Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts From a Life
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- $28.99
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- $28.99
Publisher Description
For many, Ernest Hemingway remains more a compilation of myths than a person: soldier, sportsman, lover, expat and, of course, writer.
But the actual life beneath these various legends remains elusive; what did he look like as a laughing child or young soldier? What was his handwriting like and 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 feel, and what kind of notes did he take on his journeys? This remarkable book answers these questions.
Featuring a foreword by Hemingway’s son Patrick and an afterword by his grandson Sean, the book has the intimate feel of being a member of the family. It tells the story of a major American icon through the objects he touched, the moments he saw, the thoughts he had every day.
Beautifully designed, including over 400 dazzling images of him at every stage of his life along with the letters, notes and miscellany that made his life so rich, it is an intimate, illuminating portrait like no other.
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.
