Ernest Hemingway has been praised for changing American writing. His writing was influenced by his experience as a journalist, and critics have pointed to other influences, including the events he witnessed during his lifetime.
Ernest Hemingway with his family in 1905. Source: (Wikipedia/colorized).
Hemingway, who was born in 1899, in Oak Park Illinois, was the son of Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a physician, and Grace Hall Hemingway, a musician, both of whom had some influence over who he would become. His mother taught him to play the cello. Although he resisted learning, he later admitted that the lessons influenced his writing style. He learned to hunt, fish, and camp with his father in Northern Michigan, which influenced his life-long passions.
He Was An Ambulance Driver During World War I
Hemingway in uniform in Milan in 1918. Source: (Wikipedia/colorized).
In high school, he was an athlete, participating in boxing, track and field, football, and water polo, but he also was in the orchestra and edited the school’s newspaper and yearbook, the Trapeze and Tabula. As editor, he used the pen name Ring Lardner Jr. and imitated the language of sportswriters. After high school, he worked as a club reporter for The Kansas City Star. His job there influenced his writing style, as he used their style guide.
When World War I began, the U.S. Army rejected him because of his poor eyesight. He then signed up to be an ambulance driver in Italy with the Red Cross and sailed from New York to Paris in May 1918. He arrived at the Italian Front in June. On his first day in Milan, he was sent to retrieve the remains of female workers who had been the victims of a munitions factory explosion; he would include this experience in his 1932 book, Death in the Afternoon.
Meeting The Lost Generation
Hemingway in uniform in Milan in 1918. Source: (Wikipedia).
He was only 18 when he was wounded on July 8, sustaining severe shrapnel wounds in both legs; he would spend six months recuperating in the Red Cross Hospital in Milan. However, in spite of his wounds, he helped Italian soldiers get to safety, and was awarded the Italian Silver Medal of Military Valor. His time recuperating was noteworthy because he fell in love with a Red Cross nurse who was seven years older than Hemingway, Agnes von Kurowsky. He believed they would marry, but she sent him a letter informing him of her engagement. After this, he began a pattern of abandoning women before they abandoned him.
He returned home in 1919, and in September of that year, he took a fishing trip in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. On this trip, he found the inspiration for his story “Big Two-Hearted River” with its semi-autobiographical character, Nick Adams. Late that year, he took a job as a freelancer for the Toronto Star Weekly and then moved to Chicago in September 1920. While there, he worked as an associate editor for a monthly journal, Cooperative Commonwealth. In Chicago, he met Hadley Richardson, who he married. Working as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star, he left for Paris shortly after the wedding. While in Paris, he met Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound, as well as other writers. Stein introduced Hemingway to the other writers who she referred to as the “Lost Generation,” and in her salon, he met Picasso and Joan Miró. While in Paris, he completed 88 stories for the Toronto Star Weekly.
Fitzgerald Inspired Him To Write A Novel
Hemingway working on For Whom the Bell Tolls at the Sun Valley Lodge. Source: (Wikipedia/colorized).
He and Hadley returned to Toronto, and he published his first book Three Stories and Ten Poems. A second book quickly followed, in our time. In January 1924, Hemingway, Hadley, and their son returned to Paris. He published In Our Time in 1925 to considerable praise for his crisp style. Six months prior to this publication, he met F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose work, The Great Gatsby, he had read, and it caused him to decide to write a novel.
In 1923, he discovered a new fascination, bullfighting, when he visited the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain. He and Hadley returned in 1924 and 1925. After that third visit, he began writing The Sun Also Rises, which he finished in eight weeks. In January 1927, he and Hadley divorced, and Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer in May. Pauline became pregnant by the end of the year and wanted to return to America. Pauline gave birth to Hemingway’s son Patrick, a difficult birth which he fictionalized in A Farewell to Arms.
Meeting And Marrying Martha Gellhorn
Source: (Library of Congress/colorized).
Prior to his departure for France, he finished A Farewell to Arms, and began researching his next novel, Death in the Afternoon while visiting Spain in 1929. He had his third child, Gloria Hemingway, in 1931. At this point, he resided in Key West, although he continued to travel to Europe and Cuba. His 1933 safari in Kenya gave him material for Green Hills of Africa, as well as short stories.
Hemingway went to Spain in 1937 to cover the Spanish Civil War. While there, he was joined by Martha Gellhorn, who had met in Key West. While there, he wrote his only play, The Fifth Column as Francoist forces were bombarding Madrid. After divorcing Pauline, he married Martha on November 20, 1940. In March 1939, inspired by Gellhorn, he began to write For Whom the Bell Tolls. The novel, which he wrote in Cuba, Wyoming, and Sun Valley, was a best seller and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. By the end of 1945, he had divorced Gellhorn, but his marriage to Mary Welsh would quickly follow.
He Was A Correspondent In World War II
Hemingway with Col. Charles "Buck" Lanham, Germany, 1944. Source: (Wikipedia/colorized).
He acted as a correspondent during World War II, and he was present at the liberation of Paris. He also observed the fighting in the battle of Hürtgen Forest, and in 1947 he was awarded a Bronze Star because he had been “under fire in combat areas in order to obtain an accurate picture of conditions", and “through his talent of expression, Mr. Hemingway enabled readers to obtain a vivid picture of the difficulties and triumphs of the front-line soldier and his organization in combat.”
He Won The Nobel Prize For His Work
Hemingway writing at campsite in Kenya. Source: (Wikimedia/colorized).
His anger at poor reviews for his novel Across the River and Into the Trees led him to write The Old Man and the Sea in eight weeks. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in May 1952. Then, in October 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 1956, he reclaimed trunks he had stored at the Ritz Hotel in 1928. The notebooks he discovered there led him to write A Moveable Feast. As he finished the work, he slid into a deep depression. On July 2, 1961, after his mental health had gone into serious decline, he shot himself with his double-barreled shotgun.
