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adam_mcphee 's review for:
Ernest Hemingway: A Biography
by Mary V. Dearborn
Now that's a hefty tome.
Better than the five volume Michael S. Reynolds biography. More psychological depth to her Hemingway, and more understanding of his gender dysphoria and head trauma. About the same on his writing, except she seems a little down on his work overall. It's great that she sees through the Hemingway myth, but why write about the guy at all if you only really like The Sun Also Rises and some of the short stories? Dearborn seems embarrassed of his politics and sweeps them aside as naïve, which they absolutely were but extremely heartfelt and important from the Spanish Civil War through to the end of his life. At 700 pages it still can't spend a whole lot of time on any one period of his life. For example, his meeting with Fidel Castro and conflicted feelings about revolutionary Cuba is rushed over. But these are all minor complaints. This does everything a good biography should: it lets us spend a few hundred pages living alongside someone who interests us and tries to figure out what made them tick.
I still want to finish the Reynolds' bios and maybe read some criticism on his work but for the moment I'm tapped out on Hemingway non-fiction.
Recommend this volume.
Better than the five volume Michael S. Reynolds biography. More psychological depth to her Hemingway, and more understanding of his gender dysphoria and head trauma. About the same on his writing, except she seems a little down on his work overall. It's great that she sees through the Hemingway myth, but why write about the guy at all if you only really like The Sun Also Rises and some of the short stories? Dearborn seems embarrassed of his politics and sweeps them aside as naïve, which they absolutely were but extremely heartfelt and important from the Spanish Civil War through to the end of his life. At 700 pages it still can't spend a whole lot of time on any one period of his life. For example, his meeting with Fidel Castro and conflicted feelings about revolutionary Cuba is rushed over. But these are all minor complaints. This does everything a good biography should: it lets us spend a few hundred pages living alongside someone who interests us and tries to figure out what made them tick.
I still want to finish the Reynolds' bios and maybe read some criticism on his work but for the moment I'm tapped out on Hemingway non-fiction.
Recommend this volume.