Customer Reviews

Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference

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This magnificent book by Robert W. Trogdon ranks right up there with the best of Hemingway's biographers including the definitive five volume set by Michael Reynolds to whom he dedicates this book. Trogdon has created a fascinating biography of sorts, a chronological compilation of writing by and about Hemingway. By using Hemingway's own material and those of his critics, reviewers, colleagues, friends and family he has ingeniuosly blended in a rough chronological order materials
that provide a greater understanding of this complex and fascinating man. There are also great pictorial reproductions in this book.This book is just filled with astute analyses of Hemingway's works and not only complements the work of Hemingway's biographers but introduces new material and actually surpasses many of them in my opinion.

When I was a freshman in college at Iowa State, I fell under the thrall of Hemingway. I read everything he had written in order and nearly all of the books about him. For any student of Hemingway, it is a common observation that he revealed his methods in very obscure ways. The "iceberg" principle in which your prose is improved by leaving out elements--thereby leaving the traces that affect you on a subconscious level--is one. This book is a collection of small pieces--many never published or never re-published--that give great insight into his method. Also, this is a funny book. To anyone who is embarking on the path of being a novelist, this book is golden. It was given to me by a good friend. I am grateful to have encountered this book, which was recently published. It made me happy and has energized my own path.
I would recommend this to anyone and would say that it will make a very good gift. Because the author intended it as a reference for budding authors, it contains a multitude of materials that would never have been permitted to be published otherwise. Go out and get yourself a copy, put some paper in your manual typewriter, and get busy. After you start reading this book, you will need to start writing.