Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story

Summary

Now hailed as a classic, Carlos Baker’s bestselling biography brings into sharp focus one of the titans of twentieth-century American literature, a writer whose life itself was the stuff of legend. Baker draws not only on Hemingway’s unpublished writings but on the personal testimony of the artists and writers, sportsmen and soldiers who played a part in his career. The scenes are spectacular, and the gallery of characters is a panorama of the literary history of our time: Fitzgerald, Ford, Pound, Stein, Dos Passos.

Baker reveals a man of baffling complexity behind the myths and mystique of the Hemingway persona—volcanic, mercurial, frequently tortured, consumed with anxiety, never uninteresting. Here are the many faces of Hemingway: boxer, drinker, humorist, fisherman, hunter, lover, activist, and above all, the most influential prose stylist of the century.