Reviews of Biographies of Ernest Hemingway From the Archives of The New York Times Related Articles Featured Author: Ernest Hemingway Hemingway Collection/ JFK Library, Boston Hemingway as a child in Willow Lake, Michigan. Carlos Baker's 'Ernest Hemingway' (1968) "Professor Baker has delivered his trophy and it is, as promised, a life-size replica of Ernest Hemingway. . . . In plain language, reading Carlos Baker's long-awaited biography is hugely exasperating. But then so, apparently, was Ernest Hemingway." Bernice Kert's 'The Hemingway Women' (1983) "Kert's study proves valuable in ways that are different from, and certainly more graceful than, the usual psychobiography. By re-creating Hemingway's life from the perspective of his wives and lovers, a now-familiar story achieves greater dimension." Raymond Carver on Hemingway Biographies by Jeffrey Meyers and Peter Griffin (1985) "Adulation is not a requirement for biographers, but Mr. Meyers's book fairly bristles with disapproval of its subject. . . . The only possible antidote for how you feel about Hemingway after finishing this book is to go back at once and reread the fiction itself. How clear, serene and solid the best work still seems . . ." Kenneth S. Lynn's 'Hemingway' (1987) "Hemingway, in Mr. Lynn's version, actually lived the kind of courageous and painful life he wrote about. . . . 'Hemingway' helps us recover a view of his life as having been, despite its end, a success." James R. Mellow's 'Hemingway' (1992) ". . . fresh and powerfully coherent, and stands with the best work done on the writer to date." Nancy R. Comley and Robert Scholes's 'Hemingway's Genders' (1994) ". . . a surprisingly succinct and jargon-free essay despite its deconstructionist subtitle . . . The results are richly rewarding. Whatever else the authors accomplish, they force one to see new subtleties in stories read dozens of times before . . ." Michael Reynolds's 'Hemingway: The 1930's' (1997) ". . . a good account of the 10 years of Ernest Hemingway's life in which his public image took shape and his writing skills began to mature. However, Michael Reynolds perpetuates the popular myth that by knowing more about Hemingway's life we know more about his novels." Michael Reynolds's 'Hemingway: The Final Years' (1999) "Excellent and exhaustive . . . One of the forces of disintegration, sensitively considered by Reynolds, was Hemingway's fear that he would never write anything better than 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' . . . " Return to the Books Home Page
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