Ernesto

April 1, 2019
With the opening of Cuba's Hemingway archives in Havana, a Hemingway scholar plunged into two years of research. The result is this original portrait of the author's life and work. Going to the "source" after "54 years of Cold War blockade," New Orleans-based academic Feldman adds extensively to the already massive Hemingway archival material. Cuba--and, in particular, the Finca Vigía that he bought with his third wife, Martha Gellhorn, in 1939--became the center of many things: his writing solace and success; his alternating marital bliss and torment (after Gellhorn, he brought Mary Welsh there, where they lived off and on until his suicide in Idaho in 1961); his heartfelt attachment to the locals and their families; his watering hole and source of fishing adventures; and the ultimate degradation in his health, mostly from drinking. Feldman engagingly traces Hemingway's remarkable journey as an American writer and mythmaker on many levels. At the same time, he delineates the history of modern Cuba, especially the creation of Havana as a glamorous magnet for rich Americans while it festered in political turbulence, culminating in Fidel Castro's consolidation of power in 1959. While the sordid details of Hemingway's affairs, excessive drinking, and brutal treatment of family and friends are familiarly difficult to read, what remains in Feldman's eloquent, evenhanded biography is a palpable sense of the author's fierce allegiance to his work, which crushed everything that came in the way, including wives and devoted friends like F. Scott Fitzgerald. Papa's demons, in the end, caught up with him, leaving many books (Islands in the Stream, A Moveable Feast, True at First Light) unfinished. Feldman concludes with a touching chronicle of how Castro revered the author ("All the work of Hemingway is a defense of human rights") and how the Cubans remember El Americano warmly to this day. A fresh and fair assessment of Hemingway's life and work that refreshingly avoids slipping into hagiography.

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April 29, 2019
Feldman, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland, focuses on Hemingway’s decades-long ties to Cuba and its people in his ambitious but rambling debut. First arriving in 1928, Hemingway and second wife Pauline originally stayed only two days, but the visit began a lifelong connection. From The Old Man and the Sea to Islands in the Stream, the country provided Hemingway with material and was where he lived, on and off, for more than 30 years. Along with Hemingway’s troubled life, multiple marriages, and affairs, Feldman details Cuba’s rich history and political strife. Feldman’s two years at Havana’s Hemingway Museum and Library as the first North American allowed to study in residence there is noticeable in his detailed and numerous footnotes. However, long, convoluted sentences may make readers wish that Feldman were as enamored of Hemingway’s minimalist writing style as of the man. Meanwhile, Feldman’s common use of first rather than last names conveys an unearned familiarity with Hemingway and such other famous figures as Fidel Castro, and, despite the abundant citations, many passages give unsupported, detailed descriptions of Hemingway and others’ perspectives more reminiscent of fiction than biography. This labor of love provides one more, potentially useful, reference for future students of Hemingway, but it’s not the definitive look at this aspect of his life. Deborah Ritchken, Marsal Lyon.

April 15, 2019
Ernest Hemingway first set foot on Cuba in 1928. Something about the fish-filled waters, the floral scents, the cheap hotels, the friendly people and their history kept Hemingway coming back until, a dozen years later, he settled in and stayed for most of the rest of his life. With third and fourth wives, he lived outside Havana longer than anywhere else in the world. Hemingway's relationship with Cuba, a land defined by centuries of conflict and desire, has been long understood on certain levels. So has his status as a Cuban hero, if for nothing else than for his wildly popular, Cuban-centered novella, The Old Man and the Sea. Feldman draws freely though at times unquestioningly on Cuban archives and other relatively untapped sources to flesh out the context of Hemingway's debts to and identity with Cuba. This "untold story" offers new takes on Hemingway's literary friendships, extramarital affairs, and mixed feelings about Castro's revolution. As Cuba and Hemingway continue their mystical and divisive holds on the American consciousness, Feldman's book provides useful background.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)