An Introduction to The Art of Ernest Hemingway
The Art of Ernest Hemingway — John Atkins
“ At the time I wrote there was only one other critical work on Hemingway…” John Atkins
Atkins wrote The Art of Ernest Hemingway in 1952, and my copy (published by Spring Books in 1964) has an excellent updated preface by the author that is as good an introduction to the work of Ernest Hemingway as you’re likely to get:
“ There has been one other book of great value for the Hemingway reader, and that is The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway: the Early Years, by Charles A Fenton. As the title implies, this is biography, not speculation. It takes us up to the publication of the first book of stories, In Our Time, in 1924.”
Fenton’s book, first published in 1954, is still available second-hand at good prices. Interestingly Fenton, a much respected American academic, also committed suicide, in 1960, just before Hemingway, by jumping off the 12th floor of a Washington Hotel. He was 41.
Atkins goes on to write, in his preface, about Hemingway’s training as a journalist:
