ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Ernest Hemingway (July21, 1899- july2 1961), Nobel Prize 1954.

“Hemingway may be the strongest influence in Literature that this age will give the posterity.” Charles Poore

Ernest Hemingway was one of the literary giants of the whole twentieth century during his lifetime; he was probably America’s most famous writer. His style, his manner and attitudes have been widely recognized, not just in the English speaking world but wherever books are widely read.

Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, near Chicago; the son of a doctor who loved outdoor sports and instilled in his son what were long considered masculine values. His father wanted him to study medicine, whereas his mother, musical in tastes tried in vain to make a cellist of him. He ran away from home at 15 and was graduated from High School in 1917.

After graduation from High School, Hemingway gave up college to serve a journalistic apprenticeship with the “Kansas City Star”. He went to Italy as an ambulance driver in World War I, joined the Italian Infantry and was severely wounded. In 1919, he married Hadley Richardson, a boyhood sweetheart; they had a son but were divorced in 1926.

Pauline Pfeiffer, the mother of his second 2 boys and Martha Gellhorn, the novelist, all ended in divorce; his 4th wife was Mary Welsh.

His first books were published in Paris in 1926 “The Torrents of Spring”, where he was a correspondent. His first successful novel “The Sun Also rises” (1926), “Men without women” (1927),”A Farewell to Arms”(1929) a love story written on World War I, background of an English nurse and an American soldier.

In 1927 he returned to America and bought a house in Key West,Cuba in 1930. In 1936 he went to Spain at the beginning of the Civil War. His greatest novel “For whom The bell Tolls” (1940) was the result of his Spanish experience.

For his services in World War II he was decorated with a Bronze Star.

He returned to Cuba in 1946.

In 1956 he had an accident when the plane in which he was travelling crashed in Africa, in fact he survived two plane accidents.

Seven years later, in declining health, partly as a result of injuries suffered in the crashes, he shot himself to death in his home in Ketchum, Idaho, USA (He was 62 years old)

His distinguished works also include:

“Death in the afternoon-1932- bullfighting in Spain

“The Green Hills of Africa”- 1935- game hunting on an African safari

“The Old man and the Sea”-1952- an old lonely man chased by bad luck

“A moveable feast”-1964- vivid sketches about people he knew in Paris

Ernest Hemingway became a legend in his old lifetime. He fostered the myth by mystery, he was reserved and reticent, he was an ardent fisherman and a contributor of rare specimens to museums.

It may be that no other novelist has had an equivalent influence on the prose of modern fiction, in addition, he had an extraordinary reputation as a colorful human being.

In the view of many people it is his simple, fresh and clean prose style that is his true claim to renown and permanence. There’s probably no country in which American books are read whose literature has been entirely unaffected by Hemingway´s work.

“ He taught the values of objectivity and honesty, helped to purify the Northamericans writing of sentimentality, literary embellishment, padding and superficial artfulness” Phyllip Young (1952)

Sources:

Phillip Young-University of Minnesotta 1952 -“Ernest Hemingway”

StanleyKuwitz and Howard Haycraft 1942-“Twentieth Century Authors”

“The Reader’s Adviser” Vol. 1 13th edition edited by Fred Kaplain RR

Bowker Co. NY &London 1986.