The True Gen - Denis Brian

There are still a great many Hemingway fans, although how much each successive younger generation reads him is a moot point, and there are quite a few, like me, who wonder what all the fuss was about and that the writing by ‘Papa’ was and is distinctly overrated. For both groups, however, Denis Brian’s book The True Gen will prove interesting.

But first things first: Hemingway does deserve a little credit and a place in literary history, and why is summed up by Martha Gellhorn, his third wife, who is quoted by Brian. She wrote (in a piece for the Paris Review in 1981)

‘[Hemingway] was a genius, that uneasy word, not so much in what he wrote (speaking like an uncertified critic) as in how he wrote; he liberated our written language. All writers, after him, owe Hemingway a debt for their freedom whether the debt is acknowledged or not.’

Although I take issue with the description of ‘genius’, which is a word that becomes ever more meaningless through overuse, what Gellhorn writes is spot on. Hemingway, though not necessarily intentionally, did contribute to a marked change of course in English literature by how he wrote and what he wrote about.

I say ‘contribute’ because there were other writers who did the same in the second decade of the 20th century.

There have been several biographies of Hemingway, some long, some shorter, but Brian’s book is not a biography. Instead he spent — about ten years, I think — interviewing the writer’s friends, family, rivals and associates and presenting their often vastly differing views of the man and his work. It is thus a companion piece to the biographies and fleshes out many of the ‘facts’ the biographers present.

During his life Hemingway was a controversial figure and continues to be so 60 years after his death. For every account of his ferocious temper, his overweening ego, his narcissism, his conceit, his relentless boasting, his mean-spirited behaviour, his ruthless competitiveness and his many underhand actions, there will be a balancing account from affectionate friends who have no axe to grind and have nothing but very warm memories of his warmth, politeness, charm, generosity, kindness, intelligence, shyness and concern for others. We might well be reading about two different men, but we are not.

Pertinently, these accounts, both — as it were — for and against, are not the author’s but those of men and women who knew him. With the best will in the world a biographer is, because he has to be, selective in the ‘facts’ he presents.

One might argue that Brian, too, has had to be selective, but given the the vastly contrasting ‘facts’ presented he really cannot be accused of any bias. He does not ‘push a line’ at any point and strikes me as scrupulous in his presentation of what he was told.

This book will, admittedly, be of little general interest, but if you do want to know more about a hugely, hugely contradictory man, almost a walking enigma, read Brian’s book.