Hemingway in Love: His Own Story

Author A.E. Hotchner (1920-) a notable Hemingway scholar and biographer enjoyed a 14 year friendship with Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), he would earn Hemingway's trust and become a confidant. "Hemingway in Love: His Own Story" is a good engaging read complete with personal photos. Hotchner, was also friends with Hemingway's widow Mary Welch (1908-1986) explains the delay in revealing this story was out of respect for her.

In the early 1960's there was much stigma related to mental illness, a limited knowledge and understanding compared to what we know today. Visiting Hemingway at Saint Mary's Hospital, the author was greatly concerned about his mental health. Hemingway had already undergone psychiatric ETC treatments, yet he seemed edgy and paranoid, convinced he was being overly monitored, his conversations/phone was tapped. Later, Hotchner discovered there was in fact, truth to this.

Fans of Hemingway have enjoyed the recent novels related in particular to his first and second marriages. Hotchner reveals the inside story of how Hemingway was warned by his good friend F. Scott Fitzgerald of the socialite/heiress Pauline Pfeiffer (m.1927-1940) who was deliberately out to seduce him and break-up his marriage, so she could obviously have him for herself. Fitzgerald urged him to banish her at once from his life! It was unsettling to see Pauline worm her way into the Hemingway's marriage, even pretending to be interested in his and Hadley's young son Bumby. Hemingway wanted to keep both his wife and Pauline in his life, since he loved them both. Of course, this wasn't to be.
The dynamics of these relationships are explained and explored in fascinating detail from the author's recollection; though the reason for waiting until 2015 to tell this story raise questions concerning credibility. 3* GOOD. ~ With thanks to the Seattle Public Library.

Others have already recounted the importance of this book and the context that it provides.

There is one particular section though which stays with me, long after finishing this book (pages 148-152). Hotchner writes about an unplanned meeting between just Hemingway and Hadley, which occurred in Paris at Lipp's. This reportedly turned out to be the last time the two would ever see each other again. The details of their discussion was both beautiful and sad, and I am happy it was told.

This book provides a vivid and engaging portrait of Ernest Hemingway, and one very much at odds with the popular perception of the author as a swaggering bully. I have read many books about Ernest Hemingway over the years. I found this to be the most interesting and enjoyable. Through the medium of excellent insight and observation, Mr. Hotchner has brought an elusive subject back to life, however briefly..
The question Hemingway poses about young men and their first loves should be taken to heart. How much anguish would he have been spared if he had simply followed his own advice.
This is an outstanding book, and I highly recommend it.

The author collaborated with Ernest Hemmingway on many projects during a pre-internet era when travels brought exotic, unfamiliar landscapes, and customs, otherwise unavailable to the masses, to the printed page. Though not as exciting today, A. E. Hotchner here, revisits this era, and attempts to inject fresh blood into the life and times of Hemmingway, with particular emphasis on his past loves and mental anguishes. Hotchner says he documented and saved the words of Hemmingway during these up close and personal times, and now reveals them for the first time; because Hemingway expressed his soulmate love for his first wife, he waited for his other wives to pass before writing this memoir. The book starts and ends with Hemingway’s last few weeks on earth at a psychiatric facility at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota where doctors and staff questionably “treated” him with electroconvulsive therapy before discharging him: He would kill himself within weeks afterwards. Thereafter, the author briefly traces moments of the literary icon’s love life, starting from his early and meager years with his first wife, Hadley, and subsequent three wives. Although Hemmingway would marry and then fall in love with other younger women, the thrust of the book is that Hadley was his true love. Indeed, Hemmingway believed he was in love with two women at the same time and thought “loving two women at the same time, honestly, loving them, is the worst affliction a man can have”. There are some humorous parts in the book: During a later marriage, Hemmingway, not convinced of the Catholicism doctrines, was convinced to pray at a Catholic church for relief from his inability to perform sexually. He said, “I’d feel kind of foolish getting down on my knees and asking Jesus to give me an erection”. It is clear though, that many of Hemmingway’s thoughts were reflective of his longing for Hadley. During his last days at the medical facility, he spoke of her and their early days and said, “She would put her hands on the sides of my face and pull me towards her and hold me and make me feel we had something no one else had and it would carry wherever we wanted to go”. This is a very good book and I recommend it.

