Review: Papa Hemingway

Papa Hemingway by A.E. Hotchner
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

This covers 1948 and 1961 during which time Ernest Hemingway drew in fellow author, editor and playwright A.E. Hotchner into his inner circle. They traveled together, including raucous and risky forays into the bull-fighting ferias> of Spain (once Hotchner even was goaded into acting as a matador in an actual bullfight), fishing the waters off Cuba Papa had prowled seeking U-boats, hunted in Idaho, ran with the bulls in Pamplona, and more. For fourteen years, Hotchner and Hemingway shared their thoughts and careers with Hotch acting as agent and representative. As Hemingway reminisced about his childhood, recalled the Paris literary scene of the twenties, and recounted the many real events that lay behind his fiction, including The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hotchner took it all down.

What may have made this book controversial at the time is the final act. This part seeks to unravel why Ernest Hemingway took his own life, shooting himself at his Idaho home while his wife Mary slept. Hotch blames growing depression over the realisation that the best days of his writing career had come to an end and bolsters this with noted conversations and a couple of previous suicide attempts. Signs such a personality disorder of undetermined cause and the toil of hospitalization on the independent, free spirit. Dismissed as part of the end of life delusions is FBi surveillance, which apparently was true, after all.

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