Hemingway E-Book

Gino Leineweber

• Herausgeber: Verlag Expeditionen
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 160

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

This book describes how Hemingway became what he was: one of, if not the most excellent writer of his time. But he was also a legendary drinker obsessed with his masculinity, a womanizer and macho man, a lover of boxing and bullfighting. If you want to know how these characteristics developed in the young Ernest Hemingway, you have to go back to his childhood and youth in Michigan. Hemingway's vocation as a writer was tremendous because the imprints he received there as a young person flowed into his works: Independence, experience, confidence, strength, courage, and talent. The author follows Hemingway in his literary footsteps just as he followed Hemingway to Michigan, the region of his childhood and youth. To the places where Hemingway learned to fish, hunt, drink, and meet girls and where he learned to concentrate seriously on his writing.

Leseprobe

Also by Gino Leineweber

Immersion in the Dhamma My Experiences with an American Buddhist Monk

Hello Darkness, Poems 2010 – 2014 When Love is Guiding You, Poems 2015 – 2018 Everything is True, Poems 2019 – 2022

In memoriam of my father

Biography

Gino Leineweber, born in 1944, has been a prominent figure in the literary world for over two decades as a poet, writer, and translator, and his leadership skills have been shown through his twelve-year tenure as the head of the Hamburg Authors' Association (HAV). His exceptional leadership was acknowledged in 2015 when he was appointed as honorary chairman.

From 2013 to 2020, Gino Leineweber's leadership was instrumental as he was president of the Three Seas Writers' and Translators' Council (TSWTC), based in Rhodes, Greece. He is currently a board member of the PEN Center German-Speaking Authors Abroad (formerly German Exile PEN).

Gino Leineweber's literary prowess extends beyond borders. He is a published author of travel writing, biographies, and poetry, with his poetic works resonating in numerous languages and earning him prestigious international awards. His linguistic versatility is evident as he writes in German and American English, and since 2016, he has also been translating prose and poetry from English.

He lives in Hamburg, Germany and Vietri sul Mare, Italy.

Notes and Acknowledgements

I am delighted that the English edition of Ernest Hemingway's biography—his childhood and early youth as I see it—is now in a completely revised new edition ten years after the first release stands available. When I first visited Michigan in 2008, I discovered that Hemingway spent much time in these places during his childhood and early youth. He began to write there and celebrated his first wedding in the small village of Horton Bay.

The connection between the locations and the literary genius of Hemingway encouraged my curiosity and propelled me to delve deeper into his biography. As I embarked on this journey, I realized that not only the German literature on Hemingway barely scratched the surface of this pivotal phase of his writing career. I traced his footsteps to the places that shaped his childhood and youth, the settings he immortalized in his stories. This personal exploration enriched my understanding of Hemingway, both as a writer and as a person.

Investing my time and energy in learning about this great writer's life has been very rewarding. I was lucky to meet wonderful people who were crucial to my research and who helped me in any way they could.

I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to James Vol Fox (†) and Bob (Robert) Metzger from Horton Bay, whose insights and hospitality were invaluable to my research. I am also deeply thankful to the writer Michael Federspiel and the journalist Liz (Elizabeth) Edwards of Traverse Magazine for their support and encouragement.

The sources that I used I have indicated in the text. I took all quotes from Hemingway's letters, as not otherwise noted, from Hemingway-Selected Letters 1917–1961 by Carlos Baker.

Gino Leineweber June 2024

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 1

Understanding how and why Hemingway was such a gifted author is the best approach to exploring his childhood and youth. Focusing solely on his life as an adult, his adventurous deep-sea fishing expeditions, African safaris, and his passion for boxing would be relatively unproductive.

To fully grasp the source and strength of Hemingway's literary gifts, one must trace him back to "Windemere" on Walloon Lake in Northern Michigan. Confine him to Cuba, Key West in Florida, or even the civil war in Spain as the essential locations in his life, missing out on the one place that had the most significant influence on his creative life.

