Hemingway in Love

His Own Story

By: A. E. Hotchner

Narrated by: Alex Hyde-White, Gabrielle de Cuir, Susan Hanfield, Steve Marvel, Joan Baker

This program includes archival recordings of Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway's deeply reflective account of his destructive Paris affair and how it affected the legendary life he rebuilt after, as told to his best friend, the writer A.E. Hotchner.

In June of 1961, A.E. Hotchner visited an old friend in the psychiatric ward of St. Mary's Hospital. It would be the last time they spoke: a few weeks later, Ernest Hemingway was released home, where he took his own life. Their final conversation was also the final installment in a story whose telling Hemingway had spread over nearly a decade.

In characteristically pragmatic terms, Hemingway divulged to Hotchner the details of the affair that destroyed his first marriage: the truth of his romantic life in Paris and how he lost Hadley,the real part of each literary woman he'd later create and the great love he spent the rest of his life seeking. And he told of the mischief that made him a legend: of impotence cured in a house of God; of a plane crash in the African bush, from which he stumbled with a bunch of bananas and a bottle of gin in hand; of F. Scott Fitzgerald dispensing romantic advice; of midnight champagne with Josephine Baker; of adventure, human error, and life after lost love. This is Hemingway as few have known him: humble, thoughtful, and full of regret.

To protect the feelings of Ernest's wife, Mary - also a close friend - Hotch kept the conversations to himself for decades. Now he tells the story as Hemingway told it to him. Hemingway in Love puts you in the room with the master as he remembers the definitive years that set the course for the rest of his life and dogged him until the end of his days.

Love love this

Love this look into his life and love for Hadley A side of Earnest seldom wrote about

Ah, the toils of love

It's nice to know that even a legend is susceptible to the scourge of love. Well told and constructed, I was fully engaged until the end.

Papa Made me Cry

This is a beautifully told story by Hotchner. The notes he kept are not cold pressed, but reveal an author with torn love and regret and an open friendship. This makes a wonderful companion to A Moveable Feast, which has been updated in recent years with additional writing on Hemingway's first love that goes along with the last few chapters in this memoir and speaks movingly to loss, love, and regret.

Profoundly entertaining

This is absolutely a must read/listen for any Hemingway fan. Wonderful insight into Hemingway's art, mind and heart.

Excellent, intriguing read

I am a Hemingway junkie. His writing style is appealing and his life seemed melancholic. I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir, to the point that I was sad that it ended. Well done!