Then there are a great many shorter works examining ol ‘Papa’s’ life in one way or another as well, as several books on him which might be described as ‘potboilers’.
Here is not the place for me to outline, let alone detail, why I think Hemingway does not at all deserve his conventional status as ‘a great writer’, but if you are interested, I do so on a website and will also be publishing my view in book form.
You can get an idea of my views from its title, ‘The Hemingway Enigma: how did a middling writer achieve such global literary fame?’ and if you are interested you can find it here.
For that project I have read a great deal about Hemingway, including all the — what I call ‘major’ — biographies, and unsurprisingly they don’t vary much when detailing his life. They do occasionally contradict each other,
The first biography was by Carlos Baker, Hemingway’s ‘official’ biographer, ‘official’ in that the writer sanctioned the work before he died. Baker, who published his work in 1969, eight years after Hemingway’s death, did a great deal of digging, and the welter of facts he supplied made the work of subsequent biographers a great deal easier.
But the bland catalogue of this and that fact and then that and this fact also makes his biography rather two-dimensional and occasionally dull.
That is not to say the subsequent biographers didn’t undertake additional research — or claimed they did — but Baker had done the vast majority of the spadework. He was, however, constricted by the fact that Hemingway’s fourth wife and widow, Mary Welsh, was still alive while he was writing and didn’t die until 1986.
The point is that Welsh had shown herself to be litigious in matters ‘Papa’: for example, she insisted for several years after Hemingway blew his head off that he had died in a ‘shotgun accident’. When Hemingway’s friend and sometime collaborator A E Hotchner wrote a memoir in which he told the truth, that Hemingway had actually shot himself, she sued him.
As it happens the suit finally did not succeed, although not until on appeal, but that judgment came after Baker had published, so while he was writing his biography, he was very much on notice to watch his step and be careful in what he wrote in case Miss Mary disapproved.
Baker was well aware of Hemingway’s flaws and did not skirt over them, although he remained tactful and respectful (and Baker was convinced Hemingway was ‘a great artist’). The subsequent biographers, writing ten, fifteen, twenty and in Dearborn’s case fifty-six years after Hemingway’s death allowed themselves to be rather more critical.
So, for example, where Baker is cautious about Hemingway’s lifelong tendency to tell tall stories — or, to put it in plainer English, to lie — about his experiences and achievements, they are quite open about his fibbing and inventions, though none suggested why he did it.
When Hemingway was younger, it is quite possible that it was simply daredevilry combined with a young man’s desire to cut a dash that led him to tell his tales. And of all his many traits, some unpleasant, some quite admirable, Hemingway is said to have had a well-developed sense of humour and laughed a great deal.
Thus the claims he made in his younger years might well have been tall tales told to send up a gullible listener. This could and would not have been the case, though, from when he was in his forties and later: the claims he made became ever more outlandish and were often very gruesome.
One he told many years after the Spanish Civil War was that after a battle (although he had never fought in the Civil War despite many later claims), he had been tasked with the mercy killing of Republican soldiers too injured to be taken away from the front.
That is not to say the subsequent biographers didn’t undertake additional research — or claimed they did — but Baker had done the vast majority of the spadework. He was, however, constricted by the fact that Hemingway’s fourth wife and widow, Mary Welsh, was still alive while he was writing and didn’t die until 1986.
The point is that Welsh had shown herself to be litigious in matters ‘Papa’: for example, she insisted for several years after Hemingway blew his head off that he had died in a ‘shotgun accident’. When Hemingway’s friend and sometime collaborator A E Hotchner wrote a memoir in which he told the truth, that Hemingway had actually shot himself, she sued him.
As it happens the suit finally did not succeed, although not until on appeal, but that judgment came after Baker had published, so while he was writing his biography, he was very much on notice to watch his step and be careful in what he wrote in case Miss Mary disapproved.
Baker was well aware of Hemingway’s flaws and did not skirt over them, although he remained tactful and respectful (and Baker was convinced Hemingway was ‘a great artist’). The subsequent biographers, writing ten, fifteen, twenty and in Dearborn’s case fifty-six years after Hemingway’s death allowed themselves to be rather more critical.
So, for example, where Baker is cautious about Hemingway’s lifelong tendency to tell tall stories — or, to put it in plainer English, to lie — about his experiences and achievements, they are quite open about his fibbing and inventions, though none suggested why he did it.
When Hemingway was younger, it is quite possible that it was simply daredevilry combined with a young man’s desire to cut a dash that led him to tell his tales. And of all his many traits, some unpleasant, some quite admirable, Hemingway is said to have had a well-developed sense of humour and laughed a great deal.
Thus the claims he made in his younger years might well have been tall tales told to send up a gullible listener. This could and would not have been the case, though, from when he was in his forties and later: the claims he made became ever more outlandish and were often very gruesome.
One he told many years after the Spanish Civil War was that after a battle (although he had never fought in the Civil War despite many later claims), he had been tasked with the mercy killing of Republican soldiers too injured to be taken away from the front.
This was, he claimed, to save them from falling into the hands of the Nationalists and then most certainly being tortured. But there is no record that Hemingway did any such work, and no record that the Republican side ever sanctioned or even considered such action.
Whether or not Dearborn also undertook her own research we can’t know, but her biography is not always just a carbon copy of work that had gone before. So, for example, unlike the previous biographers, Dearborn stresses that most probably for the last 17 years of his life, Hemingway’s mental health was steadily worsening and to a great extent governed his often bad behaviour. The excessive drinking didn’t help, of course.
Dearborn points out that after a car crash in London in May 1944, in which Hemingway suffered not only concussion but most probably a far more serious subdural haematoma, he did not get the treatment he required.
