Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts From a Life
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Beautifully designed, intimate and illuminating, this is the story of American icon Ernest Hemingway's life through the documents, photographs, and miscellany he kept, compiled by the steward of the Hemingway estate and featuring contributions by his son and grandson.
For many people, Ernest Hemingway remains more a compilation of myths than a person: soldier, sportsman, lover, expat, and of course, writer. But the actual life underneath these various legends remains elusive; what did he look like as a laughing child or young soldier? What did he say in his most personal letters? How did the train tickets he held on his way from France to Spain or across the American Midwest transform him, and what kind of notes, for future stories or otherwise, did he take on these journeys?
Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts from a Life answers these questions, and many others. Edited and with an introduction by the manager of the Hemingway estate, featuring a foreword by Hemingway’s son Patrick and an afterword by his grandson Seán, this rich and illuminating book tells the story of a major American icon through the objects he touched, the moments he saw, the thoughts he had every day. Featuring over four hundred dazzling images from every stage and facet of Hemingway’s life, many of them never previously published, this volume is a portrait unlike any other. From photos of Hemingway running with the bulls in Spain to candid letters he wrote to his wives and his publishers, it is a one-of-a-kind, stunning tribute to one of the most titanic figures in literature.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Katakis (A Thousand Shards of Glass), the manager of Ernest Hemingway's literary estate, has produced a slipshod collection of archival materials that still holds the power to delight. His stated aim is to remove the obscuring blur of mythology ("the story is far more nuanced and detailed than myth allows"), but the editing of the contents, drawn from the John F. Kennedy Library's Hemingway Collection, is lacking. Most photographs have no dates, a large section of scanned ephemera that makes up the heart of the book has no explanatory captions, and the letters are sometimes given with no context for the recipient's relationship to Hemingway, while the accompanying timeline feels like an assortment of facts picked randomly from an almanac (from 1951: "Greta Garbo gets U.S. citizenship"). By the end of the book, with the afterword by S an Hemingway, the author's grandson ("As well as anyone alive, I can attest to the richness and extraordinary nature of this national treasure"), the book feels most like an advertisement for the archive. As serious scholarship the volume doesn't measure up, but Hemingway enthusiasts should find it enjoyable to page through.
