thenation.com/article/wha...

Ernest Hemingway was a man who made lots of enemies in his life. And he knew it. The funny thing is, the people he hated the most when he was alive -- women, blacks, Jews, homosexuals -- are not really the people who hate him the most now. John Banville is an Irish Catholic male writer in his eighties. What on earth could Hemingway have said to make a decrepit old Irishman fighting mad?

Banville points out that Hemingway spent most of his creative life in Europe, and that most of his best books are set in Europe. He seems to resent Hemingway as some sort of ugly American. Yet everything Hemingway ever had to say about Europe was positive. Whether he was in France, Spain, Germany, or Italy he always focused on the grace of daily life and the timeless beauty of the local customs. He even makes his hero a Catholic in The Sun Also Rises, and a Catholic priest is the most admirable character in A Farewell to Arms. Whatever his hatreds, Hemingway was sincere in his love of Europe and his admiration for the Catholic church.

And I suspect that's what galls Banville. Hemingway the sincere Catholic convert reveals too much about the Catholic church that Banville the guilt-ridden Irishman would rather forget. It's not just the ugliness of Hemingway's casual anti-Semitism, which is the product of two thousand years of church teaching. Or his hatred of women and revulsion from female sexuality, which also has deep roots in the Catholic church. No, the most unforgivable thing for Banville, I suspect, is that Hemingway revealed too much about the emptiness of the church itself.

"Hail nada full of nada, nada is with thee. Our nada who art in nada nada be thy name."

These words are from "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" which is one of Ernest Hemingway's greatest short stories. Read in context they don't really seem like an attack on the Catholic church. Hemingway is just expressing how it feels to be dead inside and cut off from all hope. Or to be awake at night and unable to sleep. But to John Banville these are the casual, mocking words of a tourist who has just entered his home and tactlessly pointed out that cupboard is bare. And that the emperor has no clothes. What Banville hates is not Hemingway's lack of faith but his own, not Hemingway's connection to a corrupt and failed civilization but his own, not Hemingway's failures as a man, but his own.

Hail Banville full of Banville, Banville is with thee!

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very engrossing...fantastic....enjoyed it immensely. Other reviews complained about too much detail. If you don't want to read details don't read biographies. I loved it all. I enjoy hearing it all. Others complained about Hemingway himself. If you didn't know anything about him, then why would be interested in reading about his life?? Anyone that's read him,and done any research at all, already knows what kind of person he was. And he had many many health issues, also alcoholism, and on many drugs that would affect a person's mind, much less the head trauma etc.

I highly also suggest you read STRANGE TRIBE by John Hemingway, (a grandson),and RUNNING WITH THE BULLS by Valerie Hemingway, secretary to Papa,and later his daughter in law.

I enjoyed this read a lot.

