Can Hemingway Cure My Reading Slump?

Or, A Love Letter to Papa and His Writing

Hi, friend.

Welcome to another edition of Crooked Reads, a monthly(ish) collection of bite-sized reviews about books on a theme and occasional essays. The newsletter will always be free to read, but it ain’t free to write. Consider becoming a paid subscriber, buying me a coffee, or sending me a book from my wishlist to support my work!

While my reading life is quiet—hey, slump, you can leave at any time—I’m revisiting some of my older pieces around the internet. This one appeared in a slightly different form on Book Riot in 2022.

It’s inspired me to dig back into reading some Hemingway, starting with Ernest Hemingway on Writing, a compilation of tidbits from his books, letters, and interviews, which is such a delight! His style just works for my brain when I’m struggling to focus. And he’s a total a-hole to F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s hilarious. Up next will likely be my first read of For Whom the Bell Tolls, because after seeing Metallica live, it just feels like the right thing to do.

On to the essay!¹

Ernest Hemingway seems more legend than man. He told tall tales about himself—a more heroic version of his war injury, a more loving reaction to his wife losing a suitcase full of his writings—so much that it blurred the line between fact and fiction. Who was he, really? A writer? Of course. A hyper-masculine caricature? Sure. A tortured soul with a long line of mental illness in his family? You betcha.

Most people are firm in their stance on Hemingway: love him or hate him. And I get it; he’s a polarizing dude. He was arrogant, racist, and misogynist, among other things. But he also changed the way readers approached books. He didn’t write terribly difficult stories and he wrote with simple words and declarative sentences. His character-driven stories are for everyday people, with sex and gender always at play. There are no happy endings.

I don’t tend to believe in separating the art from the artist, but I make the exception for ol’ Ernest. Mostly because he’s dead and can’t literally get sued for being a monster.

In Hemingway, a three-part PBS documentary about the life of the famed writer by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, most, if not all, of the man’s life is covered. It’s very long—each episode is about two hours—and left me feeling like a little rain cloud perched above my head for a few hours after finishing it.

Over at at Literary Hub, Alex Thomas’s thoughts on the documentary mirror my own: “There is no American writer who has left as much literary criticism and speculation in his wake as Hemingway. But after nearly 100 years, that criticism is finally becoming more honest, nuanced and interesting.”

The documentary showcases all the machismo of Hemingway, of course, but also delves into the softer, messier sides of the man, especially in the final installment. There’s another book on my endless to-read list, Hemingway’s Brain, by forensic psychiatrist Andrew Farah, that touches on these more devastating topics.

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Hemingway’s work came to me at a time when I desperately needed it. I was in the midst of the darkest depression I’d ever experienced, shortly after graduating from college and entering the “real world.” I’d lost the ability to focus on books—books! the one thing keeping me tethered to this plane of existence!—and picked up A Farewell to Arms at a used bookstore on a whim.

It changed everything. It wasn’t the content of the book, but the writing that enraptured me. Hemingway got right to the point. I didn’t have to worry about my mind wandering over purple prose—he laid it all out with short sentences and repetition. I was transfixed. And cured, for the moment.

Of course, I get funny looks when I say Hemingway’s work brought me out of my depression. The dude was mentally ill, an alcoholic, wrote about war and death, and died by suicide. He was also super racist and a horrible misogynist. Not exactly super hero material.

But I haven’t been able to shake the adoration I have for this complex man.

I named my cat Ernest. I’ve kept a “Write drunk; edit sober” print above my desk since college (although now that I’m looking into it, it appears he never said that and also he wrote first thing in the morning with a clear head, so why would he say that?) and followed that advice liberally for a time. I’ve received countless Hemingway-themed trinkets over the years. I have three different copies of The Sun Also Rises on my shelves and have to resist buying each new edition.

My first apartment of adulthood was in the town next-door to Hemingway’s birthplace, and I made a trip to that house and museum each summer of the three years I lived there. When I got my job in publishing, my friends took me to a fancy Hemingway-inspired restaurant where we drank daiquiris and ate very expensive french fries. Loving Hemingway has become my thing.

I have this memory of being in the backseat of my grandma’s car as a kid and hearing something about Hemingway, of Oak Park, on the radio. The long road spanning the 30-mile stretch from Oak Park to my family’s neck of the woods is called Oak Park Avenue, and I was certain that meant he lived nearby. How long could a street be? I asked to go find his house, but we never did. It stayed locked in my head, though, that this famous man once lived touchably close to us.

While in the hospital for a handful of months before she died, my grandma proudly told every nurse that her great-grandkitten’s name was Ernest Hemingway, just like the writer.

I hope she’s proud of her granddaughter, the writer.

xoxo

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1. Let me know if you like this format! The book lists will always be part of the schtick; essays will be a bonus when I have something to say.