The Lessons of Youth: Ernest Hemingway as a Young Man

by Francis McGovern

The year 1999 was the Centennial of the birth of Ernest Miller Hemingway, a writer who was a legend during his own lifetime. He stands as a monument to the power of literature and could easily be argued as the most influential American writer of this century. He was an icon, part myth and myth maker, a genius and hero to many and to others he was a writer obsessed with masculinity, violence and death.

When we commemorate him, what will we remember, the legends or the man? For many, the two are one in the same. We might read his work and ask who was he? Often the plots...