The symptoms he reported — double vision, hearing lost, a perpetual headache, inability to get an erection, difficulty writing by hand, slowness in speaking and continual ringing in his ears — indicate that he was suffering from internal bleeding which should have required the blood accumulating around his brain being drained, then his treatment followed by three months recuperation.
Yet Hemingway was released from hospital just three days after his crash, most probably at his insistence given that he did not want to miss covering the allied invasion. This incident was, Dearborn suggests, the start of the unremitting decline in his mental health began and culminated in his suicide in July 1961.
In short, after that accident in 1944, she writes, Hemingway was simply not the same man. The other biographers, however, choose to date his slow mental decline from ten years later when he was involved in two plane crashes he in East Africa.
More than the other biographers, Dearborn also stresses the bi-polar disorder Hemingway (and most of his family) suffered from all his life. It is acknowledged that he was prone to bouts of often severe depression, but she accounts for much of his odd and often outrageous behaviour as taking place during his phases of mania.
So, for example, he began one manic phase in the late 1940s which lasted for several years. It was in this phase that met and pursued his amour fou for the 19-year-old Venetian Adriana Ivancich and then wrote his novel Across The River And Into The Trees.
Yet because of his mania, his judgment failed completely and he simply could not see how bad the novel was. Sadly, everyone else, from friends to his publisher and editor, could, but for one reason or another no one wanted to be the one to tell him it stank.
Whether or not Dearborn also undertook her own research we can’t know, but her biography is not always just a carbon copy of work that had gone before. So, for example, unlike the previous biographers, Dearborn stresses that most probably for the last 17 years of his life, Hemingway’s mental health was steadily worsening and to a great extent governed his often bad behaviour. The excessive drinking didn’t help, of course.
Dearborn points out that after a car crash in London in May 1944, in which Hemingway suffered not only concussion but most probably a far more serious subdural haematoma, he did not get the treatment he required.
The symptoms he reported — double vision, hearing lost, a perpetual headache, inability to get an erection, difficulty writing by hand, slowness in speaking and continual ringing in his ears — indicate that he was suffering from internal bleeding which should have required the blood accumulating around his brain being drained, then his treatment followed by three months recuperation.
Yet Hemingway was released from hospital just three days after his crash, most probably at his insistence given that he did not want to miss covering the allied invasion. This incident was, Dearborn suggests, the start of the unremitting decline in his mental health began and culminated in his suicide in July 1961.
In short, after that accident in 1944, she writes, Hemingway was simply not the same man. The other biographers, however, choose to date his slow mental decline from ten years later when he was involved in two plane crashes he in East Africa.
More than the other biographers, Dearborn also stresses the bi-polar disorder Hemingway (and most of his family) suffered from all his life. It is acknowledged that he was prone to bouts of often severe depression, but she accounts for much of his odd and often outrageous behaviour as taking place during his phases of mania.
So, for example, he began one manic phase in the late 1940s which lasted for several years. It was in this phase that met and pursued his amour fou for the 19-year-old Venetian Adriana Ivancich and then wrote his novel Across The River And Into The Trees.
Yet because of his mania, his judgment failed completely and he simply could not see how bad the novel was. Sadly, everyone else, from friends to his publisher and editor, could, but for one reason or another no one wanted to be the one to tell him it stank.
The novel was ridiculed by the critics when it was published, though ironically it sold in its tens of thousands and was on the bestseller lists for several months (and thus one does wonder how many copies were read and how many simply bought to grace a coffee table).
In most respects, though, Dearborn’s biography is much the same as the others, simply that here and there are differences in emphasis. And in that respect it is no better — and certainly no worse — than the other biographies.
Furthermore, unless you, too, like me, are engaged in some project about Hemingway and feel obliged to undertake a lot of background research, there would seem little point in reading all the major biogs. So given that choice, Dearborn’s will do as well as any of the others: the facts of Hemingway’s life are the same
Dearborn has a very readable style and treats her reader as an intelligent other and with respect (which is always gratifying).
But be aware that among the biographers there are occasionally discrepancies: for example, whereas most tell of Hemingway writing the first draft to The Sun Also Rises in a number of blue-covered notebooks, Dearborn has him composing it on a portable typewriter. Someone has got it wrong. So who is it?
Along those lines, Dearborn also takes the usual line, as do most other biographers, of accepting Hemingway’s tale of returning to Paris from Lausanne in panic when his wife confesses a small case in which she as carrying almost all of his stories had been stolen.
One biographer — I think it is Michael Reynolds — insists that was just another of Hemingway’s dramatic claims and that he did not return to Paris until several weeks later.
In most respects, though, Dearborn’s biography is much the same as the others, simply that here and there are differences in emphasis. And in that respect it is no better — and certainly no worse — than the other biographies.
Furthermore, unless you, too, like me, are engaged in some project about Hemingway and feel obliged to undertake a lot of background research, there would seem little point in reading all the major biogs. So given that choice, Dearborn’s will do as well as any of the others: the facts of Hemingway’s life are the same
Dearborn has a very readable style and treats her reader as an intelligent other and with respect (which is always gratifying).
But be aware that among the biographers there are occasionally discrepancies: for example, whereas most tell of Hemingway writing the first draft to The Sun Also Rises in a number of blue-covered notebooks, Dearborn has him composing it on a portable typewriter. Someone has got it wrong. So who is it?
Along those lines, Dearborn also takes the usual line, as do most other biographers, of accepting Hemingway’s tale of returning to Paris from Lausanne in panic when his wife confesses a small case in which she as carrying almost all of his stories had been stolen.
One biographer — I think it is Michael Reynolds — insists that was just another of Hemingway’s dramatic claims and that he did not return to Paris until several weeks later.
So, again, which is it? At the end of the day we should not take anything as the definitive gospel truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment