Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
. His economical and understated style—which he termed the
iceberg theory
The iceberg theory or theory of omission is a writing technique coined by American writer Ernest Hemingway. As a young journalist, Hemingway had to focus his newspaper reports on immediate events, with very little context or interpretation. When h ...
—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and public image brought him admiration from later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he was awarded the
1954 Nobel Prize in Literature
The 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded the American author Ernest Hemingway "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."
...
. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.
Hemingway was raised in
Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago. It is the 29th-most populous municipality in Illinois with a population of 54,583 as of the 2020 U.S. Census estimate. Oak Park was first settled in 1835 and later incorporated ...
. After high school, he was a reporter for a few months for ''
The Kansas City Star
''The Kansas City Star'' is a newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri. Published since 1880, the paper is the recipient of eight Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Star'' is most notable for its influence on the career of President Harry S. Truman and a ...
'' before leaving for the Italian Front to enlist as an ambulance driver in
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel '' A Farewell to Arms'' (1929).
In 1921, he married
Hadley Richardson
Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (November 9, 1891 – January 22, 1979) was the first wife of American author Ernest Hemingway. The two married in 1921 after a courtship of less than a year, and moved to Paris within months of being married. In Paris, ...
, the first of four wives. They moved to
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
modernist
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
writers and artists of the 1920s' "
Lost Generation
The Lost Generation was the social generational cohort in the Western world that was in early adulthood during World War I. "Lost" in this context refers to the "disoriented, wandering, directionless" spirit of many of the war's survivors in th ...
" expatriate community. Hemingway's
debut novel
A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to p ...
''
The Sun Also Rises
''The Sun Also Rises'' is a 1926 novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, his first, that portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the b ...
'' was published in 1926. He divorced Richardson in 1927, and married
Pauline Pfeiffer
Pauline Marie Pfeiffer (July 22, 1895 – October 1, 1951) was an American journalist, and the second wife of writer Ernest Hemingway.Harris, Peggy (Associated Press) (30 July 2000)Ernest Hemingway Museum Popular in Quiet Farm Town ''The Tusc ...
. They divorced after he returned from the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...
(1936–1939), which he covered as a journalist and which was the basis for his novel ''
For Whom the Bell Tolls
''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned ...
'' (1940).
Martha Gellhorn
Martha Ellis Gellhorn (8 November 1908 – 15 February 1998) was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century.
Gellhorn reported on virtually every major worl ...
became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh in London during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the
Normandy landings
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allies of World War II, Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and ...
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
(in the 1940s and 1950s). He almost died in 1954 after two plane crashes on successive days, with injuries leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, in mid-1961, he died by suicide.
Life
Early life
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in
Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago. It is the 29th-most populous municipality in Illinois with a population of 54,583 as of the 2020 U.S. Census estimate. Oak Park was first settled in 1835 and later incorporated ...
, an affluent suburb just west of Chicago, to Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a physician, and Grace Hall Hemingway, a musician. His parents were well-educated and well-respected in Oak Park,Reynolds (2000), 17–18 a conservative community about which resident
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...
said, "So many churches for so many good people to go to." When Clarence and Grace Hemingway married in 1896, they lived with Grace's father, Ernest Miller Hall, after whom they named their first son, the second of their six children. His sister Marcelline preceded him in 1898, followed by Ursula in 1902, Madelaine in 1904, Carol in 1911, and Leicester in 1915. Grace followed the Victorian convention of not differentiating children's clothing by gender. With only a year separating the two, Ernest and Marcelline resembled one-another strongly. Grace wanted them to appear as twins, so in Ernest's first three years she kept his hair long and dressed both children in similarly frilly feminine clothing.
Hemingway's mother, a well-known musician in the village,Reynolds (2000), 19 taught her son to play the cello despite his refusal to learn; though later in life he admitted the music lessons contributed to his writing style, evidenced for example in the "
contrapuntal
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
structure" of ''
For Whom the Bell Tolls
''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned ...
''. As an adult Hemingway professed to hate his mother, although biographer Michael S. Reynolds points out that he shared similar energies and enthusiasms.
Each summer the family traveled to Windemere on
Walloon Lake
Walloon Lake is a glacier-formed lake located in Charlevoix and Emmet counties, just southwestward from the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. It is now home to many vacation homes and cottages. Though the end of the west arm of t ...
, near Petoskey, Michigan. There young Ernest joined his father and learned to hunt, fish, and camp in the woods and lakes of
Northern Michigan
Northern Michigan, also known as Northern Lower Michigan (known colloquially to residents of more southerly parts of the state and summer residents from cities such as Detroit as " Up North"), is a region of the U.S. state of Michigan. A popul ...
, early experiences that instilled a life-long passion for outdoor adventure and living in remote or isolated areas.Beegel (2000), 63–71
Hemingway attended
Oak Park and River Forest High School
, motto_translation = Those things that are best
, address = 201 N. Scoville Avenue
, location =
, region =
, town = Oak Park
, county =
, state ...
in Oak Park from 1913 until 1917. He was a good athlete, involved with a number of sports—boxing, track and field, water polo, and football; performed in the school orchestra for two years with his sister Marcelline; and received good grades in English classes. During his last two years at high school he edited the ''Trapeze'' and ''Tabula'' (the school's newspaper and yearbook), where he imitated the language of sportswriters and used the pen name Ring Lardner Jr.—a nod to
Ring Lardner
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner (March 6, 1885 – September 25, 1933) was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical writings on sports, marriage, and the theatre. His contemporaries Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Wo ...
of the ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...
'' whose byline was "Line O'Type". Like Mark Twain,
Stephen Crane
Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism an ...
,
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (; August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm mora ...
, and
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was ...
, Hemingway was a journalist before becoming a novelist. After leaving high school he went to work for ''
The Kansas City Star
''The Kansas City Star'' is a newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri. Published since 1880, the paper is the recipient of eight Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Star'' is most notable for its influence on the career of President Harry S. Truman and a ...
'' as a cub reporter.Meyers (1985), 19–23 Although he stayed there for only six months, he relied on the ''Star''s
style guide
A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. It is often called a style sheet, although that term also has multiple other meanings. The standards can be applied either for gene ...
as a foundation for his writing: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative."
World War I
In December 1917, after being rejected by the U.S. Army for poor eyesight, Hemingway responded to a Red Cross recruitment effort and signed on to be an ambulance driver in Italy, In May 1918, he sailed from New York, and arrived in Paris as the city was under bombardment from German artillery.Meyers (1985), 27–31 That June he arrived at the Italian Front. On his first day in
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
, he was sent to the scene of a munitions factory explosion to join rescuers retrieving the shredded remains of female workers. He described the incident in his 1932 non-fiction book ''
Death in the Afternoon
''Death in the Afternoon'' is a non-fiction book written by Ernest Hemingway about the ceremony and traditions of Spanish bullfighting, published in 1932. The book provides a look at the history and the Spanish traditions of bullfighting. It al ...
'': "I remember that after we searched quite thoroughly for the complete dead we collected fragments."Mellow (1992), 57–60 A few days later, he was stationed at
Fossalta di Piave
Fossalta di Piave is a town in the Metropolitan City of Venice, Veneto, Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterra ...
.Mellow (1992), 57–60
On July 8, he was seriously wounded by mortar fire, having just returned from the canteen bringing chocolate and cigarettes for the men at the front line. Despite his wounds, Hemingway assisted Italian soldiers to safety, for which he was decorated with the Italian War Merit Cross, the ''Croce al Merito di Guerra''.On awarding the medal, the Italians wrote of Hemingway: "Gravely wounded by numerous pieces of shrapnel from an enemy shell, with an admirable spirit of brotherhood, before taking care of himself, he rendered generous assistance to the Italian soldiers more seriously wounded by the same explosion and did not allow himself to be carried elsewhere until after they had been evacuated." See Mellow (1992), p. 61 He was still only 18 at the time. Hemingway later said of the incident: "When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you ... Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you." He sustained severe shrapnel wounds to both legs, underwent an immediate operation at a distribution center, and spent five days at a field hospital before he was transferred for recuperation to the Red Cross hospital in Milan.Desnoyers, 3 He spent six months at the hospital, where he met and formed a strong friendship with "Chink" Dorman-Smith that lasted for decades and shared a room with future American
foreign service officer
A Foreign Service Officer (FSO) is a commissioned member of the United States Foreign Service. Foreign Service Officers formulate and implement the foreign policy of the United States. FSOs spend most of their careers overseas as members of U ...
, ambassador, and author
Henry Serrano Villard Henry Serrano Villard (March 30, 1900January 21, 1996) was an American foreign service officer, ambassador and author.
Life
Henry S. Villard was born in Manhattan, New York City March 30, 1900. He was the great-grandson of William Lloyd Garrison ...
.
While recuperating he fell in love with
Agnes von Kurowsky
Agnes Hannah von Kurowsky Stanfield (January 5, 1892 – November 25, 1984) was an American nurse who inspired the character "Catherine Barkley" in Ernest Hemingway's 1929 novel ''A Farewell to Arms''.
Kurowsky served as a nurse in an American Re ...
, a Red Cross nurse seven years his senior. When Hemingway returned to the United States in January 1919, he believed Agnes would join him within months and the two would marry. Instead, he received a letter in March with her announcement that she was engaged to an Italian officer. Biographer
Jeffrey Meyers
Jeffrey Meyers (born April 1, 1939 in New York City) is an American biographer, literary, art and film critic. He currently lives in Berkeley, California.
Biography
Jeffrey Meyers was born in New York City in 1939 and grew up in New York. He wa ...
writes Agnes's rejection devastated and scarred the young man; in future relationships, Hemingway followed a pattern of abandoning a wife before she abandoned him.Meyers (1985), 37–42
Toronto and Chicago
Hemingway returned home early in 1919 to a time of readjustment. Before the age of 20, he had gained from the war a maturity that was at odds with living at home without a job and with the need for recuperation.Meyers (1985), 45–53 As Reynolds explains, "Hemingway could not really tell his parents what he thought when he saw his bloody knee." He was not able to tell them how scared he had been "in another country with surgeons who could not tell him in English if his leg was coming off or not."
In September, he took a fishing and camping trip with high-school friends to the back-country of Michigan's
Upper Peninsula
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan – also known as Upper Michigan or colloquially the U.P. – is the northern and more elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; it is separated from the Lower Peninsula by t ...
. The trip became the inspiration for his short story "
Big Two-Hearted River
"Big Two-Hearted River" is a two-part short story written by American author Ernest Hemingway, published in the 1925 Boni & Liveright edition of ''In Our Time'', the first American volume of Hemingway's short stories. It features a single prota ...
", in which the
semi-autobiographical
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. Bec ...
character Nick Adams takes to the country to find solitude after returning from war. A family friend offered him a job in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
, and with nothing else to do, he accepted. Late that year he began as a freelancer and staff writer for the ''Toronto Star Weekly''. He returned to Michigan the following June and then moved to Chicago in September 1920 to live with friends, while still filing stories for the ''
Toronto Star
The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...
