Customer Reviews

Hemingway: The 1930s

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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.

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.

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.

Michael Reynolds. Hemingway: The 1930s. This fourth volume in Reynolds's ongoing series finds Hemingway setting up a home base in Key West, FL, while also following the bullfights-and later the civil war-in Spain, 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 attends patiently to Ernest's every need until he scuttles their marriage when the soon to be next Mrs. H (Martha Gellhorn) appears. This is everything a literary biography should be: it not only ably dissects the artist's actions, but it puts his life and work into historical and, more importantly, emotional context as well. Hemingway emerges as a fully drawn personality and you can all but smell his whisky breath coming off the pages. Though a much over-studied subject, Reynolds again proves that Hemingway is still a rich mine with much gold yet in his veins. A masterpiece in the making.-Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"

This is the fourth installment in Reynolds's five part Hemingway biography. During this period Hemingway lived mostly in Key West. He wrote his first non-fiction bullfight book, Death in the Afternoon, To Have and Have Not and For Whom the Bell Tolls. He also spent a lot of time in latter part of this decade as a journalist covering the Spanish Civil War. He meets the journalist Martha Gellhorn in Key West and begins the relationship that will break up his second marriage.

Reynolds does a good job here but it is not as good as the two previous installments. There is much less detail given here compared to those books especially with regards to Hemingway's thoughts and state of mind while writing the books of this period. The other books had a nearly page by page account of what the great man was doing and thinking while he wrote The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms. This is noticeably lacking here. The account of the writing of For Whom the Bell Tolls is especially curt. That book, which is regarded as Hemingway's masterpiece, doesn't get the attention Reynolds gave to earlier works. I read somewhere that Hemingway contacted his publisher Charles Scribner during the writing of For Whom the Bell Tolls, telling him that one of the Spanish Civil War short stories he was writing had taken off in his mind and that he already had written 40,000 words. This information is nowhere to be found here. Instead there are gossipy details of the relationship with Gellhorn and the unkind treatment Hemingway's second wife, Pauline, received at the end of their marriage.

There is a long account of Hemingway's first African safari which I found uninteresting. Reynolds stresses his subject's need to recreate the "summer people" of his youth, the group of friends that would gather at Walloon Lake in Michigan every summer of Hemingway's boyhood. Reynolds's tries to force every single relationship to fit this "summer people" thesis even when it is less than apt. There is overlong attention given to hunting trips and less attention to the actual writing than I would have liked. Reynolds has a disturbing tendency here to introduce a new person into Hemingway's life story without much explanation of how they came to meet and what caused them to be friendly. On several occasions a new friend will enter Hemingway's life and without any explanation immediately become the center around which the narrative revolves. This is unsettling and made me page back on several occasions looking for the first appearance of this person. Overall, a poor follow up to the previous books in this series.

The fourth volume in Reynolds's multi-volume biography of Hemingway. Unlike other Hemingway biographers (James Mellow, for instance) who are mostly interested in how the author incorporated his own life into his fiction, Reynolds approaches his subject in a strict chronological fashion and hardly touches upon the works at all. This volume begins in 1929 with Ernest and Pauline returning to Paris while he put the final touches on "A Farewell to Arms," and ends with Ernest beginning to write "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and taking up residence with Martha Gellhorn in Havana. Very detailed in terms of H.'s life and doings, much less so with regard to his works and art. Definitive in that respect, but not where to go to get an appreciation of Hemingway the writer and the forces behind his artistic creations.

Hemingway: The 1930s is the fourth installment in Mr. Reynold's series; he does not "dump you into the story midstream." Anyone with even a little knowledge of Hemingway is familiar with this series and knows that Mr. Reynolds is THE Hemingway biographer. My advice - do at least a little research before expressing an opinion.