Good Life According to Hemingway

In the fourteen years that A. E. Hotchner traveled with Ernest Hemingway, he collected a lifetime's worth of Hemingway's experiences, anecdotes, and observations on the backs of matchbooks, napkins, and slips of paper. Speaking on everything from war to women to writing, Hemingway's words are at turns funny and poignant, revealing a rich portrait of the American literary giant and the world he took by storm.

Complete with black-and-white photographs that cover nearly two decades of Hemingway's life, The Good Life According to Hemingway is an exuberant celebration of his remarkable genius and the chaotic adventure of his life.

Publishers Weekly

A lifetime's worth of Hemingway quotations, running the gamut from clever observations to drunken misogyny, are collected in this heavily illustrated compilation. Hotchner, who chronicled his relationship with Hemingway in Papa Hemingway and a collection of their correspondence, literally cleaned out his desk to provide the material for this book. The resulting work is for those interested in Hemingway's notoriously large ego rather than his writing. Hotchner provides us with Hemingway on hunting ("In shooting you've got to be careful, not worried"), Hemingway on war ("Why the hell do the good and the brave have to die before everyone else?"), and, of course, Hemingway being nasty about fellow writers (on Faulkner: "Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"). Outside of his brief and enjoyable foreword, Hotchner provides no editorial commentary, leaving the reader in an endless Hemingway echo chamber with no one to separate his lies and exaggerations from his actual wisdom. Some of the longer passages will prove entertaining to hardcore Hemingway fans, particularly his complaints about the film adaptations of his novels. 150 b&w photos. (May)

A. E. Hotchner is the award-winning author of numerous books, including Papa Hemingway, Sophia Loren, Doris Day, and Blown Away: The Rolling Stones and the Death of the Sixties. He is also the longtime business partner with actor Paul Newman in Newman's Own, the hugely successful food empire that donates all of its profits to charities, including Hole in the Wall Camps worldwide, dedicated to supporting children with life-threatening illnessess.