This program includes archival recordings of Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway's deeply reflective account of his destructive Paris affair and how it affected the legendary life he rebuilt after, as told to his best friend, the writer A.E. Hotchner.
In June of 1961, A.E. Hotchner visited an old friend in the psychiatric ward of St. Mary's Hospital. It would be the last time they spoke: a few weeks later, Ernest Hemingway was released home, where he took his own life. Their final conversation was also the final installment in a story whose telling Hemingway had spread over nearly a decade.
In characteristically pragmatic terms, Hemingway divulged to Hotchner the details of the affair that destroyed his first marriage: the truth of his romantic life in Paris and how he lost Hadley,the real part of each literary woman he'd later create and the great love he spent the rest of his life seeking. And he told of the mischief that made him a legend: of impotence cured in a house of God; of a plane crash in the African bush, from which he stumbled with a bunch of bananas and a bottle of gin in hand; of F. Scott Fitzgerald dispensing romantic advice; of midnight champagne with Josephine Baker; of adventure, human error, and life after lost love. This is Hemingway as few have known him: humble, thoughtful, and full of regret.
To protect the feelings of Ernest's wife, Mary - also a close friend - Hotch kept the conversations to himself for decades. Now he tells the story as Hemingway told it to him. Hemingway in Love puts you in the room with the master as he remembers the definitive years that set the course for the rest of his life and dogged him until the end of his days.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
October 20, 2015 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781427265302
- File size: 94082 KB
- Duration: 03:16:00
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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This audiobook employs a variety of narrators to portray literary personages and their associates from a significant period in literary history. Over several years, Ernest Hemingway recounted to his friend A.E. Hotchner the details of his love life in Paris, including the affair that broke up his marriage to his first wife, Hadley. Hotchner collected these memoirs and presents them in this book. The story may be of interest to serious Hemingway devotees; however, the sound quality is not entirely clear and detracts from the overall listening experience. Nonetheless, the narrators' voices help to bring to life some of the conversations and personalities in this behind-the-scenes look at the messy human relationships that unfolded. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine -
July 20, 2015
Beneath the macho persona of the writer “who roams the earth looking for adventure,” Ernest Hemingway was a deeply conflicted human being, a now familiar observation which this memoir from friend and biographer Hotchner (Papa Hemingway) proves yet again. From notes, recordings, and memories of their conversations, Hotchner presents an account of Hemingway’s reminiscences, mostly from 1954 and 1955. Nearing the end of his life and shaken by living through two recent plane crashes, Hemingway looks back, observing, “Loving two women at the same time is the worst affliction a man can have.” In his own words (as reconstructed by Hotchner), we see a young writer in Paris, on the cusp of fame, torn between his first wife, Hadley, and a wealthy Southern flapper, Pauline Pfeiffer. Despite F. Scott Fitzgerald’s injunction to make up his mind, Hemingway vacillated between the two women, until Hadley chose for him. Their divorce allowed for his marriage to Pauline, which also proved unhappy. Though Hemingway is less mentally and physically healthy each time he meets with Hotchner, his stories remain just as compelling. The result is a portrait of triumphant highs, melancholic lows, and the pervading tone of the subject’s generation—a human being’s love lost. Agent: Paul Bresnick, Bresnick Weil Literary Agency.
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