Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961

"A man who let who let his own insides get eaten out by the diseases of fame had dreamed new books on this boat. He'd taught his sons to reel in something that feels like Moby Dick on this boat. He'd accidentally shot himself in both legs on this boat. He'd fallen drunk from the flying bridge on this boat. He'd written achy, generous, uplifting, poetic letters on this boat. He'd propositioned women on this boat. He'd hunted German subs on this boat. He'd saved guests and family members from shark attack on this boat. He'd acted like a bully on this boat. She'd been intimately his, and he hers, for twenty-seven years - his final twenty-seven years. She'd lasted through three wives, the Nobel Prize, and all his ruin. He'd owned her, fished her, worked her and rode her. She wasn't a figment or a dream or a literary theory or somebody's psychosexual interpretation - she was actual." /i> Even in his most accomplished period, Hemingway carried within him the seeds of his tragic decline and throughout this period, he had one constant - his beloved boat, Pilar. * Paul Hendrickson has delved into the life of Hemingway and done the seemingly impossible- present him to us

About the Author :
Paul Hendrickson is the prize-winning author of Seminary; Looking for the Light; The Living and the Dead and Sons of Mississippi. He currently teaches non-fiction writing at the University of Pennsylvania and for two decades before that he was a staff writer at the Washington Post.

Review :
Paul Hendrickson is the most innovative and creative nonfiction writer I know. Just read Hemingway's Boat and you'll see what I mean. He has an almost saintly compassion for both the greatness and the foibles of Hemingway. A landmark publishing event In this rich, magisterial account, Paul Hendrickson charts the author's relationship with Pilar... Indeed, Hendrickson uses Pilar the way Hemingway did; to fish for 'monsters' in the deep. By the end of Hemingway's Boat, he has landed a prodigious haul. Not only has he spoken to everyone, and read everything - including nearly 7,000 of Hemingway's letters - but his own writing is lyrical and laced with insight... unforgettable Bewitchingly beautiful near-biography of Hemingway... Hendrickson is a miraculously lovely writer. He twists and turns through time, moving sensitively between the books and life The author, an accomplished storyteller, interprets myriad tiny details of Ernest Hemingway's life, and through them says something new about a writer everyone thinks they know Hemingway's Boat had me hooked from beginning to end. Every friend and acquaintance of Hemingway has been interviewed here. The result is an exceptionally lively biography, that offers a vivid new picture of Hemingway - his pleasures, foibles and occasional generosities. Now, perhaps for the first time, the 'great man with great faults' emerges as distinctive and memorable as any of his fictional creations