Customer Reviews

Hemingway's Key West

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Although this work is informative for anyone going to Key West to visit Hemingway sites, McIver's book reads like a confused hodgepodge. This would not be a problem if the chapters addressed Heminway's time in the Keys chronologically. However, the facts seem to skip around. Many chapters repeat events addressed earlier in other chapters making it appear as if each one was written by a different author without the benefit of reading each others's work, and then combined into one book. McIver's research on Hemingway seems to be of quick, incomplete work with sources easily obtained and poorly investigated.

Referred by author and friend John Dos Passos as just the place for "ole Hem...to dry out his bones" after spending another brutally cold, wet winter in Paris's Left Bank, Ernest Hemingway and pregnant second wife Pauline landed in Key West in the spring of 1928. It was just supposed to be vacation stop before traveling to north to Pauline's ancestral home in Arkansas to give birth to their first child. But a delay in the arrival of the yellow Model A Ford roadster (a wedding gift from Pauline's wealthy uncle Gus) gave the author the time to fall in love with the small town that he dubbed the "St. Tropez of the Poor." For the next decade Ernest Hemingway would write, fish, drink, and end his second marriage in this island town. And Key West would remain his most productive work environment on American soil. Among the palm fronds, bougainvillea, hibiscus, oleander and other tropical foliage outside his studio on the second floor carriage house Hemingway completed such works as A Farewell To Arms, Death in The Afternoon, Winner Take Nothing, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Short Life of Francis Macomber, and his Key West novel To Have And Have Not.

Florida historian and author Stuart McIver title promises the reader an adventure, but delivers a hodge-podge non cohesive book about Hemingway or of Key West during the time the great author lived there. Why was this decade Ernest Hemingway's most productive? What was the "it" Key West possessed that Ernest found his words flowing at around a 7 pencil day rate? Why Papa got on well and kept his Key West friends (the Mob) as life-long friends but lost many of the "out of town talent" mob members? How his marriage and later his divorce to Pauline changed the townspeople from supporting him to support Pauline, thusly diminishing slightly some important lifelong relationships to his "Key West Mob"? McIver fails to answer these questions adequately or he fails to answer these questions and repeats facts and events from other chapters. Also McIver glosses over two cataclysmic events that had profane effects on the great author: the Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and the meeting and subsequent affair with Martha Gellhorn whom eventually became Ernest's third wife.

I found the chapters on Hemingway's beloved boat Pilar (named for the daughter he desperately wanted but could never have) and his deep sea fishing very enlightening as well as the Walking tour of Papa's Key West, but the chapters on Cuba and the Key West of today didn't really enhance or fulfill the promise the author gives the reader: full answers as to why Hemingway loved Key West and was the most productive in that island city and his relationships he developed there. As a Florida resident many of anecdotal stories told in this short volume are widely known and probably to the Hemingway aficionado.

Hemingway's Key West provide a quick, interesting read for those traveling to Key West. The island's atmosphere and history twinkles like a Hemingway smile. And the reader gets quick but enlightening peeks at Hemingway's temper, his wives, his buddies (The Mob) and his fishing techniques.

Not for the library-bound scholar, this book treats the reader to the highlights of Key West and Hemingway. You'll get in-depth descriptions of his haunts. You'll find out tidbits about his life (a converted Catholic, a sometimes vindictive right-wing Republican, and a man willing to begin various love affairs instantly).

Overall, a fine read.

by Larry Rochelle, author of the hurricane thriller, GULF GHOST

I think a freshman in high school could've written a more cohesive book. The author repeats the same thing just about every chapter. The book probably contains a magazine article in information, if you can find it. It boggles my mind that this was printed, obviously no one edited it.

The book has some good nuggets of information about Hemingway and Key West, but there's a disjointed, rambling quality to the writing. It seems cobbled together in places--and the author repeats himself almost word-for-word from one chapter to another. In short, my critique is with the writing, not the information presented. Certainly a worthwhile read for die-hard Key West/Hemingway fans--but for the pleasure reader it may not be all that enjoyable.

Stuart McIver's HEMINGWAY'S KEY WEST is a classic example of history and literature neatly combined. McIver intends to just describe Hemingway's life in Key West, however, he also tells a lot about Hemingway as a family man (a role which Hemingway did not play well) and as a writer. His description of Hemingway's life and actions in Key West is done so well that it helps the reader picture himself in Key West at the time Hemingway lived there himself. McIver also does a splendid job in describing how Hemingway influenced Key West beyond the time he lived there. I have been to Key West twice, and on both occasions, I visited Sloppy Joe's Bar which is full of "Hemingway paraphernalia" - when you are at Sloppy Joe's, it is as if Hemingway were right there with you.