The Young Hemingway

In this critical biography, Reynolds uses a flashback/flashforward technique to illuminate Hemingway's early years. He reveals the fraught foundations of Hemingway's persona: his father's self-destructive battle with depression, his mother's fierce independence and spiritualism, the frustrations and disappointments of a World War which left Hemingway far from the action and the glory, and the violent contradictions of a writer thrust into a modern era from a closed and conservative past. In a world where the legendary figures were all dead, the wars all fought, Ernest Hemingway created a personal myth of strength and male dignity. Reynolds portrays the young writer carving this myth and papering the cracks which the myth opened up. Hemingway emerges as the unconscious representative of a troubled and complex time. This work should be of interest to general readers, as well as students of English and American literature.