Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in the upscale Chicago of Oak Park, Illinois. He was the second of six children and a son of a physician and a former opera performer. Not surprising; Heming turned out to be one of the greatest authors of America. Unfortunately he was found dead this morning, and until now the police has only expressed that his death was caused by suicide.

The life of Hemingway is remarkable. It was marked by success, impressionism, artists, love affairs, marriages, kids, alcoholism and depressions. In his youth he lived in the Old Town Key West which was the place for the most famous authors of America. He lived and wrote here for more than ten years because of his attraction to the water. During WWI Hemingway still lived in America where he worked as an ambulance driver after having failed in the army. Later on he moved to Paris and Milan, where he fell in love with Agnes Von Kurowsky who did not return his love but instead she served as inspiration for one of Hemingsway’s novels.
After the war he got married with Elizabeth Hadley Richardson with whom he moved to Paris where he started working as a European correspondent. By 1927 Hemingway’s first marriage was over but the same year he married Pauline Pfeiffer, a fashion reporter from Paris. In 1928 Hemingway and Pfeiffer left Paris and moved to Key West. In the summer of 1933 they travelled to Africa for a safari, and through this trip Hemingway got an image as a great hunter and as an outdoorsman.  20 years later Hemingway returned to Africa with his fourth wife. 

In 1936 - a year after the start of the Spanish Civil War - Hemingway went to Spain to cover the conflict for the American Newspaper. He worked together with a woman named Martha Gellhorn with whom he got married in 1940 and afterwards they moved to Cuba for 20 years. In 1944 Hemingway travelled back to Europe to report on World War II. His first stop was London, and here he met his fourth wife; a reporter named Mary Welsh. In this period Hemingway wrote his most famous book; The Old Man and the Sea which garnered him a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and a Nobel Prize in literature in 1954. Hemingway ended up spending the rest of his days in Ketchum, Idaho, a small community outside Sun Valley.

During his life Hemingway pioneered a new style of writing where he did away with all the florid prose of the 19^th century Victorian era and replaced it with a lean, clear prose based on action rather than reflection. His writing style is characterized by a technique by which he would leave out essential information of the story under the belief that omission can sometimes add strength to a narrative. It was a style of subtlety which contrasted greatly his themes.
Besides his writing style Hemingway is well known for his “code heroes”. ‘The men from his stories do all have different qualities with the one thing in common; they are grace under pressure. Opposite his view on men he saw woman as manipulators (this thought may be caused by the way he viewed his mother) but still he created a phenomenon “all-woman” (a femme-fatale described by her beauty and submissive to the hero).

All things considered Hemingway was a legend, who we with deep regret have lost today. He changed the literature and made deep impressions all over the world. 

Annemette Floridon, Anna Kyhn

American Newspaper

July 2^nd, 1961