The Man Who Wasn't There

A Life of Ernest Hemingway

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Pub Date 3 Nov 2020 | Archive Date 30 Sep 2020

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Description

A ground-breaking and intensely revealing examination of the life of the 20th century's most iconic writer.

Ernest Hemingway was an involuntary chameleon, who would shift seamlessly from a self-cultivated image of hero, aesthetic radical, and existential non-conformist to a figure made up at various points of selfishness, hypocrisy, self-delusion, narcissism and arbitrary vindictiveness.
Richard Bradford shows that Hemingway's work is by parts erratic and unique because it was tied into these unpredictable, bizarre features of his personality. Impressionism and subjectivity always play some part in the making of literary works. Some authors try to subdue them while others treat them as the essentials of creativity but they endure as a ubiquitous element of all literature. They are the writer's private signature, their authorial fingerprint.
In this ground-breaking and intensely revealing new biography, including previously unpublished letters from the Hemingway archives, Richard Bradford reveals how Hemingway all but erased his own existence through a lifetime of invention and delusion, and provides the reader with a completely new understanding of the Hemingway oeuvre.

A ground-breaking and intensely revealing examination of the life of the 20th century's most iconic writer.

Ernest Hemingway was an involuntary chameleon, who would shift seamlessly from a...


Advance Praise

“A blistering, rollicking, horribly convincing account of a compelling literary monster ... [a] fascinating book.” – The Sunday Times

“In a new revisionist biography by Richard Bradford, we learn, from his astute analysis of previously unpublished letters from the Hemingway archive that there is indeed a good deal more to know about this 'scrapper intellectual', and 'role player'.” – The Irish Independent

“A blistering, rollicking, horribly convincing account of a compelling literary monster ... [a] fascinating book.” – The Sunday Times

“In a new revisionist biography by Richard Bradford, we learn...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780755600977
PRICE US$20.00 (USD)
PAGES 480

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Featured Reviews

As I’m a slow reader I tend to apply to NetGalley to advance review only books I think I’ll like. A couple of Hemingway novels were part of the background of an important summer in my younger life (also worryingly featuring The Ginger Man) and I’d often wondered what he was really like. I’m reviewing this as a generalist reader. It would be interesting to read academic reviews of this book given his fairly strong criticism of other biographers of Hemingway. The book has a lively and argumentative style throughout and is very entertaining and interesting. You definitely wouldn’t want Hemingway as a friend but I hoped deep down that he was a prisoner since a child of his insecurity/ need to embellish and knew it and cursed it inwardly. Otherwise he was just unpleasant. I will buy my own copy and look for clues. I usually include ratings for violence, swearing etc in my fiction reviews but these weren’t an issue here.

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