Ernest Hemingway

24:58The story represents the essence of Hemingway's iceberg theory. which asserts that if a writer knows a truth deeply enough, they don't need to state it explicitly. The reader will feel what remains unsaid, while the bulk of meaning lies hidden below the surface. As his writing progresses, Hemingway continues to draw inspiration from the creative people around him. What eventually emerges is the book that propels him into the limelight. So he's 27 when he publishes The Sun Also Rises. That is such a slim little book. It's 60 ,000 words. And you talk about imagistic, short sentence writing. It's just magnificent.

25:42Published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises is the story of a group of expatriates drifting from Paris to Pamplona in search of meaning, love, and distraction. It captures the voice of a generation adrift after the Great War. And it makes Hemingway a celebrity almost overnight. But success brings attention and expectation. He begins to cultivate a public image as the boxer, the hunter, the fisherman, the man of action. Reporters can't get enough of him. Critics soon coin the term the Hemingway hero, who epitomizes the man who knows the world is cruel and meaningless, yet faces it with courage, discipline, and grace.

26:31It becomes both the core of Hemingway's art and the code he tries to live by But even in the early years of his fame, friends whisper that he's becoming boorish Or that the performance of Hemingway is starting to overshadow the work The people who begin to hate him do so, I think, because he becomes insufferable Instead of bringing joy, the triumph of the publication seems only to create pressure to succeed again. Ernest carries a deep fear that he will fail the next test. And even the bravado he projects can't protect him from the pitfalls of achieving so much fame so quickly. Boy, the critics want to start turning against him, even there, right there, because they're sick already.

27:19This man has become a world figure so quickly. It's all become a little bit too much. Now, compelled to embrace his own legend, he goes off on hunting safaris and great expeditions, and the press follow him everywhere. Every adventure, every hunt, every glass raised becomes part of the story, until the man and the myth are almost indistinguishable. By the late 20s, Hemingway's success has transformed him and strained his marriage. Fame, money, and ego unsettle what was once a quiet partnership with Hadley. Their small Paris apartment has become a gathering place for writers, editors, and hangers-on, all drawn to the rising star of American modernism.

28:08Among them is Pauline Pfeiffer, a stylish young fashion journalist from Vogue She is wealthy, confident and ambitious Everything Hadley is not Pauline befriends them both, but her interest in the writer is unmistakable Soon she's traveling with them, even joining the group on their annual trip to Pamplona He was a full adult, he was a father and he let himself be taken in, seduced, taken over by Pauline. It's not as if he didn't have agency. Back in Paris, the affair can no longer be hidden.

28:49When Hadley discovers it, she refuses to share him. Instead, she proposes a deal. He will spend 100 days away from his new lover. If, after that time, he still wants her, Hadley will leave him to it Hemingway agrees But when the hundred days pass, he chooses Pauline In January 1927, Hadley files for divorce Hemingway gives her all the royalties from The Sun Also Rises amounting to about$120 ,000 in today's money and she returns to the United States with their son Within a few months, Hemingway and Pauline are married in Paris The newlyweds move to Key West, Florida, where Hemingway fishes by day and writes each morning with a fierce intensity.

29:39Out of this period comes a farewell to arms, a love story it is steeped in blood and loss. Drawn from his own wounds, not least the pain inflicted when his first love Agnes rejected him. It becomes his greatest success yet, but coincides with the tragedy. There was such mental instability in the family. His father, a successful Oak Park doctor, suffering depression for many years, came home on workday at noon for lunch and went upstairs and sat on the bed and took a revolver out and he shot himself in the temple. Ernest is devastated by his father's suicide. He writes that a man should never do that to his sons.

30:25Yet he will spend the rest of his life fearing he might do the same Haunted as he is by self-doubt and bouts of deep depression He and Pauline go on to have two children But neither wealth, fame nor family can quiet the restlessness That has dogged the now famous writer throughout his adult life In the years that follow, he hunts in Africa Fishes in the Caribbean and writes with relentless discipline It all adds to the Hemingway myth But none of it silences the anxiety and dread While Pauline keeps the household running in Key West Hemingway's output grows He publishes the short story collection Men Without Women The Bullfighting Study Death in the Afternoon Another Collection Winner Take Nothing And Green Hills of Africa His non-fiction account of a big game safari His reputation as a great writer continues to grow, but satisfaction remains elusive In Key West, he spends long afternoons in Sloppy Joe's Bar, filling the gaps between writing with noise and alcohol It's at this favorite haunt that, in 1936, he meets a war correspondent called Martha Gellhorn Nearly ten years younger than him, she is sharp, independent, and utterly fearless, and Hemingway is drawn to her instantly.