[Carl Rollyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ernest Hemingway’s legacy endures in Mary V. Dearborn’s cautious and yet exhilarating new biography. She does not tout her singularity as his first female biographer, but her gender makes a difference. She can put the question in a particularly authoritative way: What aside from the macho code and grace-under-pressure ethos remains of his reputation? She answers by showing how women deeply influenced him, especially his mother. He remained closer to his Oak Park, Ill., origins than is commonly supposed in previous biographies. His hostility toward his charismatic mother is well documented, and yet, as Dearborn demonstrates, he was very much like her in his desire to be a cynosure, both inside and outside the family home.
Hemingway’s need to break out of the suburban complacency of his early environs seems, in part, attributable to his mother’s influence, although Dearborn nowhere makes that argument explicit, and it seems doubtful — judging by his testy letters to Grace Hemingway — that Hemingway ever realized his debt to her. She dressed the young Ernest in girls’ clothes and made him a kind of twin to his oldest sister. Later Hemingway would pursue what Dearborn calls a hair fetish, again twinning himself with his wives. This blurring of genders did not fully enter his work until after the Second World War in posthumously published novels such as “Islands in the Stream” and “The Garden of Eden,” both of which reflect, in Dearborn’s words, a courageous engagement with transgender issues, which his son Gregory also grappled with in ways his father seems to have tolerated surprisingly well at first, although they later had a falling out.
A singer, composer and painter, Grace Hemingway badgered her son about getting her work exhibited in Paris. He demurred at such delusions of grandeur, but they were nothing compared to his own in a lifetime of preening self-
regard that might even be the envy of Donald Trump. Dearborn does not blink at her hero’s huge flaws — the constant lying about his exploits that also resulted in his demeaning of competitor friends like F. Scott Fitzgerald — but he is still a hero, often generous and devoted to his art, if also a man not always worthy of his best self, exposed in this biographer’s expressions of regret rather than condemnation.
Hemingway’s sentimentality dooms later work such as “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (the cloying romance of Robert Jordan and Maria) and the atrocious “Across the River and Into the Trees” (a World War II colonel finds redemption in the love of a young girl) that falls well below the austere standards of “The Sun Also Rises” and his subtle stories.
The Spanish Civil War, Dearborn contends, is the only time Hemingway committed himself to a cause greater than himself. For the most part, Hemingway became his own cause. And while that may sound like a terrible egoism, it also made him an inspiration not only to generations of men but women as well, as the biographer’s deft treatment of Hemingway’s third marriage shows. Martha Gellhorn wanted to believe in her husband’s greatness, and their marriage foundered when she saw that he could not rise to her idealization of him. With his fourth wife, Mary, he reverted to a pattern of expecting wives to obey his every whim. It is no wonder that such an autocratic view of marriage should, in the end, result in his tyrannizing of his last wife. And yet he was redoubtable in a crisis — saving Mary’s life when her doctors had given up hope and patiently nursing his son Patrick through a psychotic episode.
Dearborn discards various sensationalistic reports in other biographies, such as Hemingway’s supposed work as a spy in China and World War II. He did gather some intelligence for the U.S. government and also for the Soviet Union — mainly, it seems, because both countries were antifascist, Dearborn concludes.
Hemingway’s fatal decline comes at the end of World War II, when even his best friends, the poet Archibald MacLeish and Gen. Buck Lanham, became dismayed at his shameless inflation of his war record. The trauma of three brain injuries, the result of several accidents, his alcoholism, and manicdepressive illness debilitated a very strong and powerful artist capable of much insight in stories about the failures of his own character.
But the origins of his downfall appear fairly early — after “A Farewell to Arms” (1929) when he became a bull-fighting aficionado and big-game hunter. The superb sportsman and diagnostician of the human condition in the Nick Adams stories that compose much of his groundbreaking short story collection, “In Our Time,” dissipated in three undisciplined books: “Death in the Afternoon,” “The Green Hills of Africa” and “To Have and Have Not.” The first two nonfiction works failed to create the kind of artistic form that Norman Mailer shaped out of his journalism in books like “The Armies of the Night,” notes Dearborn, who has also published a Mailer biography. As for the novel, the characters seem largely unrealized and transparently thin in an effort to concoct a narrative about a working man/fisherman that suited the fashion for proletarian fiction.
The estimation of Hemingway’s place in American fiction — the esteem his short stories still commands — is not altered by this biography. But a more nuanced portrayal emerges in this empathetic, if still critical, study of a conflicted man and artist.

[Alan (the Lone Librarian rides again) Teder · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There's no one thing that's true. It's all true." - Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway's version of "truth" draws a lot from the line in the film "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance": "When legend becomes fact, print the legend." He was inventing his own mythology before he was even out of his teens, transforming a one-week stint as a Red Cross ambulance driver in World War I into an enlistment in the Italian Army serving in the elite special forces of the Arditi Corps. Another 40+ years of tale-spinning to friends and journalists and the blurred crossover of non-fiction into fiction in many of the short stories and novels complicates the task of all of the subsequent biographers.

Mary Dearborn unravels as much as can be currently done using the latest pieces of the puzzle that are gradually being unveiled to us through various other studies (e.g. those such as Ernest Hemingway's a Moveable Feast that examine the veracity of A Moveable Feast, the ongoing & continuing Letters project The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 4, 1929-1931: 1929-1931 (4 of 17 published as of September 2017) and the recent memoirs and biographies that have focussed on specialized topics and themes e.g. Hemingway in Love: His Own Story, Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961, The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow: The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Marriage, Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961.

