Ernest Hemingway is one of our greatest writers, and Ken Burns is our greatest documentary filmmaker, so it is fitting that the latest film by Burns and his creative partner, Lynn Novick, is about the most influential American writer of the 20th century, who committed suicide on July 2, 1961. Hemingway wrote seven novels during his lifetime, six collections of short …
As my friends know, I recently finished my annual rereading of Proust’s 4,300 page novel “In Search Of Lost Time.” Hemingway is my second most liked dead writer. On my night stand is a new history “The Paris Husband: How It Really Was Between Ernest & Hadley Hemingway.” Don’t confuse this book with another, “The Paris Wife,” a fictionalized account …
I first heard of the author Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961, when I was a freshman at the University of North Dakota. He had committed suicide in July, two months before I arrived on campus It was perhaps for that reason that my ”Intro to Fiction” professor chose to begin his course that fall with Hemingway’s short story “A Clean Well-lighted Place,” …
“We’ll always have Paris.” Humphrey Bogart said that to Ingrid Bergman in the 1942 movie “Casablanca.” He was right. I feel that way about my favorite place in the whole wide world, even if I never have the opportunity to return. I’ve been there several times over the years. But actually I do have an opportunity. In July, I’m splurging …
I’ve never been much for bucket lists. But if I were, I’d have been able to check off a big one earlier this month. That is to see Havana, Cuba, from the backseat of one of the country’s classic American cars from the 1950s and ’60s, still operating on the streets every day. The importation of new cars — and lots of …
I’ve just reread Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” written when he was in his 20s and living in Paris. The book is presented in the first person by the character Jake Barnes, a newspaper reporter who like Hemingway had been injured in the World War I. I’ve always liked the novel’s first sentence, “Robert Cohen was once …
I’ve been reading biographies of Ernest Hemingway, dead for more than half a century but who remains an author who can sell books, his own as well as those of scholars trying to interpret his life to the readers of 2017. I’ve read six new ones so far this year, including most recently Nicholas Reynolds’ book, “Ernest Hemingway’s Secret Adventures, …
The latest issue of the New Yorker, dated July 3, includes one of the best essays about Ernest Hemingway I have ever read: “A New Man: Ernest Hemingway — revised and revisited,” written by Adam Gopnik. It is in part of a review of the new biography, Mary V. Dearborn’s 735-page “Ernest Hemingway.” That one is on my book shelf …
Bloomington, Minn., photographer Dave Vorland, along with Dorette Kerian and her granddaughter, Avery Dusterhoft, recently returned to the U.S. after a visit to Paris, “the City of Lights” (“la Ville des Lumières”). Dave has been to Paris several times, so he knows his way around quite well, as is evidenced by these beautiful shots. This is the first of two …
I renewed my membership in the Hemingway Society the other day and jotted down the location and dates of its next international meeting — in Paris in 2018. I may not get there, but I WILL continue to buy new books about Ernest Hemingway and his art. You’d never guess he’s been dead for more than half a century. Unlike …
I’ve read a several books by the English author Julian Barnes, including “Through the Window: SEVENTEEN ESSAYS AND A SHORT STORY.” The short story is about a Brit professor frustrated with his immature students as he discusses Ernest Hemingway’s “Homage to Switzerland.” My favorite passage: “He talked of Hemingway’s humor, which was much overlooked. And, of how, alongside what might …
I knew nothing about Ernest Hemingway in the fall of 1961. He had recently committed suicide in Idaho at age 60. My freshman English class at the University of North Dakota was assigned to read his short story, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place.” Impressed with Hemingway’s writing, I dashed off a story in his “style” and submitted it to “Tyro,” the campus …
Photographer Dave Vorland shares these images taken this past month from near his home in Bloomington, Minn., to Itasca State Park to Ketchum, Idaho, where author Ernest Hemingway is buried.
Call me old fashioned, but I have difficulty warming up to new novelists. But I’m trying — Dorette and I have signed up to the Hennepin County Library’s annual “Pen Pals” lecture program. On tap for this season: Anna Quindlen, Billy Collins, Lee Child, Elizabeth Strout and James McBride. I know nothing about any of them. Not that I don’t …
I’ve just returned with my daughter, Kristi, from a sentimental journey to Ketchum, Idaho. A goal — not the primary one since breathing mountain air and photographing the magnificent scenery were paramount for both of us — was for me to pay my respects at the writer Ernest Hemingway’s grave. Like many readers my age, I’ve been fascinated by Hemingway’s …
It was in a freshman English class at the University of North Dakota in 1961 that I first encountered the writing of Ernest Hemingway, just a few weeks after he committed suicide at Ketchum, Idaho. The short story was “A Clean Well-lighted Place,” published in 1933. James Joyce regarded it as one of the best ever written. I was inspired …