Who? ~ Ernest Hemingway

In brief:

Born in Oak Park, Chicago, Illinois, USA, on the July 21st 1899, Died July 2nd 1961.

Hemingway was a novelist, short-story writer, and journalist.

He is considered one of the most inspirational American writers of the 20th Century, having greatly influenced the likes of the beat generation's Jack Kerouac, the father of gonzo journalism Hunter S. Thompson as well as more comtemporary authors such as Bret Easton Ellis.

His economic writing style has been much praised, often copied but rarely bettered.

Married four times with three sons, Hemingway enjoyed a turbulent and passionate private life.

In 1961, at the age of 61 he committed suicide.

Biography

As a boy Hemingway excelled both at English and at sports, a sign of things to come. Rejecting the option of college, and 18 begin work as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star.

In 1918 he left the Star and attempted to join the army in an effort to serve in World War One. Reportedly failing the army medical, he instead joined the Red Cross Ambulance Corps and was dispatched to the Italian front. He soon witnessed the atrocities of war, clearing up the remains of the victims of a blown up munitions factory outside Milan (related in XXXXXX). Wounded by a mortar shell in July 1918, he was sent to Milan to convalesce were he met and fell in love with he met Sister Agnes von Kurowsky of Washington, D.C. the relationship was not to last as Agnes became involved with an Italian officer. The episode was to greatly influence Hemingway's fourth novel A Farewell to Arms.

At the end of the WWI he returned to the US, but soon moved on to Toronto, Canada where he took on various journalist jobs. Returning to Chicago in 1920 he married for the first time, to Hadley Richardson.

The wanderlust soon struck again, with the couple moving to Paris in 1921. It was in Paris that Hemingway was to become a part of the American expatriate community that was to become known as the Lost Generation and included such luminaries as Hemingway's mentor Gertrude Stein and author Ezra Pound. In 1923 his first book 'Three Stories and Ten Poems' was published and his first son, John born. In 1925 Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald met in Paris, at first they were close friends, but later competition grew between them and soured their relationship. These somewhat debauched days in Paris, gave Hemingway the inspiration for his first novel to meet critical acclaim, 'The Sun Also Rises' (1926). Semi-autobiographical, the novel, completed in only six weeks, follows a group of Americans across Europe.

In 1927 Ernest was to divorce and marry his second wife, the American, Pauline Pfeiffer a published fashion writer. In the process he converted to Catholicism. 'Men Without Women' his collection of short stories was published. In 1928 Hemingway and his wife moved back to the United States, to Key West, Florida. In the same year his father, suffering from diabetes and financial difficulties took his own life with an old Civil War pistol. The again heavily autobiographical novel 'A Farewell to Arms' was published in 1929, meeting with great success.

Whilst based in Florida, Hemingway now travelled periodically to Spain working on 'Death in the Afternoon' which was published in 1932. During these years Ernest became a bullfighting afficionados, drawing deeply from his passion for the toreo, in his writing.

In 1933, Hemingway's attentions turned to Africa, where he went on safari across Kenya and Tanzania. These journeys were to inspire his works, 'Green Hills of Africa', 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro' and 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'.

1937 saw him return to Spain, to report on the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance. These were turbulent times for Ernest, during which he came to question his friendships, politics, religion, health and marriage. After the War ended in 1939, Hemingway lost both a adopted country and a wife, in his 1940 divorce. He soon married Martha Gellhorn (his third wife) an American novelist, travel writer and journalist, whom he had spent much of the previous four years with in Spain. In 1940, 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' was published. One of Hemingway's finest, long works, it tells the story of an American volunteer fighting and loving alongside Spanish Republican guerrillas.

When America entered the war in December 1941, Ernest served aboard an attack vessel disguised as a civilian ship (Q-Ship) on duty sinking German submarines off the coasts of Cuba and the United States. From here he returned to Europe as a war correspondent for Collier's magazine in which role he observed the D-Day landings from a landing craft. Next follows a confusing period of competition between Ernest and Martha Gellhorn, who was also acting as a war correspondent and of Hemingway's questionable claims to have led his own partisan group involved in the liberation of Paris.

At the end of WW2 Hemingway spent time in a small Italian town to the south of Naples. Divorced for the third time, in 1944 he married Mary Welsh.

His next publication (and first since 1940) was 'Across the River and Into the Trees' (1950), a sentimental love story which met with much criticism.

'The Old Man and the Sea' published in 1952, brought perhaps Hemingway's greatest success (See Awards) and gave him some satisfaction.

Then things took a turn for the worse. Two plane crashes in Africa (following which some American newspapers mistakenly ran his obituary) and burns from a brushfire left him in poor health, (which his heavy drinking did not help) and left him unable to travel to Stockholm to accept his Nobel Prize. He then lost his estate outside Havana, Cuba and was forced to return to Idaho, when the US-Cuba conflict began to escalate. This left him in the US under surveillance from the government for his residence and association with Cuba.

In common with his father, he chose to end his days by suicide. On July 2, 1961 at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, he shot himself with a shotgun to the head.

Bibli/Film-ography