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Title: Hemingway by Kenneth Schuyler Lynn ISBN: 0-674-38732-5 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.29 (7 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: risky business
Comment: Lynn's book is the third Hemingway biography I've read (others: A. E. Hotchner, Carlos Baker). I found KSL's book to be quite readable, and his arguments well rationalized and thought-provoking. His exploitation of the psychological perspective is unique among the Hemingway biographies I've read or heard of, and in the abstract, his thesis is plausible. That there could be a neurotic, unconsciously destructive mother (or father for that matter) who could cause severe and lasting psychological damage to her children, is hardly news. However, getting inside another man's head is risky business - all the more so when the associated analysis will run into hundreds of pages and involve articulating the life long effects of childhood damage, character flaws, etc and following them into and back from Hemingway's work. The possibilities for misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and unconscious personal bias etc., are infinite.
In the final event, I found I couldn't give full credence to this style of biography, at least not without having certain knowlege of its author's powers of mind, life experience, and his ability to judge another man's character - things that a reader typically can not know about an author. Notwithstanding, I'm glad to have read the volume, and it offers a counterbalance to Carlos Baker's biography of Hemingway, sometimes criticized as too uncritical of the man. I still prefer Baker however, perhaps because his emphasis on literary analysis is of more interest to me and less 'risky'. And, Baker's companion work, "Hemingway, The Writer as Artist" dovetails nicely with his biography of Hemingway.
Rating: 5
Summary: Splendid Revisionist Literary Criticism
Comment: Lynn's gripping, well-written biography demonstates that Hemingway's real subject was *not* the advocacy of a code of aggressive macho behavior, but the price of maintaining that code. "Papa" paid that price himself by descending into madness, complicated by alcoholism and probably inherited chronic depression. Hemingway could only hint at his demons in his fiction; his famous elliptical style was the result of not being able to admit so many terrible facts to himself. Lynn also nails Hemingway's radical chic stupidities about the Spanish Civil War and his belated disillusionment with communism. He was a great writer--but his greatness sprang from lies, psychic confusion and pain. Lynn demonstates great compassion in the telling of the more awful parts of this tale. Hemingway buffs may not like this book, but they should read it--it's pretty convincing to me.
Rating: 5
Summary: Patrice's Review : Hemingway by Kenneth S. Lynn (hardback )
Comment: Outstanding, highly footnoted, extensive quotes from writings of
Hemingway and others and a good collection of photographs. The
chronology is excellent beginning with Hemingway's early years from
birth, high school graduation, and first job at a newspaper and
progressing to his first marriage, his European phase of his life to
the end of his life. I felt like I was living and experiencing
Hemingway's travels in Spain, Paris, Africa, Cuba, and the cafe' life.
Hemingway was very troubled, drank too much, experienced enormous
health problems, an exciting and fascinating person, and lived life to
the fullest. While I did not like his practice of putting his
friends, associaties, family, and others in fictions in ways that were
very recognizable and humiliating-- he was a prolific and dedicated
writer. Writing was his life with lots of parties and travel thrown
in for relaxing. Fishing and shooting big game were his life's
passions too besies booze and women. What a man. He did it his way as
Frank Sinatra sang.
The extensive quotes from book critics, friends,
family, writers and associates made the book very informative and
exciting. The writing style was analytical concerning the author's
assessment of how he reached conclusions by inserting the quotes and
citations from original sources-- Hemingway's writings including
letters, letters of critics's, friends and family and extensive quotes
from these sources. I cannot imagine how anyone could rate this other
than as a highly, outstanding very scholarly book. By the way I am
way past 13 years old, a former teacher of elementary school among
many other endeavors working in housing finance and public policy,
mortgage banking, investment banking, and consulting career areas
since 1970 to the present.
I recommend purchasing the hard copy
version for ones personal library. I could not put this book down in
a week. I completed reading it within a week despite the number of
pages; there are 597 pages not including the Notes pages in the
back. I also reread certain chapters again, did not want to put the
book down. Riviting! Lynn has increased my appreciation and
knowledge of Heminging far more than I could have hoped, exceeding my
expectations and piqued my desire to read more books by Lynn. I
looked at one of Lynn's major sources identified in Notes of the book
[Ernest Hemingway A Life Story by Carlos Baker]and by comparison
Lynn's book is far more informative, interesting, and readible because
of his extensive qoutes from original sources especially Hemingway and
because of the analysis of Hemingway's and of others
writings. Hemingway relied heavily on real people thinly disquised in
his writings which Lynn expertly described with notes and quotes. The
print is also larger in Lynn's book than that of Baker's book.
Baker's book contians the same primary information without the
extensive analysis of Lynn's book.
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Title: Hemingway, a Biography: A Biography by Jeffrey Meyers ISBN: 0306808900 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship by Matthew Joseph Bruccoli ISBN: 0897230531 Publisher: Bruccoli-Clark Layman Pub. Date: December, 1994 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences by James R. Mellow ISBN: 0201626209 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: May, 1994 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Hemingway Women by Bernice Kert ISBN: 0393318354 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: December, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Hemingway: The 1930s by Michael Reynolds ISBN: 0393317781 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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