6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Like having a private conversation with the author, July 11, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Portrait of Hemingway (Modern Library) (Paperback)
This edition of Portrait of Hemingway by Lillian Ross starts with the 1950 Profile of Ernest Hemingway, one of the most famous articles ever to appear in The New Yorker, and ends with an Afterward by Miss Ross which she has now written, almost fifty years later. The profile became a classic, William Shawn wrote of it, "perhaps because, to a degree that has never been equalled in a factual portrait, it contains the very breath of life."
Miss Ross does not present us with hints or rumors of Hemingway, or with theories or suppositions about him, or with second or third or fourth hand "information" downloaded and culled over the years from the writings of would-be biographers. Instead, on page after page of "Portrait of Hemingway," Hemingway is simply there.
With the Profile, Miss Ross made several litarary innovations, one of which was to compose a portrait entirely in terms of action. For example, as Hemingway walks through the Metropolitan Museum with his son Patrick, he talks --exuberantly, at times reflectively, always brilliantly-- about his work, his pleasures, his plans, his notions. Miss Ross quietly, sensitively, and affectionately, sets it all down, as much of it as is needed to record, on paper, a living man -- and since the man is Hemingway, a great man. William Shawn, who edited the profile for The New Yorker called it a masterpiece.
In the Afterword, Miss Ross tells about her friendship with Hemingway and his wife, Mary, that followed the publication of the profile and that continued until his death in 1961 and Mary's death in 1986. And again, Miss Ross gives us, not her own opinions or suppositions, but actual quotes from the letters the Hemingways wrote to her over the years. For instance, she quotes what he wrote to her in the mid 1950's when people continued to talk to him about the Profile: "All are very astonished because I don't hold anything against you who made an effort to destroy me and nearly did, they say. I always tell them how can I be destroyed by a woman when she is a friend of mine and we have never even been to bed and no money has changed hands?" Miss Ross also writes: "He had some succinct advice for me as a writer: `Just call them the way you see them and the hell with it.'"
Miss Ross writes that she confided in the Hemingways about her romance with William Shawn ( She wrote that love story in her 1998 book Here But Not Here) and how supportive they were when she went to Hollywood in an effort to disentangle herself from that turn in her life. (She stayed there for a year and a half, doing the reporting for her Hollywood book Picture.) Hemingway told her things. She didn't hunt or fish or shoot or go on safaris to Africa, but she enjoyed hearing Hemingway talk about those things. Both Ernest and Mary wrote to her from Africa, the echoes of which may be found in the new Hemingway book True at First Light. They wrote to Miss Ross from their Finca, or farm, outside of Havana, in Cuba. Hemingway also gave her advice for one of her own enthusiasms -- playing poker. "Never call; either raise or put down."
And he discussed writing and writers in many of his letters.
He was aware of the bitter and destructive nature of critics who set themselves up as literary pundits, and he would often say to Miss Ross: "The only thing for me to do is write good books." Once he speculated to her about why the critics went after him so relentlessly: "I joke all the time at myself, and everybody else and at everything and most literary critics are very solemn and without humor and they resent that," he wrote to her.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A remarkable combination of objectivity and love., July 26, 1999
This review is from: Portrait of Hemingway (Modern Library) (Paperback)
It's a remarkable piece of work, both loving and accurate. If you don't like his kind of macho, I guess you could call the Portrait barbed; but she obviously loved it and him enough to win his trust. He opened up for her and, in the welcoming sense, took her in. I'm left full of wonder for the way she got his words, as well as his presence, down. You can see, too, how his early work, with its pared-down clarity, influenced her style. This is biography without conjecture -- biography at its best.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must read for Hemingway fans and fascinating overall., August 3, 1999
This review is from: Portrait of Hemingway (Modern Library) (Paperback)
Portrait is a glimpse into the life of Hemingway over a two-day period. For fans of Hemingway, this is a fascinating snapshot of the famous Hemingway bravado and an offering of the vulnerability and sensitivity flowing immediately under the gruff and overly-confident exterior. Hemingway's passion for art and alcohol is found here, and one can't help but be reminded of his earlier devotion to, and inspiration from, painting rendered in A Moveable Feast. Sadly, one also anticipates the later disability compounded by the excessive drinking that finally extinguished such a brilliant career. This book caused a commotion when it was first published because Hemingway came across as insensitive, but it is only the lazy reader not willing to dig a little deeper, and only the reader who allows the powerful prose of Ross to lull them into mere observation, who fails to recognize the whole of Hemingway's character. If you are a Hemingway fan, or you want to scratch the surface of the life of a great writer who showed no fear in displaying his faults as readily as his virtues, and you don't mind a few character quirks along the way, read this book.
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