Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences [Paperback]

James R. Mellow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 21, 1993

In this brilliant, elegantly written biography, award-winning author James R. Mellow offers a thorough reassessment of a man who was both a literary giant and an icon for his age. The final volume in Mellow’s ”Lost Generation” trilogy, Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences is also a homage to Paris in the 1920s and a tribute to the writers and artists who set the indelible standards for the modern age.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Early in Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences, biographer James R. Mellow recounts an episode from the writer's apprentice years in which the then young journalist kept Kansas City Star colleague Ted Brumback awake for the better part of the night with drunken readings from Robert Browning. When Brumback woke up at four the next morning, Hemingway was still talking, but sailed through the work day that followed with seemingly no ill effects. "Sometimes I think that's the outstanding characteristic of genius," Brumback said later, "boundless energy." It was this vital energy and its subsequent translation into fiction that distinguishes Hemingway from his illustrious contemporaries. Perhaps no other writer in this century has so deliberately, and so successfully, pursued such a variety of experiences for source material.

Just recounting the significant events in Hemingway's life--the war experiences, the literary feuds, the safaris, the wives--is a major endeavor, and Mellow's ability to do so fluently and concisely in this relatively compact work, and with depth of analysis, is one of the book's outstanding qualities. Mellow's extensive experience with Hemingway's contemporaries (having written both Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company and a biography of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Invented Lives) proves invaluable to him in this project. He has the background both to cover the Paris of the 1920s, where Hemingway honed his craft, and to make the necessary critical assessment of the writer's time-line, which Hemingway conflated and re-created repeatedly in later life. Mellow's sensitive appreciation of Hemingway's prose doesn't blind him to a clear-sighted assessment of the writer's literary weaknesses and failures. Nor does his evident affection for his subject hinder him from detailing the manipulations, grudges, and breaches of faith that Hemingway was capable of in his ambitious drive to be the Great American Writer. Mellow is particularly good at demonstrating how Hemingway's life, as much as his fiction, was a conscious creation. The title of this biography is, we discover, largely an ironic one, as the writer's tendency to mix truth and fantasy in his writing and his own life was to have vast consequences, for his friends and lovers, for himself, and most tragically, for the literary genius that was far too often squandered in his later years. --John Longenbaugh

From Publishers Weekly

Hemingway's (1899-1961) third wife, Martha Gelhorn, bore no great affection for him, but she did cogently sum up his importance: "He was a genius, that uneasy word, not so much in what he wrote as in how he wrote; he liberated our written language." If true, this idea may justify the continuing proliferation of Hemingway biographies, to which Mellow has made a notable addition with this concluding volume of a trilogy devoted to the modernist writers and artists of the "lost generation" ( Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company and Invented Lives: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald ). With two-thirds of its pages concentrating on the first 30 years of Hemingway's life, Mellow's work is especially valuable for its exploration of the influences that shaped the writer's skills--particularly the impact of Stein and Ezra Pound--and led to his becoming the 20th century's most famous author. Hemingway's pose as a literary tough guy accounted for much of his celebrity and has provided ample material for the psycho-sexual speculations of biographers--including Mellow, who examines in great detail the many instances of male bonding that accompanied Hemingway's interests and lifestyle. Mellow softens Hemingway's harsh portrait of his mother as a domineering harridan, while he acknowledges that Hemingway's unresolved feelings about his mother affected his relationships with women. Hemingway was haunted, too, by the suicide of his ineffectual but admired father, from whom he learned the "masculine" pursuits of hunting and fishing, although Mellow contends that Hemingway's fear of death obsessed him long before that devastating loss. Hemingway's hoard of private papers to which Mellow had access--character notes, outlines and early versions of now-famous stories and novels--reveal much about him; the papers provide insight, for example, into the process by which a writer transforms the ordinary stuff of life into art. Mellow devotes only a few pages to Hemingway's slow decline into the pontifications of the "Papa" period, aptly remarking that "one has to fight back the feeling that Hemingway let himself down badly." These words resonate against the image of the writer as a charismatic young man with a wide smile and big shoulders whose great promise and considerable achievements Mellow so sensitively assesses. Photos not seen by PW .
Copyright 1992 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: 736 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (September 21, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201626209
• ISBN-13: 978-0201626209
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #869,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good intro to Hemingway, May 25, 2000

By 

S. DEMILLE "All Purpose Nerd" (N. Las Vegas, Nevada USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences (Paperback)

James Mellow should be applauded for the way he harmonizes Hemingway's stories and Hemingway's life. After all, Hemingway did write with a highly autobiographical slant, and by reading his fiction, one is able to travel alongside the famous writer as, for example, he travels with his father to the Indian Camp, as he lies wounded in an Italian hospital, as he leans on the rail of the bullfight arena and watches horses get gored by bulls, etc, etc. I took my time reading this massive biography, and, simultaneously, I read each of Hemingway's stories (in the First Forty-nine) as I encountered them in the bio. This dual-reading allowed greater understanding of Hemingway the man and greater appreciation for Hemingway the writer. Compared to Kenneth Lynn's biography, Mellow's objective treatment is rather dull, but memorable overall. Read the last paragraph and enjoy the beauty of the language.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK STARTER KIT ON HEMINGWAY - WITH RESERVATIONS, February 4, 2005

By 

D. Blankenship (The Ozarks) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences (Paperback)

I enjoyed this work. The author did give a different slant to Hemingway the man, and indeed, the works of Hemingway. I cannot say for a second that I agreed with the author much over 25 percent of the time, but hey, Mellow has his opinion, I have mine. I did feel that Mellow beat the "gay" thing into the ground (as like in "Who Cares?") and did feel that the author did not have a good grasp of the works of his subject, i.e. Hemingway and his writing. Again though, it was nice getting another opinion and did leave me with some food for thought. This in no way compares with the work of Carlos Baker and his ilk, but, again, gives us just another view...always a nice thing. I do hope though, that the reader of this work reads some other biographies on Hemingway and do hope they actually read some of Hemingways work. On the other hand, I am a big Hemingway fan and my view, I am sure, is a bit slanted.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars don't do it, May 28, 2004

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J. Hodde "MakeOilObsolete" (Irvine, KY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences (Paperback)

I was quite disappointed with this book. The author divides his time between 1) relating events of Hem's life (ok), 2) attacking Hem's character and endlessly trying to prove he was gay (?), and 3) attempts at 'literary criticism' of Hem's work (bad).

Almost from the outset, I got the feeling James Mellow didn't understand much about Hemingway's stories. His criticisms seemed trite or misguided. But when I got to page 521 I was quite sure he understood very little indeed. Summarizing For Whom The Bell Tolls, he writes, "Robert Jordan, on the last night before the dynamiting of the bridge, is forced to write his letter to General Golz suggesting that the attack be called off because of Pablo's treachery and the destruction of El Sordo's guerrilla band." Evidently Mr. Mellow didn't read the part where Jordan observes the enemy's massive defensive buildup just prior to the 'surprise offensive', which would render the offensive useless and costly. We're talking about a major troop movement with thousands of pieces of equipment, where El Sordo's band figures little, and it is beyond me to understand how this understanding of the situation could be lost on the critic / biographer.

I was glad to read the basic outline of Hemingway's life story, but didn't care for the sermonizing judgements of Hem's lifestyle and weak criticisms of his work.