To truly understand the growth of literary qualities in the young Ernest Hemingway, it is necessary to lay aside the tales of his legendary obsessive drinking, macho womanizing, or love of boxing and bullfighting. One must experience him in Horton Bay or Petoskey, where he could be found on excursions to lakes and creeks with his friend Bill or in a hammock, reading a book. Or where he could be imagined swimming in a lake on warm summer days, feeling breezes through the spruce as he walked barefoot through the woods, rowing out on a lake in the evening sun, wandering the hills, or fishing for trout in Horton Creek. Here lies the root, source, and strength of his literary vocation.

In the book Hemingway in Michigan, biographer Constance Cappel compared him to a 'migratory bird' that returned each summer to spend his vacation 'Up in Michigan.'

Here, he discovered and nurtured his calling as a writer. Here, he gathered himself, created an independent personality, and learned to fish, hunt, drink, and meet girls. Here, he learned to focus and take his writing seriously.

Hemingway grew up in a relatively puritanical home. His father, Dr. Clarence Edmond Hemingway, known as Ed, was a physician in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. Today, the Hemingway house on 339 N. Oak Park is home to The Ernest Hemingway Foundation and open to visitors. Another Hemingway home, from 1906 and also in Oak Park, is now in private hands. In 1896, Dr. Hemingway married Grace Hall, a woman of an artistic disposition from a wealthy Chicago family who had wished to become an opera singer. Ed was a sporty, outdoor man who enjoyed fishing and hunting, whereas Grace's interests lay more in Chicago society and artistic pursuits.

Hemingway had four sisters and was his parents' only son until his sixteenth year, when, as the last sibling, his brother Lester was born. Ernest, the second child, did not have a good relationship with his parents, for whom "good and evil" were clearly defined and what they insisted on. His father severely punished his son for any deviation.

Card games and dancing were prohibited, and Sunday church attendance was duty-bound for all family members. The boy grew into a powerful and energetic young man continually striving to escape the choking provincial shackles of his home, determined to write and not to accept the world as it was.

In the autumn of 1917, the time came for Ernest Hemingway, born July 21, 1899, to leave home. He withstood his parent's wish for him to go to college after high school. Instead, his uncle and father's brother, Tyler, intervened, securing him a post as a reporter with The Kansas City Star. America drew into The First World War, and Ernest volunteered. When a colleague at the Star brought his attention to The Red Cross Ambulance Corps, he applied and was accepted. Towards the end of 1918, Ernest left Kansas with his friend, Carl Edgar, and two companions, setting out for a fishing holiday in Michigan. Here, he received a telegram informing him that he had set sail for Europe from New York on May 8.

The young Hemingway was confronted with war and found his place and recognition in this warlike situation. As Second Lieutenant in the ambulance service, he was proud to be photographed in his decorated US Army officer's uniform.

However, it would appear that being just an ambulance corps officer was not enough for his public image, as seen from photos where he had removed his Red Cross badge from his uniform.

In 1918, he crossed the Atlantic in a French liner named after Chicago, his hometown. Deployed in Northern Italy, at the foot of the Dolomites, he was an ambulance driver with tasks of transporting the wounded from the hillsides to the field hospitals down below. He even volunteered to take cigarettes and chocolate by bicycle twice daily to soldiers on the Front.

On one of these occasions, a soldier was killed, and Hemingway and several others were seriously injured when a hand grenade exploded in their midst. Later, the Italian Government decorated Hemingway with the Silver Medal for Bravery.

Included in his certificate of bravery was, among other things: "Ernest Miller Hemingway ... responsible for carrying sundries (articles of comfort) to the Italian troops engaged in combat, gave proof of courage and self-sacrifice. Gravely wounded … with an admirable spirit of brotherhood before taking care of himself, he rendered generous assistance to the Italian soldiers more seriously injured by the same explosion and did not allow himself to be carried elsewhere until after they had been evacuated … "

On June 16, 1918, in a letter to his family from his sickbed, Hemingway wrote: "The 227 wounds I got from the trench mortar didn't hurt a bit at the time; only my feet felt like I had rubber boots full of water on. Hot water. And my knee cap was acting queer. The machine gun bullet just felt like a sharp smack on my leg with an icy snow ball. However, it spilled me. But I got up again and got my wounded into the dug out. I kind of collapsed at the dug out."