I thoroughly enjoyed A.E. Hotchner's short memoir of Hemingway's remembrances of his falling in love with Pauline Pfeiffer and his prolonged break with his wife Hadley. I haven't read Hotchner's previous memoir, Papa Hemingway, but I read enough other biographies of Hemingway to know most of the individuals referenced in the book.
I can't attest to the truthfulness of everything in the book, but Hotchner captures Hemingway's voice, either through the use of memory or the tapes of coversations Hotchner transcribed. Many of the scenes are affecting, especially those of Hemingway in decline. This memoir made me want to return once more to Hemingway's writings, the short stories especially, now that I know the circumstances behind some of the classic early ones. A quick read and a gem for fans of Hemingway's writing.

Written by A.E. Hotchner who maintained a friendship with Hemingway over 13 years, this
thin volume ( 168 pages) contains material not used in his earlier book, Papa Hemingway - A Personal Memoir.
This is a short book and flows well, is easily read and contains much dialogue and some sweet remembrances and 'conversations' between Hemingway and Hadley. What emerges is his love for Hadley his first wife. As an older man he is full of regret for his foolishness for the affair with Pauline Pfeiffer, that lead to Hadley asking him to stop seeing her for one hundred days to see if they could cool off. She was willing to forgive his betrayal, but in the end Hadley asked for the divorce and he is saddened and surprised when she remarries.

"I wanted to have both of them just as they were, both of them, I didn't know much about women did I?"

He had met Pauline at a party given by the Fitzgerald's and she set out to wheedle her way into their lives and her persistence paid off. But once married all Papa did was travel to escape her clutches. Some poetic justice here. He made his choices. I am encouraged to read Mellow's Book - A Life Without Consequences and to learn more about Hadley.

So many of Hemingway's life experiences and people turn up in his novels.

I had heard and read about this book for years and happened upon it the other day at my local shop. Knowing little about the text and having read more books than I can count about the man, I thought what more is there to learn about Hemingway? But at the price it was offered, I figured I had little to lose. I was pleased and surprised to read in the intro that the corpus of the work incorporates comments and observations Hemingway had never before revealed. I was touched, too, that Hotchner held off from publishing the work before Hemingway's last wife passed as he was friendly with Mary and did not want to hurt her. Essentially, the book details what any reader of Hemingway will have already inferred: his first wife Hadley was his true love. What I find troubling, but not in the least surprising, is that Hemingway blames Pauline (the woman for whom he left Hadley) for the break in his marriage arguing that he was helpless in the face of her wily ways -- Oh the stories we tell ourselves. But I digress! Overall, this is a very readable account of one man's friendship with Hemingway.

I picked up this book from the library on a Wednesday and finished reading it on Friday. Considering Thanksgiving was this Thursday, it was a very quick read. Well written and interesting, I enjoyed this book. I ended it not really liking Hemingway the person. This story was written by his close friend who admired him and from Hemingway's perspective and yet he still comes off as a man who used his second wife for her money and abandoned his second two children from birth because he no longer liked their mother. It's written as a love story to Hemingway's first wife Hadley, but it didn't feel very romantic. From Hemingway's point of view, he loved Hadley deeply, as she loved him, but was torn away from her by the evil Pauline who seduced him by pursing him relentlessly and promising him an easy life that only money can bring. He blames Pauline for ruining his perfect marriage. I find it hard to believe that Pauline was such a black and white villain in real life or that Hemingway would have stayed with Hadley had Pauline not come along. Hemingway seems like a man who valued women for what they could do for him and was not capable of remaining loyal to any one woman for a lifetime. What I liked most about this book was reading about the ways his life experiences closely influenced his writing. He wrote well and he wrote fearlessly, and for that, he made his permanent mark on literature.

