Hemingway's Chair [Hardcover]

Michael Palin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1998

"Monty Python's Flying Circus" alumnus Michael Palin turns his hand to writing fiction. A mild-mannered English postmaster--who is obsessed with Hemingway--must decide whether to drift along passively or fight for what he believes in, after his small village postal office is privatized.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A quiet, unassuming postman develops an unexpected obsession in this quiet, unassuming--and very English--first novel from Michael Palin of Monty Python fame. Martin Sproale is the very model of a modern Walter Mitty. An assistant postmaster in the coastal town of Threston, he lives at home with his mother and rides his bicycle to work each day. It's a pleasant but uneventful sort of life, marked only by Martin's growing fascination with the life, works, and personal style of Ernest Hemingway. "Tea-drinkers, mothers, post office administrators, would-be fiancées. Little people with little minds," Martin thinks. "When would they realise that only through confrontation with danger could life be lived to the full?" Martin has transformed his room into a kind of Hemingway shrine, complete with bullfighting poster, several first editions, the same kind of typewriter Papa used--even a vintage WWI Italian army first-aid cabinet filled with all the liquors he liked to drink.

Two things happen to shatter Martin's equilibrium. First, a new, corporate-style postal manager takes the job that by rights should have been his, promptly beginning a campaign of privatization and modernization that threatens all Martin holds dear. Second, an American woman outbids him on Hemingway memorabilia; a scholar, "not a fan," of the writer, Ruth Kohler lives in seclusion nearby while she works on a book about the women in Hemingway's life. Martin and Ruth engage in some increasingly heated role-playing as the conflict over Threston's post office comes to a slow boil. Deprived of his position, his cozy world crashing down around him, Martin finds himself acting more like the he-man writer than he ever thought possible. Palin's debut is in some ways a surprise: poignant rather than funny, skillfully paced and couched in workmanlike but hardly spectacular prose. Readers expecting Pythonesque absurdity might find themselves disappointed--but only at first; with patience, this book unfolds its more subtle pleasures with understated aplomb.

From Booklist

With apologies to the late Tip O'Neill, it could be said that all humor is local. Palin is best known for his work as a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus, the comedy troupe that poked fun at quaint English customs with a subtle humor Americans enjoyed but probably did not fully understand. Palin serves up much of the same in this light but entertaining first novel about Martin Sproale, a postal worker in a small seaside town trying to save his beloved post office from the ravaging forces of modernization, technology, Thatcherite greed, and the European Union. Sproale strives to emulate his hero, Ernest Hemingway, trying to transform himself into the contumacious American writer to battle the novel's corporate villains. An American Hemingway scholar writing in England feeds his obsession and encourages him in his struggle, culminating in a very Pythonesque denouement. Hemingway is well crafted and witty, but the personalities and peculiarities in this humorous portrait of small-town English life lose some of their context on this side of the Atlantic. Ted Leventhal

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1ST edition (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312185936
• ISBN-13: 978-0312185930
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,458,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story that might be any of us, January 24, 2002

By 

Paul Sayles (Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hemingway's Chair (Paperback)

Hemingway's Chair is the story of a man who is a true fan of Ernest Hemingway and how this passion percolates through his life. Martin is an assistant postmaster in a small English town. He doesn't own a car, he uses a bike. He lives with his mother. In short a man who would seem to be quite constrained in his outlook. But this passion for Hemingway is quite at odds with the man we would pass in the street or buy stamps from at the post office. It is this passion that feeds the story that Palin tells with great skill.

The writing of Michael Palin is quite at odds with the man of Monty Python skits. For me, Palin struck a chord that might be there in all of us. A desire to be in the same room with a great figure. Palin's charecter to me, doesn't want to be Hemingway, rather he would be quite happy just being in the same room with him. Seeing him, listening to him, basking in the relected glory of the man. Is this a religious zeal? I don't think so. Rather it is almost a love of the man and all he stands for.

Palin's cahrecters are all believeable. We all know the bustling new boss who wants to drag a perfectly serviceable work situation into the fast lane of the GPO. To him, this is his opportunity to excel and move up the ladder of success. No matter that there are people already in place who have long service in one office, know all the customers, thier children and their varied stories. To the boss, this is of no value; streamline, moderinize and economize are his watchwords. I don't like him. He ignores the history of the people around him and the place in which he is in the process of destroying. The rest of the charecters are just as true to life, including the American woman who intrudes on Martin's life and eventually awakens in him a Hemingwayesque way of dealing with the turmoil that has so changed his life.

I found this to be a book that made me think, not just about Palin's charecter, but my own outlook on life. It is not a book for someone who is looking for a printed version of the goofy charecters from Palin's sketches. Rather it is a thought provoking book that will make you sit and think afterwards and even during your reading of it. This is not a quick read but it is engrossing. It is a book, I hope that people will revisit periodically for a recharge in their batteries, the better to deal with reality.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I only wish it was longer, March 15, 2000

By 

Mark Bridgeman - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hemingway's Chair (Paperback)

I was hesitant when I first picked up this book - although I'm a fan of Palin's Ptyhon work, I wasn't sure that I was ready to read that vein of comedy in a novel. However, I needn't have worried - Palin's writing is engaging, and with "Hemingway's Chair" he has created a cast of characters that *breathe*.

I fell into this book from the start, and the imagery that Palin brings forth is fresh; the plot one that I found hard to resist, despite it being partly centred around a writer I have no interest in, or knowledge of. However, Palin's characters carry the story along honestly, and interact with each other believably.

If you enjoy witty, enjoyable fiction, especially that which carries an strong English feel to it, then you cannot and MUST not pass up this book.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written, funny, and inspiring., August 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Hemingway's Chair (Paperback)

I think some people who read "Hemingway's Chair" were expecting a lot of silly, outrageous humor like what Michael Palin helped create in Monty Python. But that's not what this novel is, at all. It's much more serious that I expected, but it really is a great book, and the funny stuff is inserted in there with just perfect timing that made me smile for a long time afterward. This is not an action book, either (though some parts are indeed very exciting). The plot is not very complicated, but it really makes you think, and the characters are very human. The very end of the book may not be quite what the rest was, but I think it was pretty much satisfactory. This is a very sweet and well writen novel, and I very much recommend it to anyone interested in a good read.