So far this year we have seen two major new publications on Ernest Hemingway. Most recently we have seen Volume One of Hemingway’s complete letters, and earlier in the year Lemuria had the honor of hosting an event for Dr. Edgar Grissom to honor the publication of his descriptive bibliography for Ernest Hemingway. As if to give us a well-rounded year, this fall we have the publication of Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 by Paul Hendrickson. As we get ready for a signing and reading with Paul Tuesday evening at 5:00, enjoy this review by our friend Dr. Ed Grissom. -Lisa

A Guest Post by Dr. Edgar Grissom

I have been waiting for a work like Hemingway’s Boat while not really expecting to ever see it. I have long hoped that the right individual might emerge who would posses the skill to conduct the dogged research necessary to get beyond the blinding Hemingway mythology and posses the skill to authentically portray the person, the real human being. No psychobabble involved just a portrayal of the man with all his weakness and strengths. No second guessing about how events may have occurred but rather the explicit unfolding of the events.

Hemingway the chameleon has made it difficult for any author to see beyond the many blinding colors. And no author had yet removed their ego from their rendition of Hemingway. I believe that Paul Hendrickson has accomplished this better than anyone who has ever attempted it. And there have been many, many such attempts. And that he at the same time produced such a delightful and impeccably crafted work is doubly impressive.

This is a work brimming with new information that tugs the reader’s heart that begs to be savored in small bites that engages the senses at every turn.

Paul Hendrickson has my admiration.

-Edgar Grissom

Notes:

Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 (Knopf, September 2011) is also Lemuria’s First Edition Club pick for the month of December.

On Tuesday, Decemeber 6th Lemuria is proud to host a signing and reading at 5:00 and 5:30 for Paul Hendrickson. Some of Paul’s previous publications include Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy and The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (1996 finalist for the National Book Award)

Notable Hemingway Publications in 2011

See the trade edition of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 1907-1922 (Cambridge, September 2011), edited by Sandra Spanier and Robert W. Trogdon.

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Also see Cambridge’s collector’s edition of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 1907-1922

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Ernest Hemingway: A Descriptive Bibliographyby C. Edgar Grissom (Oak Knoll Press, June 2011)

See two previous posts on Dr. Grissom and the event at Lemuria: One from John and another from Lisa.

Here is a book that I really liked, but haven’t written anything about. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.

I got my hands on an early copy and read it this past July on vacation.

This book came out last month with much fan fare. If you missed it here is a shot of the billboard from Times Square:

Crazy for a literary book. eh?

Well, I don’t know if the billboard sold books, but this one deserves to be widely read. This is Eugenides attempt (successful in my book) at a postmodern love story. Madeleine and Leonard are young and in love – it’s the 1980s and they are steeped in college life. But while Leonard is quite brilliant he also tends to be very erratic. Meanwhile the Religious Studies student Mitchell has been in love with Madeleine since freshman year. I won’t tell you who ends up with who.

The story is captivating and the writing is never to wordy or verbose – I actually tended to think that Middlesex had some boring sections.

The secret to The Marriage Plot is that it makes the reader feel smarter. While you are reading about Madeleine’s post modern fiction class you feel like you are engaging with the Derrida or Barthes. Everyone in the store that has read this book has rushed over to the foreign fiction shelf and picked up Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse thinking they would read it as soon as they finished The Marriage Plot only to be thwarted by lines like “Everything follow from this principle: that the lover is not to be reduced to a simple symptomal subject, but rather that we hear in his voice what is “unreal” – sheesh.

At any rate, you should pick The Marriage Plot up, you won’t regret it.

Since the release of John Grisham’s latest novel, The Litigators, I remembered that Grisham readers and collectors often look to fill in any gaps in their Grisham collections. So, I thought about doing a display where all of Grisham’s books would be together, a place where it would be easy to see the year of each book. So this display was born and I am quite pleased with it as it illustrates the diligence and discipline of John Grisham.

So I dug further into the First Editions room and found this interesting piece of Grisham memorabilia. In 1994, The University of Mississippi Libraries held an exhibition focusing on three aspects of Grisham’s career: The first novel, A Time to Kill; the international reception of John Grisham’s novels; and the translation of novel into film (a script and other materials used in the filming of “The Firm” were on display). The guide, pictured below, written to accompany the exhibition, includes a Foreword by Richard Howorth, A Memoir by Willie Morris, An Essay by Anne Rapp, and An Afterword by John Grisham. This copy is signed by John Grisham and is one out of 100.

I liked this passage in Grisham’s Afterword concerning the 1994 exhibition:

Presented here are papers and books that hold wonderful memories for me. The original handwritten manuscript for A Time to Kill is still impossible for me to look at without a twinge of emotion. Written on three stenographer pads, I carried this with me for three years as I diligently pursued my new, secret hobby. I wrote on these pads in the early morning hours at my office, often before the sun was up. I carried the story in my briefcase, and would sneak off to empty rooms and write while I waited for judges in the courthouses of Mississippi. I scribbled on these pads at the dining room table, long after Renee and the children were asleep. Many times I cursed the sight of these green pages, but for reasons I cannot fully articulate, I was always drawn back to them.

Grisham: An Exhibition (1994), Limited Edition Signed by John Grisham 1/100. $200.00