BY FORCE OF WILL: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway

by Scott Donaldson ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1977

In this book, I set out to discover and record what Ernest Hemingway thought on a variety of subjects,"" begins Donaldson's introduction. The subjects are politics, money, fame, love, sex, religion, death, art, friendship, sport, war, and ""mastery."" The sources are Hemingway's writings, his conversation, his actions, and the shelves filled by Hemingway critics and biographers. And Donaldson succeeds. Headnoting as he goes (""Preoccupation with the Dollar,"" ""Money Corrupts,"" ""A Gift for Friendship,"" ""Macho and Midwesterner,"" ""Convert to Catholicism?""), this master gatherer blends anecdotes with textual analysis with comments from the Hemingway coterie with quotations from the canon--and never falls into acadamese, glib psychoanalyzing, or Blotnerish lint-saving. But. But the blueprint Donaldson has chosen (small wonder this topic-by-topic format is attempted so rarely) generates neither the drama of a biography nor the aesthetic adventure of a critical study. Without chronological life history (parents Doc and Grace are barely sketched in until the final chapter, when Doc's suicide and the vital matter of the gun finally surface), Donaldson's recurring confrontation with Hemingway's contradictions--""the question is why""--can never seem anything but futile. And the occasional chunk of extended artistic evaluation (the ""Love"" chapter produces a sharp Farewell to Arms commentary) only frustrates, because the writer's progress isn't followed; time instead for another topic. Papaphiles will revel nonetheless, and veterans of the Carlos Baker 1969 biography will find this a provocative sidekick; it offers the fruits of recent interviews and materials that Baker edited out--but a collection of term papers, even supremely researched, inspired, A+ papers, can't make a compelling, book-length statement about either the man or his work.

Pub Date: March 1, 1977

ISBN: 0595170773

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1977

Categories: NONFICTION