A. E. Hotchner is now 95. He wrote a bestselling Hemingway biography some fifty years ago, and helped founhelp explained be why he decided to publish this allegedly never-before-told tale of Hemingway's conflicted love for his wife, Hadley, and the harridan Pauline Pfeiffer. A. E. Hotchner, either a sycophantic younger friend during the writer's declining years, or an instrumental assistant in bringing some of the writer's work to the public, at the age of 95, apparently felt the need to squeeze a bit more water from the stone. There's nothing wrong with a never-before-told tale, as long as the tale has never been told before. I didn't learn one thing new in the story, except for some of the phrasing of Hemingway's "own words." Hotchner said he had to wait until all principles were dead before he could publish, ostensibly to protect their sensibilities (a squeamishness he didn't display when writing "Papa Hemingway" a mere five years after the writer's death). Perhaps that was the reason, or perhaps it was to ensure that there was nobody still alive who could say, "Wait a minute," Ernest never said that."
It's quite a bit of word-for-word. Some of it sounds like Hemingway. Other bits sound like one of those submissions to one of those annual Write-Like-Hemingway competitions. Still, all things said and done, when you've been reading about Hemingway for as long as I have, getting another book about him for Christmas, and reading it in an evening, is just another brick in the wall. Always fun to read about the man whose influence still looms large over American literature.
How influential he is can be summed up by this little fact. In a few years Hemingway will have been dead for more years than he was alive, and yet the Hemingway industry keeps chugging along.

I go back and forth, wondering about Hemingway, whether I appreciate him as a person, and whether I appreciate him as a writer. I find it amazing that after all has been written by and about Hemingway (and then the Woody Allen movie, "Midnight in Paris") there was still more to interest me about Hemingway. I have not yet finished this book -- reading it at the library and will finish it in two sittings. It is very short. But I have already ordered my own copy from the store. I will leave it at that, for now. It's an incredibly honest book. I came here hoping that others much smarter than I had already reviewed this book to see their take on it, but no reviews yet, so I will have to wait.

I find that I'm usually wrong in my inappropriate exuberance with regard to some books, and I suppose I am wrong again here but "we" are incredibly fortunate that Hemingway told this story, and that Hoetchner captured it and finally published it.

I got this book at Book Expo America and I am madly in love with this book. This shows you a side of the man, the myth, the legend, that you can't find anywhere else. It is brilliant.

I wasn't expecting much from Hemingway in Love because I'm not very attached to Hemingway. But I came away with a new respect for Ernest and a really strong desire to have a margarita (most of this book takes place in Cuba). I laughed, I cried--you know, all the things a good book will do to you.

A quick mention: I hate romance and all things love in my books. But Hemingway wasn't a very fluffy lover, so I really got into this story. So if you hate romance and love and all that, I wouldn't chuck this book out the window just yet.

As the 2015-2016 Writer-in-Residence at the Hemingway Birthplace Home in Oak Park, Illinois, I couldn't resist this book. It's captures the touching and sorrowful melancholy of a genius looking back on his life and the true love he lost forever. I didn't want it to end. That said, I question a bit the authenticity of the quotes and conversations between those in the book—Hemingway and F. Scott, Hemingway and his first wife—there is no way to verify this dialogue. It is obviously just the "essence" of what occurred, and not the quotes of journalism. And much of it is one-sided, Hemingway's own recollections, which is perfectly fine and legitimate for memoir, but it does put doubt on authenticity. It's only Hemingway's side of the story with Hotchner's interpretations. Still, all and all, Hotchner's prose and storytelling is magnificent, and it does add to the depth of the Hemingway story—a man who like all of us, found life full of beauty and wonder, but also tinged with loss and regret.