''. In Chicago, he worked as an associate editor of the monthly journal ''Cooperative Commonwealth'', where he met novelist
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and ...
.Meyers (1985), 56–58
When St. Louis native
Hadley Richardson
Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (November 9, 1891 – January 22, 1979) was the first wife of American author Ernest Hemingway. The two married in 1921 after a courtship of less than a year, and moved to Paris within months of being married. In Paris, ...
came to Chicago to visit the sister of Hemingway's roommate, Hemingway became infatuated. He later claimed, "I knew she was the girl I was going to marry." Hadley, red-haired, with a "nurturing instinct", was eight years older than Hemingway. Despite the age difference, Hadley, who had grown up with an overprotective mother, seemed less mature than usual for a young woman her age.Oliver (1999), 139 Bernice Kert, author of ''The Hemingway Women'', claims Hadley was "evocative" of Agnes, but that Hadley had a childishness that Agnes lacked. The two corresponded for a few months and then decided to marry and travel to Europe.Kert (1983), 83–90 They wanted to visit Rome, but Sherwood Anderson convinced them to visit Paris instead, writing letters of introduction for the young couple.Baker (1972), 7 They were married on September 3, 1921; two months later Hemingway was hired as a foreign correspondent for the ''Toronto Star'', and the couple left for Paris. Of Hemingway's marriage to Hadley, Meyers claims: "With Hadley, Hemingway achieved everything he had hoped for with Agnes: the love of a beautiful woman, a comfortable income, a life in Europe."Meyers (1985), 60–62
Paris
Carlos Baker
Carlos Baker (May 5, 1909, Biddeford, Maine – April 18, 1987, Princeton, New Jersey) was an American writer, biographer and former Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature at Princeton University. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College and ...
, Hemingway's first biographer, believes that while Anderson suggested Paris because "the monetary exchange rate" made it an inexpensive place to live, more importantly it was where "the most interesting people in the world" lived. In Paris, Hemingway met American writer and art collector
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
, Irish novelist
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
, American poet
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...
(who "could help a young writer up the rungs of a career") and other writers.
The Hemingway of the early Paris years was a "tall, handsome, muscular, broad-shouldered, brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked, square-jawed, soft-voiced young man." He and Hadley lived in a small walk-up at 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine in the
Latin Quarter
The Latin Quarter of Paris (french: Quartier latin, ) is an area in the 5th and the 6th arrondissements of Paris. It is situated on the left bank of the Seine, around the Sorbonne.
Known for its student life, lively atmosphere, and bistro ...
, and he worked in a rented room in a nearby building. Stein, who was the bastion of
modernism
Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
in Paris, became Hemingway's mentor and godmother to his son Jack; she introduced him to the expatriate artists and writers of the
Montparnasse Quarter
Montparnasse () is an area in the south of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail. Montparnasse has be ...
, whom she referred to as the "
Lost Generation
The Lost Generation was the social generational cohort in the Western world that was in early adulthood during World War I. "Lost" in this context refers to the "disoriented, wandering, directionless" spirit of many of the war's survivors in th ...
"—a term Hemingway popularized with the publication of ''
The Sun Also Rises
''The Sun Also Rises'' is a 1926 novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, his first, that portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the b ...
''.Mellow (1992), 308 A regular at Stein's
salon
Salon may refer to:
Common meanings
* Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments
* French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home
* Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment
Arts and entertainment
* Salon (P ...
, Hemingway met influential painters such as
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
,
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , , ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist born in Barcelona. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona i ...
, and
Juan Gris
José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris (; ), was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic ge ...
.Reynolds (2000), 28 He eventually withdrew from Stein's influence, and their relationship deteriorated into a literary quarrel that spanned decades.Meyers (1985), 77–81 While living in Paris in 1922, Hemingway befriended artist Henry Strater who painted two portraits of him.
Ezra Pound met Hemingway by chance at
Sylvia Beach
Sylvia may refer to:
People
*Sylvia (given name)
*Sylvia (singer), American country music and country pop singer and songwriter
*Sylvia Robinson, American singer, record producer, and record label executive
*Sylvia Vrethammar, Swedish singer credi ...
's bookshop Shakespeare and Company in 1922. The two toured Italy in 1923 and lived on the same street in 1924.Meyers (1985), 70–74 They forged a strong friendship, and in Hemingway, Pound recognized and fostered a young talent. Pound introduced Hemingway to
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
, with whom Hemingway frequently embarked on "alcoholic sprees".Meyers (1985), 82
During his first 20 months in Paris, Hemingway filed 88 stories for the ''Toronto Star'' newspaper. He covered the Greco-Turkish War, where he witnessed the
burning of Smyrna
The burning of Smyrna ( el, Καταστροφή της Σμύρνης, "Smyrna Catastrophe"; tr, 1922 İzmir Yangını, "1922 Izmir Fire"; hy, Զմիւռնիոյ Մեծ Հրդեհ, ''Zmyuṙno Mets Hrdeh'') destroyed much of the port city of ...
, and wrote travel pieces such as "Tuna Fishing in Spain" and "Trout Fishing All Across Europe: Spain Has the Best, Then Germany".Desnoyers, 5
Hemingway was devastated on learning that Hadley had lost a suitcase filled with his manuscripts at the
Gare de Lyon
The Gare de Lyon, officially Paris-Gare-de-Lyon, is one of the six large mainline railway stations in Paris, France. It handles about 148.1 million passengers annually according to the estimates of the SNCF in 2018, with SNCF railways and RER D ...
as she was traveling to
Geneva
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...
to meet him in December 1922.Meyers (1985), 69–70 In the following September the couple returned to Toronto, where their son John Hadley Nicanor was born on October 10, 1923. During their absence, Hemingway's first book, ''
Three Stories and Ten Poems
''Three Stories and Ten Poems'' is a collection of short stories and poems by Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and ...
'', was published. Two of the stories it contained were all that remained after the loss of the suitcase, and the third had been written early the previous year in Italy. Within months a second volume, ''in our time'' (without capitals), was published. The small volume included six
vignettes
Vignette may refer to:
* Vignette (entertainment), a sketch in a sketch comedy
* Vignette (graphic design), decorative designs in books (originally in the form of leaves and vines) to separate sections or chapters
* Vignette (literature), short, i ...
and a dozen stories Hemingway had written the previous summer during his first visit to Spain, where he discovered the thrill of the '' corrida''. He missed Paris, considered Toronto boring, and wanted to return to the life of a writer, rather than live the life of a journalist.Baker (1972), 15–18
Hemingway, Hadley and their son (nicknamed Bumby) returned to Paris in January 1924 and moved into a new apartment on the rue Notre-Dame des Champs. Hemingway helped
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals '' The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review'' were instrumental in ...
edit ''
The Transatlantic Review
''The Transatlantic Review'' (often styled ''the transatlantic review'') was an influential monthly literary magazine edited by Ford Madox Ford in 1924. The magazine was based in Paris but was published in London by Gerald Duckworth and Company.
...
'', which published works by Pound,
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos (; January 14, 1896 – September 28, 1970) was an American novelist, most notable for his ''U.S.A.'' trilogy.
Born in Chicago, Dos Passos graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He traveled widely as a young man, visit ...
, Baroness
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (née Else Hildegard Plötz; (12 July 1874 – 14 December 1927) was a German-born avant-garde visual artist and poet, who was active in Greenwich Village, New York, from 1913 to 1923, where her radical self ...
, and Stein, as well as some of Hemingway's own early stories such as "
Indian Camp
"Indian Camp" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. The story was first published in 1924 in Ford Madox Ford's literary magazine ''Transatlantic Review'' in Paris and republished by Boni & Liveright in Hemingway's first American volume of ...
".Meyers (1985), 126 When ''
In Our Time In Our Time may refer to:
* ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid
* ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema"
* ''In ...
'' was published in 1925, the dust jacket bore comments from Ford.Meyers (1985), 127 "Indian Camp" received considerable praise; Ford saw it as an important early story by a young writer, and critics in the United States praised Hemingway for reinvigorating the short story genre with his crisp style and use of declarative sentences. Six months earlier, Hemingway had met
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularize ...
, and the pair formed a friendship of "admiration and hostility".Meyers (1985), 159–160 Fitzgerald had published ''
The Great Gatsby
''The Great Gatsby'' is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts First-person narrative, first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious mil ...
'' the same year: Hemingway read it, liked it, and decided his next work had to be a novel.Baker (1972), 30–34
With his wife Hadley, Hemingway first visited the
Festival of San Fermín
The festival of San Fermín is a weeklong, historically rooted celebration held annually in the city of Pamplona, Navarre, in northern Spain.
The celebrations start at noon on July 6 and continue until midnight on July 14. A firework starts o ...
in
Pamplona
Pamplona (; eu, Iruña or ), historically also known as Pampeluna in English, is the capital city of the Chartered Community of Navarre, in Spain. It is also the third-largest city in the greater Basque cultural region.
Lying at near above ...
, Spain, in 1923, where he became fascinated by
bullfighting
Bullfighting is a physical contest that involves a bullfighter attempting to subdue, immobilize, or kill a bull, usually according to a set of rules, guidelines, or cultural expectations.
There are several variations, including some forms wh ...
.Meyers (1985), 117–119 It is at this time that he began to be referred to as "Papa", even by much older friends. Hadley would much later recall that Hemingway had his own nicknames for everyone and that he often did things for his friends; she suggested that he liked to be looked up to. She did not remember precisely how the nickname came into being; however, it certainly stuck. Reprinted in Published at The Hemingways returned to Pamplona in 1924 and a third time in June 1925; that year they brought with them a group of American and British expatriates: Hemingway's
Michigan
Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
boyhood friend Bill Smith, Donald Ogden Stewart, Lady Duff Twysden (recently divorced), her lover Pat Guthrie, and
Harold Loeb
Harold Albert Loeb (October 18, 1891 – January 20, 1974) was an American writer, notable as an important American figure in the arts among expatriates in Paris in the 1920s. In 1921 he was the founding editor of ''Broom,'' an international liter ...
.Nagel (1996), 89 A few days after the fiesta ended, on his birthday (July 21), he began to write the draft of what would become ''
The Sun Also Rises
''The Sun Also Rises'' is a 1926 novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, his first, that portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the b ...
'', finishing eight weeks later.Meyers (1985), 189 A few months later, in December 1925, the Hemingways left to spend the winter in
Schruns
Schruns is a municipality in the Montafon valley (altitude 690 meters), in the Bludenz district of the westernmost Austrian state of Vorarlberg.
To the west is the famous Zimba mountain, often called the "Vorarlberger Matterhorn," which is ver ...
, Austria, where Hemingway began revising the manuscript extensively. Pauline Pfeiffer joined them in January and against Hadley's advice, urged Hemingway to sign a contract with
Scribner's
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing American authors including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan Rawli ...
