Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost Paperback – July 24, 2012

This is an extraordinary book, unlike most books about authors in both form and in aspiration. Hendrikson says that he hoped to provide not a biography but an "evocation and interpretation" of Hemingway the man and his works, and in this Hendrikson succeeds brilliantly. He does so not by focusing exclusively on his subject but also on people touched by Hemingway, including some who readers might think minor characters but who in fact provide unique glimpses of Hemingway (and who are interesting in their own right). Also, Hendrikson fortunately does not shrink from putting himself into his account as he has a great deal of wisdom to bring to the subject. The book is the result of enormous research, displays great sensitivity toward all of its subjects, and understands just how complex and contradictory Hemingway, and all of those who populate his story, are. All of this is presented in remarkably vivid prose that makes the sea and Havana and the Pilar and that awful moment in Ketchum fully present. Of course, that the book covers a period of Hemingway's life in which he declined makes it especially poignant: all that enormous energy finally expelled leaving him muddled and depressed. The whole tale is gripping, and the insights this tale provides about Hemingway's fiction are deep and at times revelatory (for example, what appears to be his perhaps unconscious desire to be a woman in this, the supposedly most masculine of writers). It's clear that Hendrikson loved his subject and loved writing about him, and this love is infectious. I have read few books about an author that capture its subject so vibrantly and so insightfully and with such great sympathy. It made me realize again the nature of Hemingway's achievements, as well as what was truly awful and also truly noble about the man who produced them. All in all this was a marvelous reading experience; I highly recommend the book.

The juxtiposition of Hemmingway's life and his experiences with his boat turn out to be an excellent vehicle for gaining a more human and realistic look at this enigmatic character. The book also connects Hemmingway with several friends who are obscure compared to the usual list of illustrious contacts usually mentioned in Hemmingway biographies. This too is an excellent and probably more realistic way to see Hemmingway through the eyes of others who were not rivals and/or other writers. My only complaint is that toward the end of the wirter's life the story seems to side track and focus too much on Gregory, one of Hemmingway's children. I would have liked to know more about the injuries Hemmingway suffered in his plane crashes and his resulting deterioration as well as more commentary about how Pilar ended up stranded in Cuba. Hemmingway was the archetypal "man's man" of the era and to a greater or lesser degree his attitudes were shared by many in an entire generation and still many today. Understanding more about how and why this did not work out so well, I feel, needs further exploration.

"You know you love the sea and would not be anywhere else...She is just there and the wind moves her and the current moves her and they fight on her surface but down below none of it matters."That's a segment from Hemingway's Islands in the Stream, repeated in this book on pages 457 and 458, and it sums up Hendrickson's view of the great American writer. The author's project here, built somewhat waveringly about his boat, Pilar, is to depict, not the superficial man - the writer, the fisher, big game hunter, drinker, and womanizer, but the man few have written about, the man even fewer knew.The more important parts of this book draw on letters to and from friends and family. They show a Hemingway who could be generous to a fault, as in the "maestro, Arnold Morse Samuelson, who showed up destitute at Hemingway's door in Key West - just to meet his writing hero. Hemingway not only tutored Morse, but kept him around for a year to experience life at sea.Then there was Hemingway's family, particularly his youngest son, Gregory, or Gigi, as Papa called him. Gigi was talented - adept at so many things that mattered to and mirrored Papa - but a troubled soul. Gigi was a cross dresser who near the end of his life sought and received a sex change operation. He was also a bright, articulate, friendly, well-read person, a doctor.Hendrickson posits that beneath Papa's ultra-male exterior resided, not a latent homosexual as some, from Zelda Fitzgerald to Hemingway's posthumous chroniclers, have proclaimed, but a complex person, perhaps an androgynous person, living out many subterranean facets of his makeup through his writing.Until Gigi's behavior became apparent to Papa, that is.Gigi is portrayed here as those submerged aspects of Papa manifested. The son is confronting his own personality conflicts at the time Hemingway is writing the book eventually published under the title, The Garden of Eden. Hendrickson surmises that the gender-swapping aspects of his protagonist's ménage à trois were Hemingway's attempt at trying to understand Gigi. Since Hemingway was one of the first American writers to fictionalize personal life in such depth, Hendrickson may not be far off the mark.The writing here is elegant, the research deep and well thought out. As I wrote earlier, the story wanders in and out of many lives, all hovering about the presence of Pilar. It would be crude to criticize Hendrickson's work here in a structural sense; it's not meant to be that sort of work, but a deep, caring investigation of the man many love to hate, yet the person who made the most significant impact on the art of modern writing.

Brilliant!

it's not Always true what appears first..

Great Book...have been at the "Finca de Vigia" near Habana and drank rum and chatted with Gregorio Fuentes @ "Village of Cojimar" Habana.Big Hemingway devotee'here/////Paul Herriott

Interessante il libro, ma giunto dopo ben venti giorni e mio reclamo, consegna non al richiesto Amazon hub ma a casa, prezzo maggiorato rispetto a quanto preventivato nel modulo di acquisto. Molto male, rispetto ai soliti positivi standard di consegna! Pronta e volonterosa comunque l'assistenza dell'addetta Maria Chiara.

I’m so pleased with my copy of Hemingway’s Boat. It is second hand, but it has been loved and cared for. The condition is exactly as described by awesome books. I will without any doubt be using them again. I can’t wait to get tucked in.... but first I need to finish my current read. Thank you Awesome Books.