Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway - by Jeffrey Meyers (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The multifaceted, cubist, and comprehensive perspective of Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway appears on the fortieth anniversary of Meyers's magisterial biography of Hemingway. This approach has never before been used to illustrate the complexity of his character, the range of his interests, and the brilliance of his work. This authoritative book uses sources in Italian, Spanish, French, and German. It reveals his reading of literature and history, his transformation of friends into fiction, his personal battles and mythic stature, his persona and ever-growing legend. This work analyzes his name and background, early work, friendships, relations with artists, connections to contemporary writers, description of historical figures and events, war reporting, military experience, life in Cuba, links with Hollywood, wives and lovers as well as the novels that influenced The Sun Also Rises and the background of "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." It also considers Hemingway's feasts, humor, quarrels, self-condemnation, Nobel Prize, unwritten works, suicide, and lasting achievements"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

The multifaceted, cubist, and comprehensive perspective of Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway appears on the fortieth anniversary of Meyers's magisterial biography of Hemingway. This approach has never before been used to illustrate the complexity of his character, the range of his interests, and the brilliance of his work. This authoritative book uses sources in Italian, Spanish, French, and German. It reveals his reading of literature and history, his transformation of friends into fiction, his personal battles and mythic stature, his persona and ever-growing legend. This work analyzes his name and background, early work, friendships, relations with artists, connections to contemporary writers, description of historical figures and events, war reporting, military experience, life in Cuba, links with Hollywood, wives and lovers as well as the novels that influenced The Sun Also Rises and the background of "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." It also considers Hemingway's feasts, humor, quarrels, self-condemnation, Nobel Prize, unwritten works, suicide, and lasting achievements.

Review Quotes

"There isn't a dead sentence or stale insight in Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway. Drawing upon a lifetime's study of Hemingway, and an astounding knowledge of twentieth-century culture, Meyers has fashioned what reads like a great and inspired performance, generating improbable insights and placing Hemingway in contexts no one else has had the wit or invention to portray. Who would ever have thought that Hemingway--his moods and strategies and visionary excursions--is best captured not solely by attention to standard biographical information or textual analysis but by setting him alongside a wide range of other vital creators, from Stein and Fitzgerald to Cézanne and Picasso, from Ted Hughes and Joan Miró to Wallace Stevens and André Malraux. Strange these juxtapositions and connections will occasionally seem, and yet Meyers' audacity seems always in the service of genuine understanding, the jarring leaps and shifts handled with consummate respect for clarity, pertinence and penetration. Throughout the reader is moved by the energy and openness of the project, the easy and yet rigorous air of authority and command. This is a major work that always knows what it is about. As you read on you are secure in the sense that nothing Meyers chooses to look at has ever been in better or surer hands."--Robert Boyers, founder and editor of Salmagundi

"When a new book appears on the subject of Ernest Hemingway, I wonder what more can be said. I knew the man. I spent four years archiving his papers in the 1960s. I recall how Hemingway resented critics and biographers. One day in 1959 in Spain, a young man approached. He asked what the author meant by some incident in For Whom the Bell Tolls. 'It doesn't matter what I meant, ' Hemingway replied. 'When you read a novel, you bring your own experience to it.' What Meyers brings to Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway is a lifetime of literary scholarship and an intimate understanding of Hemingway's world and all it entails. If you are of a literary bent, this book is bound to keep you alert and earnestly engaged over many delightful hours."--Valerie Hemingway, author of Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways

About the Author

Jeffrey Meyers, one of twelve Americans in the Royal Society of Literature, is the author of fifty-seven books on biography, art, film, and literary criticism. His work has been translated into fourteen languages and published on six continents. He has received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters honoring exceptional achievement.