Dearborn does especially draw attention to Hemingway's androgynous hair fetish, the love-hate relationship with youngest son Gregory (Gigi) Hemingway (who later transgendered into Gloria) and the final sad years of mental illness which may have been triggered as early as the concussion injury sustained in a World War II London car crash. Much of what was written post-WWII was never published at the time and some of it only in posthumous heavily edited forms such as the gender bending The Garden of Eden (probably too risque for both its late 40's writing time and the author's marketed image) and the various edited versions of the final African journey True At First Light: A Fictional Memoir and Under Kilimanjaro. The ongoing Hemingway Library Edition may yet show us more of those unknowns as well although the story seems to be never-ending. Whatever questions fascinate you about this one person's life can likely never be fully answered and the journey itself becomes the goal. In that I see Hemingway as a stand-in for all humankind. Even with all of this ongoing documentation he is still a mystery and the subject of endless curiousity for us.

I read "Ernest Hemingway" in hardcover by Mary V.. Dearborn in parallel with the audiobook edition narrated by Tanya Eby. The narration was excellent and clear and well-paced.

#ThereIsAlwaysOne
Erratum
pg. 428 "...the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1941."
As most with a heritage from the Baltic States or Eastern Europe will know, the Hitler-Stalin Pact actually dates from August 22, 1939.

Trivia
Great use of a "Crook Factory"/"Operation Friendless"/"Hooligan Navy" image as the cover photo. The second use of this one I believe cf. The Crook Factory.

[Aurimas Nausėda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knyga apie rašytojo, kario E. Hemingvėjaus vaikystę, brandos metus ir senatvę. Daug įdomių įžvalgų apie rašytojo silpnybes, stiprybes, psichines problemas bei avantiūrizmą, santykius su moterimis. Rašytojo proza paanalizuota neišsamiai, tačiau knygą verta paskaityti siekiant suprasti trumpos prozos meistro E. Hemingvėjaus temas, idėjas, įtaką JAV literatūros procesui.

[Stephen Davenport · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first introduction to Ernest Hemingway was as a 17 year old, reading "Farewell to Arms" during Study Hall in an all-boys boarding school. I hid the book in an over-sized three-ring binder so the proctor of the study hall wouldn't know I wasn't doing my homework. Suddenly, much of the fiction studied in our English classes felt smarmy to me, over emoted, while reading Hemingway, I felt liberated from the sentiments I was supposed to feel, but didn't. The clean, sparseness of the writing, that left so much unsaid, made reading authors like Charles Dickens feel like wading through mud. I read Hemingway's other books and all his short stories, gobbling them up, going back to read them again and again. Like for a lot of males, he became my favorite author, a heroic example of how to live and how to write.
Or so I thought - until reading Carlos Baker's biography I learned of his faults.
It seems to me that what Mary V. Dearborn brings to the forefront about those faults that Baker and the other biographers do not, comes from her perspective as a woman. She is, and I think, rightly so, less forgiving of those faults, which for the sake of anyone who has not read any biography of Hemingway, I won't spoil the experience by naming here. Her biography struck me as a deep dive into a very complex, tragic person, and major writer.

[Faye Glidden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hemingway's latest biography dons a new lens through which listeners consider his life: from that of a woman. With the presumption that the culture to which Hemingway was exposed throughout his life influenced his writing, this particular perspective - a woman's - would reveal another look into the unique personalities of the famous writer, making him less a masculine idol and more a fallible, emotionally-driven human. In particular, this one considers Hemingway's relationship(s) with the women in his life as the primary reason he couldn't/didn't write any stories with a strong female heroine. Considering the patriarchal culture in which he grew, Hemingway's approach to gender roles was conflicted.

A unique perspective and enlightening read that all who have a remote interest in the writer should read!

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading Hemingway biographies since the late 60s when I read Carlos Baker's Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story.

Mary Dearborn''s book is the best.

