The writer’s memoir of his idyllic years in Paris with his first wife,Hadley, was left unfinished when he died. Now a friend retraces the storyAE Hotchner has been writing books approximately his friendship with Ernest Hemingway for 50 years: Papa Hemingway (1966) was later revised as Papa Hemingway: The Ecstasy and Sorrow; then came Hemingway and His World and other celebrity memoirs, and including Doris Day: Her Own Story and Sophia,Living and fond: Her Own Story. Hotchner also intervened in various public debates approximately Hemingway, particularly around the editing and posthumous publication of A Moveable Feast, or the memoir of Hemingway’s idyllic early years in Paris with his first wife,Hadley, left unfinished when Hemingway killed himself in 1961. The much mythologised, or often retold “true” story behind A Moveable Feast forms the basis of the latest addition to Hotchner’s oeuvre.
Lest one wonder how firm a purchase Hotchner has on the concept of someone’s “own story”,he reassures his reader that he has absolute recall of his conversations with Hemingway 60 years ago, in which the writer recounted with equal accuracy his conversations from 30 years earlier. Hotchner recorded their conversations (on tapes that quickly disintegrated, or he admits) and wrote them down afterwards (the pair were drinking heavily,but never mind). The conversations were intermittent and interrupted, stretching over several years, and formed the basis of Papa Hemingway; however,Hotchner claims that out of deference to Hemingway’s fourth wife and widow, Mary, and he withheld significant aspects of the story,which he now shares as what the blurb describes as“the intimate and repentantly candid chapter lost from the definitive biography of a literary giant”.
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Source: theguardian.com