Hemingway's Boat by Paul Hendrickson: book review

Paul Hendrickson’s semi-biographical, Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 (2011) is a mixed bag: mostly engrossing, but often confusing.

Hendrickson’s manuscript is more of an expose of his notes than a formal biographical account as he interviews people in Ernest Hemingway’s life and analyses photographs and memorabilia. The greatest piece of “memorabilia” is Hemingway’s boat, “Pilar” – bought in 1934 after his best seller, “A Farewell to Arms” and achieving fame as “America’s greatest novelist.” It is at this time that Hemingway leaves America to live in Bimini near Havana, Cuba, until forced back to America when the future of Cuba nosedives after 1958 under Fidel Castro’s regime.

Hemingway describes the Cuban years as the happiest of his life, which he ended early on July 2, 1961 in his Ketchum, Idaho home, shortly before his sixty-second birthday and a year after he leaves Cuba. Not only was it his happiest period, it was also his most prolific as an author. He would spend much of the fishing season on his boat off the coast of Cuba, inspiration for his novel, “Old Man and the Sea” which resulted in the 1952 Pulitzer Prize. In 1954 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. However, he also continued spending time in Africa on safari, and in Spain to watch bull-fighting which inspired further novels, works of non-fiction, and short stories.

Hendrickson’s work comments on Hemingway’s relationship with his parents (particularly his father), his three sons and his four wives. He also comments on the influential personalities in Hemingway’s life, his publishers, and assistants. He comments too on the numerous biographies of Hemingway including that of his son, Gregory (Gigi) Hemingway (1976), his fourth wife Mary (1976), and his brother Leicester (1996). It is on these pages where Hendrickson departs from a chronological and linear account and the boat as the focal point for depicting Hemingway’s inspirations, loves, losses, challenges, thoughts, and feelings. His best and most interesting writing occurs when he focuses on Hemingway and his boat. The most poignant chapter is of the last years of Hemingway’s life as he battles suicidal tendencies, electric shock treatments, and depression. For Hemingway lovers Hendrickson’s work presents a different, unique approach to the narration of the author’s life.

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