31:55When war breaks out in Spain, Gellhorn heads off on assignment for Collier's magazine to cover the fight against fascism. Hemingway follows, partly for the story, partly for her, and partly because he needs to test himself again, drawn by the danger and thrill of the front.

32:19It's early 1937 in Madrid, Spain.

32:27Under siege, the city shakes as a shell lands somewhere beyond the Gran Via, rattling windows in their frames. In the early morning light, the buildings of central Madrid appear carved from smoke. Ernest Hemingway moves through the city at a heavy trot, shoulders hunched, coat pulled tight against the cold. Ahead of him, the massive bulk of the Telefonica building looms. It's one of the last places left where correspondents can still push a story out of Spain. Beside him, Martha Gellhorn keeps pace, weaving through rubble and sandbags, her notebook tucked safely in her coat pocket.

33:12The avenue is eerily empty. Everyone who can stay indoors is already taking cover. Another shell whistles overhead, ending in a concussive boom behind the rooftops. The blast rolls through the street, lifting dust like a tide. But Hemingway doesn't stop. He understands the rhythm of bombardment now, and knows when to keep moving.

33:42They reach the entrance of the Telefonica building and push inside. Dust shakes loose as another impact quakes through the floor.

33:54Upstairs, the press room is a chaotic whir of clacking typewriters, telegraph cables, beeping, and journalists chatting. A generator struggles to keep power flowing through lines, constantly damaged by shellfire. Here, global correspondents work shoulder to shoulder, filing reports around the world. While Gellhorn greets a fellow writer, Hemingway crosses to an empty desk. He pulls his notes from his pocket and scans the jottings made earlier between bombardments. As he feeds a sheet into the typewriter, artillery thunders again, and the building shudders in response. A shower of plaster dust falls from the ceiling, but no one even looks up.

34:40Every second counts when the lines of communication might die at any moment. On the next explosion, the lights blink once, then die completely. There is a collective moan of frustration, and for a heartbeat, nothing moves. The bombardment outside seems louder without the clatter of keys. Hemingway pats his pockets for his lighter, and a moment later, a small flame blooms at his fingertips. In the flickering orange glow, he carries on typing, pounding the keys with the same steady force as the artillery outside. Whatever else stops in Madrid today, the story will not.

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36:40Day after day, the bombardment shatters windows, scatters debris, and leaves the city trembling. It's in this crucible that Hemingway and Gellhorn's relationship is truly forged. Together they race through the devastated streets to file from the Telefonica building, or drink with foreign correspondents in dim hotel bars. And their comradeship morphs into something competitive, electric, romantic. But as the Republic falters, the foreign press corps eventually disperses, with each correspondent carrying home their own version of the siege. For Hemingway, the war in Spain is another turning point.

37:23It gives him both a new, great love and the raw material that will later once more redefine his career with his masterpiece For Whom the Bell Tolls. It also marks the beginning of the end of his marriage to Pauline.

37:40When they leave Spain, Hemingway and Gellhorn return to America as war heroes of a kind, or at least as renowned correspondents and literary celebrities. By 1940, he has divorced Pauline and married Martha. Together, they buy a hillside house outside Havana, naming it Finca Vigia, or Lookout Farm. At first, Cuba is everything Hemingway loves. He has the sea, the solitude, the light. He writes in the morning, fishes in the afternoon, and in between times, he drinks with the sailors in the local port. His new wife, though, has no plans to relinquish any of her independence. When she leaves to cover World War II, he feels abandoned and overlooked.

38:27He joins her in Europe, reporting from Normandy and from the liberation of Paris. But the relationship doesn't survive the strain. By 1945, his third marriage is over. His kid brother Leister, he said, everything was good with my brother until it wasn't. When we talk about Hemingway, it's always about contradiction, always about this thing undoing that thing.

38:55Modern critics are often concerned by the presence of racist and anti-Semitic language and tropes which appear in his work. Though some argue they simply demonstrate his commitment to truthfully representing the world in which his characters lived, they also speak to the casual, unexamined prejudice endemic at the time. Another of the vexing contradictions in Hemingway's character is his relationship with women, both in life and on the page. Though he experiences love repeatedly and intensely, he can be cruel. A man who depends on women, yet pushes them away. Serially unfaithful, emotionally volatile, and often controlling, he expects his partners to orbit his work and moods, and when challenged, can be cutting or dismissive.