. He left Austria for a quick trip to New York to meet with the publishers, and on his return, during a stop in Paris, began an affair with Pfeiffer, before returning to Schruns to finish the revisions in March. The manuscript arrived in New York in April; he corrected the final proof in Paris in August 1926, and Scribner's published the novel in October.Baker (1972), 44
''The Sun Also Rises'' epitomized the post-war expatriate generation,Mellow (1992), 302 received good reviews and is "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work".Meyers (1985), 192 Hemingway himself later wrote to his editor
Max Perkins
William Maxwell Evarts "Max" Perkins (September 20, 1884 – June 17, 1947) was an American book editor, best remembered for discovering authors Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Thomas Wolfe.
Early life and e ...
that the "point of the book" was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever"; he believed the characters in ''The Sun Also Rises'' may have been "battered" but were not lost.Baker (1972), 82
Hemingway's marriage to Hadley deteriorated as he was working on ''The Sun Also Rises''. In early 1926, Hadley became aware of his affair with Pfeiffer, who came to Pamplona with them that July.Baker (1972), 43 On their return to Paris, Hadley asked for a separation; in November she formally requested a divorce. They split their possessions while Hadley accepted Hemingway's offer of the proceeds from ''The Sun Also Rises''. The couple were divorced in January 1927, and Hemingway married Pfeiffer in May.Meyers (1985), 172
Pfeiffer, who was from a wealthy
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
Arkansas
Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...
family, had moved to Paris to work for ''
Vogue
Vogue may refer to:
Business
* ''Vogue'' (magazine), a US fashion magazine
** British ''Vogue'', a British fashion magazine
** ''Vogue Arabia'', an Arab fashion magazine
** ''Vogue Australia'', an Australian fashion magazine
** ''Vogue China'', ...
'' magazine. Before their marriage, Hemingway converted to Catholicism. They honeymooned in
Le Grau-du-Roi
Le Grau-du-Roi (; oc, Lo Grau dau Rei) is a commune in the Gard department in southern France. It is the only commune in Gard to have a frontage on the Mediterranean. To the west is the Herault department and La Grande-Motte village, and to th ...
, where he contracted
anthrax
Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium ''Bacillus anthracis''. It can occur in four forms: skin, lungs, intestinal, and injection. Symptom onset occurs between one day and more than two months after the infection is contracted. The sk ...
, and he planned his next collection of short stories, '' Men Without Women'', which was published in October 1927,Meyers (1985), 195 and included his
boxing
Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermined ...
story "
Fifty Grand
"Fifty Grand" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. It was first published in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' in 1927, and it appeared later that year in Hemingway's short story collection '' Men Without Women''.
"Fifty Grand" tells the story of Jack B ...
". ''
Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan may refer to:
Food and drink
* Cosmopolitan (cocktail), also known as a "Cosmo"
History
* Rootless cosmopolitan, a Soviet derogatory epithet during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1949–1953
Hotels and resorts
* Cosmopoli ...
'' magazine editor-in-chief
Ray Long
William Ray Long, (March 23, 1878 – July 9, 1935) was an American newspaper, magazine, film, writer, and editor who is notable for being the editor-in-chief of ''Cosmopolitan'' magazine between 1919 and 1931. He is said to have had "a colorfu ...
praised "Fifty Grand", calling it, "one of the best short stories that ever came to my hands ... the best prize-fight story I ever read ... a remarkable piece of realism."
By the end of the year Pauline, who was pregnant, wanted to move back to America. John Dos Passos recommended
Key West
Key West ( es, Cayo Hueso) is an island in the Straits of Florida, within the U.S. state of Florida. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Island, it cons ...
, and they left Paris in March 1928. Hemingway suffered a severe injury in their Paris bathroom when he pulled a skylight down on his head thinking he was pulling on a toilet chain. This left him with a prominent forehead scar, which he carried for the rest of his life. When Hemingway was asked about the scar, he was reluctant to answer. After his departure from Paris, Hemingway "never again lived in a big city".Meyers (1985), 204
Key West and the Caribbean
Hemingway and Pauline traveled to Kansas City, where their son
Patrick Patrick may refer to:
* Patrick (given name), list of people and fictional characters with this name
* Patrick (surname), list of people with this name
People
* Saint Patrick (c. 385–c. 461), Christian saint
*Gilla Pátraic (died 1084), Patrick ...
was born on June 28, 1928. Pauline had a difficult delivery; Hemingway fictionalized a version of the event as a part of '' A Farewell to Arms''. After Patrick's birth, Pauline and Hemingway traveled to Wyoming, Massachusetts, and New York.Meyers (1985), 208 In the winter, he was in New York with Bumby, about to board a train to Florida, when he received a cable telling him that his father had killed himself.Clarence Hemingway used his father's Civil War pistol to shoot himself. See Meyers (1985), 2 Hemingway was devastated, having earlier written to his father telling him not to worry about financial difficulties; the letter arrived minutes after the suicide. He realized how Hadley must have felt after her own father's suicide in 1903, and he commented, "I'll probably go the same way."
Upon his return to Key West in December, Hemingway worked on the draft of ''A Farewell to Arms'' before leaving for France in January. He had finished it in August but delayed the revision. The serialization in ''
Scribner's Magazine
''Scribner's Magazine'' was an American periodical published by the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons from January 1887 to May 1939. ''Scribner's Magazine'' was the second magazine out of the Scribner's firm, after the publication of ' ...
'' was scheduled to begin in May, but as late as April, Hemingway was still working on the ending, which he may have rewritten as many as seventeen times. The completed novel was published on September 27.Meyers (1985), 215 Biographer James Mellow believes ''A Farewell to Arms'' established Hemingway's stature as a major American writer and displayed a level of complexity not apparent in ''The Sun Also Rises''.(The story was turned into a play by war veteran
Laurence Stallings
Laurence Tucker Stallings (November 25, 1894 – February 28, 1968) was an American playwright, screenwriter, lyricist, literary critic, journalist, novelist, and photographer. Best known for his collaboration with Maxwell Anderson on the 1924 pl ...
that was the basis for the film starring
Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, quiet screen persona and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, a ...
.)Mellow (1992), 378 In Spain in mid-1929, Hemingway researched his next work, ''
Death in the Afternoon
''Death in the Afternoon'' is a non-fiction book written by Ernest Hemingway about the ceremony and traditions of Spanish bullfighting, published in 1932. The book provides a look at the history and the Spanish traditions of bullfighting. It al ...
''. He wanted to write a comprehensive
treatise
A treatise is a formal and systematic written discourse on some subject, generally longer and treating it in greater depth than an essay, and more concerned with investigating or exposing the principles of the subject and its conclusions."Treat ...
on bullfighting, explaining the ''toreros'' and ''corridas'' complete with glossaries and appendices, because he believed bullfighting was "of great tragic interest, being literally of life and death."
During the early 1930s, Hemingway spent his winters in Key West and summers in Wyoming, where he found "the most beautiful country he had seen in the American West" and hunted deer, elk, and grizzly bear.Meyers (1985), 222 He was joined there by Dos Passos, and in November 1930, after bringing Dos Passos to the train station in
Billings, Montana
Billings is the largest city in the U.S. state of Montana, with a population of 117,116 as of the 2020 census. Located in the south-central portion of the state, it is the seat of Yellowstone County and the principal city of the Billings Metrop ...
, Hemingway broke his arm in a car accident. The surgeon tended the compound spiral fracture and bound the bone with kangaroo tendon. Hemingway was hospitalized for seven weeks, with Pauline tending to him; the nerves in his writing hand took as long as a year to heal, during which time he suffered intense pain.
His third child,
Gloria Hemingway
Gloria Hemingway (born Gregory Hancock Hemingway, November 12, 1931 – October 1, 2001) was an American physician and writer who was the third and youngest child of author Ernest Hemingway.
A good athlete and a crack shot, Gloria longed to ...
, was born a year later on November 12, 1931, in Kansas City as "Gregory Hancock Hemingway".Oliver (1999), 144She would undergo
sex reassignment surgery
Gender-affirming surgery (GAS) is a surgical procedure, or series of procedures, that alters a transgender or transsexual person's physical appearance and sexual characteristics to resemble those associated with their identified gender, and alle ...
in the mid-1990s and took the name Gloria Hemingway. Se "Hemingway legacy feud 'resolved'" . BBC News. October 3, 2003. Retrieved April 26, 2011. Pauline's uncle bought the couple a
house
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air condi ...
in Key West with a carriage house, the second floor of which was converted into a writing studio.Meyers (1985), 222–227 While in Key West, Hemingway frequented the local bar Sloppy Joe's.Mellow (1992), 402 He invited friends—including
Waldo Peirce
Waldo Peirce (December 17, 1884 – March 8, 1970) was an American painter, who for many years reveled in living the life of a bohemian expatriate.
Peirce was both a prominent painter and a well-known colorful figure in the world of the arts ...
, Dos Passos, and
Max Perkins
William Maxwell Evarts "Max" Perkins (September 20, 1884 – June 17, 1947) was an American book editor, best remembered for discovering authors Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Thomas Wolfe.
Early life and e ...
—to join him on fishing trips and on an all-male expedition to the
Dry Tortugas
Dry Tortugas National Park is a national park located about west of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico. The park preserves Fort Jefferson and the seven Dry Tortugas islands, the westernmost and most isolated of the Florida Keys. The archipelago's c ...
. Meanwhile, he continued to travel to Europe and to Cuba, and—although in 1933 he wrote of Key West, "We have a fine house here, and kids are all well"—Mellow believes he "was plainly restless".Mellow (1992), 424
In 1933, Hemingway and Pauline went on safari to Kenya. The 10-week trip provided material for ''
Green Hills of Africa
''Green Hills of Africa'' is a 1935 work of nonfiction by American writer Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway's second work of nonfiction, ''Green Hills of Africa'' is an account of a month on safari he and his wife, Pauline Marie Pfeiffer, took in East ...
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Set in Africa, it was published in the September 1936 issue of ''Cosmopolitan'' magazine concurrently with " The Snows of Kilimanjaro". The story was eventually adap ...
".Desnoyers, 9 The couple visited
Mombasa
Mombasa ( ; ) is a coastal city in southeastern Kenya along the Indian Ocean. It was the first capital of the British East Africa, before Nairobi was elevated to capital city status. It now serves as the capital of Mombasa County. The town is ...
,
Nairobi
Nairobi ( ) is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The name is derived from the Maasai phrase ''Enkare Nairobi'', which translates to "place of cool waters", a reference to the Nairobi River which flows through the city. The city proper ha ...
Tanganyika Territory
Tanganyika was a colonial territory in East Africa which was administered by the United Kingdom in various guises from 1916 to 1961. It was initially administered under a military occupation regime. From 20 July 1922, it was formalised into a L ...
, where they hunted in the
Serengeti
The Serengeti ( ) ecosystem is a Geography of Africa, geographical region in Africa, spanning northern Tanzania. The protected area within the region includes approximately of land, including the Serengeti National Park and several game res ...
