Perhaps it’s something that all young male writers have to go through: a love affair with Ernest Hemingway. His work endures. And yet it is hard to separate the man from the cliché. And it is the cliché that young writers fall for. Hunting, fishing, shooting, drinking, fighting, womanizing, travel. It’s a vision of masculinity that seems at odds with the profession of writer. How can a life lived in the mind connect to such a rumbustious existence? And yet Hemingway seemed to achieve that connection, and inspired thousands of young men into thinking they could do the same.
I fell for it, too, though not hard, because I read Jack Kerouac before I read Hemingway, and Kerouac’s version of freedom got its hooks into me first. Travel and the crazy incidental beauty of the world around us—that seemed to be more than enough to write about. I could leave the hunting and fighting for braver, meaner men. I have, however, recently returned to Hemingway, via Italy.
Some critics felt that the love affair between Cantwell and Renata was wish-fulfilment on the part of a tired, self-indulgent writer.
While Cuba, Spain and Paris are the places most intimately associated with the American author, Italy also played a critical role in his life. In June 1918, the 18-year-old Hemingway, searching for adventure beyond his suburban Chicago upbringing, arrived in Milan as a second lieutenant ambulance driver. He was soon immersed in the horror and tragedy of World War I. In July, hoping to get close to the frontline, he volunteered to help a mobile Red Cross unit at Fossalta di Piave, 40 miles north of Venice, where the Italian army was desperately trying to defend a bridge over the Piave river from the advancing Austrian army.
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