All of the others -- more or less -- shun his nastiness, his abusive personality, his tendency toward egotism and emphasize his literary greatness. Sometimes, they emphasize this as a way of distracting us from the stuff that would make us question Hemingway's qualities as a person.

Mary Dearborn has found a way of telling us the truth about his personality and telling us the truth about his literary accomplishments. She points out the good in both and she doesn't shy away from the bad in both -- and trust me, there is bad in both.

I've read all of Hemingway repeated over the years, and I'll probably read him again, but I'll read him with new eyes, eyes that Mary Dearborn has given me.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 4 out of 5]

About as authoritative as one can get (some papers are still sequestered, so another bio will almost surely come out in a few years), and Dearborn's prose style has improved since her biography of Henry Miller. (She seems to prefer Hemingway's works over Miller's, or find him more psychologically interesting, than Miller.)

There's a lot of sourcing and quoting, and genuine mysteries remain unsolved, though of course a biographer can speculate. As with almost every biographer looking back in time to medical treatments and diagnoses, Dearborn strikes a superior attitude on the medical care Hemingway received (though most often he didn't want or receive timely care) based on the knowledge of the 1940s-1950s. (What will it know in 20 years?)

It's amusing, to me, that in the Thomas Wolfe biography Hemingway has more of a place there than Wolfe does here.

Recommended for anyone who wants to see Hemingway in various contexts.

[Judy McCarver · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are as intrigued with American literature as much as I am, and with those who have penned the stories, this biography of Ernest Hemingway will not disappoint you. I thought it was a thorough and comprehensive telling of Hemingway’s life story, starting with his birth, youth, and growing up in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park Illinois as well as the summers they family spent on Walloon Lake in Northern Michigan. Mary Dearborn takes you along from Chicago, Michigan, Kansas, and Toronto to Paris, Spain, Cuba, Montana, and Idaho, giving the reader so many details of Hemingway’s life and a deeper understanding of those he loved and betrayed. It was intriguing to read about the excess of traumatic brain injuries coupled with depression which plagued him, and how this played into his downfall as he spiraled down a path of delusion and utter despair to suicide. His childhood was to say the least -troubled. His relationship with his mother -very complicated. His dad committing suicide with a gun when Hemingway was a young adult was untenable. Hemingway’s four wives and his interminable womanizing. Never content with the present wife, he was always on the prowl for another woman. His inability to accept constructive criticism even from his closest friends. Scott Fitzgerald, an exceptionally talented writer and close friend of Hemingway was just one example of someone who Hemingway stepped on and treated like dirt, in spite of (or because of) Fitzgerald’s generous and absolute necessary help in getting “The Sun Also Rises” ready for publishing -and getting it published. Hemingway being Hemingway could never say thank you to someone helping him along in his career. Nor could he forgive them for doing it. He saw himself too much as a self made man. When in fact his genius had been championed along by a slew of people. That is a sad state of affairs. But Hemingway, like his main character, Jake Barnes, in “The Sun”, was himself a sad state of affairs. Hemingway was and will always be respected and revered for his talent. I’m glad he pursued his craft of writing with the same energy and zeal he pursued life and war and adventure. I’m sorry he was a man with so many demons and so many complex issues that the darkness in his heart ultimately could not be overcome.

[Andy Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This new biography of Hemingway is somewhat revisionist, pushing against dismissals of Hemingway because of his character flaws including misogyny and chauvinism. The theme of separating Hemingway the writer from the Hemingway the deeply flawed human is intriguing here because it comes from Hemingway's first female biographer, Mary Dearborn. She even places Hemingway's flaws in context, discussing the roles of alcoholism, possible family mental illness and repeated head injuries in his flawed life.