, around
Lake Manyara
Lake Manyara is a lake located in Monduli District of Arusha Region, Tanzania and is the seventh-largest lake of Tanzania by surface area, at . It is a shallow, alkaline lake in the Natron-Manyara-Balangida branch of the East African Rift. The n ...
, and west and southeast of present-day
Tarangire National Park
Tarangire National Park is a national park in Tanzania's Manyara Region. The name of the park originates from the Tarangire River that crosses the park. The Tarangire River is the primary source of fresh water for wild animals in the Tarangire ...
. Their guide was the noted "white hunter" Philip Percival who had guided
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
on his 1909 safari. During these travels, Hemingway contracted
amoebic dysentery
Amoebiasis, or amoebic dysentery, is an infection of the intestines caused by a parasitic amoeba ''Entamoeba histolytica''. Amoebiasis can be present with no, mild, or severe symptoms. Symptoms may include lethargy, loss of weight, colonic u ...
that caused a prolapsed intestine, and he was evacuated by plane to Nairobi, an experience reflected in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro". On Hemingway's return to Key West in early 1934, he began work on ''Green Hills of Africa'', which he published in 1935 to mixed reviews.
Hemingway bought a boat in 1934, named it the '' Pilar'', and began sailing the
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
.Meyers (1985), 280 In 1935 he first arrived at
Bimini
Bimini is the westernmost district of the Bahamas and comprises a chain of islands located about due east of Miami. Bimini is the closest point in the Bahamas to the mainland United States and approximately west-northwest of Nassau. The popula ...
, where he spent a considerable amount of time. During this period he also worked on ''
To Have and Have Not
''To Have and Have Not'' is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1937 by Charles Scribner's Sons. The book follows Harry Morgan, a fishing boat captain out of Key West, Florida. ''To Have and Have Not'' was Hemingway's second novel set in th ...
'', published in 1937 while he was in Spain, the only novel he wrote during the 1930s.Meyers (1985), 292
Spanish Civil War
In 1937, Hemingway left for Spain to cover the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...
for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), despite Pauline's reluctance to have him working in a war zone.Mellow (1992), 488 He and Dos Passos both signed on to work with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens as screenwriters for '' The Spanish Earth''.Meyers (1985), 311 Dos Passos left the project after the execution of José Robles, his friend and Spanish translator,Meyers (1985), 308–311 which caused a rift between the two writers.Koch (2005), 164
Hemingway was joined in Spain by journalist and writer Martha Gellhorn, whom he had met in Key West a year earlier. Like Hadley, Martha was a St. Louis native, and like Pauline, she had worked for ''Vogue'' in Paris. Of Martha, Kert explains, "she never catered to him the way other women did".Kert (1983), 287–295 In July 1937 he attended the Second International Writers' Congress, the purpose of which was to discuss the attitude of intellectuals to the war, held in
Valencia
Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, Valencia and the Municipalities of Spain, third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is ...
,
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
and
Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...
and attended by many writers including
André Malraux
Georges André Malraux ( , ; 3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French novelist, art theorist, and minister of cultural affairs. Malraux's novel ''La Condition Humaine'' (Man's Fate) (1933) won the Prix Goncourt. He was appointed by P ...
,
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by the ...
and
Pablo Neruda
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...
. Late in 1937, while in Madrid with Martha, Hemingway wrote his only play, '' The Fifth Column'', as the city was being bombarded by Francoist forces.Koch (2005), 134 He returned to Key West for a few months, then back to Spain twice in 1938, where he was present at the
Battle of the Ebro
The Battle of the Ebro ( es, Batalla del Ebro, ca, Batalla de l'Ebre) was the longest and largest battle of the Spanish Civil War and the greatest, in terms of manpower, logistics and material ever fought on Spanish soil. It took place between Ju ...
, the last republican stand, and he was among the British and American journalists who were some of the last to leave the battle as they crossed the river.Meyers (1985), 321Thomas (2001), 833
Cuba
In early 1939, Hemingway crossed to Cuba in his boat to live in the
Hotel Ambos Mundos
The Hotel Ambos Mundos (, '' Both Worlds Hotel'') is a hotel in Havana, Cuba. Built with a square form with five floors, it has an eclectic set of characteristics of 20th-century style architecture. It was built in 1924 on a site that previousl ...
in Havana. This was the separation phase of a slow and painful split from Pauline, which began when Hemingway met Martha Gellhorn.Meyers (1985), 326 Martha soon joined him in Cuba, and they rented "
Finca Vigía
Finca Vigía (, ''Lookout Farm'') is a house in San Francisco de Paula Ward in Havana, Cuba which was once the residence of Ernest Hemingway. Like Hemingway's Key West home, it is now a museum. The building was constructed in 1886.
History of ...
" ("Lookout Farm"), a property from Havana. Pauline and the children left Hemingway that summer, after the family was reunited during a visit to Wyoming; when his divorce from Pauline was finalized, he and Martha were married on November 20, 1940, in
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Cheyenne ( or ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Wyoming, as well as the county seat of Laramie County, with 65,132 residents, per the 2020 US Census. It is the principal city of the Cheyenne metropolitan statistical ...
.
Hemingway moved his primary summer residence to
Ketchum, Idaho
Ketchum is a city in Blaine County, Idaho, located in the central part of the state. The population was 3,555 at the 2020 census, up from 2,689 in 2010. Located in the Wood River Valley, Ketchum is adjacent to Sun Valley and the communities sh ...
, just outside the newly built resort of Sun Valley, and moved his winter residence to Cuba.Meyers (1985), 342 He had been disgusted when a Parisian friend allowed his cats to eat from the table, but he became enamored of cats in Cuba and kept dozens of them on the property.Meyers (1985), 353 Descendants of his cats live at his
Key West
Key West ( es, Cayo Hueso) is an island in the Straits of Florida, within the U.S. state of Florida. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Island, it cons ...
home.
Gellhorn inspired him to write his most famous novel, ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'', which he began in March 1939 and finished in July 1940. It was published in October 1940.Meyers (1985), 334 His pattern was to move around while working on a manuscript, and he wrote ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' in Cuba, Wyoming, and Sun Valley. It became a Book-of-the-Month Club choice, sold half a million copies within months, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and, in the words of Meyers, "triumphantly re-established Hemingway's literary reputation".Meyers (1985), 334–338
In January 1941, Martha was sent to China on assignment for ''
Collier's
''Collier's'' was an American general interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as ''Collier's Once a Week'', then renamed in 1895 as ''Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal'', shortened in 1905 to ''Collie ...
'' magazine. Hemingway went with her, sending in dispatches for the newspaper '' PM'', but in general he disliked China.Meyers (1985), 356–361 A 2009 book suggests during that period he may have been recruited to work for Soviet intelligence agents under the name "Agent Argo". They returned to Cuba before the
declaration of war by the United States
A declaration of war is a formal declaration issued by a national government indicating that a state of war exists between that nation and another. A document by the Federation of American Scientists gives an extensive listing and summary of st ...
that December, when he convinced the Cuban government to help him refit the ''Pilar'', which he intended to use to ambush German submarines off the coast of Cuba.
World War II
Hemingway was in Europe from May 1944 to March 1945. When he arrived in London, he met ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine correspondent Mary Welsh, with whom he became infatuated. Martha had been forced to cross the Atlantic in a ship filled with explosives because Hemingway refused to help her get a press pass on a plane, and she arrived in London to find him hospitalized with a concussion from a car accident. She was unsympathetic to his plight; she accused him of being a bully and told him that she was "through, absolutely finished".Kert (1983), 393–398 The last time that Hemingway saw Martha was in March 1945 as he was preparing to return to Cuba,Meyers (1985), 416 and their divorce was finalized later that year. Meanwhile, he had asked Mary Welsh to marry him on their third meeting.
Hemingway accompanied the troops to the
Normandy Landings
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...
wearing a large head bandage, according to Meyers, but he was considered "precious cargo" and not allowed ashore.Meyers (1985), 400 The
landing craft
Landing craft are small and medium seagoing watercraft, such as boats and barges, used to convey a landing force (infantry and vehicles) from the sea to the shore during an amphibious assault. The term excludes landing ships, which are larger. Pr ...
came within sight of Omaha Beach before coming under enemy fire and turning back. Hemingway later wrote in ''
Collier's
''Collier's'' was an American general interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as ''Collier's Once a Week'', then renamed in 1895 as ''Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal'', shortened in 1905 to ''Collie ...
'' that he could see "the first, second, third, fourth and fifth waves of
anding troops
Anding may refer to:
Places China Districts and counties ()
* Anding District, Dingxi, Gansu, formerly Anding County
* Zichang County, formerly Anding County
Towns ()
* Anding, Beijing, in Daxing District, Beijing
* , subdivision of Ping ...
lay where they had fallen, looking like so many heavily laden bundles on the flat pebbly stretch between the sea and first cover". Mellow explains that, on that first day, none of the correspondents were allowed to land and Hemingway was returned to the ''
Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Lynde Dix (April 4, 1802July 17, 1887) was an American advocate on behalf of the indigent mentally ill who, through a vigorous and sustained program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first gen ...
''.
Late in July, he attached himself to "the 22nd Infantry Regiment commanded by Col. Charles "Buck" Lanham, as it drove toward Paris", and Hemingway became de facto leader to a small band of village militia in Rambouillet outside of Paris.Meyers (1985), 398–405
Paul Fussell
Paul Fussell Jr. (22 March 1924 – 23 May 2012) was an American cultural and literary historian, author and university professor. His writings cover a variety of topics, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commentar ...
remarks: "Hemingway got into considerable trouble playing infantry captain to a group of Resistance people that he gathered because a correspondent is not supposed to lead troops, even if he does it well." This was in fact in contravention of the
Geneva Convention
upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864
The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conven ...
, and Hemingway was brought up on formal charges; he said that he "beat the rap" by claiming that he only offered advice.Lynn (1987), 518–519
On August 25, he was present at the liberation of Paris as a journalist; contrary to the Hemingway legend, he was not the first into the city, nor did he liberate the Ritz.Meyers (1985) 408–411 In Paris, he visited Sylvia Beach and Pablo Picasso with Mary Welsh, who joined him there; in a spirit of happiness, he forgave Gertrude Stein.Mellow (1992), 535–540 Later that year, he observed heavy fighting in the
Battle of Hürtgen Forest
The Battle of Hürtgen Forest (german: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald) was a series of battles fought from 19 September to 16 December 1944, between American and German forces on the Western Front during World War II, in the Hürtgen Forest, a a ...
. On December 17, 1944, he had himself driven to Luxembourg in spite of illness to cover
The Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. The battle lasted from 16 December 1944 to 28 January 1945, towards the end of the war in ...
. As soon as he arrived, however, Lanham handed him to the doctors, who hospitalized him with pneumonia; he recovered a week later, but most of the fighting was over.
