I've finally OD'ed in the life of Hemingway and cannot read anymore. Surely all the interesting stuff about his life has finally been mined. ( )

Ernest Hemingway has been the subject of countless books and biographies for more than sixty years now, beginning even before his death by suicide in 1961. I've read a few of them over the years, the exhaustive bios by Carlos Baker and A.E. Hotchner, as well as a small book by his younger brother Leicester Hemingway. And just a few years ago I read Lyle Larsen's critical study, STEIN AND HEMINGWAY, about his friendship with Gertrude Stein, which soon soured. Recently there has been renewed interest, speculating what happened to the shotgun he shot himself with. And this spring there will be another new book, HEMINGWAY'S BRAIN.

Paul Hendrickson's HEMINGWAY'S BOAT was a bestseller several years back, and I can see why. Hendrickson spent years gathering information and researching the book, adding another whole dimension to the controversial author's life - Hemingway as boat enthusiast and sailor. There is plenty here about the events leading up the purchase of the Pilar, and how the author wrote many magazine pieces and other bits of journalism in order to afford the boat. Hemingway was NOT wealthy, something he resented. And more stories too of Hemingway's years in Key West and Cuba and the "big fish" stories that got told and embellished by the author himself and others.

Perhaps the part of the book I found most interesting was the mini-bio of one of Papa's hangers-on who spent part of a year crewing and keeping the boat's log. In the chapter,"Shadow Story," Hendrickson gives us the life story of Arnold Samuelson, a North Dakota drifter Hemingway took a liking to, and lent him books and encouraged his writing. Samuelson managed to publish a couple of magazine pieces, but it wasn't until after his death, that his adult daughter found a journal Samuelson had kept the year he spent with Hemingway. It was later published, a slim book called simply, WITH HEMINGWAY. Now out of print, it enjoyed brief success more than twenty years after Hemingway's death. Samuelson's own life was a rather tragic one which ended in madness and penury. He died alone on his property in Texas. I'd like to read his book - his particular take on Hemingway - some day.

HEMINGWAY'S BOAT is chock full of interesting stories like this, more than I can go into here. It is obviously a labor of love on the author's part, but he pulls no punches. Hemingway was often a bully and a braggart, and, later in life, became the victim of his own reputation. Despite his stellar literary reputation, as a person he was not especially likeable. It's all in here, right up to the sad end. And everything you could possibly want to know about his boat, the Pilar - that's in here too. This is a damn fine book. Very highly recommended, especially for Hemingway scholars and enthusiasts.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

"Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life and Lost" by Paul Hendrickson.

At a KC Library event, the author described his approach to Hemingway's highly complex life through narrative of a material object that he loved...his boat, Pilar. He strove to ground Hemingway journalistically in the reality of his boat and his love of fishing, rather than pursue a psychological or analytical view. He holds his subject in his extreme wholeness, with empathy...."amidst so much ruin, still the beauty."

The author received a letter from a reader that said, "the only thing that exceeded Hemingway's grasp on the human condition was its grasp on him." ( )

Interesting look at a different side of E.H. ( )

A brilliant masterpiece. I tell why here:

http://mewlhouse.hubpages.com/_1qsqsuzy8itx3/hub/Untamed-Enough-To-Ride-On-Hemin... ( )

This book is billed as a reconsideration of Ernest Hemingway that, presumably, will make the reader think better of a man who is most often portrayed as a boorish bully and also, perhaps a closeted homosexual. It covers the years 1934 to his death by suicide in 1961 and uses his beloved boat, Pilar as a metaphor for the last half of his life.

Paul Hendrickson has done extensive research not only into Hemingway and his family, but also into many of the tangential persons who crossed path with the author during his life. He writes lyrically in a stream of consciousness manner about the demons that haunted not only Hemingway himself, but also his family, particularly his youngest son, Gregory, known in the family as Gigi and the sections about his son and several other people who who the author befriended. These parts of the book are a joy to read.

However, if the author's goal was to make the reader think better of Ernest Hemingway, he has not succeeded - at least not with this reader. Hemingway certainly was capable of great kindnesses, but they all seemed to be with people who could be regarded as his social and intellectual unequals. With other writers, his wives and his family, he is still the arrogant & mean-spirited bully of my imagination - always having to put in the hateful & spiteful remark, tearing down other people in order to sustain his own ego. Perhaps that is why he still fascinates 50 years after he ended his own life. It's hard to turn ones eyes away from a train wreck. ( )