Mythbusting Hemingway: Debunking Hemingway Myths and Celebrating the Extraordinary Stories of His Life by Thomas Bevilacqua and Robert K. Elder (review)

Reviewed by: Mythbusting Hemingway: Debunking Hemingway Myths and Celebrating the Extraordinary Stories of His Life by Thomas Bevilacqua and Robert K. Elder Steve Paul Mythbusting Hemingway: Debunking Hemingway Myths and Celebrating the Extraordinary Stories of His Life. By Thomas Bevilacqua and Robert K. Elder. Lyons Press, 2023. 240 pp. Paperback, 21. 95. Everyone in Hemingway studies undoubtedly has a favorite anecdote revealing either a telling moment from the writer's world or a nagging piece of misinformation that no amount of critical attention can dislodge from the collective, pop-cult consciousness. Grace under pressure? Check. Mojitos in Havana? Please hold my beer. But the story of Ernest Hemingway, either told by him or told by others, has always presented entanglements of mythic proportions. His large public life created multiple audiences. It also created a legend. Hemingway scholars and biographers have been dissecting the legend for many decades now, yet the truth about so many details about both the writer's life and his imprints on the culture remain elusive if not endlessly debatable. Isn't that why we're still here? Enter Thomas Bevilacqua, a scholar and educator, and Robert K. Elder, an excavator of Hemingway history. Their cleverly imagined book attempts to settle some of those debates and wrestle some of those mythic Hemingway hairballs to the ground. Mythbusting Hemingway amounts to a quasi-biography in disguise. It's built with a miscellany of articles, or short chapters, most bylined by one or the other or both, that range from Hemingway's early boyhood to the exact manner of his death, which, as Elder notes, to this day envelops a forensic mystery. It goes like this: To which part of his head was the double-barreled shotgun directed? Hemingway biographers have not been able to agree. Each has had no problem deciding that it was either to the forehead or to the upper End Page 104 palate, but no biographer has conceded, as Elder illustrates, that we still don't know for sure. This episode may well leave some readers wondering, despite the essential and disparate workings of Hemingway biography, why exactly this detail matters. Elder introduces the book with an anecdote recalling an experience I also share. While autographing books by the pool at the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West, Florida, Elder—and likely any Hemingway scholar who has done the same—heard tour guides tell the story of a penny encased in the pool's concrete patio. Not one, not two, but as many as half a dozen museum docents walked by as he sat at a book-laden table. They told half a dozen different versions of how and why the penny got there. The accounts usually focus on Hemingway's return from Spain, where he was covering the Civil War and dallying with his new love interest, Martha Gellhorn. He confronted wife Pauline about her extravagant spending on their home. As he complained she was using up his every last penny, he reached in his pocket and tossed her one. No one has ever corroborated that tale, and many like to point out the countering fact that the funding for the Hemingways' Key West abode came not from Hemingway but from Pauline's uncle back in Arkansas. Whatever. As Bevilacqua reveals in his separate riff on the subject, the evidence leads to Toby Bruce, the Hemingway's home handyman, chauffeur, and legacy protector. We learn from Hemingway's youngest sister, Carol, that after the house was sold to new owners following the author's death in 1961, Bruce helped out by inventing some alluring, tourist-pleasing stories. Drawing from interviews and numerous scholarly and popular sources, the authors present each topic in response to a question. For example: "Did Hemingway kill 122 Nazis during World War II? " (Short answer: False. ) And: "Did Hemingway Shoot a Toilet? " (You bet. ) The articles create a mosaic of information, speculation, trivia, and investigation into Hemingway's life, something like one of the painter Chuck Close's portraits made up of a complex of intricate cells. Several themes emerge as the brief stories proceed. Many of the book's topics can be grouped into a handful of categories. . .