I enjoyed reading this illustrated biography and gazing at the many photos. The author knew Hemingway personally for the last dozen years of his life. By that time, the books that made him famous and rich lay behind him, with the exception of The Old Man and the Sea, the novella that tipped the stodgy Nobel jury into awarding him the prize it withheld from Joyce and Pound. In addition to his innovative narrative technique, Hemingway had created and marketed a persona. In some ways, this great white hunter and bullfight afficiando who could drink anyone under the table overshadowed his writing. Hotchner clearly admires both bodies of work, although the text is honest enough to include the criticisms of those who were not so enamored with Hemingway’s emphatic machismo, beginning with Max Eastman’s notorious salvo, “Bull in the Afternoon.” Hotchner also records the many broken friendships in Hemingway’s wake.
There is one aspect of Hemingway’s legacy that remains unchallenged in the text: Hemingway’s track record of discovering unsullied paradises and becoming the agent of their ruin by his promoting them in his writing. I’m not a big Eagles’ fan, but the final words of the last track on their Hotel California LP seem apt: “You call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye.”
In addition to offering a good short biography of Hemingway, this book is also valuable for the many images. Some are familiar, but others had never before been published.
The book is organized topically, with one to three double-page spreads devoted to each. This leads to some overlap. In a few cases, this may have been unavoidable. For instance, the tale of Hemingway’s purchase of Miró’s “The Farm” is recounted both in “Closeries des Lilas” and “Hemingway and Painting.” In other cases, however, careful editing would have eliminated repetition. There is often repetition between picture captions and the main text, as well as a number of typos and one instance of mix-up in the order of captions and images. Did the publisher rush this to press? Thirty years on, that seems a shame. But overall, a valuable book. ( )