A Writer Of The Lost Generation : Bio Of Ernest He Essay, Research Paper

English- March 19,1999 A Writer of the Lost Generation: The Biography of Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (known as Papa to friends) was born July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. High school would be the highest formal education Hemingway would receive. He worked as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star for a short time after graduation. During World War I, he volunteered his services to the American Red Cross as an ambulance driver in Italy. On July 18, 1918, he was wounded by a 420-caliber shell that exploded near him. While recovering from his injuries in a Milano hospital, Hemingway fell in love with a young nurse named Agnes Von Kurowsky. The affair only lasted a short time before the couple went there separate ways. It wasn’t until January of 1919 that Ernest would return home to Oak Park from the hospital. Feeling confined, Hemingway and his friend Bill Smith moved to Chicago to live with Bill`s brother. On September 3, 1921, he met and married his first wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson. The couple spent their honeymoon at the Hemingway’s cottage on Lake Walloon in Michigan. Shortly after the wedding they moved to Paris, France, on the advice of a friend Sherwood Anderson. ” While there, he was encouraged in creative work by the American expatriate writers Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein”. (Encarta 98) Along with Pound and Stein, there were other American writers living in Paris, ” bitter about their WWI experiences with the American society”. (Encarta 98) Hemingway and the other writers made up a group known as “The Lost Generation”. Between 1923 and 1927 Hemingway published five (5) books and a collection of short stories. The Sun Also Rises published in New York in 1926 being the best known. The collection of short stories Men Without Women was published in 1927, that same year Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer, after divorcing Hadley Richardson. Pfeiffer was in Paris working as a fashion writer for Vogue Magazine when she met Hemingway for the first time. It was a short time later that the couple moved to Key West, Florida. Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms was published September 27, 1929. The book had a first run of 31,500 copies. Four months after publication sales were around 80,000 copies. The title is kind of ironic, after losing his father to a self inflicted gun shot wound to the head, a year earlier. Hemingway took a fancy to the rod and reel. In 1934 he purchased a custom sportfishing boat named Pilar. He liked to fish for Marlin in the gulfstream near the coast of Cuba. Having an adventurous nature also brought him to many Big Game hunts in Africa. A few well-known pieces that were published while Hemingway lived in Florida are; Death in the Afternoon, Winner Take Nothing, Green Hills of Africa, and To Have and Have Not. The ten years Hemingway spent in Florida were the most productive years he’d ever had. This would all change in 1940, when he divorced his wife Pauline, to marry a well-known writer, whom he had met at a local bar in Key West. Martha Gellhorn had accompanied Hemingway to Spain on several occasions during the Spanish Civil War (1937-1938), where they both had been correspondents. The couple moved to Cuba, where he started writing a new novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. The book was published and dedicated to his new bride on October 21 1940. As a Christmas gift to him and Martha, Hemingway purchased the Finca Vigia, ” a sprawling, breeze-swept farmhouse on a hill overlooking the village of San Francisco de Paula, about six miles southeast of Havana”. (Workbook) It would be a year later when the Untied States became involved in World War II. Itching for adventure, Hemingway traveled with the American troops as a correspondent to France and Germany. In 1944 while driving with a not too sober friend through the blackedout streets of London, Hemingway was involved in a car accident, which left him with a severe concussion, and in the hospital for five days. ” Ernest and Martha’s marriage was in serious trouble during the time they were both covering the war in Europe”. (Workbook) They were eventually divorced in December of 1945. Not surprised, Hemingway was remarried a short time later. Her name was Mary Welch. They had met through a mutual friend and though both were married at the time, they continued to see each other many times after.

Hemingway would only write two more novels that were published in his lifetime. The first being Across the River and into the Trees, published in 1950, and the second, The Old Man and the Sea, published in 1952. ” On the evening of May 4 1953, on board Pilar anchored inside the reef near Paraiso, Cuba, after a days fishing with Mary, Ernest, listening to the news on the radio from Miami”, he heard ” he `d been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for 1952″. (Workbook) Hemingway was astonished; ” he and Mary celebrated that night with a can of Oxtail soup and extra rations of cheese”. (Workbook) One month later, Hemingway and his wife left for an East African Safari, the trip was underwritten by Look Magazine. The itinerary included stops through Key West, New York, Paris, Spain, Madrid and then to Mombassa, Kenya. As Christmas neared, Hemingway was going to surprise Mary with an Air Safari. An American pilot named Roy Marsh was to fly the couple from Nairobi across the Serengeti Plain to Lake Victoria and on down the Congo River to Stanlyville. The trip was to take place in Roy `s Cessna ` 180 `. A few days into the trip, the plane struck an old telegraph pole, and made a crash landing. All three walked away, but were beaten up in the crash. Early the next morning a charter boat coming down the Victoria Nile river spotted the trio, and brought them to the nearest village of Butiaba, Uganda. As the boat was coming into dock, it was spotted by a bush pilot named Reggie Cartright. Reggie had been out looking for Roy `s downed plane. Hoping that Roy and the passengers were aboard the boat, he landed his plane in a plowed over field near the village. Since there were no hotels in Butiaba, Reggie agreed to fly the trio to near by Entebbe. During takeoff Cartright lost control of his BI-wing airplane, and crashed. The plane was engulfed in flames. Cartright and Mary escaped through a small window in the forward cockpit, Hemingway being too large to fit through the window, used his head to break open the rear cargo door, and he and Roy climbed out to safety. The toll of two plane crashes in as many days was starting to weigh heavy. The couple finally made their way back to Nairobi. After the plane crashes, Hemingway was in poor physical condition and a mere fraction of his normally adventurous self. He would never fully recover. In the Fall of 1956, Mary became ill. The doctor who examined her took one look at Hemingway and admitted him into the hospital also. ” The result was Blood pressure 210/105, a cholesterol count of 380 (220 being normal), a badly functioning liver, and worst of all, a fluoroscope showed an area of inflammation around the aorta”. (Workbook) The Hemingway’s would eventually return to Cuba. The summers were long and hot. For Hemingway they seemed to go on forever. He grew home sick for the clean western mountain air that he used to know as a younger man. In October of 1958, Ernest and Mary moved to a small town in Idaho near the Sun Valley Ski Resort, called Ketchum. During the next three years Hemingway would be treated for high blood pressure, liver disease, diabetes, and depression. Several trips to the Mayo Clinic, and two attempted suicides, Hemingway’s sanity was slowly slipping away. On the morning of July 2, 1961,while Mary still lie sleeping. ” Ernest awoke, padded softly down the stairway, selected his favorite double-barreled Boss shotgun with a tight choke, slipped in two shells, lowered the gun butt carefully to the floor, leaned forward, pressed the two barrels against his forehead, just above the eyebrows, tripped both triggers”. (Workbook) ” Hemingway drew heavily on his experiences as an avid fisherman, hunter and bullfighter enthusiast in his writing. His adventurous life brought him close to death several times ” (Encarta 98) The greatest lesson Hemingway has taught the world is that its ok to live life on your own terms. He is considered one of the foremost authors of his generation.

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