The Man and the Sea

* Bodley Head

* Pages: 507,Rs 999

When Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954,Time magazine’s profile described him as “a globe-trotting expert on bullfights,booze,women,wars,big game hunting,deep sea fishing,and courage”. It was that extraordinary passion for life,and living it king-sized,that turned Hemingway into a near-mythical figure,more than his literary talents deserved. Certainly,his writing impacted the global literary scene,but it was his sense of adventure,his many wives and affairs and his hunting and fishing that made him larger than life. Which explains why there are more biographies on ‘Papa’ Hemingway than all the novels,short story collections and non-fiction works he wrote. Ever since he took his life in 1961,everything that could be said about the man and his work should have been exhausted. Now we have another biography and the question is whether it adds anything to the vast material available on Hemingway’s life and work.

Paul Hendrickson has chosen a clever literary hook. He has focused on the last 27 years of Hemingway’s life,bracketed by the purchase of his seagoing fishing boat in May 1934 to his suicide in 1961. Hendrickson uses the boat,Pilar,as a vehicle to flesh out his story. When he bought Pilar,Hemingway was at the peak of his professional glory and physical virility. In 1961,he was prematurely old and depressed,unable to write. This book sets out to be about Hemingway’s boat but turns into something more elaborate,a finely worded,elaborately researched story about Hemingway. It is about fishing,friendship,fatherhood,love of the sea,masculinity and the insecurities of being a celebrity facing a string of divorces and mishaps along with deadline pressures for his writings. It is about the desperate search for the biggest fish in the ocean.

Hemingway acquired Pilar so he could sail to Cuba,fishing for marlin and the giant tuna. Hendrickson reminds us that Hemingway wanted to be remembered for his life rather than his writing and much of that life was spent aboard his boat where drunken escapades and affairs competed for space with epic battles against fish. Hemingway’s pursuit of the sporting life probably hastened his decline into a hollowed-out celebrity and,according to some critics,the washed-out writer he had become at his suicide aged 62. But it also,according to Hendrickson,gave him the literary freedom he needed to broaden his literary horizons and it showed in his writing style post 1934.

Hendrickson uses the book to trawl through subjects like courage and kinship,the complexities of sexuality and burdens of guilt and fear. He does this by navigating the muddled waters of Hemingway’s life via the thing he loved most,his boat,and the many characters who entered and influenced his life on the deck of Pilar. This book avoids literary pitfalls by telescoping the more familiar aspects of Hemingway’s life — the drinking,war reportage,divorces,his books — while many of the characters he uses to expand our understanding of “Papa” are relatively minor but deployed to remarkable effect,mechanics and hobos,deck hands,and cooks. Hendrickson’s true genius lies in bringing alive the fascination the ocean held for Hemingway.

Hendrickson also manages to shed new light on Hemingway through innumerable interviews with people who knew Hemingway,most notably Papa’s youngest son,Gregory (Gigi),a compulsive cross-dresser who eventually had sex-change surgery. The core,however,remains Pilar,which was a signpost to Hemingway’s life and eventual decline and had the power to influence his moods.

For all the exhaustive research and interviews and compelling writing,this book,like its subject,is not without flaws. There is far too much detail and explanation on fishing technicalities and at times it is more about the author than the subject,but ultimately,it is a significant addition to the Hemingway chronicles.

As Hendrickson points out: Hemingway’s life has been examined by so many scholars and biographers contradicting one another that it appears as if “we have lost all sense of who the man really was”. Who the man really was and what Pilar represented in his life was summed up in Hemingway’s words: “I just thought,when you can make a business out of living for the pleasure there is to be got out it,I was having a fine time.” This book tells us exactly what Papa meant.