Hemingway: The 1930s [Paperback]

Michael S. Reynolds (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 1998

"[R]eads like a novel, filled with strongly drawn characters and a wealth of lively detail.... The book offers as much insight into the creative process as it does into this crucial period of our history."—Lee Smith

In the years between A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway matured as a writer against the backdrop of Cuban revolutions, African game trails, Key West impoverishment, and the Spanish Civil War. He experimented in fiction and nonfiction, pushing his limits as a writer, in such works as Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, and To Have and Have Not. In this "masterpiece in the making," Reynolds brings us so close to Hemingway that "you can all but smell Hemingway's whisky breath coming off the pages" (Library Journal). Photographs

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If Paris and Spain in the '20s provided the scene for Ernest Hemingway's writing apprenticeship, it was the decade that followed that saw the writer mature to the height of his powers, as told in the third volume of Michael Reynolds's five-part biography of the American writer. It was also the time that marked the creation of the "Hemingway myth," the burden and eventual doom of his later years. Hemingway "the great white hunter," "the boozing brawler," "the literary pugilist" began to take shape during his 30s, and the brilliance of his mature work carries within it the inevitable ripeness of decline and self-parody. (His friends would comment on the "long white whiskers" that Hemingway would metaphorically assume when talking about art, life, and literature, even as a young man.) Reynolds stretches his timeline back to 1929 to cover both the publication of A Farewell to Arms and the stock market crash. The next 10 years saw the publication of many of his major novels and some of the finest short stories, as well as such "nonfiction" as Death in the Afternoon, The Green Hills of Africa, and the collected pieces of war correspondence that would serve as source material for For Whom the Bell Tolls. The writer, increasingly celebrated and successful, made new friends, quarreled with old ones (including John Dos Passos and Edmund Wilson), and met and fell in love with the glamorous Martha Gellhorn--the writer with whom he covered the Spanish Civil War and later married. As with his other biographies of Hemingway, Reynolds balances a clear enthusiasm for his subject with a keenly honed critical sense, chronicling not only the triumphs but also the ruthless nature of the writer's ambition to achieve them. He is particularly good at tracing how his subject's experiences--from fishing with friends off Key West to the African veldt to the battlefields of Spain--were translated into his fiction, through Hemingway's uncompromising effort to "put a thousand intangibles into a sentence." --John Longenbaugh

From Library Journal

This fourth volume in Reynolds's ongoing series finds Hemingway setting up a home base in Key West, Florida, while also following the bullfights?and later the civil war?in Spain, going on safari in Africa, and fishing off Cuba. Though it might seem that he had put his talent in dry-dock to enjoy leisure pursuits, his adventures resulted in Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, and To Have and Have Not. The book also offers a fine portrait of Pauline, the dutiful second wife who attended patiently to Ernest's every need until he scuttled their marriage when the soon-to-be-next Mrs. H (Martha Gellhorn) appeared. This is everything a literary biography should be: it not only ably dissects the artist's actions but puts his life and work into historical and, more importantly, emotional context as well. The great writer emerges here as a fully drawn personality?you can all but smell Hemingway's whisky breath coming off the pages. Though he pursues a much overstudied subject, Reynolds again proves that Hemingway is still a rich mine with much gold in his veins. A masterpiece in the making.
-?Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (June 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393317781
• ISBN-13: 978-0393317787
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #683,405 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy-to-read informative biography, June 8, 2000

By 

Thomas Stamper (Orlando, FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hemingway: The 1930s (Hardcover)

Though this is the fourth of a five book series, and the first I chose to read, I had no trouble keeping up. You could argue that Hemingway the man was more interesting than his fiction and Reynolds goes a pretty good distance to show why. Hemingway takes his first safari, catches Marlin in Key West and fights in the Spanish Civil War, and switches women before the end of the decade.

Reynolds paints a fairly descriptive portrait of Hemingway, but also reminds us of other current events as the decade unfolds. Hemingway begins the decade mostly apolitical, but he is very critical of the New Deal Programs he sees running in his hometown of Key West Florida. In 1936 he likens President Roosevelt's plan to socialism, but his support two years later of antifascist guerrillas in the Spanish Civil War allies him with downright communists.

It was also interesting to watch Hemingway's friendships crumble. Reynolds describes how Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sherwood Anderson went their separate ways from Papa for various reasons, but mostly because Hemingway was an explosive character. His larger than life dominating personality coupled with his fatigue for certain personality types doomed a great deal of one-time friendships.

What I like mostly of Reynolds work is that he likes Hemingway a great deal, and this comes through, despite Papa's many flaws.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent side dish - not the main course., July 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Hemingway: The 1930s (Paperback)

This thorough and "personable" slice of Hemingway's life in the 30's is quite readable and almost literary itself. Reynolds' periodic but careful use of correspondence and journalistic fragments, interspersed with the narrative is thought-provoking and draws the reader into the time. The only problem with this book is the necessity that the reader bring a somewhat extensive background to the reading in order to thoroughly enjoy the material. If you do not know the Hemingway cast of characters, Reynolds does not go to great lengths to introduce you. Since the book, by its nature, dumps you into the "story" midstream, its failure to catch you up is somewhat frustrating at times. However, the expertise with which it is written only leaves you wanting more and seeking additional sources to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. I highly recommend it to all who are somewhat familiar with Hemingway. If you are among the uninitiated, you may wish ! to start elsewhere and keep this in mind for later.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Heimgway out of step, October 22, 2010

By 

Eric Maroney (Trumansburg, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hemingway: The 1930s (Paperback)

This, the fourth volume of Reynolds biography of Hemingway, shows the writer in the 1930s, increasingly losing step with the country, and the zeitgeist of intellectuals. Hemingway was reluctant to jump on the band wagon of leftist writers appalled by conditions in the Great Depression, believing that economics was temporary, but good literature was forever. Eventually he would succumb, with To Have and To Have Not, being his example of a proletarian novel, although somewhat strangely rendered.

In this volume Reynolds shows Hemingway in yet another vital period of transformation. He is a world class writer now, well-known, and solidifying his public persona, which he helped create and would eventually trap him. His early works were much praised, but now, ten years later, the reaction set in, and the New York critics would be unimpressed by his work in the 30s -- skewering him.

But beneath it all Hemingway was forging a new self, a new writer, and by the end of the decade it would find much of its crystallization in the novel of the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Published just as World War II began, the novel was prescient, once more a statement from "in our time."

Of course there is a failed marriage, and the start of another marriage, his third, and Hemingway's increasing problems with drink and anti-social habits.

Reynolds renders all this well, in both detailed and broad strokes.