The Slow Crack-Up

Ernest Hemingway, who told so many lies in his books, could never lie to himself

By ALLAN MASSIE
WSJ

'When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest." It is a great sentence, one of those sentences that stay in your mind. This is not just because of its balance and simplicity but because of the doubt and melancholy that underlie the promise of happiness. It's the word "false" that does it, of course. The false spring is a cheat; winds, rain and cold weather follow it. The line comes from Ernest Hemingway's Paris memoir, "A Moveable Feast" (1964), the last good thing he wrote and one of the truest—though it was also full of lies. It's a book that recaptures happiness, written by a man who is no longer happy.

Ernest Hemingway standing looking out of doors, circa 1960s.

Paul Hendrickson's reconsideration of Hemingway begins after the Paris years in the 1920s, begins at the time when the critics were turning on him with the publication of his travelogue "Green Hills of Africa" (1935). The title, "Hemingway's Boat," makes it look like a narrow study, but the subtitle declares the author's ambition: "Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-61."

There is a great deal about the boat, Pilar, and about big-game fishing, which Hemingway loved. Mr. Hendrickson is himself an enthusiast for boats and fishing and writes about them with intelligence and expertise. Readers who don't share these interests shouldn't, however, be deterred; the book is about Hemingway, about what was good in him and what was bad, about what brought a man who took pleasure in so much to the point where he could take his own life. It is about the joy he spread and the infection he carried.

Mr. Hendrickson has been brooding on Hemingway (1899-1961) for 30 or 40 years. He has read all the biographies and countless articles, done time in libraries, delved in the archives, talked with the three Hemingway sons and some of their children, along with many others who knew Hemingway or knew people who knew him. The research has been prodigious, and I would guess he knows as much about Hemingway as anyone now living. He certainly knows more about Hemingway than anyone who knew him in his lifetime.

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