Lawyer's Reviews > Hemingway in Love: His Own Story

Hemingway in Love: His Own Story, A Shot of Tequila to be Taken with Ample Salt

Well, well, well. This is a beautiful little literary memoir written by A.E. Hotchner. Mr. Hotchner's a nice fellow. He helped Paul Newman start the Newman's Own food brand, the proceeds of which are donated to charity. He also, along with Newman, established the Hole in the Wall Camp for kids ages seven through fifteen with cancer and rare blood diseases from which they are unlikely to recover. Admission is free. Anyone involved in projects like that under his belt is all right in my book.

I can almost excuse him for writing this book about Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway took a much younger Hotchner under his wing around 1948. Obviously, Hotchner never suffered one of Hem's infamous tongue lashings as most of his friends did throughout Hemingway's life. Of course Hemingway had a use for Hotchner. Hotchner was involved in bringing a number of Hemingway stories to the screen, small and large.

To be continued after having slept on it. My blood pressure having subsided to a relatively normal rate. While I attribute no scurrilous motive to Mr. Hotchner, having read numerous academic biographies of Mr. Hemingway, I do believe Mr. Hotchner has been thoroughly duped by a man who considered truth to be a relative concept, one that served his purpose moment to moment. Believe me, more to follow...

So, it is a new day. I have had a solid night's sleep. A visit to the medicine cabinet should have my blood pressure on an even keel. I'll do my utmost to be objective. After all, I am a great admirer of the writing of Ernest Hemingway. Let's examine this little memoir.

As I write this, I'm listening to an interview with A.E. Hotchner. He is ninty-five years old now. Sharp as a tack. He obviously loved Hemingway. He thought Papa was the ideal nickname for the man for he viewed Hemingway as a father figure. Hotchner admits he did no research for this book. He vetted no facts. He wanted the reader to discover the personality of the man he came to know over the course of a thirteen year friendship.

Hotchner was an employee of Cosmpopolitan Magazine prior to the Helen Gurley Brown days. Before the Cosmo Girl days. When it was still a literary magazine. Hotchner was sent to recruit Hemingway to write an article on "The Future of Literature." Hotchner traveled to Cuba, sent a note to Hemingway introducing himself. He was surprised to receive a phone call from Hem, inviting him for a drink at the Floridita Bar. Although Hotchner did not realize it, it was the beginning of what became a fast friendship.

Hotchner last saw Hemingway at Saint Mary's Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, three weeks before Hemingway committed suicide. Hemingway was in the depths of depression and out and out paranoia. He believed he was under surveillance by the FBI, that his bank account was being audited, that the Federal government was after him for back taxes. He believed his nurse, Susan was a federal informant. It was Hemingway's second admission to the hospital. It was Hemingway's second course of shock treatments. The treatments had no effect on his delusions.

What is contained in this brief memoir largely consists of segments excised from Hotchner's biography Papa Hemingway published in 1965 because of references to people still alive, especially Hemingway's fourth wife, Mary Walsh Hemingway, and his third wife, Martha Gellhorn, and, yes, Hadley Richardson Mowrer, who received the news of Hemingway's suicide while on vacation with her husband Paul Mowrer to whom she had been married since 1931 .

Hemingway poignantly tells Hotchner that his only true love was his first wife, Hadley Richardson, whom he lost to Pauline Pfeiffer. While Hemingway paints Hadley as his Eve, he depicts Pauline as his Lillith. He finds little fault with himself. Pauline was a seductress who inserted herself into the Hemingway family, becoming a friend to Pauline, all the while looking for a suitable husband, her target being Ernest. My, my, my.

It would be one thing if Hemingway's story of his love for Hadley haunting him for the rest of his life came at the end of it when Hotchner was visiting him in St. Mary's Hospital. But it did not. Hemingway related his story to Hotchner in the mid-1950s following his two airplane crashes while on safari in Africa with fourth wife Mary.

Hemingway's story, actually recorded by Hotchner on tape relates to times before Hotchner ever knew the man, the women, or the people Hemingway called his friends. The memoir relates none of the betrayals of friendship. It still contains Hemingway's blatant insistence that he was in the Italian army during World War One, although he was a Red Cross Volunteer. Hem portrays Scott Fitzgerald as one of his closest friends, even bestowing his lucky rabbit's foot on Scott when Fitzgerald had hospitalized Zelda in an asylum. In truth, Hemingway despised Zelda as much as she did him. Zelda called him a fake the first time she met him.

All of the 1920's expatriate crowd in Paris appear in this memoir. All with Hemingway's unique spin. Where his untruths are not actually told they exist by omission. Yes. For Hemingway, truth was a relative concept. While you may read this memoir and find an absolute air of heartbreak and poignancy within its pages, Hemingway lived a life of conscious choices. As biographer Robert R. Mellow so aptly titled his book regarding this man, it was Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences

You may wonder, considering the contents of this review, why a rating of four stars? Because A.E. Hotchner is a wonderful writer, whether he was duped or not. It is a portrait of friendship, beautifully captured. Perhaps, in friendship, it is sometimes easier to look the other way. Hemingway taught Hotchner much. That Hotchner viewed Hemingway a father figure is without question.

The punchline? Hemingway was right about one thing.

"Decades later, in response to a Freedom of Information petition, the F.B.I. released its Hemingway file. It revealed that beginning in the 1940s J. Edgar Hoover had placed Ernest under surveillance because he was suspicious of Ernest’s activities in Cuba. Over the following years, agents filed reports on him and tapped his phones. The surveillance continued all through his confinement at St. Mary’s Hospital. It is likely that the phone outside his room was tapped after all." Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds. A.E. Hotchner, July 1, 2011, The New York Times