Ernest Hemingway: A Writer's Life (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ernest Hemingway: A Writer's Life Karen Coats Reef, Catherine . Ernest Hemingway: A Writer's Life. Clarion, 2009 [192p]. illus. with photographs ISBN 978-0-618-98705-4$20.00 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10 With his outdoorsy, All-American-Boy childhood and his carefully cultivated, larger-than-life adult persona, Ernest Hemingway is a youth biographer's dream. Sure, there are tricky bits to navigate, such as his three divorces and four marriages, his heavy drinking, his carefree approach to parenting, and his suicide. Veteran biographer Catherine Reef presents these aspects of Hemingway's life in their contexts, not sugarcoating the darker aspects of Hemingway's personality—his jealousies, his taste for violence, his need for constant adoration—but instead balancing them against his obvious charm and robust appeal. A simple catalogue of the injuries Hemingway sustained during his lifetime would be enough to guarantee his place in the tough guys' hall of fame, so there is no need to embellish the subject in order to create audience appeal, but Reef is careful to select details that show the degree to which Hemingway's myth of manliness was self-created as well as media-enhanced. She deftly includes plot summaries of his major works, weaving them into the life narratives from which they were drawn and diverged, and including accounts of public acclaim and rejection of the various novels and short-story collections, as well as Hemingway's reaction to the reception of his works. Photographs of the dashing author at various stages in his life grace nearly every page, references are discreetly relegated to endnotes, and a wealth of sources is included in a bibliography, making this an accessible and entertaining look at an American icon. Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois