Hemingway [Paperback]

Kenneth Lynn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 3, 1995

Ernest Hemingway was a mythic figure of overt masculinity and vibrant literary genius. He lived life on an epic scale, presenting to the world a character as compelling as the fiction he created. But behind it all lurked an insecure, troubled man. In this immensely powerful and revealing study, Kenneth S. Lynn explores the many tragic facets that both nurtured Hemingway's work and eroded his life. Masterfully written, Hemingway brings to life the writer whose desperate struggle to exorcise his demons produced some of the greatest American fiction of this century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Undaunted by the large body of biographical and critical work that has preceded his own, Lynn succeeds in casting the familiar life of Ernest Hemingway in a new and interesting light. He focuses on key events and relationships that affected the novels and short stories that ultimately changed our literature: Hemingway's traumatic wounding in World War I; his wives and lovers; and, most importantly, the parents who shaped his Oak Park years. Cursed with the same depressive streak, Hemingway was haunted by his father's suicide. Much of his own strength and talent was drawn from his mother, but her overpowering influence left other marks as well. She dressed him as a twin to his older sister when he was a toddler, an experience that undoubtedly contributed to the subsequent counter-posture of excessive masculinity central to Hemingway's public image. Nevertheless, Lynn finds evidence aplenty that this childhood feminization also accounted for a lifelong fascination with androgyny and sexual transposition vis-a-vis women, imparting another level of meaning to Hemingway's oft-repeated declaration that in his writing he wanted "to make people feel more than they understood." Taking as his premise Hemingway's glib assertion that the only analyst he relied upon was his "portable Corona Number 3," Lynn (Literary and Historical Writing About America, etc.t tracks the exploration of a disordered inner world as Hemingway sought to find some sort of resolution to the agony of his personal conflicts through "his cunningly wrought fiction." The man who emerges from Lynn's biography is a vastly more complex and compelling figure than the white-bearded, pontificating "Papa" of myth. Photos. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This intelligent, lively, mean-sprited biography of Hemingway gives us virtually no new factual material. Still, by virtue (or vice) of its single-minded psychological reductionism and its determination to find or invent biographical identifications and unconscious motives in all of Hemingway's fiction, Lynn discovers a "new" Hemingway. The reader is triumphantly presented with a vulgarized portrait of the artist as a mother-fixated young, middle-aged, and old man, unconsciously inclined to androgony and viciously in thrall to his own vengeful wrath and self-serving sentimentality. Lynn's revisionist readings of some of Hemingway's best-known stories seem like tortured efforts to support an eccentric interpretation that is intermittently provocative but ultimately unpersuasive. Earl Rovit, English Dept., City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1987 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: 712 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (March 3, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674387325
• ISBN-13: 978-0674387324
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #503,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THIS ONE IS A BIT DIFFERENT!, July 28, 2007

By 

D. Blankenship (The Ozarks) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: HEMINGWAY: LIFE & WORK (Hardcover)

I have had the pleasure of reading several (actually, quite a few), biographies concerning Hemingway over the years. Some were good, others not so good and some were absolutely horrible. With each book tough, good or bad, I did learn something new about E. Hemingway and/or his writing. This is a good thing. This particular biography by Kenneth S. Lynn is yet another take on the man and the ledged who was Ernest Hemingway. No I am not a big fan of Hemingway's novels, but am a great fan of his short stories, but overall I find that the "man" Hemingway is actually more fascinating that the "writing" of Hemingway. That being said....

This work by Kenneth Lynn probably addresses Hemingway's actual work more than most of the biographies I have read. Most of his major and quite a number of minor works are covered here. The author discusses these works in conjunction with what the author knows, or has speculated, of Hemingway's life. It has been mentioned by a couple of reviewers that this is a revisionist view of Hemingway and his work. I personally do not look at it as such. Even a cursory review of Hemingway's work reveals a very troubled man behind the words and the story. There is really nothing "new" here, only a different way of looking at the facts we all pretty well can figure out for ourselves with a bit of attention. This work, like all works of this nature has pros and cons. First the pros:

The work is well done, well written and certainly holds readers attention. As far as I can tell, the author has done his research and done it well. The author has given us some great food for thought as we read Hemingway's work and I know, I for one, will read EH in a bit of a different light from now on. This is good. The author has presented his arguments and observations in a very forceful and convincing way. Each statement he makes, each speculation, is backed up with quite sound logic. The author has written an interesting biography, one well worth the read. The Background information, in particular that of the literati establishment in Paris during the twenties and thirties, is quite well done in this work. We get great glimpses of some very famous people. I think most readers will learn a lot from reading this work. I know I did. Now for the cons:

