Customer Reviews

Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways

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In this sophisticated and adroitly handled memoir, Valerie Hemingway details the years she spent with the Hemingway family-traveling with Ernest's entourage in Spain, working as his personal secretary in Cuba, assisting Mary with Ernest's estate after his death, and dealing with the psychological trauma of her marriage to Ernest's estranged son, Gregory. While the book offers an intimate look at the final years of Hemingway's life that will be of interest to both scholars and Hemingway enthusiasts alike, it is also a finely wrought and intriguing narrative that details the life of a young Irish journalist who by chance found herself enmeshed in the exciting but often disturbing world of the Hemingway family. From her run-ins with literary and artistic figures in Europe, to her dealings with Fidel Castro in attempts to safely secure the Hemingway estate after Ernest's suicide, Valerie Hemingway observed first hand the last gasps of literary modernism as the culture entered the turbulent politics of the 1960s, and this cultural backdrop sets the stage for Valerie's account of her intellectual awakening. This book is essential reading not only for those looking for an in-depth look at Ernest Hemingway's final years and the aftermath of his suicide but also for those looking for an engrossing account of the author's captivating life.

Valerie Hemingway has written a superb memoir with sensitivity and insight into a complex man and his world. Writing about Ernest Hemingway, she strikes a difficult balance between adoration and objectivity. Her prose is pleasing--sweet in places--sometimes humorous, and altogether compelling. Valerie Hemingway's often forlorn childhood in Ireland is interesting, and the unlikely confluence of this convent girl and the macho author is fascinating. On top of that comes a romance with Brendan Behan, Ernest Hemingways's suicide, and Valerie's eventual marriage to Hemingway's son, Gregory, who turns out to be a transvestite. Valerie Hemingway spent 28 years involved with the Hemingway family, and her observations and comments are important additions to the lore about Ernest Hemingway, his friends, enemies, wives and children. "Running With the Bulls" is not happy reading in many spots, but it is always engaging.

I purchased and read this book because of my intense interest in the life of Ernest Hemingway. Memoirs by his family members or friends often disappoint, but I was impressed with this one. Valarie Hemingway writes well and sheds new light on Hemingway's last years, leading up to his suicide. Her tumultuous marriage to Ernest's troubled son Gregory is fully and truthfully explored here for the first time, and that alone is worth the price of admission. Running With The Bulls is an interesting and worthwhile look at the Hemingway family from a fresh perspective.

When a non-literary or semi-literary character gets caught up in the wake of a great writer, an historical event or disaster or what have you, you have to take their memoir as it is. Valerie Hemingway, a teen when she met Hemingway, seems to have been an aspiring journalist and to have done some editing since, though obviously she makes no great claim as a writer. The question is what she has to say, and frankly this writer not only has some new revelations about Hemingway and his family which are more than mere gossip, but posesses a degree of wisdom and balance, all in all something to say about life.

The first half of the book deals with Valerie's relationship with Ernest and Mary Hemingway, in Spain and Cuba, 1959-1961. The author is eerily present in each line Valerie writes, well recognizable from other known accounts, but she adds her own valuable and to some degree deeper take. She was a perceptive girl who Hemingway (who always enjoyed tough young "Summer People" as he once memorably termed them) obviously had good reason to like. But just as obviously it has taken her years to meditate on this material and get it right.

Hemingway's funeral and her meeting with Gregory are then told, including her touchy relationship with Mary Hemingway. Here one perhaps wishes for a little more, but the fact is no one yet has been able to properly get an angle on Hemingway's fox terrier of a fourth wife who stuck it out for hell on earth and was thereby seriously damaged afterwords.

An interlude then concerns the Irish playwright Brendan Behan, by whom Valerie had a son. And finally the rest -- which comes to feel like the majority of the book -- concerns the third "bull" in her life, Ernest's third and tragic son Gregory, whom Valerie married. This seemingly private and sensational story, on the charming Dr.Gregory and his finally all-encompassing transvestism disorder, is nonetheles as relevant to Hemingway studies as the first half of the book. Gregory was the model for one of Thomas Hudson's sons in Islands in the Stream, and the subject behind the meditation in a little known late short story, "I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something." Gregory also wrote his own justly acclaimed take on Ernest which pulled no punches. The product of Ernest's stormy second marriage, there were scars from the beginning which are duly reflected in his realist father's letters and fiction.