What a lucky fella Ernie must have been to have such a good person as Hotchner. The author, with his succinct description of Hemingway's peregrinations in Harry's Bar in Venice and his mansion in Key West et al., introduces readers into the yet unknown life stories of the writer torn between the explosive Pauline and the submissive Hadley. Ernie must have had a great time with Pauline who clung to him like ivy on a wall. And yet had Ernie had a bit of remorse for his little Bumby (later Jack the captain and the bond salesman) who cried "Je t'aime, Papa; Le vie est beau avec Papa?" One might strongly recommend one read this memoir along with Kevin Birmingham's "The Most Dangerous Book..." where we find Ernie hobnobbing with Joyce, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Stein et al in Paris at Sylvia Beach's The Shakespeare & Company at Rue Dupuytren and later at Rue de la Bucherie.

I think EH would find this book up to his critical standards, brief but entertaining. It's almost like Hotchner is channeling EH. For us baby boomers who grew up with EH stories this is a nice addition after a long drought. EH seemed to be in a nostalgic mood before his death entertaining the idea that his first wife was his true love and had regrets all his life about betraying her but in reality he should have mentioned that even first love can change after so many years of being together. EH hardly mention any affection toward his later wives and barely mentions his 3rd wife and his last wife seem to be depicted more as a domestic in his last years. The book definitely reflects the same sadness and depression that we find in so many of his books even Moveable Feast but for the EH lover the book is a nice addition to one's library.

I had just finished The Paris Wife and was eager for more information. I liked this book. I don't think objectivity or adulation affected it. Hemingway was telling Hotchner his story. Reading these two books has given me a different perspective of Hemingway, making him more human and a mere mortal. It's very sad to find and lose the love of your life and to have to live with that knowledge for the next 40 years

I read this book on a plane ride. It was too good to put down. If you've not read Hotchner's other Hemingway bio (Papa Hemingway), you'll be amazed at these stories. If you, like me, have read just about every piece of Hemingway biography you can find, you will be pleasantly surprised by the stories included in this short memoir and by the flow of the prose. It was a delightful read life and love and what really matters. Hemingway in Love made me hold close to what is most important and try not to forget it. A thoroughly enjoyable read that I will will be picking up again someone soon.

Hemingway in Love: His Own Story is a short, powerful, and heart-breaking story. Hotchner was fortunate to have met a prodigious man like Ernest who confided him one of the biggest struggles he faced while a young man: being in love with two women at the same time.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about Ernest Hemingway. It provides a great insight into the life of the writer, going beyond of just covering his love affair.
I obtained a copy of the book through the First Reads giveaway at Goodreads. I would like to thank St. Martin's Literary Fiction for providing me a copy of this book.

This book is more garbage from Hotchner. Hotchner has always been very much a shameless hyena ravening on the corpse of his friend Hemingway. It is hard to believe he is still, almost ninety years old, publishing this tired trash. Aside from being merely more treacle along the standard Hemingway-cliche line, Hotchner here chooses to circumvent quite plain facts of timeline even while quoting the dead Hemingway at length. This book offers absolutely nothing new regarding H the man. It reads much like a dime-novel-meets-cliff's-notes text and worse, quotes Hemingway himself at exhaustive length as placing himself, Hemingway, into the role of the personal hero of many of the stories and books he wrote. A tired notion which Hemingway himself worked his life to quell.

How can Hotchner get away with such long-winded quotations? What are his sources again? His own memory? How does he dare put quote marks around pages-long passages which he supposedly heard 60 years ago?

I find it no wonder Hotchner waited until Hemingway was dead before he began publishing his various memoirs. I believe Hemingway would be extremely insulted were he alive to read this garbage. I was insulted and it wasn't about me. Here's looking foreward to the hopeful end of Hotchner's exploitation of the Hemingway legend. Leave us have no more of these tired re-hashings of things, events, and stories you got wrong for the first 50 years ago and continue, it seems, to get wrong today. Put the pen down Hotch you've done enough. Too much, in fact.