39:43And while he writes unforgettable heroines, he is often accused of chauvinism in his work, too. The criticism centers on how women are framed in relation to male suffering. His female characters are often defined through desire, devotion, or loss, and their inner lives can seem secondary to the wounded men they love. To some readers, they appear idealized, simplified, or shaped to serve male endurance, rather than fully realized on their own terms. And yet, that is only part of the picture. Many central female characters are far from passive Defined by their agency and strength They often possess more emotional clarity and resilience than the men around them This great heroine of A Farewell to Arms, Catherine She's not a doormat The wrong reading of her is that she would be a doormat The debate over Hemingway and women endures precisely because his work resists easy answers He is capable of tenderness and empathy, yet is shaped by the limits of his own experience.

40:53For all the swagger and bluster of his public persona, Hemingway also reveals in his private letters and his work a far more vulnerable man. He can be tender, even self-effacing, especially in moments of illness or uncertainty. He wrote once to Hadley that he needed her like rain and told Gellhorn she was the bravest woman in the world. Both sentiments at odds with the supposedly impenetrable masculinity he has cultivated for himself. And in life, as in fiction, love is no small matter to him. He was absolutely capable of falling authentically and deeply in love. But partnership for Hemingway is rarely simple Admiration turns to resentment And passion sours into competition His marriages all begin as rescue And end as escape And the wreckage from each relationship Helps shape the next version of himself Was that part of his need for the next thing?

41:59Was that part of his need for the next adventure? The next conquering? My answer to that is yes and no. When his marriage to Martha Gellhorn ends, Hemingway finds his fourth wife, Mary Welsh. She is a sharp, worldly journalist he meets in wartime London, and she becomes his companion through the final great successes of his career. They settle at Finka Vigia in Cuba, where Hemingway returns to a familiar rhythm. He spends mornings at his desk, afternoons at sea, nights filled with friends, rum, and stories. In 1952, he publishes The Old Man and the Sea, a spare poetic novel about endurance and dignity, following an aging fisherman battling a giant marlin, and in many ways himself.

42:53It wins him the Pulitzer Prize, and two years later, the Nobel Prize for Literature. For the first time, Hemingway seems to have found a kind of stability, surrounded by friends, his wife, his trophies, and the warm air of the tropics. But his children are adults now and live far away, and contact with them is irregular. Likewise, his relationships with his former wives have cooled or collapsed. Added to that, his health is failing, and the old darkness is gathering again. By the mid-1950s, Hemingway is world famous. He's a Nobel laureate and the living symbol of American courage and style. But the fame that once thrilled him now feels like a burden.

43:39Years of drinking, injury, and sun have taken their toll. He suffers from high blood pressure, depression, and the lingering effects of two near-fatal plane crashes in Africa in 1954, which leave him in constant pain. He tries to keep writing, but it becomes harder to focus. What became of Hemingway? Fame became of Hemingway. Yes, it's the diseases of fame, it's the ravages of alcohol, and this leads to your increasing inability to write to your own satisfaction. He grows paranoid, convinced the FBI is watching him, and, as later records show, he isn't entirely wrong. His years in Cuba, his wartime activities and his political sympathies have placed him on their radar, though not as centrally as he imagines.

44:34Friends notice his memory failing and his temper shortening. He retreats into silence and drink, haunted by the sense that he has outlived his own legend. In 1960, political upheaval in Cuba forces him to leave the island he loves. He returns to the United States, settling in Ketchum, Idaho with Mary, but he is a shadow of the man he once was. By this time, Hemingway's mental state has deteriorated even further. He is suffering from severe depression, insomnia, paranoia, and an overwhelming sense that he can no longer write. His doctors diagnose him with hypertension and what today would be recognized as a major depressive disorder.

45:20In early 1961, he is admitted to the Mayo Clinic. Electroshock therapy is prescribed, intended to lift his depression, but in his case it only further erodes his memory and confidence. One way to read Hemingway's life is through the idea of loss. He lost the beauty and the pristine wilderness of northern Michigan to the loggers, the clear cutters who came in. He lost Key West and he moved to Cuba. He lost Key West because his marriage broke up. And then he lost Cuba. The revolution came in. Castro came in. He had to leave. He lost the Gulf Stream where he spent those last decades of his life. For some reason, the marlin fields in the ocean dried up.

46:05He lost all these relationships. And finally, he lost his mind. Finally, he lost his ability to write. In July 1961, his struggle ends.

