Hem And Us

Clancy Sigal at the British newspaper the Guardian writes about Ernest Hemingway, his suicide and how he is unfairly judged today.

Fifty years ago, Ernest Hemingway, the writer, sportsman, big-game hunter, soldier, poseur, genius and Nobel Prize winner shot himself with his favourite Boss doublebarrel shotgun at his home in Ketchum, Idaho. His wife Mary at first pretended it was an accident, but nobody bought that fairy tale. He'd been suffering almost every imaginable physical and some mental problems, including writer's block and, so it is said, impotence...

There's a lot there to pick apart in the man: the bluster, exaggerated machismo, mood swings, four marriages, alcoholism, death-wooing in the bullring, at the D-Day landing, and in bed. No small ego there. But, in all the fancy analytical footwork, it's sometimes forgotten that, like Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, Hemingway explored "strange new worlds … to boldly go where no man has gone before". His powerfully insinuating prose practically took over the style of many young writers, including me, as did Salinger's for a later generation. Some of Hemingway's novels, and many beautiful short stories like "Big Two Hearted River" and "In Another Country", will live as long as literature.

You can read the rest of this intersting piece via the below link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/26/ernesthemingway-fbi

You can also read my earlier post on Hemingway movies via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2010/06/hbo-to-make-movie-of-ernest-hemingway.html

And you can also read my column that covers Hemingway on crime via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2009/08/on-crime-thrillers-hemingway-on-crime.html