In 1947, Hemingway was awarded a
Bronze Star
The Bronze Star Medal (BSM) is a United States Armed Forces decoration awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces for either heroic achievement, heroic service, meritorious achievement, or meritorious service in a combat zone.
Wh ...
for his bravery during World War II. He was recognized for having been "under fire in combat areas in order to obtain an accurate picture of conditions", with the commendation that "through his talent of expression, Mr. Hemingway enabled readers to obtain a vivid picture of the difficulties and triumphs of the front-line soldier and his organization in combat".
Cuba and the Nobel Prize
Hemingway said he "was out of business as a writer" from 1942 to 1945 during his residence in Cuba.qtd. in Mellow (1992), 552 In 1946 he married Mary, who had an
ectopic pregnancy
Ectopic pregnancy is a complication of pregnancy in which the embryo attaches outside the uterus. Signs and symptoms classically include abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding, but fewer than 50 percent of affected women have both of these symptoms. ...
five months later. The Hemingway family suffered a series of accidents and health problems in the years following the war: in a 1945 car accident, he "smashed his knee" and sustained another "deep wound on his forehead"; Mary broke first her right ankle and then her left in successive skiing accidents. A 1947 car accident left Patrick with a head wound and severely ill.Meyers (1985), 420–421 Hemingway sank into depression as his literary friends began to die: in 1939
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...
and
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals '' The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review'' were instrumental in ...
; in 1940
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularize ...
; in 1941
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and ...
and
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
; in 1946
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
; and the following year in 1947, Max Perkins, Hemingway's long-time Scribner's editor, and friend.Mellow (1992) 548–550 During this period, he suffered from severe headaches, high blood pressure, weight problems, and eventually diabetes—much of which was the result of previous accidents and many years of heavy drinking.Desnoyers, 12 Nonetheless, in January 1946, he began work on ''
The Garden of Eden
In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden ( he, גַּן־עֵדֶן, ) or Garden of God (, and גַן־אֱלֹהִים ''gan-Elohim''), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the biblical paradise described in Genesis 2-3 and Ezekiel 28 an ...
'', finishing 800 pages by June.''The Garden of Eden'' was published posthumously in 1986. See Meyers (1985), 436 During the post-war years, he also began work on a trilogy tentatively titled "The Land", "The Sea" and "The Air", which he wanted to combine in one novel titled ''The Sea Book''. However, both projects stalled, and Mellow says that Hemingway's inability to continue was "a symptom of his troubles" during these years.The manuscript for ''The Sea Book'' was published posthumously as '' Islands in the Stream'' in 1970. See Mellow (1992), 552
In 1948, Hemingway and Mary traveled to Europe, staying in
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
for several months. While there, Hemingway fell in love with the then 19-year-old
Adriana Ivancich
Adriana Ivancich () was an Italian noble woman and poet. She was also known for her romantic relationship with the writer Ernest Hemingway.Across the River and into the Trees
''Across the River and Into the Trees'' is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1950, after first being serialized in ''Cosmopolitan'' magazine earlier that year. The title is derived from the last ...
'', written in Cuba during a time of strife with Mary, and published in 1950 to negative reviews. The following year, furious at the critical reception of ''Across the River and Into the Trees'', he wrote the draft of ''
The Old Man and the Sea
''The Old Man and the Sea'' is a novella written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cayo Blanco (Cuba), and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction written by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. ...
'' in eight weeks, saying that it was "the best I can write ever for all of my life". ''The Old Man and the Sea'' became a book-of-the-month selection, made Hemingway an international celebrity, and won the
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
in May 1953, a month before he left for his second trip to Africa.Desnoyers, 13Meyers (1985), 489
In January 1954, while in Africa, Hemingway was almost fatally injured in two successive plane crashes. He chartered a sightseeing flight over the
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo (french: Congo belge, ; nl, Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964.
Colo ...
as a Christmas present to Mary. On their way to photograph
Murchison Falls
Murchison Falls, also known as Kabalega Falls, is a waterfall at the apex of Lake Albert on the Victoria Nile in Uganda. At the top of Murchison Falls, the Nile forces its way through a gap in the rocks, only wide, and tumbles , before flowing ...
from the air, the plane struck an abandoned utility pole and "crash landed in heavy brush". Hemingway's injuries included a head wound, while Mary broke two ribs. The next day, attempting to reach medical care in
Entebbe
Entebbe is a city in Central Uganda. Located on a Lake Victoria peninsula, approximately southwest of the Ugandan capital city, Kampala. Entebbe was once the seat of government for the Protectorate of Uganda prior to independence, in 1962. T ...
, they boarded a second plane that exploded at take-off, with Hemingway suffering burns and another concussion, this one serious enough to cause leaking of cerebral fluid. They eventually arrived in Entebbe to find reporters covering the story of Hemingway's death. He briefed the reporters and spent the next few weeks recuperating and reading his erroneous obituaries. Despite his injuries, Hemingway accompanied Patrick and his wife on a planned fishing expedition in February, but pain caused him to be irascible and difficult to get along with.Mellow (1992), 588 When a bushfire broke out, he was again injured, sustaining second-degree burns on his legs, front torso, lips, left hand and right forearm.Meyers (1985), 505–507 Months later in
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
, Mary reported to friends the full extent of Hemingway's injuries: two cracked discs, a kidney and liver rupture, a
dislocated shoulder
A dislocated shoulder is a condition in which the head of the humerus is detached from the shoulder joint. Symptoms include shoulder pain and instability. Complications may include a Bankart lesion, Hill-Sachs lesion, rotator cuff tear, or i ...
and a broken skull. The accidents may have precipitated the physical deterioration that was to follow. After the plane crashes, Hemingway, who had been "a thinly controlled alcoholic throughout much of his life, drank more heavily than usual to combat the pain of his injuries."
In October 1954, Hemingway received the
Nobel Prize in Literature
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, caption =
, awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature
, presenter = Swedish Academy
, holder = Annie Ernaux (2022)
, location = Stockholm, Sweden
, year = 1901
, ...
. He modestly told the press that
Carl Sandburg
Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg ...
,
Isak Dinesen
Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (born Dinesen; 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962) was a Danish author who wrote works in Danish and English. She is also known under her pen names Isak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countrie ...
and
Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865 – October 6, 1959) was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. His book ''The Drawings of the Florentine Painters'' was an international success. His wife Mary is thought to have had a large ...
deserved the prize, but he gladly accepted the prize money.Baker (1972), 38 Mellow says Hemingway "had coveted the Nobel Prize", but when he won it, months after his plane accidents and the ensuing worldwide press coverage, "there must have been a lingering suspicion in Hemingway's mind that his obituary notices had played a part in the academy's decision."Mellow (1992), 588–589 Because he was suffering pain from the African accidents, he decided against traveling to
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
.Meyers (1985), 509 Instead he sent a speech to be read, defining the writer's life:
From the end of the year in 1955 to early 1956, Hemingway was bedridden.Meyers (1985), 512 He was told to stop drinking to mitigate liver damage, advice he initially followed but then disregarded. In October 1956, he returned to Europe and met
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
writer
Pio Baroja
Pio may refer to:
Places
* Pio Lake, Italy
* Pio Island, Solomon Islands
* Pio Point, Bird Island, south Atlantic Ocean
People
* Pio (given name)
* Pio (surname)
* Pio (footballer, born 1986)
Felipe Anselmo Viciano (born 6 January 1986 in Sant ...
, who was seriously ill and died weeks later. During the trip, Hemingway became sick again and was treated for "high blood pressure, liver disease, and arteriosclerosis".
In November 1956, while staying in Paris, he was reminded of trunks he had stored in the Ritz Hotel in 1928 and never retrieved. Upon re-claiming and opening the trunks, Hemingway discovered they were filled with notebooks and writing from his Paris years. Excited about the discovery, when he returned to Cuba in early 1957, he began to shape the recovered work into his memoir ''
A Moveable Feast
''A Moveable Feast'' is a 1964 memoir ''belles-lettres'' by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling expat journalist and writer in Paris during the 1920s. It was published posthumously. The book details Hemingway's fir ...
''.Meyers (1985), 533 By 1959 he ended a period of intense activity: he finished ''A Moveable Feast'' (scheduled to be released the following year); brought ''True at First Light'' to 200,000 words; added chapters to ''The Garden of Eden''; and worked on ''Islands in the Stream''. The last three were stored in a safe deposit box in Havana, as he focused on the finishing touches for ''A Moveable Feast''. Author Michael Reynolds claims it was during this period that Hemingway slid into depression, from which he was unable to recover.
The Finca Vigía became crowded with guests and tourists, as Hemingway, beginning to become unhappy with life there, considered a permanent move to Idaho. In 1959 he bought a home overlooking the
Big Wood River
The Big Wood River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data. , accessed May 4, 2011 river in central Idaho, United States, that is a tributary of the Malad River (which in turn is tributary to the ...
, outside Ketchum, and left Cuba—although he apparently remained on easy terms with the
Castro
Castro is a Romance language word that originally derived from Latin ''castrum'', a pre-Roman military camp or fortification (cf: Greek: ''kastron''; Proto-Celtic:''*Kassrik;'' br, kaer, *kastro). The English-language equivalent is '' chester''.
...
government, telling ''The New York Times'' he was "delighted" with Castro's overthrow of
Batista
Batista is a Spanish or Portuguese surname. Notable persons with the name include:
* Batista (footballer, born 1955), Brazilian football player
* Dave Bautista, American actor and professional wrestler, also known as Batista
* Edina Alves Batis ...
.Meyers (1985), 516–519 He was in Cuba in November 1959, between returning from Pamplona and traveling west to Idaho, and the following year for his 61st birthday; however, that year he and Mary decided to leave after hearing the news that Castro wanted to nationalize property owned by Americans and other foreign nationals. On July 25, 1960, the Hemingways left Cuba for the last time, leaving art and manuscripts in a bank vault in Havana. After the 1961
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called ''Invasión de Playa Girón'' or ''Batalla de Playa Girón'' after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles, covertly fina ...
, the Finca Vigía was
expropriated
Eminent domain (United States, Philippines), land acquisition (India, Malaysia, Singapore), compulsory purchase/acquisition (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, United Kingdom), resumption (Hong Kong, Uganda), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Austr ...
by the Cuban government, complete with Hemingway's collection of "four to six thousand books".Mellow (1992), 599 President Kennedy arranged for Mary Hemingway to travel to Cuba where she met Fidel Castro and obtained her husband's papers and painting in return for donating Finca Vigía to Cuba.
Idaho and suicide
Hemingway continued to rework the material that was published as ''A Moveable Feast'' through the 1950s. In mid-1959, he visited Spain to research a series of bullfighting articles commissioned by ''
Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...
'' magazine.Meyers (1985), 520 ''Life'' wanted only 10,000 words, but the manuscript grew out of control. He was unable to organize his writing for the first time in his life, so he asked
A. E. Hotchner
Aaron Edward Hotchner (June 28, 1917 – February 15, 2020) was an American editor, novelist, playwright, and biographer.The Dangerous Summer
''The Dangerous Summer'' is a nonfiction book by Ernest Hemingway published posthumously in 1985 and written in 1959 and 1960. The book describes the rivalry between bullfighters Luis Miguel Dominguín and his brother-in-law, Antonio Ordóñez, ...
