The Quintessential American Writer: Ernest Hemingway

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick once again give us compelling entry into one of the makers of the American century in the documentary Hemingway. The writer Ernest Hemingway lived alongside the avatar of the same, through some of the most consequential times in history.

Ernest Hemingway’s family history of mental illness and tragedy repeated itself in his own life. It is difficult to condemn any faults in his character amid all this, especially considering the astonishing number of head injuries he sustained.

As a writer, he believed his fundamental task was to tell the truth as sparsely and plainly as possible, ironically writing some of the most artful sentences known in English.

This life is framed as it were by three wars: the two world wars, and the Spanish Civil War. He never fully endeared himself to any ideologues, because he saw and spoke of war’s horror and necessity. Even considering his great sympathy for the socialist Republicans in Spain, he knew that cause was deeply flawed. One commentator noted that For Whom The Bell Tolls was truer in fiction than his optimistic dispatches as a journalist during that war.

He actually fought in World War II, though he was not a soldier. Nobody with sense necessarily misses the Cuban regime of Fulgencio Batista, but contrasted with Castro, perhaps we should, for our sake, and for Hemingway’s. It was in Cuba in the early ‘50s that he wrote the masterpiece The Old Man And The Sea, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.

Both creatively and chronologically, this represented the beginning of the end. On the other hand, in the face of the mercy of God in Christ, we should not give death this much credit. Ash Wednesday is a perfect day to reflect on that: reminded as we are that we are dust and to dust we shall return, yet also that we can “repent and believe the Gospel” to find life.

Indeed, even as I lament all this struggle and tragedy, we are more than those who live and die. If Hemingway’s life and work doesn’t testify to the dynamic mystery of “sub-creation,” almost no life does.

I must read more of this man; I must plumb the depths of this human mystery in the confidence of the paschal mystery. It is beyond our power to make any saints. But it is also true that in Christ, man is most alive.

Jason Kettinger is Associate Editor of Open for Business. He writes on politics, sports, faith and more.