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American Literature: The Modernist Period: Hemingway

A research topic guide on the modernist period of American literature.

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961) was an American writer and winner of the Nobel Prize (1954) and the Pulitzer Price (1953). He is most well known for A Farewell to Arms, Old Man and the Sea, and A Moveable Feast. 

Research & Reference

Ernest Hemingway: Wrestling with Life

Ernest Hemingway claimed he didn’t want his biography written until at least 100 years after his death—but by then it might be hard to separate fact from fiction. This episode of Biography, narrated by Mariel Hemingway, follows in the footsteps of the Nobel laureate in search of the enormous man behind the enormous myth. A fascinating trip through his world, the program travels from the hospital in Milan where he first found love to the resort community where, at age 61, he committed suicide. Rare film clips, excerpts from letters and unpublished works, and comments of those who knew him shed light on his remarkable life. Among those interviewed for this definitive portrait are his sons Jack and Gregory, his best friend A. E. Hotchner, Gregorio Fuentes (the model for Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea), publisher Charles Scribner III, hunter Clara Spiegel, and matador John Fulton. Distributed by A&E Television Networks. (90 minutes) Distributed by A&E Television Networks.

Source: Films on Demand

Author's Works & Perspectives

For Whom the Bell Tolls

In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.

The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

Before he gained wide fame as a novelist, Ernest Hemingway established his literary reputation with his short stories. This collection, The Short Stories, originally published in 1938, is definitive. Among these forty-nine short stories are Hemingway's earliest efforts, written when he was a young foreign correspondent in Paris, and such masterpieces as "Hills Like White Elephants," "The Killers," "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber," and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Set in the varied landscapes of Spain, Africa, and the American Midwest, this collection traces the development and maturation of Hemingway's distinct and revolutionary storytelling style -- from the plain, bald language of his first story, "Up in Michigan," to the seamless prose and spare, eloquent pathos of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" to the expansive solitude of the Big Two-Hearted River stories. These stories showcase the singular talent of a master, the most important American writer of the twentieth century.

Old Man and the Sea

A Scribner Classics Edition Told in his famed powerful and minimalist prose, this story of courage and personal triumph remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most enduring works. The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal--a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream, on the water for months without a catch, but refusing to stop trying. Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the timeless theme of courage and commitment in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novella confirmed his talent and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Hemingway Unknown

Ernest Hemingway built himself a reputation as a soldier of fortune, a large than life personality, a man and a myth, confusing the life he lived with the imaginary lives of his characters. This documentary focuses on his years in Italy. Through his meticulously documented notes, we gain insight into his friendships, his lovers, his love of food and wine, the landscape, pleasures, and tragedies, all of which shaped him as a writer. We see how Hemingway was the precursor of the modern celebrity, and uncover unknown and private aspects of this legendary character.

Source: Films on Demand