This is not to say that Dearborn minimizes Hemingway's flaws. She details Sherwood Anderson's kindness and successful advocacy of the then unknown Hemingway which was repaid by the then famous Hemingway with cruelty and a devastatingly critical review of one of Anderson's works. Fitzgerald's genuine feelings of friendship toward Hemingway are recounted including his revisions of the Sun Also Rises. Most agree it was Fitzgerald's revisions that made it a masterpiece, but Hemingway repaid it with ridicule that was manifested in "Snows of Killmanjaro." An example of the fine detail in this biography is Dearborn's notice that in the first publishing of the story, Hemingway ridiculed Fitzgerald by name while his editor, Max Perkins, forced the deletion of "Scott" when the story was published in the collection of stories. Also, Dearborn resists the temptation of many biographers to become partisans of their subject, her discussion of the reference to Fitzgerald in Killmanjaro discusses its inaccuracy as well as its cruelty.

Dearborn also has a twist to Hemingway's romantic exploits. She discounts many rumors of his affairs by noting his sexual happiness with his current wife at the time, noting that Hemingway was more of a serial monogamist than a constant philanderer. This does not minimize his brutal treatment of his wives, with only Martha Gellhorn giving as much as she got, it also does not ignore the affairs that Hemingway did have.

There is excellent analysis of Hemingway's writing that includes a weaving of his personal life into his fiction. For example she discusses by name the people who inspired the characters in "Sun Also Rises" and where the novel tracked real life and where it did not. While she could not do in depth analysis of all his short stories, the ones she picked were also my favorites including Big Two Hearted River, A Clean Well Lighted Place, and Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber. The one strong disagreement I had with her was with her analysis of the ending of "For Whom the Bell Tolls." She finds that the ending was about the suicide of Robert Jordan and comparing it with the suicides of people in Hemingway's family. My reading is that Robert Jordan desperately wanted to live, especially given his new love with Maria. It was the wound he received from the fascist soldiers that made him stay to fight to give the others time to escape and he passed on the easy suicide of shooting himself or having Pablo shoot him so that he would endure the pain and wait for the oncoming Fascists to slow them down even though it exposed him to a much harsher death.

But that is a delight of this book, it engages the reader, makes the reader think by offering a balanced view of a brilliant writer and complicated, flawed man

[Lowell White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sensitive, insightful, and really really terrific. The bio Hemingway deserves.

[Anna Klets · Rating 5 out of 5]

Хоча книжка доволі об'ємна, кожна її сторінка приносить задоволення, і водночас із сумом усвідомлюєш, що вона колись скінчиться. Авторка надзвичайно детально досліджує кожен період життя Гемінґвея, від народження до смерті, зосереджуючись на його психологічному портреті та причинно-наслідкових зв'язках його вчинків. Важко навіть уявити, скільки часу пішло на створення цієї книги, адже здається, що для такого глибокого дослідження життя іншої людини можна витратити все своє життя.
Цікаво було б дізнатися більше про достовірність деяких фактів, таких як, наприклад, твердження про співпрацю Гемінґвея з радянською розвідкою під час Другої світової війни. Окремо варто відзначити, як авторці вдалося захопливо подати історію людини, яка, хоча й мала надзвичайно цікаве життя, все ж була досить неприємною особою, що завдавала багато болю людям навколо себе, не кажучи вже про тварин. Опис полювань і сафарі, які Гемінґвей обожнював, справді вражає своєю жорстокістю.
Читаючи біографії письменників, художників, музикантів, виникає питання: наскільки талант сумісний із дотриманням загальнолюдських цінностей? Серед більш-менш позитивних прикладів на думку спадає лише Толкін, і то з поправкою на епоху. Можливо, це пояснюється тим, що він, насамперед, був науковцем, а не письменником.
Загалом, книжка повністю занурює читача в епохи, свідком яких був Гемінґвей: Перша світова війна, "золоті" 20-ті, Друга світова війна, повоєнні роки тощо. Словом, щиро рекомендую!

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this very much. Marketed as the first full Hem bio written by a woman I was curious as to what this new bio might add to the several other bios I've read. Happily this book did add a great deal to my thinking about Hem, though I am unsure whether this was a result of the author's perspective as woman or whether it was just a "damn fine" book. Among the many areas that I felt were contributions beyond what I've previously read include: 1) Hem's relationship with his family, particularly his mother Grace; 2) How alcoholism, mental illness, physical mishaps all contributed to his narcissism and cruelty in personal relations; 3) His romanticism and how serial monogamy is different from womanizing. I was impressed by the author's ability to separate his writing from his personality. In this sense she has transcended the host of frankly non-serious Hemingway critiques that evaluate the man of the 20's and 40's in terms of the morality of today.

