Hemingway, the Paris years

Library Journal

With the second volume of his continuing study, Reynolds establishes himself as without peer among those still sorting and shifting the tangle of lies and facts that are Hemingway's self-invented life. Less drawn than most to psychobiography, Reynolds locates Hemingway in an American sociocultural context wherein he rejects middle-class restraints and aspires to identity as hero and self-reliant frontiersman (soldier, bullfighter, hunter, lover). The genius of the book lies in a graceful and informative linkage between literary creation and biographical incident. The years (1921-26) between In Our Time and The Sun Also Rises are more accurately reported than ever before, particularly regarding his relations with Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and the hangers-on at the Pamplona festival. Above all, the fiction is scrutinized expertly and sensitively.--Arthur Waldhorn, City Coll., CUNY