'') of almost 130,000 words.Reynolds (1999), 544–547 Hotchner found Hemingway to be "unusually hesitant, disorganized, and confused",qtd. in Mellow (1992), 598–600 and suffering badly from failing eyesight.Meyers (1985), 542–544
Hemingway and Mary left Cuba for the last time on July 25, 1960. He set up a small office in his New York City apartment and attempted to work, but he left soon after. He then traveled alone to Spain to be photographed for the front cover of ''Life'' magazine. A few days later, the news reported that he was seriously ill and on the verge of dying, which panicked Mary until she received a cable from him telling her, "Reports false. Enroute Madrid. Love Papa." He was, in fact, seriously ill, and believed himself to be on the verge of a breakdown. Feeling lonely, he took to his bed for days, retreating into silence, despite having the first installments of ''The Dangerous Summer'' published in ''Life'' in September 1960 to good reviews.Mellow (1992), 598–601 In October, he left Spain for New York, where he refused to leave Mary's apartment, presuming that he was being watched. She quickly took him to Idaho, where physician George Saviers met them at the train.
At this time, Hemingway was constantly worried about money and his safety. He worried about his taxes and that he would never return to Cuba to retrieve the manuscripts that he had left in a bank vault. He became paranoid, thinking that the FBI was actively monitoring his movements in Ketchum.Reynolds (1999), 548 The FBI had, in fact, opened a file on him during World War II, when he used the ''Pilar'' to patrol the waters off Cuba, and
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation ...
had an agent in Havana watch him during the 1950s. Unable to care for her husband, Mary had Saviers fly Hemingway to the
Mayo Clinic
The Mayo Clinic () is a nonprofit American academic medical center focused on integrated health care, education, and research. It employs over 4,500 physicians and scientists, along with another 58,400 administrative and allied health staff, ...
in Minnesota at the end of November for
hypertension
Hypertension (HTN or HT), also known as high blood pressure (HBP), is a long-term medical condition in which the blood pressure in the arteries is persistently elevated. High blood pressure usually does not cause symptoms. Long-term high bl ...
treatments, as he told his patient. The FBI knew that Hemingway was at the Mayo Clinic, as an agent later documented in a letter written in January 1961.
Hemingway was checked in under Saviers's name to maintain anonymity. Meyers writes that "an aura of secrecy surrounds Hemingway's treatment at the Mayo" but confirms that he was treated with
electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a psychiatric treatment where a generalized seizure (without muscular convulsions) is electrically induced to manage refractory mental disorders.Rudorfer, MV, Henry, ME, Sackeim, HA (2003)"Electroconvulsive th ...
(ECT) as many as 15 times in December 1960 and was "released in ruins" in January 1961. Reynolds gained access to Hemingway's records at the Mayo, which document ten ECT sessions. The doctors in Rochester told Hemingway the depressive state for which he was being treated may have been caused by his long-term use of
Reserpine
Reserpine is a drug that is used for the treatment of high blood pressure, usually in combination with a thiazide diuretic or vasodilator. Large clinical trials have shown that combined treatment with reserpine plus a thiazide diuretic reduces m ...
and
Ritalin
Methylphenidate, sold under the brand names Ritalin and Concerta among others, is the most widely prescribed central nervous system (CNS) stimulant medication used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and, to a lesser extent ...
. Of the ECT therapy, Hemingway told Hotchner, “What is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient.”
Hemingway was back in Ketchum in April 1961, three months after being released from the Mayo Clinic, when Mary "found Hemingway holding a shotgun" in the kitchen one morning. She called Saviers, who sedated him and admitted him to the Sun Valley Hospital;Meyers (1985), 551 and once the weather cleared Saviers flew again to Rochester with his patient. Hemingway underwent three electroshock treatments during that visit. He was released at the end of June and was home in Ketchum on June 30. Two days later he "quite deliberately" shot himself with his favorite shotgun in the early morning hours of July 2, 1961. He had unlocked the basement storeroom where his guns were kept, gone upstairs to the front entrance foyer, and shot himself with the "double-barreled shotgun that he had used so often it might have been a friend", which was purchased from Abercrombie & Fitch.
Mary was sedated and taken to the hospital, returning home the next day where she cleaned the house and saw to the funeral and travel arrangements. Bernice Kert writes that it "did not seem to her a conscious lie" when she told the press that his death had been accidental.Kert (1983), 504 In a press interview five years later, Mary confirmed that he had shot himself.
Family and friends flew to Ketchum for the funeral, officiated by the local Catholic priest, who believed that the death had been accidental. An altar boy fainted at the head of the casket during the funeral, and Hemingway's brother Leicester wrote: "It seemed to me Ernest would have approved of it all." He is buried in the Ketchum cemetery.
Hemingway's behavior during his final years had been similar to that of his father before he killed himself;Burwell (1996), 234 his father may have had
hereditary hemochromatosis
Hereditary haemochromatosis type 1 (HFE-related Hemochromatosis) is a genetic disorder characterized by excessive intestinal absorption of dietary iron, resulting in a pathological increase in total body iron stores. Humans, like most animals, h ...
, whereby the excessive accumulation of iron in tissues culminates in mental and physical deterioration.Burwell (1996), 14 Medical records made available in 1991 confirmed that Hemingway had been diagnosed with hemochromatosis in early 1961.Burwell (1996), 189 His sister Ursula and his brother Leicester also killed themselves. Hemingway's health was further complicated by heavy drinking throughout most of his life.
A memorial to Hemingway just north of Sun Valley is inscribed on the base with a eulogy Hemingway had written for a friend several decades earlier:
:''Best of all he loved the fall''
:''the leaves yellow on cottonwoods''
:''leaves floating on trout streams''
:''and above the hills''
:''the high blue windless skies''
:...''Now he will be a part of them forever.''
Writing style
''The New York Times'' wrote in 1926 of Hemingway's first novel, "No amount of analysis can convey the quality of ''The Sun Also Rises''. It is a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame.""The Sun Also Rises" . (October 31, 1926). ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. Retrieved November 30, 2011. ''The Sun Also Rises'' is written in the spare, tight prose that made Hemingway famous, and, according to James Nagel, "changed the nature of American writing".Nagel (1996), 87 In 1954, when Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, it was for "his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in ''The Old Man and the Sea'', and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."
Henry Louis Gates
Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African Am ...
believes Hemingway's style was fundamentally shaped "in reaction to isexperience of world war". After World War I, he and other modernists "lost faith in the central institutions of Western civilization" by reacting against the elaborate style of 19th-century writers and by creating a style "in which meaning is established through dialogue, through action, and silences—a fiction in which nothing crucial—or at least very little—is stated explicitly."
Because he began as a writer of short stories, Baker believes Hemingway learned to "get the most from the least, how to prune language, how to multiply intensities and how to tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth."Baker (1972), 117 Hemingway called his style the
iceberg theory
The iceberg theory or theory of omission is a writing technique coined by American writer Ernest Hemingway. As a young journalist, Hemingway had to focus his newspaper reports on immediate events, with very little context or interpretation. When h ...
: the facts float above water; the supporting structure and symbolism operate out of sight. The concept of the iceberg theory is sometimes referred to as the "theory of omission". Hemingway believed the writer could describe one thing (such as Nick Adams fishing in "Big Two-Hearted River") though an entirely different thing occurs below the surface (Nick Adams concentrating on fishing to the extent that he does not have to think about anything else). Paul Smith writes that Hemingway's first stories, collected as ''
In Our Time In Our Time may refer to:
* ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid
* ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema"
* ''In ...
'', showed he was still experimenting with his writing style, and when he wrote about Spain or other countries he incorporated foreign words into the text, which sometimes appears directly in the other language (in italics, as occurs in ''
The Old Man and the Sea
''The Old Man and the Sea'' is a novella written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cayo Blanco (Cuba), and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction written by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. ...
'') or in English as literal translations. He also often used bilingual puns and crosslingual wordplay as stylistic devices. In general, he avoided complicated syntax. About 70 percent of the sentences are
simple sentence
In grammar, sentence and clause structure, commonly known as sentence composition, is the classification of sentences based on the number and kind of clauses in their syntactic structure. Such division is an element of traditional grammar.
Typol ...
s without
subordination
Subordination may refer to
*Subordination in a hierarchy (in military, society, etc.)
** Insubordination, disobedience
*Subordination (linguistics)
* Subordination (finance)
* Subordination agreement, a legal document used to deprecate the claim ...
—a simple childlike grammar structure.
Jackson Benson believes Hemingway used autobiographical details as framing devices about life in general—not only about his life. For example, Benson postulates that Hemingway used his experiences and drew them out with "what if" scenarios: "what if I were wounded in such a way that I could not sleep at night? What if I were wounded and made crazy, what would happen if I were sent back to the front?" Writing in "The Art of the Short Story", Hemingway explains: "A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff that you, not your editors, omit."
The simplicity of the prose is deceptive. Zoe Trodd believes Hemingway crafted skeletal sentences in response to
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
's observation that World War I had "used up words". Hemingway offers a "multi-focal" photographic reality. His iceberg theory of omission is the foundation on which he builds. The syntax, which lacks
subordinating conjunctions
In grammar, a conjunction (abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitutes a ...
, creates static sentences. The photographic "
snapshot
Snapshot, snapshots or snap shot may refer to:
* Snapshot (photography), a photograph taken without preparation
Computing
* Snapshot (computer storage), the state of a system at a particular point in time
* Snapshot (file format) or SNP, a file ...
" style creates a
collage
Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
of images. Many types of internal punctuation (colons, semicolons, dashes, parentheses) are omitted in favor of short declarative sentences. The sentences build on each other, as events build to create a sense of the whole. Multiple strands exist in one story; an "embedded text" bridges to a different angle. He also uses other cinematic techniques of "cutting" quickly from one scene to the next; or of "splicing" a scene into another. Intentional omissions allow the reader to fill the gap, as though responding to instructions from the author and create three-dimensional prose.
Hemingway habitually used the word "and" in place of commas. This use of
polysyndeton
Polysyndeton (from Ancient Greek πολύ ''poly'', meaning "many", and συνδετόν '' syndeton'', meaning "bound together with".) is the deliberate insertion of conjunctions into a sentence for the purpose of "slow ngup the rhythm of the ...
may serve to convey immediacy. Hemingway's polysyndetonic sentence—or in later works his use of subordinate clauses—uses conjunctions to juxtapose startling visions and images. Benson compares them to
haiku
is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or se ...
s.McCormick, 49 Many of Hemingway's followers misinterpreted his lead and frowned upon all expression of emotion;
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 July 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only wr ...
satirized this style as "Do you have emotions? Strangle them." However, Hemingway's intent was not to eliminate emotion, but to portray it more scientifically. Hemingway thought it would be easy, and pointless, to describe emotions; he sculpted collages of images in order to grasp "the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always". This use of an image as an objective correlative is characteristic of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...