I must admit one point of difference with the author. Like many reviewers at the time she is very harsh on Across the River and Into the Trees. As an older man (and a non-literary type) I am very moved by ACIT. While I have no standing to disagree with her critique, I must remain a fan of this sad but for me very relatable work.

[Valerie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was just okay. While this was a better read than Hemingway's Boat, it still was quite gossipy and at times was a chore to get through. Also she seems overly fixated on Hemingway's issues with sexuality. I also did not agree with her comments on For Whom The Bell Tolls. For Whom The Bell Tolls is not outdated. It's a fantastic story and it is not hard to read.

Also, does it really matter if a man or a woman writes a biography of Hemingway? Why should she feel special because she wrote a bio of him? Yes, Hemingway does come to symbolize the ideal masculine hero, despite all of his flaws, but women can still enjoy his works. I certainly did.

Leave the politically correctness out of here.

[Pegdana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I checked out this book in anticipation of the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick 6-hour special on PBS. The author was one of the many women commenting during that show. It was a pleasure to read his life from a woman's perspective. When my late husband taught Hemingways's stories, he commented often that H could be understanding and sympathetic to women in his writings -- something people did not see because of the macho cloud around H. This book provides nuances and details I had not known before. The writing can be a bit plodding and sometimes redundant. But the book was worth the time, and now I want to revisit some of H's stories.

[Kristen Lindquist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hemingway had an extremely interesting and complex life, so it would be hard to write a poor biography of the man. I was disappointed, however, that his first female biographer couldn’t come up with a new or different perspective on his life—at the very least, perhaps clearer insight into his relationships with the women in his life. By the end of the book, I found myself wishing I had read a biography of each of his wives instead.

[Jim Puskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Regardless of whatever else I have to say about this book and about its topic, this is a superb piece of work, a tour de force biography. Exhaustively researched, perfectly structured and annotated; and above all, even-handed in its portrayal of Hemingway the writer and Hemingway the man. There were long passages and even entire chapters that I found to be mesmerizing. Some readers may quibble about Dearborn’s relentless inclusion of petty details of the daily lives and restless wanderings of Hemingway and his vast collection of cronies, wives, lovers, acolytes and hangers-on; but it’s that very restlessness, that constant search for validation that reveals so much about Hemingway. It seems to me that he was never, even in his brash youth or at the height of his public triumph, at peace with himself. His inner turmoil needed to be constantly assuaged by adulation; his superiority among writers needed to be confirmed by receiving the highest fees; his masculinity always had to be re-affirmed through madcap adventures, by newly acquired women, even by means of exaggerated tales of his exploits, whether they were true or not.
I chose to read this bio because I’ve always struggled to come to terms with Hemingway’s writing. Time and again, I began another of his novels only to get bogged down and eventually abandon it only half read. Having read this bio, I now understand the root of my problem: it’s not possible to read Hemingway without coming face-to-face with the man behind the pages. And he’s not an easy man to spend time with in a quiet room — his enormous ego gets in the way of every story and his presence absorbs all the air in the room. It’s a marionette show where the light is never far away from the puppeteer. Time and again, his protagonist is another version of Hemingway himself, or at least exhibits some of his particular (and often highly unattractive) traits. Dearborn quotes a critic named Joseph Wood Krutch observing that in Hemingway’s hands “the subject matter of literature becomes sordid little catastrophes in the lives of very vulgar people.” Bingo!
I’m pretty sure that Hemingway didn’t write while gazing at his own image in a mirror; but I cannot help thinking that he must have been, if only unconsciously, studying his own largely self-created model of himself, seeking to extract from that image his own version of truth about the human condition.
Thus armed with a better grasp of the terrain (and the rules of the game that Hemingway devised) I shall have a fresh try at reading some of his work. BTW, my thanks to Chrissie, a fellow reader for pointing me to this bio as a necessary preparation before reading “A Moveable Feast”.

