High life | 14 April 2012

Papa Hemingway’s recently published letter to an Italian male friend revealed his human side, one all of his admirers were always aware of (like Bogie, tough on the outside, jelly on the inside). Until lately, Papa haters had a good long run. Soon after Carlos Baker’s matchless biography appeared around 1970, nine years after Hemingway’s suicide, the naysayers started to gnaw away at him. The rats were led by modernists, feminists and other such rubbish, the kind of non-talented, self-aggrandising phonies that have turned literature into the unreadable garbage that’s around today, especially in America. Papa’s straight, short, no-nonsense style didn’t suit them. Magic realism did. It hid their lack of talent. He wrote about tough guys doing the honourable thing, something the sandal-wearing sissies who came after him couldn’t imagine doing.

I’ve just finished a 500-pager called Hemingway’s Boat, by Paul Hendrickson, in which that old chestnut of Papa versus Scott Fitzgerald comes up, both sides generously treated by the author.