Hotchner has been criticized before for writing more fiction than fact about Hemingway. I would have to say, "SHOW ME THE TAPES!" before I could believe what is in this book. Where will these tapes be transcribed and archived for researchers to review? Previous books have already said that Hadley, the first Hemingway wife, was the love of his life and that he regretted destroying the marriage. The so-called dialogue just does not sound like Ernest Hemingway. Hedging my bets on this one.

Here are two errors: 1. Hadley did not get married quickly after her divorce from Hemingway. She courted Paul Mower five years before they married. 2. Uncle Gus did not buy the Pilar. Hemingway financed the boat by getting advances from publishers.

The part where Hemingway goes to church to pray for an end to his sexual problem sounded like the true Hem, making it up as he went along. Hotcher writes it like he actually believed it.

The book needed a disclaimer. As Hem would say, "bullsh*t."

A special thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

E. Hotchner (Aaron Edward) American editor, novelist, playwright, biographer, and friend (Hotch), delivers an intimate inside look, “behind the scenes” of his close friend’s relationship, life, and photos-- HEMINGWAY IN LOVE: His Own Story, a love triangle between the famous much loved author, Ernest Hemingway—(Hadley and Pauline); his loves, his near death experiences, his regrets, and dreams.

Having met Ernest Hemingway some fifty years ago, in 1948, Hotchner became close friends until Hemingway’s death in 1961. In addition, Hotchner is also known for Papa Hemingway, his 1966 biography of Hemingway, whose work he had also adapted for plays and television.

From Paris, Venice, African Safaris, Key West, The Ritz, St Mary’s Hospital, the famous Hundred Day sentence, to his death in Idaho.

Hemingway had experienced a near-death experience in the second of the plane crashes, which upended him-- he was determined to tell Hotcher of a painful period in his life he had never discussed -- he wanted to unburden himself.

While Hemingway relived the harrowing experience –the agony of the period in Paris when he was writing The Sun Also Rises, while in love with two women simultaneously, an experience that would haunt him to his grave.

“Hadley was simple, old-fashioned, receptive, plain, virtuous; Pauline up to the second chic, stylish, aggressive, cunning, nontraditional.” Total opposites. He was in charge of Hadley; whereas, Pauline in charge of him.

Scott Fitzgerald had warned him he would eventually lose both women. However, because two women loved him-- Pauline had money, servants, fancy apartments, boats, houses, and the fact he was tired of poverty at times, he was flattered by the attention of two women. However, was unaware of the dangers of his actions, until it was too late. He lost the one woman he would always love and cherish.

Hotchner reflects back to his private conversations with his friend “Papa”, while withholding some of these conversations years earlier, out of respect for Mary. He reiterates the account is not a buried memory dredged up; however, the story he recounted over the course of their travels, entrusted to him with a purpose. He has finally released it to the world. He shares their stories and adventures from France, Italy, Cuba, Florida Keys, and Spain. Ernest’s zest for life was infectious.

The book opens in 1961, it is the second time Hemingway was a patient in the psychiatric section under the care of doctors from the nearby Mayo Clinic at St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester. For six weeks he had not been able to receive visitors or make phone calls.

Back then electric shock was brutally administered, the electric current projected into the patient’s brain without benefit of an anesthetic, a piece of wood clenched between his teeth as he writhed in torturous pain. The Mayo doctors had diagnosed Ernest as suffering from a depressive persecutory condition and had prescribed the ECTs, in an attempt to diminish it.

Mary was Ernest's fourth wife at the time. They had celebrated Ernest’s 60th birthday, which was his last good year. The next upcoming year his paranoia deepened convinced his car and house were being bugged by the FBI and that the IRS were auditing his bank accounts. Mary was distraught. (Some of this information later came to light after his death, which was indeed true). Hotchner witnessed over the next upcoming year, abrupt and puzzling changes in Ernest’s demeanor.