On his return to the United States, Hemingway visited his much-loved Michigan, where he had spent considerable time every summer since birth, enjoying many carefree vacations. Michigan, a state of unique geographical features, is surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes in North America: Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior, the world's largest freshwater lake. The name Michigan is derived from the Indian word Mishigami and roughly means 'great lake,' which is no exaggeration. The given term Great Lakes State is proper because more than half of the state consists of the Great Lakes and numerous smaller ones. No state resident must travel more than six miles to a lake. However, what truly sets Michigan apart is its geographical division into two distinct parts: the Upper Peninsula and the Lower Peninsula.

The main occupational activities in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula and the Upper Peninsula were tree felling, fur trading, and fishing. These practices ceased at the turn of the twentieth century, paving the way for a thriving tourism industry. Although if I can entirely ignore mass tourism signs such as those on Mackinac Island, I cannot say severe damage to the landscape is evident. Tourism here is mainly individual and leaves minor or non-lasting damage.

Michigan has the most significant number of National Parks in the United States. However, its greatest fame comes from Detroit's city—the hub of the car automobile industry. It is situated in the Lower Peninsula's extreme southeast corner, whereas tracing Hemingway leads northwest and to the Upper Peninsula.

From 1898, the Hemingway family spent their vacations here, first with their then-only daughter, Marceline, and later with all their up to six children. They were captivated by the magic of Northern Michigan among undulating hills, lakes, and forests. Here, they would remain undisturbed for the duration of the school vacation.

Dr. Hemingway could not always be with the family due to the pressures of work and the need to earn a living.

Their first visit took them by the beauty of the countryside around Walloon Lake—then called Bear Lake—that they looked around for land to build a holiday home. Henry Bacon, later called "Grandpa Bacon" by the children, provided them with what they were after 4,000 square meters of land on a lake shore where they could spend their vacation. They built a simple, structurally sound cottage with a large fireplace in the living room; an oil lamp gave light for reading and piano playing. As the years passed, they gradually extended it and made an outhouse in the little pine forest at the house's back. The house was surrounded by a spring well, from where they pumped water by hand and birch, cedar, oak, and beech trees. Grace baptized it Windemere after a lake in England. The southwest veranda provided a good view of the lake, and the parents could keep an eye on their children.

There was a little sandy strand, and they would swim and wash their clothes in the lake's blue water. The family lived their life in and around the water. It was a constant source of fun and entertainment.

Dr. Hemingway spent much time with his children, teaching them swimming, including lifesaving maneuvers. He drilled them in these techniques and even organized swimming competitions to ensure the children could compete in their disciplines. Over the years, the family had watercraft of all kinds, from rowing boats and canoes to their first motorboat in 1910. In a different context, Marjorie Bump, a friend and playmate of the children, had the following to say:

Dr. Hemingway was a wonderful man who was easy to love. He had eyes like the softest cashmere, with kindness buried in their depths. One stormy night, he had to be tough and scold us after our nighttime lark of going out canoeing on Walloon Lake without permission. Even then, his eyes were expressively kind and tender, though his strong disapproval reminded us that we had not been safe.

Furthermore, under their father's guidance, the children learned about fishing. Dozens of family photos with trout, pike, and perch bear graphic witness to the success of his instruction and the bounty of the inland lakes at that time. The shooting was an integral part of the Hemingway family vacations as well. Skeet shooting was central to Sunday afternoon activities. They did not shoot for fun; hunting was also a leisure activity. However, Dr. Hemingway's explicit instructions to his children were they could not kill an animal if it could not eaten by them later.

Windemere was an open house for guests and special festivities. Family members, including grandparents and friends, came for extended visits, like barbecues on the Fourth of July. In 1911, their daughter Carol was born in Windemere. The fun and freedom the children enjoyed at the cottage were in no way curtailed by their having to contribute to the duties and responsibilities involved in the daily running and upkeep of the house.