[Grace · Rating 1 out of 5]

no. suck it hemingway.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. So rich in detail, and yet left me feeling like he could never truly be known, which is probably true for most people in life.

[clyde cohen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This biography feels like a giant, shitty reddit post

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you are a fan of Hemingway, I implore you to buy this as a necessity. (If you are not a fan of Hemingway, I still recommend it as an exemplary work of biography!)

Dearborn defines the pinnacle of scholarly ability, crossed with an understanding of pop accessibility, with the contents of this text. Every page is chock-full of anecdotes from interviews, notes and nods to writers near Papa's circle, Dearborn's own reading of many other Hemingway biographies, and the similarities/disparities between H's life and the words he chose to write in his semi-autobiographical books. Perhaps the most interesting recurring thread was the way that H's novels employ 'real life' events and people, while distorting them to fit his increasingly self-centered persona. Dearborn excellently parallels H's fiction with the non-fiction of his actual life.

Honestly, I was astounded by the level of detail contained in this book. I felt that I was truly coming to know the man himself because of Dearborn's clear depth of research. One of the strongest contributing factors, I felt, was the inclusion of direct quotes as well as observations and impressions from H's acquaintances, friends, wives, colleauges, etc. Instead of feeling separated by an academic veneer, readers will feel as though they are coming to learn about the man by hearing stories told by friends.

It is impossible to understand the so-called 'Lost Generation' without the mutual contextualization that many writers provided for each other. The book is pleasantly peppered with myriad references to other works, as befits Hemingway's lifelong tendency to absorb many other writers. Throughout my reading of this book, I ordered and read a handful of other books that were referenced within (a few of H's books I had not read, as well as some Josephine Herbst and John Dos Passos - writer friends of H's who received nods in this biography). If you are a bibliophile, this book will give you many, many ideas for your reading list.

The one potential downside of this book for some readers may be the sheer length. Clocking in at over 600 pages - of fairly dense non-fiction - it may be daunting for some, but is well worth it. I do not count that as a weakness, because Dearborn's shining attention to detail deserves every paragraph that was published. Hemingway had a truly fascinating life, Dearborn has a gift with the pen, and readers will feel invested up until the bitter end.

Obviously, this book was written for fans of Hemingway's writing and his legendary life. However, even readers without a knowledge of his work will be able to enjoy this book for the sheer quality of storytelling and research. Five stars for Mary Dearborn!

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exhaustive in detail and exciting for the more recently uncovered information, this text is also perhaps the most anti-hagiographic book on Hemingway ever written. Get ready for some psychoanalysis, too: Dearborn variously diagnoses Ernest with gender dysphoria, a hair fetish, PTSD, CTE, BPD, and alcoholism, in that order, and what's more is she's (circumstantially) pretty convincing on all counts. Persona deflation and forensic psychiatry aside, Dearborn never convincingly captures what was so compelling about the guy to the people in his orbit, or why he became such an outsized legend, and clearly doesn't even like much of his writing. I recommend this as a chaser after any opposing, fawning biography, or even just as an impressive casting of 21st Century shade on the grandest literary celebrity of the 20th, but wouldn't start here on nonfiction about Hem or read it at all without working familiarity with most all of the dude's ouerve.

[Lisa Mcbroom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never was a Hemingway fan. Having to read The Old Man and the Sea in 10th grade bored me. He and Zelda Fitzgerald were enemies and I was team Zelda and preferred her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald's writings. In one of the few biographies on Hemingway written by a woman, Dearbon paints a fascinating psychological portrait of Hemingway, his four wives and his family. Whether you love or hate Hemingway after reading this painstakingly researched novel, you will realize what made him tick.

[Barbara Nutting · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overwhelming and way too long. I made it to page 445 and then skimmed. What I took away from this biography was that the author could have been describing Donald Trump. Hemingway was egotistical, arrogant, rude, vulgar, a misogynist ( in spite of numerous wives and love affairs), adored sycophants and turned on anyone who defied him - sound familiar?