Weekend Writing: Celebrating Ernest Hemingway

Ah, Hemingway--one of the best American writers from the 20th century. There are very few writers like him who have withstood the test of time. His novels and short stories are still widely read, and I believe readers will continue to cherish his writing for many decades to come.

Ernest Hemingway (photo/Wikipedia).

Today I'm celebrating him on my blog because it's his birthday. Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. His father was a physician and his mother was a musician. Both were well-educated and highly respected in their Chicago suburb community.

Hemingway wasn't very close to his parents. In fact, he once stated that he hated his mother, even though they shared similar characteristics. Her insistence that he learned to play the cello was a source of conflict between the two, but Hemingway eventually confessed that his music lessons were later useful to his writing. Hemingway learned how to hunt, fish and camp from his father, and it's safe to assume that these early experiences in nature instilled a passion for outdoor adventures and living in remote areas.

It shouldn't be surprising that Hemingway excelled in his English classes. During his junior year of high school, he took a journalism class that was structured like a real newspaper office. This is where Hemingway's passion for journalism and writing thrived, and he eventually began a career as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. But he only stayed there for six months until he set off for another adventure: World War I.

Ernest Hemingway, serving in World War I
(photo/Wikipedia).

Hemingway is famous for being an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I. After all, he often wrote about his experiences, including in his famous novel, A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway was injured--badly wounded--and spent six months in a Red Cross hospital in Milan.

This is when he fell in love with his first "real" love--Agnes von Kurowsky, a Red Cross nurse seven years older than him. They decided to get married and when Hemingway returned to the United States, he made plans for a wedding and to start their life together.

Unfortunately, he later received a letter from Agnes, explaining that she was engaged to an Italian officer. Hemingway was devastated by the rejection, and this heartache affected his future relationships. While he did get married (four times, actually), he would have the habit of abandoning a wife before she would abandon him.

Once back in America, Hemingway didn't fit in anymore. He would go on fishing and camping trips to get away from the chaos of his life--inspiring more writing. He worked as newspaper editors, but nothing fit. Nothing mattered to him, so he left for Paris in the 1920s--like many other writers. He met and worked with Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many others.

Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were often rivals, but read each
other's work (photo/Pinterest). 

Hemingway did most of his writing when he was in Paris, and he relied heavily on Stein's opinions on his manuscripts. He published his first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, in 1923. When F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby in 1925, Hemingway read it, liked it, and decided he would write a book that would be even better than Fitzgerald's.

And this became his famous novel, The Sun Also Rises. He wrote the manuscript in eight weeks, went through many re-writes, and it was published in 1926. The novel epitomized the post-war expatriate generation. The work is often regarded as his best writing. But, if you want my opinion, The Great Gatsby is better...but that's just my opinion.

Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises"
(photo/Amazon).

After moving back to America, Hemingway settled in Key West, Florida. It was here that he wrote A Farewell to Arms (published in 1929), a closely autobiographical novel about World War I. Hemingway's other novels include For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), A Moveable Feast (1964), In Our Time (1924), To Have and Have Not (1937), and many others, including The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, which he won the Pulitzer Prize.

Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea"
(photo/Wikipedia).

Apart from writing, Hemingway loved big game hunting in Africa, Spanish bullfighting, and deep-sea fishing in Florida. But, these adventures led to him suffering from many injuries, even surviving multiple plane crashes.

Ernest Hemingway (photo/Signature Reads).

At the peak of his career, Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, but that still didn't help his body and mind. Hemingway suffered from depression toward the end of his life and developed liver disease. He wrote his final novel, A Moveable Feast--an autobiography--and then retired to Idaho. On July 2, 1961, he committed suicide. The novel would be published posthumously.

But, it's been more than 50 years since his death and we're still talking about him today. We're still reading his novels, discussing his unique writing, and writing biographies about his life. He coined the "Iceberg Theory," that is seen in many of his short stories and novels--discussing themes "beneath the surface." What's really happening? What's the deeper meaning? While Hemingway may have not been the first writer to explore this method, he popularized it in his writing--designating himself as one of the best American writers of all time.

And perhaps he will always be regarded as one of the best.

-KJL-