Photo is Hemingway (L) at the feria in Pamplona.
I visited his house in Key West only eight years after Papa died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his house in Idaho in 1961.
Reading Carlos Baker's bio of Hemingway in 1978 had a huge influence on me wanting to be a novelist. And it's a book I still take out and look at from time to time.
Though his life ended sadly, he lived it richly and, at times, well. And of course what remains is the work. It is uneven and at times weak, but at its best, in the stories, it is magnificent and will outlast many other famous authors of the same period.
I "grew up" with Hemingway even after he was gone and saw him, like Picasso and John Huston, as larger than life and often larger than his stories. I have one of his books of war reporting and find much there to admire that is so little known now by the general public. Your post was a catalyst to many memories.
ReplyDelete