hemingway an adventure author

SILC Talks: Adventure Author Series: Ernest Hemingway By Antonio Graceffo, PhD, China MBA

Discover reading. Discover adventure. Discover Ernest Hemingway

Antonio Graceffo ( 安东尼博士 )

War hero, big game hunter, fisherman, and arguably the greatest American writer of all time. Hemingway gave the world 10 novels, 10 collections of short stories, 5 works of non-fiction, and 21 movies based on his writing. In return, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1953) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1954).


Reading is an adventure which can take you anywhere in time and place.

Monday (12/12) from 12:30-13:30 in the auditorium


Reading is an adventure which can take you anywhere in time and place.

Thursday (DATE) from 12:30-13:30 in the auditorium




Hemingway traveled the world. He spoke Spanish, German, Italian, and French conversationally. He spent years writing in Paris and Spain. In Cuba, he enjoyed fishing on his boat, The Pilar. Italy, the country where he was wounded during WWI held a special place in his heart. He was a big game hunter in the western United Sates and especially in Africa, a land he came to love and write about extensively.


Hemingway gave advanced notice about his own death.

Some say that his greatest literary work was his life. He became the character, Ernest Hemingway. He believed boxing, war, hunting, and bull fighting were the bravest things a man could do.

“I would not stay in a world where I could not be Ernest Hemingway.” E.H.


In 1961, after suffering from alcoholism and mental illness, Ernest Hemingway obviously believed he could no longer be Ernest Hemingway, and he took his own life.


Who was this man, Ernest Hemingway, who lived a life so full, gave the world so much, and then died so tragically?


Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. Hemingway worked on his high school newspaper and then instead of going to college he went to work on a real newspapers in Kansas City (age 17).


Being a newspaper writer means writing a story, maybe 250-500 words, every single day. And often the editors force the journalists to shorten their stories to fit in the newspaper. That experience, writing one very short, very tight and accurate story every day for years, helped Hemingway develop a very unique literary style.


"On the (Kansas City) Star you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time." Heming Way


In 1918, during World War I, Hemingway served as an ambulance driver in Italy He was wounded while saving some Italian soldiers and was given a medal for bravery, by the Italian government.


While recovering in an Italian military hospital, young Lt. Hemingway fell in love with an American nurse, named Agnes von Kurowsky. This story became the basis for his first great novel, A Farewell to Arms.


Agnes Kurowsky broke Ernest’s heart. When he returned home, between his heart-break, injuries, and the horrors of the war he had witnessed, he was so depressed that his parents actually threw him out of the house, not knowing how to help him. Ernest eventually landed a job as a journalist at the Toronto Star newspaper.

Being a journalist trained Ernest Hemingway to write short, tight fiction. As a result, he is considered one of the greatest American short story writers of all time.


Working as a journalist in Chicago, Ernest Hemingway met Hadley Richardson. They married and moved to Paris where Ernest wrote his fiction, but supported himself by working as a foreign correspondent for the Star.

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” Hemingway


In Paris, Hemingway was part of a group of writers and artists, mostly American, who were called The Ex-Pats, because they chose to live outside of their home countries.

Apart from Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, the most famous ex-pats were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Ford Maddox Ford, and John Dos Pasos.


While living in Paris, Hemingway was also working as a war correspondent. In 1922, he covered the war between Greece and Turkey. War would play a significant role in much of his writing.


The Lost generation authors knew and wrote about each other. Although they identified their writing as fiction, elements of the real lives of the Paris ex-pats were often present in the books. Hemingway’s books, The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast contained characters based on the other authors he knew.


The ex-pat life in Paris ended in 1929 when the US stock market crashed,. The US was hit first and perhaps hardest by The Great Depression. When the ex-pats discovered there would be no more money sent from parents back home, they abandoned Paris and returned to America.


In 1936 a civil war broke out in Spain, fought between the left-wing Republicans and the Fascist Nationalists, led by General Francisco Franco. American volunteers joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and fought along aside of the Republicans. The war finally ended in 1939 with the Fascists winning. General Franco remained in power until his death in 1975.


In 1937 Hemingway went to cover the Spanish Civil war. He and a group of British and Americans were the last to leave the 1938 Battle of the Ebro, one of the final turning points in the war.

His experiences became one of his greatest books, For Whom the Bell Tolls.


Hemingway as a witness to history.

In 1937, fellow ex-pat, Pablo 　 Picasso completed one of his most famous works, a painting called Guernica, which commemorated the bombing of the Spanish city by that name. During the Spanish Civil War, the Nationalist/fascist government was allied with Nazi Germany. Consequently, the city was completely destroyed by Nazi airplanes, supporting General Franco. The painting has become a timeless anti-war symbol known around the world.