. Hemingway's letters refer to Proust's ''
Remembrance of Things Past
''In Search of Lost Time'' (french: À la recherche du temps perdu), first translated into English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'', and sometimes referred to in French as ''La Recherche'' (''The Search''), is a novel in seven volumes by French ...
'' several times over the years, and indicate he read the book at least twice.Burwell (1996), 187
Themes
Hemingway's writing includes themes of love, war, travel, wilderness, and loss. Critic
Leslie Fiedler
Leslie Aaron Fiedler (March 8, 1917 – January 29, 2003) was an American literary critic, known for his interest in mythography and his championing of genre fiction. His work incorporates the application of psychological theories to American lit ...
sees the theme he defines as "The Sacred Land"—the
American West
The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the Wes ...
—extended in Hemingway's work to include mountains in Spain, Switzerland and Africa, and to the streams of Michigan. The American West is given a symbolic nod with the naming of the "Hotel Montana" in ''The Sun Also Rises'' and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. According to Stoltzfus and Fiedler, in Hemingway's work, nature is a place for rebirth and rest; and it is where the hunter or fisherman might experience a moment of transcendence at the moment they kill their prey. Nature is where men exist without women: men fish; men hunt; men find redemption in nature. Although Hemingway does write about sports, such as fishing, Carlos Baker notes the emphasis is more on the athlete than the sport.Baker (1972), 120–121 At its core, much of Hemingway's work can be viewed in the light of American naturalism, evident in detailed descriptions such as those in "Big Two-Hearted River".
Fiedler believes Hemingway inverts the American literary theme of the evil "Dark Woman" versus the good "Light Woman". The dark woman—Brett Ashley of ''
The Sun Also Rises
''The Sun Also Rises'' is a 1926 novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, his first, that portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the b ...
''—is a goddess; the light woman—Margot Macomber of "
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Set in Africa, it was published in the September 1936 issue of ''Cosmopolitan'' magazine concurrently with " The Snows of Kilimanjaro". The story was eventually adap ...
"—is a murderess.Fiedler (1975), 345–365
Robert Scholes
Robert E. Scholes (1929 – December 9, 2016) was an American literary critic and theorist. He is known for his ideas on fabulation and metafiction.
Education and career
Robert Scholes was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1929. After taking hi ...
says early Hemingway stories, such as "
A Very Short Story
"A Very Short Story" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. It was first published as a vignette, or chapter, in the 1924 Paris edition titled '' In Our Time'', and later rewritten and added to Hemingway's first American short story collec ...
", present "a male character favorably and a female unfavorably". According to Rena Sanderson, early Hemingway critics lauded his male-centric world of masculine pursuits, and the fiction divided women into "castrators or love-slaves". Feminist critics attacked Hemingway as "public enemy number one", although more recent re-evaluations of his work "have given new visibility to Hemingway's female characters (and their strengths) and have revealed his own sensitivity to gender issues, thus casting doubts on the old assumption that his writings were one-sidedly masculine." Nina Baym believes that Brett Ashley and Margot Macomber "are the two outstanding examples of Hemingway's 'bitch women.
The theme of women and death is evident in stories as early as "
Indian Camp
"Indian Camp" is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway. The story was first published in 1924 in Ford Madox Ford's literary magazine ''Transatlantic Review'' in Paris and republished by Boni & Liveright in Hemingway's first American volume of ...
". The theme of death permeates Hemingway's work. Young believes the emphasis in "Indian Camp" was not so much on the woman who gives birth or the father who kills himself, but on Nick Adams who witnesses these events as a child, and becomes a "badly scarred and nervous young man". Hemingway sets the events in "Indian Camp" that shape the Adams persona. Young believes "Indian Camp" holds the "master key" to "what its author was up to for some thirty-five years of his writing career". Stoltzfus considers Hemingway's work to be more complex with a representation of the truth inherent in
existentialism
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
: if "nothingness" is embraced, then redemption is achieved at the moment of death. Those who face death with dignity and courage live an authentic life. Francis Macomber dies happy because the last hours of his life are authentic; the
bullfighter
A bullfighter (or matador) is a performer in the activity of bullfighting. ''Torero'' () or ''toureiro'' (), both from Latin ''taurarius'', are the Spanish and Portuguese words for bullfighter and describe all the performers in the activit ...
in the corrida represents the pinnacle of a life lived with authenticity.Stoltzfus (2005), 215–218 In his paper ''The Uses of Authenticity: Hemingway and the Literary Field'', Timo Müller writes that Hemingway's fiction is successful because the characters live an "authentic life", and the "soldiers, fishers, boxers and backwoodsmen are among the archetypes of authenticity in modern literature".
The theme of emasculation is prevalent in Hemingway's work, notably in ''God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen'' and ''The Sun Also Rises''. Emasculation, according to Fiedler, is a result of a generation of wounded soldiers; and of a generation in which women such as Brett gained
emancipation
Emancipation generally means to free a person from a previous restraint or legal disability. More broadly, it is also used for efforts to procure economic and social rights, political rights or equality, often for a specifically disenfranchis ...
. This also applies to the minor character, Frances Clyne, Cohn's girlfriend in the beginning of ''The Sun Also Rises''. Her character supports the theme not only because the idea was presented early on in the novel but also the impact she had on Cohn in the start of the book while only appearing a small number of times. In ''God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen'', the emasculation is literal, and related to religious guilt. Baker believes Hemingway's work emphasizes the "natural" versus the "unnatural". In "
An Alpine Idyll
"An Alpine Idyll" is a short story by American writer Ernest Hemingway, set in Switzerland and presumably featuring protagonist Nick Adams
Descriptions of food and drink feature prominently in many of Hemingway's works. In the short story "
Big Two-Hearted River
"Big Two-Hearted River" is a two-part short story written by American author Ernest Hemingway, published in the 1925 Boni & Liveright edition of ''In Our Time'', the first American volume of Hemingway's short stories. It features a single prota ...
" Hemingway describes a hungry Nick Adams cooking a can of pork and beans and a can of spaghetti over a fire in a heavy cast iron pot. The primitive act of preparing the meal in solitude is a restorative act and one of Hemingway's narratives of post-war integration.
Susan Beegel reports that Charles Stetler and Gerald Locklin read Hemingway's ''The Mother of a Queen'' as both
misogynistic
Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women. It is a form of sexism that is used to keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the societal roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practiced f ...
and
homophobic
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred or antipathy, m ...
, and Ernest Fontana thought that a "horror of
homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...
" drove the short story "
A Pursuit Race
"A Pursuit Race" is a 1927 short story by American writer Ernest Hemingway. It was published in the collection '' Men Without Women''.
Plot summary
"A Pursuit Race" tells the story of a man, William Campbell, involved in a " pursuit race" with a ...
".Beegel (1996), 288 Beegel found that "despite the academy's growing interest in multiculturalism ... during the 1980s ... critics interested in multiculturalism tended to ignore the author as 'politically incorrect.'", listing just two "apologetic articles on ishandling of race". Barry Gross, comparing Jewish characters in literature of the period, commented that "Hemingway never lets the reader forget that Cohn is a Jew, not an unattractive character who happens to be a Jew but a character who is unattractive because he is a Jew."
Influence and legacy
Hemingway's legacy to American literature is his style: writers who came after him either emulated or avoided it. After his reputation was established with the publication of ''The Sun Also Rises'', he became the spokesperson for the post-World War I generation, having established a style to follow. His books were burned in Berlin in 1933, "as being a monument of modern decadence", and disavowed by his parents as "filth".Hallengren, Anders "A Case of Identity: Ernest Hemingway" . Nobelprize.org. Retrieved November 30, 2011. Reynolds asserts the legacy is that " emingwayleft stories and novels so starkly moving that some have become part of our cultural heritage."
Benson believes the details of Hemingway's life have become a "prime vehicle for exploitation", resulting in a Hemingway industry. Hemingway scholar Hallengren believes the "hard-boiled style" and the machismo must be separated from the author himself. Benson agrees, describing him as introverted and private as
J. D. Salinger
Jerome David Salinger (; January 1, 1919 January 27, 2010) was an American author best known for his 1951 novel ''The Catcher in the Rye''. Salinger got his start in 1940, before serving in World War II, by publishing several short stories in '' ...
, although Hemingway masked his nature with braggadocio. During World War II, Salinger met and corresponded with Hemingway, whom he acknowledged as an influence. In a letter to Hemingway, Salinger claimed their talks "had given him his only hopeful minutes of the entire war" and jokingly "named himself national chairman of the Hemingway Fan Clubs".
The extent of his influence is seen from the enduring and varied tributes to Hemingway and his works. 3656 Hemingway, a
minor planet
According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term ''minor ...
discovered in 1978 by
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
astronomer
Nikolai Chernykh
Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh (russian: Никола́й Степа́нович Черны́х) (6 October 1931 – 25 May 2004Казакова, Р.К. Памяти Николая Степановича Черных'. Труды Государст ...
, was named for Hemingway, and in 2009, a crater on
Mercury
Mercury commonly refers to:
* Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun
* Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg
* Mercury (mythology), a Roman god
Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to:
Companies
* Merc ...
was also named in his honor. ''The Kilimanjaro Device'' by
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and r ...
featured Hemingway being transported to the top of
Mount Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro () is a dormant volcano in Tanzania. It has three volcanic cones: Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira. It is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain above sea level in the world: above sea level and ab ...
, while the 1993 motion picture ''
Wrestling Ernest Hemingway
''Wrestling Ernest Hemingway'' is a 1993 American romantic drama film written by Steve Conrad and directed by Randa Haines, starring Richard Harris, Robert Duvall, Sandra Bullock, Shirley MacLaine, and Piper Laurie. The film is about two elder ...
'' explored the friendship of two retired men, played by
Robert Duvall
Robert Selden Duvall (; born January 5, 1931) is an American actor and filmmaker. His career spans more than seven decades and he is considered one of the greatest American actors of all time. He is the recipient of an Academy Award, four Gold ...
and
Richard Harris
Richard St John Francis Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor and singer. He appeared on stage and in many films, notably as Corrado Zeller in Michelangelo Antonioni's '' Red Desert'', Frank Machin in '' This Sporting ...
, in a seaside Florida town. His influence is further evident from the many restaurants bearing his name and the proliferation of bars called "Harry's", a nod to the bar in ''Across the River and Into the Trees''. Hemingway's son Jack (Bumby) promoted a line of furniture honoring his father, Montblanc created a Hemingway fountain pen, and multiple lines of clothing inspired by Hemingway have been produced. In 1977, the
International Imitation Hemingway Competition
The International Imitation Hemingway Competition, also known as the Bad Hemingway Contest, was an annual writing competition begun in Century City, California. Started in 1977 as a "promotional gag",Schwartz, Amy E. (August 12, 1994)Homage to Pop ...
was created to acknowledge his distinct style and the comical efforts of amateur authors to imitate him; entrants are encouraged to submit one "really good page of really bad Hemingway" and the winners are flown to Harry's Bar in Italy.