Even more relevantly, the whole issue of family illnesses and psychoses, which emerges in the Gregory material, throws light back on Hemingway's fictionalized relationship with his own father in the Nick Adams stories, plus the whole issue of hidden psychic wounds in most major Hemingway characters first explored by the early and pioneering Hemingway critic Phillip Young. The fact is psycho-sexual issues permeate Hemingway biography because they lay under his body of his fiction like an iceberg. Those taking Valerie to task for the revelations herein, and arbitrarily labeling her a goldbrick and the 2nd half of the book as worthless, are simply uninformed. Gregory was apparently the saddest victim of something haunting his family for the three generations that have been documented. Valerie therefore has nothing to be ashamed of. Nor does she ask for your applause, either.

Moreover, her frank story of Gregory Hemingway's obsessive downfall is rather courageous. The very private sort of sexual psychosis Gregory had may well be more common than generally known, and will always likely cause shame and scorn to both the victim and his family to become known. Valerie could therefore only risk exposing herself to ridicule to publish this, and most people would have buckled to that threat. In that case a very important chronicle of a family's struggle with this sort of downfall would not be available. The telling is neither sensational, bitter, nor confused -- it is straight up realism professionally told. It is loving and quite starkly human. It will certainly help families burdened by the same affliction in their midst.

Valerie Hemingway's account of the last years of Ernest Hemingway's life, and his suicide that affected her in so many ways, is magnificent. She catches the author's insecurities as his abilities fail along with his eyesight. She records his obsession with suicide, countered by his lust for life and his enjoyment of the international acclaim he had won.

But this is also about an extraordinary woman, filled with tenderness, steely in her courage, who loved and nursed and nurtured and sometimes fought several Hemingways, including Ernest, Mary, and her husband Gregory, Ernest's ill-starred son.

This is more than a memoir: it is a superb study of genius and madness, the betrayals of Ernest's sycophantic friends, and the pain and joy associated with a celebrity life.

This is an important work, a great contribution to our understanding of one of America's greatest authors, and his family. She has written with grace and courage and beauty, and were Ernest Hemingway alive, he would be celebrating her achievement.

This is yet another "I knew Hemingway when" story. As my title states, I have mixed feelings and opinions about this one. The first portion of the book, where the author is actually with Hemingway and his wife at the time, Mary, is interesting and somewhat informative. It is always interesting (for me anyway) to pick up tidbits of the life of this author, i.e. E. Hemingway. After the death of Hemingway the book sort of goes into a bit of a decline. Some of the interactions with Mary Hemingway were interesting and indeed the horrible, sad story of her marrage (the author's) to Greg Hemingway was, while not facsinating, at least interesting, in a voyeuristic sort of way. I do have several problems with this work though. First, the author is by far one of the most profilfic name droppers I have ever read. This is okay I suppose, but in this work she really goes over the top. In addition (probably, no doubt, due to my complete lack of sophistication), I had no clue who 90 pecent of these people were and, in all truth, could care less. Secondly, the author is simply not consistent, even in matters concerning her own life. She goes from being a simple little Irish girl, to an ultra sophisticated world traveler who is wise in the way of literater, back to being a simple little Irish Girl, over and over and over again. Third, the author seems to hesitate to speak of anything remotely personal and intimate in dealing with E. and Mary Hemingway as if she does not want to break a trust. Hey, they are dead - most of the family is either dead or insane! The writing of this book alone broke a trust, per author's own admission, so why not be a bit more detailed? The book is an obvious effort to make a buck (no hard feelings there, I would have done the same, only earlier), so why not go into a bit more depth? That being said, I am glad I read this work and glad it was written. I just feel it could have been so much more and so much more informative. It did give me more information concerning the life of a great author. For that I am grateful.

Another personal memoir of encounters with Hemingway. It was an easy and compelling read, largely because the author offered occasionally compelling insights which gave the hope of more. Mostly, however, it reads like a list of places visited and a list of names met without any of the detail about the people. The author drops names and sometimes even shoehorns anecodtes awkwardly into the story, the purpose of which seems only to be to drop another name.

If the author felt compelled to keep Hemingway's secrets then she shouldn't have written a book. If she wanted to write a book, she should have included more substance that what is here. The result is a rather unsatisfactory tease. The writing itself is good. The author gives a real sense of what it was like to travel in Spain and France and to live in Cuba. What she doesn't do is give any real sense of who Hemingway was, what their relationship was like and how it developed into what must have been a close, intense bond. The author doesn't really ever convey the closeness of their relationship. It only comes across in the extracts of letter from Hemingway to her.

