This time I'm back and I mean it. For one thing, prac is blessedly over. For another thing, I miss blogging. Even if no one is reading it, I miss writing it.
Speaking of Reading:
Papa Hemingway by AE Hotchner. I started reading this book, a memoir of Hotchner's 13-year friendship with Hemingway from 1949 to Hem's death, a public love letter, really, and I wasn't enjoying it terribly much. I'm always kind of appalled at the way men write in an almost admiring tone of Hemingway's cavalier attitude to women. It sticks in my craw. Then it occurred to me that this was a book about a friendship, not some kind of critical review of a literary life, and goodness knows I know what it is to hero worship someone, and so I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb.
As far as loving memoirs go, this one is pretty much tops. It's clear why people were mesmerised by Hemingway: he brought them into his orbit and made them feel they were important to him. He loved to share his knowledge and skills, not just show them off (though he did plenty of that), and he had just done and knew so much stuff that other people didn't. (Much like another Ern who has appeared on these pages.) We're all elitist in some way or another, but for a man who had achieved so much there didn't seem to be much of the elitist in old Hem. A self-aggrandising wind bag to be sure, but not elitist.
Life is pretty much a rollicking ride with Hotchner and his hero, with hints here and there of the terrible depression that was lurking on Hemingway's horizon. However, it's the last part of the book that's gold. It covers his final, shattered years, filled with paranoid delusions and terrible shock treatments. Hotchner captures the sadness and frustration of watching a loved one slide into oblivion. And he seems to have understood Mary Hemingway's despair when the doctor's insisted on releasing him into her care.
I've read criticisms of Mary Hemingway regarding these final days; about why she allowed Hemingway access to his guns. There are so many things you could say about this but, having read Hotchner's account of just how broken Hemingway had become, in her position I might have put the keys to the gun cabinet in his hand and helped him turn the lock.
Top 5 Songs:
German Farmhouse - The Go-Betweens
His Last Summer - The Barracudas
Raise You - The Hammonds
Sally Can't Dance - Lou Reed
Church - Lyle Lovett
1 comment:
people read, just don't comment.
In fact, just last night I was wondering how things were going with you.
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