Mary Hemingway established the Hemingway Foundation in 1965, and in the 1970s she donated her husband's papers to the John F. Kennedy Library. In 1980, a group of Hemingway scholars gathered to assess the donated papers, subsequently forming the Hemingway Society, "committed to supporting and fostering Hemingway scholarship", publishing ''The Hemingway Review''. Numerous awards have been established in Hemingway's honor to recognize significant achievement in the arts and culture, including the
Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award The PEN/Hemingway Award is awarded annually to a full-length novel or book of short stories by an American author who has not previously published a full-length book of fiction. The award is named after Ernest Hemingway and funded by the Hemingway ...
and the Hemingway Award.
In 2012, he was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.
Almost exactly 35 years after Hemingway's death, on July 1, 1996, his granddaughter
Margaux Hemingway
Margaux Louise Hemingway (born Margot Louise Hemingway; February 16, 1954 – July 1, 1996) was an American fashion model and actress. She gained success as a supermodel in the mid-1970s, appearing on the covers of magazines including ''Cosmopo ...
died in
Santa Monica
Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to ...
, California. Margaux was a
supermodel
A supermodel, also spelled super-model or super model, is a highly paid fashion model who usually has a worldwide reputation and often a background in ''haute couture'' and commercial modeling. The term ''supermodel'' became prominent in the po ...
and actress, co-starring with her younger sister Mariel in the 1976 movie ''
Lipstick
Lipstick is a cosmetic product used to apply coloration and texture to lips, often made of wax and oil. Different pigments are used to produce color, and minerals such as silica may be used to provide texture. The use of lipstick dates back t ...
''. Her death was later ruled a death by suicide.
Three houses associated with Hemingway are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places: the
Ernest Hemingway Cottage
The Ernest Hemingway Cottage, also known as Windemere, was the boyhood summer home of author Ernest Hemingway, on Walloon Lake in Michigan. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1968. and
History
In about 1898, Dr. Clarence H ...
on Walloon Lake, Michigan, designated in 1968; the
Ernest Hemingway House
The Ernest Hemingway House was the residence of American writer Ernest Hemingway in the 1930s. The house is situated on the island of Key West in Florida. It is at 907 Whitehead Street, across from the Key West Lighthouse, close to the southern ...
in Key West, designated in 1968; and the Ernest and Mary Hemingway House in Ketchum, designated in 2015. His boyhood home, in Oak Park, Illinois, is a museum and archive dedicated to Hemingway. Hemingway's childhood home in Oak Park and his Havana residence were also converted into museums.
On April 5, 2021, ''
Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fi ...
'', a three-episode, six-hour documentary, a recapitulation of Hemingway's life, labors, and loves, debuted on the
Public Broadcasting System
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
. It was co-produced and directed by
Ken Burns
Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American filmmaker known for his documentary film, documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle United States, American History of the United States, history and Culture of the ...
and
Lynn Novick
Lynn Novick is an American director and producer of documentary films, widely known for her work with Ken Burns.
Early life
Novick was born in 1962, raised in New York City, and graduated from Horace Mann School in 1979. She graduated magna cum la ...
.
Selected works
*(1925) ''
In Our Time In Our Time may refer to:
* ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid
* ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema"
* ''In ...
''
*(1926) ''
The Sun Also Rises
''The Sun Also Rises'' is a 1926 novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, his first, that portrays American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the b ...
To Have and Have Not
''To Have and Have Not'' is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1937 by Charles Scribner's Sons. The book follows Harry Morgan, a fishing boat captain out of Key West, Florida. ''To Have and Have Not'' was Hemingway's second novel set in th ...
''
*(1940) ''
For Whom the Bell Tolls
''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned ...
''
*(1952) ''
The Old Man and the Sea
''The Old Man and the Sea'' is a novella written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cayo Blanco (Cuba), and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction written by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. ...
* Baker, Carlos. (1969). ''Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
* Baker, Carlos. (1972). ''Hemingway: The Writer as Artist''. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...
.
* Baker, Carlos. (1981). "Introduction" in ''Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917–1961''. New York: Scribner's.
* Banks, Russell. (2004). "PEN/Hemingway Prize Speech". ''The Hemingway Review''. Volume 24, issue 1. 53–60
* Baym, Nina. (1990). "Actually I Felt Sorry for the Lion", in Benson, Jackson J. (ed.), ''New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway''. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press
Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 Du ...
.
* Beegel, Susan. (1996). "Conclusion: The Critical Reputation", in Donaldson, Scott (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway''. New York:
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press
A university press is an academic publishing hou ...
.
* Beegel, Susan (2000). "Eye and Heart: Hemingway's Education as a Naturalist", in Wagner-Martin, Linda (ed.), ''A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway''. New York:
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
.
* Benson, Jackson. (1989). "Ernest Hemingway: The Life as Fiction and the Fiction as Life". ''American Literature''. Volume 61, issue 3. 354–358
* Benson, Jackson. (1975). ''The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Critical Essays''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
* Burwell, Rose Marie. (1996). ''Hemingway: the Postwar Years and the Posthumous Novels''. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Desnoyers, Megan Floyd "Ernest Hemingway: A Storyteller's Legacy" . John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Online Resources.
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is the presidential library and museum of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917–1963), the 35th president of the United States (1961–1963). It is located on Columbia Point in the Dorchester neighb ...
. Retrieved November 30, 2011.
* Fiedler, Leslie. (1975). ''Love and Death in the American Novel''. New York: Stein and Day.
*Gladstein, Mimi. (2006). "Bilingual Wordplay: Variations on a Theme by Hemingway and Steinbeck" ''The Hemingway Review'' Volume 26, issue 1. 81–95.
* Griffin, Peter. (1985). ''Along with Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years''. New York: Oxford University Press.
* Hemingway, Ernest. (1929). ''A Farewell to Arms''. New York: Scribner's.
* Hemingway, Ernest. (1975). "The Art of the Short Story", in Benson, Jackson (ed.), ''New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
* Hemingway, Leicester. (1996). ''My Brother, Ernest Hemingway''. New York: World Publishing Company.
*Herlihy, Jeffrey. (2009). "Santiago's Expatriation from Spain" ''The Hemingway Review'' Volume 28, Number 2. 25–44.
*Herlihy-Mera, Jeffrey. (2017). "Cuba in Hemingway" ''The Hemingway Review'' Volume 36, Number 2. 8–41.
* Hoberek, Andrew. (2005). ''Twilight of the Middle Class: Post World War II fiction and White Collar Work''. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Josephs, Allen. (1996). "Hemingway's Spanish Sensibility", in Donaldson, Scott (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Kert, Bernice. (1983). ''The Hemingway Women''. New York: Norton.
* Koch, Stephen. (2005). ''The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles''. New York: Counterpoint.
* Long, Ray – editor. (1932). "Why Editors Go Wrong: '
Fifty Grand
"Fifty Grand" is a short story by Ernest Hemingway. It was first published in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' in 1927, and it appeared later that year in Hemingway's short story collection '' Men Without Women''.
"Fifty Grand" tells the story of Jack B ...
' by Ernest Hemingway", ''20 Best Stories in Ray Long's 20 Years as an Editor''. New York: Crown Publishers. 1–3
* Lynn, Kenneth. (1987). ''Hemingway''. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...
.
* McCormick, John (1971). ''American Literature 1919–1932''. London:
Routledge
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, and ...
.
* Mellow, James. (1992). ''Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
* Mellow, James. (1991). ''Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
* Meyers, Jeffrey. (1985). ''Hemingway: A Biography''. New York: Macmillan.
* Miller, Linda Patterson. (2006). "From the African Book to Under Kilimanjaro". ''The Hemingway Review'', Volume 25, issue 2. 78–81
* Müller, Timo. (2010). "The Uses of Authenticity: Hemingway and the Literary Field, 1926–1936". ''Journal of Modern Literature''. Volume 33, issue 1. 28–42
* Nagel, James. (1996). "Brett and the Other Women in ''The Sun Also Rises''", in Donaldson, Scott (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Oliver, Charles. (1999). ''Ernest Hemingway A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work''. New York: Checkmark Publishing.
* Reynolds, Michael (2000). "Ernest Hemingway, 1899–1961: A Brief Biography", in Wagner-Martin, Linda (ed.), ''A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Oxford University Press.
* Reynolds, Michael. (1999). ''Hemingway: The Final Years''. New York: Norton.
* Reynolds, Michael. (1989). ''Hemingway: The Paris Years''. New York: Norton.
* Reynolds, Michael. (1998). ''The Young Hemingway''. New York: Norton.
* Robinson, Daniel. (2005). "My True Occupation is That of a Writer: Hemingway's Passport Correspondence". ''The Hemingway Review''. Volume 24, issue 2. 87–93
* Trogdon, Robert W. "Forms of Combat: Hemingway, the Critics and Green Hills of Africa". ''The Hemingway Review''. Volume 15, issue 2. 1–14
* Sanderson, Rena. (1996). "Hemingway and Gender History", in Donaldson, Scott (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Scholes, Robert. (1990). "New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway", in Benson, Jackson J., ''Decoding Papa: 'A Very Short Story' as Work and Text''. 33–47. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
* Smith, Paul (1996). "1924: Hemingway's Luggage and the Miraculous Year", in Donaldson, Scott (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Stoltzfus, Ben. (2005). "Sartre, "Nada," and Hemingway's African Stories". ''Comparative Literature Studies''. Volume 42, issue 3. 205–228
* Svoboda, Frederic. (2000). "The Great Themes in Hemingway", in Wagner-Martin, Linda (ed.), ''A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Oxford University Press.
* Thomas, Hugh. (2001). ''The Spanish Civil War''. New York: Modern Library.
* Trodd, Zoe. (2007). "Hemingway's Camera Eye: The Problems of Language and an Interwar Politics of Form". ''The Hemingway Review''. Volume 26, issue 2. 7–21
* Wells, Elizabeth J. (1975). "A Statistical Analysis of the Prose Style of Ernest Hemingway: ''Big Two-Hearted River''", in Benson, Jackson (ed.), ''The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Critical Essays''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
* Young, Philip. (1964). ''Ernest Hemingway''. St. Paul, MN: University of Minnesota.
The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
University of Maryland libraries
The University of Maryland Libraries is the largest university library in the Washington, D.C. - Baltimore area. The university's library system includes eight libraries: six are located on the College Park campus, while the Severn Library, an of ...
* Ernest Hemingway Collection. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
*Audre Hanneman was a biographer of Ernest Hemingway. Her papers can be found at the
University of Maryland Libraries
The University of Maryland Libraries is the largest university library in the Washington, D.C. - Baltimore area. The university's library system includes eight libraries: six are located on the College Park campus, while the Severn Library, an of ...