Ernest Hemingway: A Biography

Well researched - one of the most detailed biographies I've read.

VERY detailed and sometimes with irrelevant information at the expense of analysis and thematic strands. Would have benefitted from an appendixed timeline and a bibliography of Hemingway's publications.

Fast delivery and the book is in perfect condition, as expected. I'm looking forward to reading this book, all the 738 pages.

Read a few on Hem, this is up there with the best of them

Hemingway, led a Extraordinary Life , Lived to the limit, His writing is sublime. Mary Dearborn Book is a Must Read.

Excellent read. One of the best I've read on the great man..

I was looking forward to reading about the life of Hemmingway, but found this heavy going. The writing is jolting and doesn’t flow. Far too syrupy and loads of conjecture about what people were thinking at the time, when the author is completely speculating. Disappointing

I've read plenty of literary biographies over the years and this is right up there with the best (e.g. Richard Holmes’s Shelley and Edel's Henry James). Mary V. Dearborn puts you 100% into Hemingway's overstuffed and extraordinary life. Her skill in switching from brutal detail to broader psychological perspectives is unmatched. Highly recommended even if you've never read of word of Hemingway, and if you have, this will feel like having an intense booze-up with Papa himself.

Nice

je ne pas un commentaire.merci.

Versatile, comprehensive, ambitious and revealing. In short, Hemingway in all his excellence and infirmity!

Carlos Baker's 1969 biography of Ernest Hemingway, the first full biography of Hemingway, set a high bar for the many Hemingway biographers to come, and in some ways it is still the gold standard. It is well written, meticulously researched and authoritative in many ways. Over the years, I have read is several times, have always enjoyed it and still admire it. Of course in the nearly 50 years since the first edition of Baker's work was published there has been much new scholarly research on Hemingway, especially on subjects such as his mother and her romantic relationship with another woman, his hair fetish and and gender fluidity role-playing with his wives and lovers. Mary V. Dearborn, who earned her doctorate at Columbia (Baker's was from Princeton, where he taught for many years) has incorporated this new research, while adding some significant findings of her own. Dr. Dearborn is the first woman to write a full biography of Hemingway, and without making too much of this, I think that Dearborn brings some perspective on Hemingway that his male biographers didn't have. In his 20s, 30s and into his 40s, Hemingway's image as a sportsman, outdoorsman, warrior and lover of life including good food and drink was admired by many men, including his male biographers. Dearborn doesn't seem quite so easily impressed. She is more willing to explore his many personality faults than did Dr. Baker, though Baker didn't shy away from them. She is also ruthless in presenting his psychological decline in his 50s and how he lost his way as a writer. Dearborn also seems much more willing to admit than Baker and other biographers that many things we thought we knew about Hemingway are at the very least subject to interpretation and debate. Quite often she present several different versions of what may have happened and simply lets the reader judge what might, or might not, be the truth. Sometimes, she's blunt about mistakes that others have made: For example, she states categorically that Hemingway's "famous" six-toed cats in Key West are a myth, that he didn't keep cats in large numbers until he moved to Cuba. For me, where the new biography most falls short is in Dearborn's literary judgments on both some of his individual works and on why he was, and will always be, such an important figure in 20th century literature. Without going into detail, essentially Dearborn seems to conclude that Hemingway's reputations relies mainly on his first major work, The Sun Also Rises, and a number of his short stories. Not only does she agree with others that books like The Torrents of Spring, Across the River and Into the Trees, Death in the Afternoon and almost all of his posthumously published work (except in some ways The Moveable Feast) are second-rate, or worse, she also emphasizes the flawed nature of A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea, among other works. If you had never heard of Hemingway and came across this biography, you might be excused for not understanding why he was such an important figure in modern literature. Having said that, Dearborn's Ernest Hemingway: A Biography, is an important new contribution to the immense amount of work on Hemingway and his canon. It's clearly and, for the most part, gracefully written. It is full of new insights, and it will occupy a prominent place next to Carlos Baker's biography on my bookshelves.

Reading Mary V Dearborn’s book Ernest Hemingway A Biography was like listening to a great story while sitting around a campfire talking about old friends. Hemingway is portrayed warts and all and it is refreshing as a reader to be given room to develop your own opinion of Ernest’s life and work. My interest in Ernest Hemingway began after reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (another good book) which was about Ernest’s first wife, and then watching Hemingway & Gellhorn, a movie about Martha Gellhorn, his third wife. I wanted to know more about what kind of person he was and Mary V Dearborn delivered on that information in a well researched, well written, 627 page book. This book is very readable and I would recommend it to all my friends who are interested in Ernest Hemingway. I am now excited to I go back and read The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and a few others he wrote with a new perspective on who Ernest Hemingway was when he wrote those novels.