“A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway” edited by Linda Wagner-Martin
We all know Ernest Hemingway’s story. Born in a Chicago suburb on 21 July 1899, by the time he turned 25 Hemingway was already friends with Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and had written the majority of the stories that were published as “In Our Time” (1925). Before he was 30 Hemingway had buried his father due to suicide, and written “The Sun Also Rises” (1926) and “A Farewell to Arms” (1929).
Moreover, at 36 he reported the Spanish Civil War to American news readers. At 44 he reported on the Normandy invasion from a landing craft off Omaha Beach. At 46 he had already married to his 4th wife. At 53 he won the Pulitzer for fiction and survived from 2 plane crashes in Africa. At 54 he won the Nobel Prize in literature. And on 2 July 1961, Hemingway shot himself on the head in a suicide.
This book provides this short biography right at chapter 1. So, what does it talk about for the rest 7 chapters? It breaks down his persona into 5 focuses: 1. His education as a naturalist 2. The fashion of machismo 3. His gender training 4. The great themes in his writing: love, war, wilderness, and loss 5. My favourite subject: The intertextual Hemingway (the methods or styles or ideas that he borrowed from other writers). And then followed by an amusing illustrated chronology of his life that complements nicely the information in chapter 1, before concluded by a bibliographical essay. All of which are written by 7 different writers.
It is such a complete, multi-vantage points, view on Hemingway’s life. It shows the family background, his education, the many books that he read, the influential friends that he had, the evolution in his writing style, his vocation as a reporter, his experience as a volunteer ambulance driver during World War 1, his complicated relationship with women, his inspirations for his books, his struggle for depression, his choice to be a machismo, and more. All of which helped to shape his world views, which then projected into the characters and narrations in his books.
It is such a complete dissection of his life, done in a serious investigative manner.
Just a little fun fact about how I get my hands on this book: I found and purchased this book at the legendary Kitazawa bookstore, one of only few English-language bookstores out of 176 bookstores in Jimbocho book town in Tokyo. The place was filled with interesting old books but very well preserved (all of them are even laminated). And it is so fitting to have bought a book in a legendary bookstore that talks about a legendary writer.
THE CHAOS THEORY 