Nicholas Reynolds

Before this book, I knew only the hazy outlines of Hemingway's life and I appreciated the way this book fleshed out the details of Hemingway's life from the 1930s to his suicide in 1961. Hemingway's spying activities (if they could be called that) provide insight into how the famous writer thought and perceived the world around him. Considering the big events of the period - the Spanish Civil War, the Japanese invasion of China, World War II, and Castro's revolution in Cuba - this book also reads as a fascinating history of a tumultuous era. I'd recommend this to Hemingway fans and those interested in the history of the period.… (meer)

This is a fascinating take on Hemingway's political self, and Reynolds does a fine job of distilling the background needed to grasp where Papa was coming from at any given time from the Spanish Civil War through the Cold War without drowning the reader in detail. I've read a number of other biographies of Hemingway, and have always found his personal life more interesting than his fiction. This one may turn me back to the iconic novels I've brushed aside since my 20's, because now I feel I may "get" them better. I'm sure I'll still find them a bit too macho for my taste, but I've never been entirely comfortable with my attitude toward his work. The premise of WSSS is that Hemingway flirted with spying for Russia, even while he was doing some low-grade espionage in an unofficial capacity for the US. Although he was demonstrably never a communist, or even a sympathizer, he was fiercely anti-fascist, and believed for decades that the United States needed to have better relations with Russia for the good of Europe and North America. He was most definitely contacted by the NKVD (pre-cursor to the KGB) as a potential spy, and the FBI kept a file on him, without actively investigating him. These two facts weighed on Hemingway's mind in his later years, and fear of eventual consequences of his activities may have contributed to the paranoia he suffered before his suicide.… (meer)