There are a few judgments in the book and a few inconsistencies that grate. For example, the writer seems to object to Hotchner writing a book and having access to the Hemingway letters for that purpose but then withholds her own letters from the public and uses them in her own book. The reader doesn't ever get a sense of what drew the author to Gregory in the first place which makes it almost impossible to understand why she persisted with him through the events which as they are described in the book, almostly universally paint him in a very bad light.

If you want to read everything ever written about Hemingway, then you'll find this interesting. If you want to read a memior by someone who knew (and still liked) Hemingway in his later years, read Hotchner's work or Mary Hemingway's biography.

Valerie Hemingway is the wife of one of Ernest Hemingway's sons- and she gives a unique perspective on life in and around the Hemingway family in "Running With the Bulls". Although many books in the "I knew Hemingway" category have come out in recent years, this one manages to give us some insights into the depth of the man, his weaknesses and strengths, his frailties, passions, rough edges and all. Being with Ernest Hemingway during the running of the bulls in Pamplona- which just took place about ten days ago and occurs every year on the Festival of San Fermin- must have been an exciting time, something most Hemingway fans would cherish. We see it on T.V. and grimace at the scenes of people barely escaping the bulls' horns- or worse- those who get gored, ending up in the hospital. Yet Ernest Hemingway lived it and relished it- and actually ran at least once himself- although the book focuses on his later years, when he was content to sit at cafes, drink the local "Riojo" (red wine) and enjoy the tasty Spanish tapas and other delicacies.

"Running With the Bulls" gives us a glimpse into the mind, the heart and soul of this great writer in the final years of his life, when things weren't going so well, when health problems and the cumulative effect of three divorces weighed heavily on him. We still see his strength, his passion and sense of exhilaration at the wondrous things in life- simple, yet spectacular scenes of bulls running through the streets...

-Gene Pisasale
Author, "Lafayette's Gold- The Lost Brandywine Treasure" and
"Vineyard Days"

If you are interested in a different side to the Hemingway story then this is a good book to read. Obviously the book focuses on her time with the various Hemingways; initially mostly on Papa Hemingways last two years, especially the last full summer he spent in Spain following the top matadors, and later on about her life married to Greg Hemingway and her continued association with Mary Hemingway after Papa Hemingway's death. I enjoyed hearing her take on the many different adventures in Spain, Cuba, NYC, and Idaho and also hearing more about what happened in the years after Hemingway's death. For a semi-orphaned, young irish girl from no-where, she had a hell of an adventure and met some amazing people. The prevalence of mental illness and denial of it throughout the book is amazing. It was an good and easy read and I would recommend it.

Running with the Bulls is autobiography par excellence. Valerie Hemingway openly and frankly tells the fascinating story of her life, which began as Valerie Danby-Smith. Her mother was English Catholic, her father Irish Protestant, and their marriage failed. Young Valerie grew up in a convent in Ireland, literally, and she spent the summers of her youth, when the convent school was closed, at a country hotel that attracted artists and writers.

Aspiring to be a journalist, young Danby-Smith went to Spain. There she went to interview the American author Ernest Hemingway, then 59 years old and enthusiastically visiting sites from his earlier days. Thus the 19-year-old Irish woman began figuratively "running with the bulls."

Danby-Smith became Hemingway's secretary and confidant. She traveled in Spain and France with the Hemingway entourage. She moved to Cuba to help the writer, but soon the Cuban Revolution forced the Hemingways to leave Cuba. Danby-Smith went to New York City to pursue her career, and the Hemingways moved to Idaho. There Ernest Hemingway committed suicide. At his funeral Danby-Smith met Hemingway's youngest son, Gregory, long estranged from the family for reasons she did not learn until many years later. With Fidel Castro's complacency, she helped Hemingway's widow smuggle the famous author's manuscripts and art collection out of Cuba. For several years thereafter she sorted the Hemingway papers at the office of his publisher in New York City. When she married Gregory Hemingway, he was a young doctor in New York. The marriage took her to Florida, back to New York, and later to Montana, where the tragic drama of Gregory's life eventually brought the marriage to an end.

Nothing in this book is expected. If the book were a novel, the reader would not believe the story, the famous characters, the twists and turns. But the story is true, and Valerie Hemingway lived it. She tells her story with grace, discretion, and the skill of a fine journalist whose early mentor had been the legendary Ernest Hemingway.

At the time she was hired, Ernest Hemingway had stipulated that a requirement of employment was that she would not write about the family. She honored that requirement. But years have passed and others have written about her relationship with Ernest Hemingway, so the time came for Valerie Hemingway to tell it like it was. It was an adventure!