Despite the idyllic vacations, Hemingway felt lost and misunderstood in this family dynamic with an overbearing mother and a weak father. On the other hand, I imagine him as enriched, forgetting the world and finding pleasure in the woods and lakes of Michigan, where he could fish and hunt beyond the confines of his life in Chicago. In his book Ernest Hemingway on Writing, had nothing positive to report on his upbringing:

Question: What is the best early training for a writer? Hemingway: An unhappy childhood.

Chapter 2

His experiences in Michigan greatly influenced him and became part of his writing. In his younger years, 1916 and 1917, Hemingway wrote his first three short stories published in the school journal Tabula. Corresponding to the notion that a writer can only write his experiences, the young Hemingway began shaping stories about people and places he knew and understood in Michigan.

In the story Judgment of Manitou (he uses the Ottawa Indian word Manitou for God), the picture fits when he writes about nature and violence. A conflict between two men near the Canadian border ends deadly. The two trappers, Dick and Pierre, are the main characters in this short story. Pierre has become suspicious of Dick, thinking that he has taken his lost wallet. So, he sets a snare trap for Dick when he goes out to check his bear trap. Dick is soon caught and hangs from a tree to meet his fate, hence, being eaten by timber wolves. Pierre soon realizes that it was a red squirrel that stole his wallet. He rushes out to find what's left of Dick and is then caught by Dick's bear trap to face the 'Judgment of Manitou.'

The second story, The Matter of Color, is more of an anecdote than a short story. There is no plot or dramatic build-up. It is about a fight between two boxers, a white man, Montana Dan Morgan, and a black man, Joe Gans. Dan has injured his punching hand. Although he cannot use it, he takes part in the fight. Beforehand, however, he pays a big Swede to hit Joe on the head from hiding behind the curtain next to the ring. But the Swede knocks Dan out instead. He hit the wrong man because he is colorblind.

In the third story, Sepi Jingan, there is contact, for the first time, with an actual person, the Indian Billy Tabeshaw, who would later appear in Hemingway's book The Nick Adams Stories. The inclusion of existing people would be a feature of Hemingway's stories from then on. Sep Jingan draws on tales from traditional Indian knowledge. It is the name of a dog who saved Billy's life. Billy tells the story of an Indian named Paul Black Bird, who killed the game warden who caught him illegally spearfishing. The warden was Billy's cousin, so Billy sought revenge and tracked Paul with his faithful dog, Sepi Jingan. Two years later, on the Fourth of July, people found Paul Black Bird dead on the train tracks. They thought that he had gotten drunk and had himself killed by a train. But Billy knows better. On that very day, he and his dog had run into Paul. The problem was that Paul saw them first and knocked Billy to the ground with a pike-pole. While Paul toyed with his prey, Sepi Jingan crawled toward him from behind and attacked and killed Paul. Billy then put Paul on the tracks, causing people to conclude that Paul had lain down on the train tracks in a drunken stupor.

In these three stories, Hemingway established a style and pattern that is repeatedly found in his later work. All three have a surprise ending. In two of them, he portrayed Indians as protagonists. Even in his younger years, he sought places that influenced his writing most, and he never changed this pattern during his lifetime.

The experiences, surroundings, and happenings in Michigan find expression and can be recognized in much of Hemingway's work. On the contrary, Hemingway's years spent in his primary home in Oak Park, Chicago, were hardly mentioned.

These influences are especially noticeable in The Nick Adams Stories. Here, Hemingway has shown a collection of short stories incorporating his alter ego, Nick Adams, published in various editions.

The book, as it is, was first published in 1972. In addition to previously published texts, it also contains work unpublished up to that time. The publisher chronologically sorted the stories written between 1922 and 1933 and divided them into five categories.

The first category, The Northern Forests, describes Michigan's landscape and living conditions. Hemingway's ability to define a landscape is evident from the beginning of the prologue:

'Of the place he had been a boy he had written well enough. As well as he could then.' That thought a dying writer in an early version of The Snows of Kilimanjaro. The writer, of course, was Hemingway. The place was Michigan of his boyhood summers, where he remembered himself as Nick Adams. As well as he could write then was very well indeed.