Hemingway Goes to War [Paperback]

Charles Whiting (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1999

Ernest Hemingway, literary giant of the 20th century, was renowned as a hard-drinking man of action. As the fighting reached its climax in the closing ten months of World War II, he spent time as a US war correspondent based in London, Paris and Luxembourg. It was during that period, by his own account, that he participated in the D-Day landings and saw action in the frontline at the Battle of the Bulge with the US Army. He also claimed to have flown on bombing raids with the Royal Air Force. This text examines Hemingway's trail through war-torn Europe during World War II, chronicling his tangled personal life and assessing the impact that first-hand experience of war had on him both as a writer and as a man.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

British military historian Whiting is way out of his depth here in analyzing Hemingway's activities as a correspondent in World War II. Whiting questions Hemingway's motives for reporting on the war, insisting that the author came to the European theater more to gather material for a novel than to dispatch news and that he used his celebrity status to gain special treatment from army commandAno kidding! In addition to having no grasp of the intricacies of Hemingway's personality, Whiting makes several factual errors, including some confusion about namesAHemingway's first wife's first name (Hadley) appears as Hemingway's middle name as well as his mother's maiden name. Whiting also can't seem to discuss Hemingway's fourth wife, Mary, without commenting on her breasts. The descriptions of military operations are where Whiting excels, and those sections are quite interesting. However, all this information along with superior analysis of Hemingway's character is readily available in the scholarly biographies by Carlos Baker and Michael Reynolds, making this an unnecessary purchase.AMichael Rogers, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 292 pages
• Publisher: Sutton Publishing; 1 edition (June 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750922508
• ISBN-13: 978-0750922500
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 1.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,472,365 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor work, August 12, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Hemingway Goes to War (Paperback)

Terrible book. Not a single reference. I purchased the book hoping to have some insight into what may have gone on, but this reads like fiction. How does the author know that Hemingway was impotent anyway? Whiting seems obessed with that point. He holds some strange grudge against Hemingway.

1.0 out of 5 stars Hatchet job, August 13, 2007

By 

Will Varner "Will" (Oxford, Mississippi) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hemingway Goes to War (Paperback)

A pure hatchet job by a true Hemingway hater. Gives the worst possible interpretation of everything Papa did, said, or even thought. This guy's got a problem. This is malice, not objective history. Sorry I wasted my money.

2.0 out of 5 stars Some Interesting Tidbits, November 17, 2002

By 

J. Sachs (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hemingway Goes to War (Paperback)

Anyone knowledgable about Hemingway would know that a book about his involvement in WWII would not be flattering; he was clearly playing soldier in a pompous self-important way. But this book, while it has interesting tidbits (without any references), has a bizarre obsession with Hemingway's impotence. Also, it seems that the writer begins to fancy himself a "great novelist" himself, what with his repetitve, melodramtic references to the "Factory of Death." Maybe he got co-opted by Hemingway, much the same way the people in his book that he criticizes did. If you can avoid getting irritated by this, it is an interesting read, although you wonder how much of it is factual.