Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure - Softcover

Palin, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0752837060 ISBN 13: 9780752837062

Publisher: Orion, 2001

Synopsis

When Michael Palin was researching for his novel Hemingway’s Chair his interest was stimulated by Hemingway’s appetite for travel and ‘Papa’s’ evocations of the places he knew. Hemingway remains a compelling figure, and Palin’s goal was to revisit Hemingway’s world. This book includes the American West (‘wide lawns and narrow minds’), Idaho, Michigan (‘fly fishing, hunting’), Europe in the First World (where Hemingway was wounded serving in the Ambulance Brigade), Cuba (where Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls), Paris in the Roaring Twenties and Spain during the Spanish Civil War, Sun Valley and Key West – where the Hemingway lookalike competition is an annual event.

About this title

Review:

Written while filming his TV series retracing the travels of America's literary titan, Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure is a masterpiece in its own right. And it's just as eye-delighting in book form, thanks to Basil Pao's wanderlust-arousing photography and vibrant design. The witty, literary Palin, a Monty Python alumnus-turned-professional adventurer, takes us on the journey of a lifetime--Papa's and his own. "Hemingway's world was close and uncomfortable and itchy and sweaty and frequently exhausting," writes Palin. "It was, I felt, the real thing. To experience it would require the ability to absorb a little punishment, it would demand an open mind and a degree of recklessness. But it could and should be done."

Palin visits the restless Hemingway's many residencies, drinks (less excessively) in the same charming Parisian bars, tries boxing and Cuban marlin fishing, but he's really trying to discover what made Hemingway tick--what inspired him to write. In Spain, Palin examines Hemingway's passion for the country and the character of the matador in Hemingway's work while studying with young matador apprentices in a dusty Madrid bullfighting school. In Africa, which inspired and almost killed Hemingway, Palin learns spear throwing from Masai warriors, flies in a small plane around Mount Kilimanjaro, and searches for the site where Hemingway's own plane crash-landed. At the end of the day, drinking Hemingway's preferred beer, brewed still in Nairobi, Palin muses, "Mortality, of one kind or another, always feels close at hand in Africa. Maybe that's why Hemingway liked it, student of death that he was."

Palin begins in Hemingway's Illinois birthplace and ends his journey standing on the spot in Papa's Idaho kitchen where he shot himself, having recently broken down in tears, unable to complete JFK's request for a few simple words commemorating his inauguration. This isn't just a lively travel or TV tie-in book; it's a thoughtful, emotional biography. --Michele Norton

About the Author:

Michael Palin is one of the most popular comic figures of our time. His exploits with the Monty Python team and in subsequent films such as A Fish Called Wanda are now the stuff of legend. It is as the adventurous traveller of his major television series however that he has acquired a vast and loyal following.

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0752837060
• ISBN 13: 9780752837062
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288