Michael Reynolds devoted his entire writing career to documenting the life of another writer, American 20th century master Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway: The Final Years was Reynolds’ last in a 5-volume biography of “Papa,” and his 10th book on Hemingway overall. Not long after its 1999 publication, the biographer himself passed away.
Reynolds’ encyclopedic knowledge of all-things-Hemingway, coupled with intensive research skills, not only gives us a detailed look into Hemingway’s life, but lends credence to his debunking of some of the now-infamous myths regarding the larger-than-life “Papa”(as he was affectionately called.)
Hemingway Helped Create His Own Myths
In fact, one of the many intriguing things Reynolds explores in Hemingway: The Final Years is the author’s own involvement in creating and perpetuating those myths. The intrigue lies in the fact that Hemingway would often publicly complain about all the questions and attention, all the while “feeding” his biographers with exaggerated tales of his own heroism/sexual conquest/greatness.
On the surface, it would seem Ernest either had trouble distinguishing fact from fiction, or that, as the alcohol he so famously imbibed in quantity (not an exaggeration) took hold, he just didn’t care who he was telling what. Perhaps whatever fit the occasion was the rule.
But Reynold’s points to a couple of more premeditated reasons for the tall tales, and backs them up with evidence. One is that, as Hemingway’s growing annoyance with erroneously-reported “profiles” grew, he began to purposely give questioners and potential biographers conflicting information, essentially “booby-trapping” their work.
Hemingway Walked Line Between Fact and Fiction
The other is a bit closer to that blurry line between fact and fiction that Hemingway often trod. Like many great authors, Ernest’s work was drawn closely from his own life, what he knew best, and his was a life of high adventure. He was involved in several wars, traveled the world extensively, was married four times, and was an avid, risk-taking outdoorsman.
But as Hemingway grew older, and he’d felt he “used up” most of his adventures, it seems he began to create new ones about which to write, rather than just experience, document, turn into literary art. One example of this is his posthumously published The Garden of Eden, based on experiences he and wife Mary had in an African village.
It was here that the author seemingly seriously considered taking a second, native teen as a wife, an event mirrored in the novel. The lines were blurring and it was obvious to those close to Hemingway that his severe depression was accelerating, though they seemed helpless to do much about it.
As frustratingly sad (and sometimes disturbing) as these final years were, ending with his 1960 suicide, they were also intertwined with much living. Reynolds documents in detail Hemingway’s “off-the-official-record” experiences in World War II with great detail. It was too a period of great literary productivity for the author, as he penned the Nobel Prize-winning The Old Man and the Sea, and his beautiful Paris memoir A Moveable Feast.
Michael Reynolds’ Hemingway: The Final Years leaves nothing out, and the result is a fine biographical portrait of the very “full” life of Ernest Hemingway. For readers, it will stir a gamut of emotions, just as Hemingway’s own work—based on that life—does.
Reynolds, Michael. Hemingway: The Final Years, 1999, W.W. Norton & Co. (ISBN: 0-393-04748-2).
Dale Van Every - Dale Van Every is a freelance and fiction writer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned his Masters Degree in English Literature from ...
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