46:25It's early morning on July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho. The sun is only just beginning to rise over the Wood River Valley. Outside a house on East Canyon Drive, the early quiet is broken by the sound of a car pulling up on the gravel. A Blaine County deputy steps out, hat in hand, moving with a kind of reluctant purpose towards the front porch. The screen door hangs slightly ajar, as if someone fled through it moments earlier and and didn't look back. The woman who called him, Mary, stands outside, still in her robe, gripping the railing with both hands. Her face is drained, her breath uneven. The deputy nods to her gently as he passes, then pauses at the open door.

47:18Inside the foyer is still and silent. Light spills across the floorboards, illuminating a pair of glasses on a side table, a rug, pushed slightly askew, and just ahead, the body of Ernest Hemingway, dressed in blue pajamas and a bright red robe. Beside him on the floor lies the shotgun he has just used to end his life. The deputy stops, removes his hat, steps back, and looks toward the driveway where another car is arriving. A doctor climbs out, followed by a second deputy. Their movements are subdued, almost ceremonial. They enter the house together, speaking in low murmurs, picking their way across the floor with delicate care.

48:07The doctor leans over the body of the bearded, barrel-chested writer, whose pajamas are now stained with his own blood. He reaches for a pulse, but it's a formality, as surely none can exist. And then he pronounces the death at just after 7.40am. him. The larger-than-life man of words is gone. The deputy watches from the deck, standing beside Mary, who leans against the balustrade, her eyes fixed on nothing. She cannot see inside from where she stands, and she doesn't try. As the doctor leaves, she talks briefly with Mary. Of course, there will be an inquiry, but for now, for the sake of the family, they will tell the world that he shot himself accidentally.

48:53while cleaning his gun. And with that, he leaves Mary alone on the porch. There are no more words.

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49:51I'm your boss. You work for me. We're not in the office anymore. It's bold, relentless, and endlessly rewatchable. Discover why critics give it 93 % on Rotten Tomatoes. You're so fired. Oh, am I? No help is coming. Send help. Rated R. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. The fight has ended. But even to the very last, Hemingway's mind was a well of contradictions. At his lowest ebb, just days before he died, he sat down to compose the last piece of writing he would ever complete. It was a letter to the nine-year-old son of his doctor and close friend, who was seriously ill, to wish him a speedy recovery.

50:36He's at the Mayo Clinic, and he's had shock treatments, and everything is gone. And he sat down and wrote those, I forget, 259 words to that ill child who was the child of his small-town Idaho doctor. I mean, every time that I want to revile Hemingway for all of this boorish dross, I want to go back and read that letter and see the dignity and the beauty and the poetry of a man who's lost everything, but still able to put down those luminous words. News of Hemingway's death shocks the world. To millions, he was more than a writer. He was an icon, a living symbol of courage and adventure. Newspapers carry the story across the globe, while in Ketchum, mourners gather quietly as the body is laid to rest beneath the mountains he loved.

51:32His house, his boat, his manuscripts all become relics of the life he built around action and art. Within months, a movable feast, his portrait of 1920s Paris is published posthumously. The book's gentle nostalgia offers a final glimpse of the young man he once was, before fame and fear closed in.

52:00Over time, the legend only grows. The name Hemingway becomes shorthand for a certain kind of masculinity that's stoic, wounded, defiant, but also dangerous. Critics question his treatment of women, his politics, his myth-making. Others see, beneath the bravado, a man who wrote with unmatched honesty about pain, loss, and endurance. I'm accused of sometimes standing up too much for Hemingway. I'm proud to say I'm guilty of that. I think he was on a strange quest for his sainthood, and he destroyed it at every turn. But you can't deeply read Hemingway without seeing the decency and the goodness in him.

52:47But it's covered up so much by his boorishness, his macho demand that he is the alpha male in every situation, in every moment. You scrape all that away. It's a bookish man in glasses trying to get his work done. Today, more than sixty years after his death, Hemingway's work still feels alive. His words echo from the trenches and the bull rings, from fishing boats and battlefields, from every place where people test themselves against fear. He once wrote that a man can be destroyed, but not defeated. In the end, perhaps, that line was less a declaration than a plea. the hope that courage, if found, might last forever.

53:36He will fascinate us and revile us and make us intensely admire him for all these things we're talking about. But he invented a new way of language on the American page. And the words are the words are the words. And when they were beautiful, there was nothing like them.

54:05Next time on Short History of, we'll bring you a short history of C.S. Lewis. Lewis has become one of our most successful writers because he read everything and remembered everything. His toolbox as a stylist had every available tool, from a sledgehammer to a scalpel and everything in between. He could write books that appeal to seven-year-old kids, but also write books that satisfied the most learned professors at Oxford and the most devout archbishops in the Church of England. There are very few people who can hit so many different marks in so many different ways with such degrees of success.

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