Hemingway spent much of his adult life involved in wars. Although he glorified the male heroism of soldiers, he hated the destruction of war.


Hemingway was one of the most celebrated American authors when World War II broke out, in 1941. Many Americans feared attacks by German submarines in the Caribbean and off the coast of Florida and Long Island. Hemingway used his celebrity to obtain a commission from the US government to use his boat The Pilar to search for submarines off the coast of Cuba. Armed with a sub machine gun and some hand grenades, Hemingway and his friends sailed around the Caribbean, drinking heavily and never finding any bad guys.


In the spring of 1944, Hemingway went to Europe as a war correspondent. He witnessed the Normandy Landing and later led a band of “irregular soldiers into the liberation of Paris.” Hemingway, always the character, established himself in the nicest hotel in town, where he drank and ate and told stories to his followers about his adventures.

Afterward, he travelled with the allied invasion of Germany, which was some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. The US government awarded him the Bronze Star for bravery under fire.


It is interesting to note that Hemingway never wrote a great book about WW II. Two of his greatest books were about his experiences in war, A Farewell to Arms, about World War I, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, about the Spanish Civil War.

In 1946, he wrote one book related to World War II called Across the River and into the Trees, which was not very well received. In my opinion, this was the beginning of Hemingway’s decline as a writer.


After the war, Hemingway began to fall apart. He had a car accident in 1945 and injured his knee and forehead. Additionally, his ex-pat friends began to die off, one by one. William Butler Yeats and Ford Madox Ford both died in 1939, Scott Fitzgerald in 1940, Sherwood Anderson and James Joyce in 1941, Gertrude Stein in 1946, and Max Perkins, Hemingway's editor, died in 1947. Hemingway began to suffer severe headaches, high blood pressure, weight gain, and diabetes. He was also drinking heavily.


In 1951, Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea, arguably his greatest work, and the one which he was most pleased with. The Old Man and the Sea won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1952 and cemented his fame as a world-renowned author.


In 1954, while hunting in Africa, Hemingway barely survived a plane crash which left him severely injured. The next day, he boarded a second plane which was meant to take him to the hospital, but it exploded. He was terribly burned and had a severe head injury. When he finally arrived at the hospital he read a newspaper report of his own death. After some rest, he continued on his African adventure but was terribly burned by a bush fire. His injuries included two cracked discs, kidney and liver rupture, a dislocated shoulder, and a broken skull.


In 1954 Hemingway received The Nobel Prize for Literature, but was too ill to fly to Stockholm and receive the award.


From 1955 to 1956, Hemingway was bedridden. The doctors told him he had to stop drinking, but of course, he ignored them.

But he was still Ernest Hemingway, a famous author and he was being paid a lot of money to write articles for magazines. The Old Man and the Sea, however, would be his last great book.

Hemingway’s friends said that his eyesight was failing, his mind was unclear, and according to the newspapers, he was on the verge of dying.


Hemingway was admitted to a mental hospital for severe depression where he was given shock treatments. When he was released from the hospital he asked to be driven home, where he put a shotgun in his mouth and killed himself.


Hemingway wrote short, concise, but simple sentences which were full of meaning.

His greatest works include: A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), The Sun Also Rises (1926) The Novella The Old Man and the Sea (1952), Death in the Afternoon (1932), The Green Hills of Africa (1935), The Nick Adams Stories (1972), andMen Without Women (1927)


“Hemingway’s greatest work may have been his life, the life he lived.” Biography, n.d.

“He took being a writer from being someone who just sat in a room to being someone who not just gobbled up life but made a show of it.” Biography, n.d.


Hemingway and Me

When I was a boy my grandmother encouraged me to read adventure authors such as Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and Sir Richard Francis Burton, so I would learn to appreciate languages and travel and adventure. Hemingway had a profound influence on me, my writing, and my life.


Heming way was a boxer. And I was a boxer.


Hemingway served in World War I. I served in the Army.


Hemingway travelled around the world and write about his adventures. So did I.


Hemingway was a sailor. And so was I.


Hemingway was a war correspondent. And so was I.


Hemingway inspired me to become an author, and I wrote 7 books.


I hope all of you will read some Hemingway titles in our Independent Learning center. But most of all, I hope Hemingway can inspire you to find your passion and follow it.

Thank you for listening to my report.

Now, go read a book!!!

Dr. Antonio Graceffo, PhD, China MBA (安东尼博士 )Shanghai University, Department of EconomicsContact: [email protected]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniograceffo

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hemingway an adventure author

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