Hemingway's Boat
Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961
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3,7 • 67 valoraciones
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Descripción editorial
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • National Bestseller • A brilliantly conceived and illuminating reconsideration of a key period in the life of Ernest Hemingway that will forever change the way he is perceived and understood.
"Hendrickson’s two strongest gifts—that compassion and his research and reporting prowess—combine to masterly effect.” —Arthur Phillips, The New York Times Book Review
Focusing on the years 1934 to 1961—from Hemingway’s pinnacle as the reigning monarch of American letters until his suicide—Paul Hendrickson traces the writer's exultations and despair around the one constant in his life during this time: his beloved boat, Pilar.
Drawing on previously unpublished material, including interviews with Hemingway's sons, Hendrickson shows that for all the writer's boorishness, depression and alcoholism, and despite his choleric anger, he was capable of remarkable generosity—to struggling writers, to lost souls, to the dying son of a friend. Hemingway's Boat is both stunningly original and deeply gripping, an invaluable contribution to our understanding of this great American writer, published fifty years after his death.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
NBCC award winner Hendrickson (Sons of Mississippi) offers an admirably absorbing, important, and moving interpretation of Hemingway's ambitions, passions, and tragedies during the last 27 years of his life. When Hemingway purchased the sleek fishing boat Pilar in 1934, he was on the cusp of literary celebrity, flush with good health, and ebullient about pursuing deep sea adventures. The release from his desk was a reward for productive writing and the change replenished his creative energy. But eventually Hemingway's health and work declined. When he committed suicide in 1961, he hadn't been aboard the Pilar in many months. Acutely sensitive to his subject's volatile, "gratuitously mean" personality, Hendrickson offers fascinating details and sheds new light on Hemingway's kinder, more generous side from interviews with people befriended by Hemingway in his prime. Most importantly, Hendrickson interviewed each of Hemingway's sons. He suggests, not for the first time but with poignant detail, the probability that Papa's youngest son, Gregory (Gigi), a compulsive cross-dresser who eventually had gender-altering surgery, was acting out impulses that his father yearned for yet denied. Hendrickson makes new connections between ex-wife Pauline's sudden death after Hemingway's cruel accusations against Gigi, and Gigi's lifelong guilt over her death. In the end, Hendrickson writes of the tormented Gigi and his conflicted father, "I consider them far braver than we ever knew." 23 illus.
Reseñas de clientes
An engaging read
I enjoyed the linking of boat and man even though I'm not really a boat person. There's so much said about Hemingway, but Hendrickson has given the man some much needed compassion and vital humanity.
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Textual errors (in the hope that someone out there will fix the digital text)
MISSPELLING: Under her portrait, this slelf-description: “Why aren’t they contented like me?”
EXTRA SPACING in lean-to: “Swiss Army knives, a mess kit, extra pairs of socks, a lean- to tent, and cans of pork-and-beans.”
A rare view from the inside track...
The life, or more accurately, the drive behind the pen, is revealed in this wonderful inside look to how writers write, what inspires them, and why they sometimes have despair, and more importantly, a high beyond the average mortal. My daughter gave this to me and I loved it so much I gave a hard copy to her mom who was fearful that the end of the tale would be the focus. It is not; it is barely mentioned, except in context. A remarkable man; a remarkable book, especially if you are a writer, a reader, AND a fisherman. Or even the wife of one.