Like another reviewer here, I simply do not know the qualifications of Kenneth S. Lynn as to the validity of some of the speculations he makes about the influences Hemingway's family had over his work. I do not know what the qualifications are of the author as to how he can speculate what was actually going on in HM's mind as he was writing a certain piece. It would seem that everything that HM ever put on paper had some sexual deeper meaning to it, according to Lynn. I find this difficult to fully believe. Some times a story is just a story and nothing more. Next, I felt the author was one of those that jumped on the "lets bash Hemingway" band wagon that seems to pop up about every twenty years, as this certainly is not a book that admirers of HM will appreciate. (It is childish of me, I know, but I would love to be in a room with Lynn and Hemingway as Lynn reads this book to Hemingway). Everyone the poor man ever knew or spoke to, seems to have written a book about him or is trying to. (At least Lynn did not rant on for over 600 pages trying to prove that HM was a homosexual as Mellow did in his work "Hemingway, A Life Without Consequences." This author, Lynn, as far as I can tell, feels HM is only suffered from gender confusion, or something like that.

All in all this book is well worth the read. It gives us just one more slant of the life of a fascinating man. I do recommend though, that the reader check out, read and discover several other biographies on HM as this one being reviewed here is certainly not the beginning and end of all Hemingway biographies. I would also suggest you read the fine work by Noel Riley Fitch, "Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation." Some of the folks, writers, artists, publishers, etc. are not all that well know today to the general public, are pretty obscure now, and a bit of knowledge of these people will make reading Lynn's work much more pleasurable.

Overall, recommend this one highly. I am giving it five stars, not because I agree with or believe everything the author has written, but because he, Lynn, has written it well and it has given me something to think about...something I always appreciate.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meticulous detail transcends Papa myth, November 19, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Hemingway (Paperback)

Lovers of Hemingway as the macho, confident, larger than life hero may not like this book, but anyone who wants a vision of objective truth with the good and bad falling where the details say they should, will love this meticulously researched story of the real Hemingway. The author weaves the stuff of Hemingway's fiction into the record of his life, upsetting the hero worship attitudes of some earlier biographers by showing clearly how what Hemingway revealed himself to be was rarely truthful, and what was fiction often was his inner truth disquised. Although the book is over 700 pages, the author's easy narrative style holds the reader's attention and no where do we get lost or feel overwhelmed with detail. Stories of how Hemingway interacted with other great writers of his day ae fascinating, and where he did accomplish interesting adventures, Lynn gives him easy credit. For example, where would Joyce's Ullyses be today had Hemingway not subsidized it's publication and planned how to smuggle it into the country? The book is more than a biography, it is a slice of Hemingway's time and literary community. Most refreshing is how easy it is to tell the facts from the author's astute speculation and escape the myth written as biography we have read in so many other places.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All-Encompassing., March 10, 2007

By 

Bernard Chapin "Ora Et Labora!" (CHICAGO! USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hemingway (Paperback)

Kenneth Lynn's biographical treatment of Ernest Hemingway is thorough and magnificent. It satisfied me for several reasons--not the least of which was the cheap z shop price I paid for it. What I liked about the narrative best is Lynn's habit of discussing Hemingway's work and life simultaneously. Just as with the man, the fiction blends in seamlessly with the non-fiction. The body of the text is almost 600 pages long and a solid half is devoted to those halcyon years of productivity; that wondrous decade of artistic bliss between 1920 and 1930. Due to the expansiveness of the biography and literary analysis I found those pages to be highly addictive reading. Indeed, I've just purchased Finca Vigia edition of his short stories and will devour them with a keen level of appreciation due to the efforts of Mr. Lynn. Personally, I did not find this biography to be revisionist. There was a great deal of atmospherics inherent to the masculinity of Ernest Hemingway. How much the macho corresponded with his true essence will always be subject to debate. This is not a controversial statement as Gertrude Stein, Zelda Fitzgerald, and countless others noticed the disingenuous, "tries too hard" aspects of his personality. He was a caricature in many ways, but I continue to find his style beguiling and life mesmerizing.