Things That Hemingway Might Have Said
Review of the HarperCollins Kindle eBook (October 19, 2010) of the Ecco hardcover original (April 19, 2008).

It’s all so beautiful in this misty light. Mr. Degas could have painted it and gotten the light so that it would be truer on his canvas than what we now see. That is what the artist must do. On canvas or on printed page, he must capture the thing so truly that its magnification will endure. That is the difference between journalism and literature. There is very little literature. Much less than we think.

I've been a bit leery of Hotchner's various Hemingway memoirs. The first one Papa Hemingway (1966) was certainly entertaining and revelatory, but had the sour note of its attempted suppression by Mary Hemingway, the subject's last wife. Hemingway in Love: His Own Story (2015) had the whiff of a late cash-in by its recycling of material from the 1966 work and building a romanticized tale which was likely inspired by Paula McLain's success with her historical fiction of Hemingway's first marriage in The Paris Wife (2011). It also had several errors in it as noted in my review Back to the Well at the time.

So I hadn't give The Good Life According to Hemingway much of a thought until it came up as a Kindle Deal of the Day recently. At a bargain price I thought it was worth a go.

The thing that strikes you about it is that although it is supposedly filled with Hemingway's views about topics such as writing and life, the book is not credited to Hemingway himself, but rather to Hotchner. So you realize these are Hotchner's recreations of things Hemingway said over the 14 years or so that they were friends. A lot of it does sound like things Hemingway would have said, so in that sense Hotchner does capture the voice. Still you are left feeling a bit doubtful about the authenticity.

The volume is pretty slim at 154 pages of which space half is taken up with Hemingway photos, several of which were new to me.

Trivia and Link
The Guardian's obituary of A.E. Hotchner (1917-2020) gives an excellent overview of his career and especially his friendship with Hemingway. It also mentions his friendship with actor Paul Newman, which led to their partnership in the founding of the Newman's Own brand of food products. ( )