Hemingway: The 1930s

Reynolds, whose The Young Hemingway was a National Book Award finalist, here reconstructs Hemingway's life in the decade during which he was transformed from a little-known literary cult figure to an American icon--the decade that produced Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, Winner Take Nothing and To Have and Have Not. The story begins in 1930, when Hemingway, his second wife, Pauline, and their son Patrick were living in Europe. Using to great advantage a detached tone, a direct style and a mix of present and past tenses (strongly reminiscent of Hemingway's own language), Reynolds imaginatively brings the story to life. He chronicles the ups and downs of Hemingway's friendship with F. Scott Fitzgerald and other writers of the period--including Archibald MacLeish, Gerald and Sara Murphy and John Dos Passos; Hemingway's obsessions with hunting, fishing and boxing; and, always, his struggles to grow as a writer. His restless genius takes him from Europe to Key West, to Cuba and back to the Midwest, all the while being protected from the severest effects of the Depression by the constant flow of magazine work and a sympathetic aid of his editor, Max Perkins. Hemingway's activities during the Spanish Civil War as the decade ended marked two major events of his life: his meeting with correspondent Martha Gellhorn, who would become his third wife, and the experiences that became the raw material for his next novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Filled with fascinating details and anecdotes, this fine biography illuminates our understanding of this crucial decade. Photos. (May)