Publishers Weekly
04/11/2022
Ernest Hemingway emerges as a “devoted family man and engaged father” in this intimate collection of three decades’ worth of letters between Hemingway and his son Patrick. There’s Hemingway’s first letter to his son (then four years old) in which he describes a Wyoming hunting trip, a note with some fatherly advice on football (“Always remember to swing your arms wide when you tackle”), and dispatches from Patrick on studying, boredom, and homesickness while he was at boarding school (“I sure wish I could write you more, but there just isn’t anything to say”). Hemingway’s support of Patrick’s changing career goals is touching, and while the letters easily capture the pair’s close bond, the lack of annotation presents its share of problems; readers will have to parse their way through a jumble of family sobriquets (Patrick is referred to as “Mouse”), pets’ names, and sporting banter (“An old guy named Copin who hadn’t shot since 1937 won the trap championship with 100 straight almost precipitating a wave of suicides in the class shooters 2nd 100 straight in 30 years”). Hardcore Hemingway fans will appreciate this view of the writer as a father. (June)
From the Publisher
"A son’s loving memorial to his famous father. . . . Edited by Patrick’s nephew Brendan Hemingway and grandson Adams, the letters reveal shared enthusiasms for fishing, hunting, African terrain, and rigorous adventure. . . . [Dear Papa is] an intimate glimpse into Hemingway family dynamics." —Kirkus Reviews
Library Journal
01/01/2022
In Also a Poet, New York Times best-selling author Calhoun blends literary history and memoir, examining her relationship with her father, art critic and poet Peter Schjeldahl, and their shared passion for Frank O'Hara's work as she draws on taped interviews he conducted for a never-completed biography of O'Hara. In Somewhere We Are Human, distinguished writers/activists Grande and Guiñansaca compile 44 essays, poems, and artworks by migrants, refugees, and Dreamers that help clarify the lives of those who are undocumented. Featuring a selection of letters exchanged by Ernest Hemingway and his son Patrick over two decades, Dear Papa was edited by Patrick Hemingway's nephew Brendan Hemingway and his grandson Stephen Adams (40,000-copy first printing). Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, Horn's Voice of the Fish uses fish, water, and mythic imagery to illuminate the trans experience, with travels through Russia and a devastating injury the author suffered as backdrop. Former deputy editor of The New Yorker and former editor of the New York Times Book Review, McGrath looks back on childhood summers as both joyous memory and obvious idealization in The Summer Friend, also considering a close friendship with someone from a very different background. Starting out with his nearly dying on the day he was born, the world's best-selling novelist has some amazing stories to tell in James Patterson by James Patterson (250,000-copy first printing). Having probed the lives of Mary Shelley and Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's wife and daughter, acclaimed biographer Seymour takes on Jean Rhys, the celebrated author of Wide Sargasso Sea in I Used to Live Here Once.
Kirkus Reviews
2022-04-09
A son’s loving memorial to his famous father.
"The man I knew,” writes Ernest Hemingway’s son Patrick (b. 1928), “tried very hard to be a good family man. I think our correspondence shows he was intimately connected with his wives and his children all his life.” Patrick was the writer’s son with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, whom he married in 1927; Gregory (Gigi) was born in 1931; and Patrick’s older half brother, Jack (Bumby), was the son of first wife Hadley Richardson. Edited by Patrick’s nephew Brendan Hemingway and grandson Adams, the letters reveal shared enthusiasms for fishing, hunting, African terrain, and rigorous adventure. As a father, Hemingway was doting, solicitous, and demanding. “I wish to hear from you and Giggy and Bumby on the first and the fifteenth of each month throughout the year,” he ordered Patrick. “The letters are not to be hurried, nor sullen, nor forced; but are to be as good letters as you can write at bi monthly intervals.” Some letters betray tensions that Patrick was eager to alleviate. “When I am acting stupid or disrespectful, please tell me and tell me plainly,” he wrote when he was 23. “I am not as talented or interesting as Mr. Giggy, but I want to be a dutiful son to you.” After his mother died in 1951, Patrick wrote from Key West, where he was attending to estate matters: “If you think I am a worthless person, that I am sitting over here loafing, with designs on your property, tell me so, and I will know clearly what I am and make some effort to do better.” Apparently, he did very well. “You were the only brother I had among my sons,” Ernest wrote. “Mr. Bumby admirable but not really intelligent and Mr. Gigi wonderful but always strange.” Later, he added, “I love you always and am very proud of you.”
An intimate glimpse into Hemingway family dynamics.