Hemingway questioned what everyone was giving him at age sixty-one. The only thing someone of his age cares about is being healthy, working at his calling, eating and drinking with people he cares about, good sex, traveling to places he loves. He is being denied all of this. Why should he stick around? They were all after him, from the hall phone to the Nurse Susan…all reporting to the FBI.

Out of Hemingway’s four wives, Hadley Richardson, his first wife, is the one he fondly recalls in the book. While they were married, he began an affair with femme fatale, model, Pauline. A total opposite from his wife, Pauline befriended Hadley and interjected herself into their lives. Hadley gave him the famous 100 days to make his decision between the two women.

However, Hadley threw in the towel with a divorce before the hundred days. Aggressive and persistent, Pauline continued to pursue Hemingway, until Hadley asked for a divorce. By this time, Ernest gave in, as Pauline used her wealthy financial status and cunning ways, to seal the deal. With the birth of their children, he was driven further away. There is not much mention of third wife, Martha, except a way to escape Pauline.

The book also accounts and shows photography of Hemingway’s safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in two successive plane crashes that left him in pain or ill health for much of his remaining life. Hemingway maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, (1930s) and Cuba (1940s and 1950s), and in 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961.

Ernest, a complex man was pulled between the two women at the time; however, his regrets were leaving the one real love of his life, as readers hear of intimate details of the two women, as well as adventures, travel, and conversations between the two friends over drinks recalling earlier days. From his literature, traumas, his declining health, to his other famous friends such as Scott Fitzgerald and Gary Cooper.

For those Key West fans, you will enjoy pulling up a bar stool, the stories over drinks at the famous Sloppy Joes, where Hemingway was a former co-owner (silent partner) with Joe Russell, with a reserved table. From hunts, friends, art, literature, fishing, skiing, horseback riding, gaming, boating, culture, travel, the Fitzgerald’s, the Murphy’s, booze, good food, sex, loves and women.

“All things truly wicked start from an innocence.”—Ernest Hemingway

Hotchner, a natural storyteller, delivers an admirable account of his friend's thoughts. Hemingway and literature fans will appreciate the inside look at this gifted novelist; the highs and lows, of a complex man, and the raging storms; his loves, both personally and professionally.

For Hemingway fans, this is a must read. A series of intimate conversations with the author and Hemingway on the subject of Papa's relationship with his first two wives, and his ultimate decline as he entered the last few years of his life. The conversations are recounted with sensitivity and beautiful prose. Highly recommended.

Over the past year, I have been fascinated by Hemingway's life and writings. This book reveals some of his most intimate thoughts and experiences and was so revelatory regarding certain aspects of his relationship with his first wife, Hadley. I read this book in only a few days as it is relatively short, but also so captivating. I'm grateful that Ernest shared these parts of his story and that Hotchner published them for us to enjoy.

I am always intrigued by Hemingway's life story, especially when it comes to his first wife, Hadley, and their early years in Paris. This book was like having a conversation with the man himself as he looked back over his full life and mourned the loss of the love of his life! A must read for Hemingway fans!

How could one man love two women at the same time? He couldn't, unless one was determined to have him. In the end, of course, he was the loser, but what a life he lived up until then! Sadly, like so many, he was richer when he was poorer. A short read by a gifted writer (the author, A.E. Hotchner). A side to Hemingway most of us never knew. Terrific read.

I'm conflicted about Hotchner's latest memoir. It's entertaining, it occasionally adds to the mountain of information we already have about Hemingway, but there's something false about the whole thing. Too many of the purported conversations are almost duplicates of A Moveable Feast. Even worse, Hotchner reports Hemingway telling him about the aftermath of his breakup with Hadley and how it coincided with an angry quarrel with Gertrude Stein. But the story Hotchner tells relies on recriminations about Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which wasn't published until six years later!