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Title: True at First Light by Ernest Hemingway, Brian Dennehy, Patrick Hemingway ISBN: 0-671-04448-6 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio Pub. Date: 06 July, 1999 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 8 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.26 (61 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Man Is In It
Comment: Sure the work was incomplete and this patched up version tends to ramble and doesn't have a real strong narrative drive. So what? As with virtually all Hemingway, it is a rewarding and fascinating read. The prose is brutal and beautiful and wise and sad and strange and funny as hell sometimes and sometimes definitely not politically correct by today's standards. It will disturb in a new way and reveal fresh rewards to the reader every trip through. The book ends with Hemingway and his wife making plans to visit the Congo by plane. There is great poignancy in knowing that this was the trip (documented in Hemingway's article The Christmas Gift, available in By-Line Ernest Hemingway) where the two plane crashes took place that caused the serious internal injuries which are said to have begun the downward spiral in Hemingway's physical and mental health. What was written in the Saturday Review about Mark Twain's autobiography (also a patched up posthumously published work) I think applies to this book just as strongly: "It is worth reading because the man is in it."
Rating: 4
Summary: Well, I'll be damned ... it's really good!
Comment: As a longtime Hemingway fan, I approached this unfinished work with both hesitation and skepticism: like "The Garden of Eden," the whole idea of this book seems wrong -- it smacks of disturbing the dead. If Hemingway had wanted this published, he would have finished it, right? The poor guy was in deep artistic decline when he wrote it, right?
Well, after reading this "fictional memoir," I'm no longer quite sure.
Perhaps I read too much of the lukewarm, pre-publication hype -- my expectations were very low. But upon reading it, "True At First Light" struck me as astonishingly strong. I didn't find it very rambling, or half-baked as some have charged. Nor did it seem racist: It is certainly a book of it's time -- the mid-50's -- but its treatment of Africa and Africans seems eminently respectful and somewhat sad. He compares the faded glory of these post-Colonial peoples to that of the Native Americans in the wake of the settling of the U.S. -- a mortally wounded people, struggling to preserve a history and tradition mostly destroyed by European warriors, profiteers and missionaries.
The writing is clearly an early draft -- but what a fine early draft it is! There are flashes of brilliance that only the greatest living writers could hope to match in their most "finished" works. And I personally like the less-guarded qualities of late Hemingway. His early work is clearly more innovative, and carries more historical and cultural importance. But that's not really the point, I'd argue.
For too long, Hemingway has been either lionized or condemned as a larger-than-life celebrity icon -- and of course, in many ways that's what he was. But let's not forget that under all the dated, off-putting bombast, he was also a skilled and sensitive artist -- and this work is well worth the time and close attention of anyone who loves that oft-forgotten, oft-obscured soul: Hemingway, the writer.
Rating: 3
Summary: Disappointing Posthumous Finale
Comment: This book was published to coincide with what would have been Hemingway's 100th birthday. Unfortunately, it's not much of a tribute. Fortunately, it is supposed to be the final Hemingway work, so maybe the "picking at Papa's bones" has finally come to an end.
Posthumous publications always raise the question of what would the author have wanted. Would Hemingway have wanted this book to see publication, particularly given the fact that it is need of heavy editing? I have my doubts that he ever intended for this book to see publication. He had shelved this project himself prior to his death and nothing I've read indicates he had any desire to see it to completion.
The book is characterized as "A Fictional Memoir," and, rather than seeming to have been intended as a complete novel in and of itself, the book appears to be more of a collection of material out of which a novel might have been constructed. Hemingway began work on it in 1954, and it essentially describes Hemingway's trip to Kenya with his fourth wife, Mary Welsh. The line between what is fiction and what is memoir is fairly ambiguous throughout.
Fans of Hemingway, such as myself, will be disappointed. There is no real plot or dramatic structure and what suspense there is, e.g., will Miss Mary kill her lion?, is disposed of before the book is half over. The book, which is reputed to have been edited down from over 800 pages, is in severe need of additional editing. Hemingway, who was famous for his self-editing, probably would have sheared off at least another quarter of the book.
Still, there is enough of the old master present here to make it worth reading if you are a fan.
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Title: The DANGEROUS SUMMER by Ernest Hemingway, James A. Michener ISBN: 0684837897 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 09 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: GARDEN OF EDEN by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0684804522 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 06 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The TORRENTS OF SPRING by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0684839075 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 06 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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Title: TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0684818981 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 20 March, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO by Ernest Hemingway ISBN: 0684804441 Publisher: Scribner Book Company Pub. Date: 01 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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