Wallace hung himself in 2008; Hemingway shot himself in 1961. Neither of them was able to adequately bear the twin burdens of fame and mental anguish. Here is Hemingway both in his heyday, soaring on the accolades of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, and his decline, precipitated by alcoholism and two airplane crashes that may have well left him with undiagnosed brain injuries. The title is a reference to his beloved boat, the 38-foot Pilar (made in the Wheeler Shipyard of Brooklyn), that served as a vessel for Hemingway’s macho dreams. Those dreams had their casualties, his son Gregory’s painful sexual confusion not the least among them. Howell Raines, the former New York Times editor, was accurate in his recent Washington Post review when he wrote that Hendrickson “issues no free pass to Papa…[giving] the ravaged old man something more honest: a fair summing-up of a life like no other.” It is biography as art, about that forever-lost breed of writer who was equal parts artist and pugilist.
—Alexander Nazaryan, review of Hemingway’s Boat in the Daily News.
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