Popular Culture Review Volume 30, Number 2, Summer 2019 | Page 288

Popular Culture Review 30.2 • Summer 2019 Book Review
The Paris Husband : How It Really Was Between Ernest and Hadley Hemingway . Scott Donaldson . Simply Charly , 2018 . 158 pages .
ISBN : 978-1943657681
Reviewed by Carl Rollyson Independent Scholar
One of the rules of reviewing is that you don ’ t pay attention to blurbs�or puffs as the British like to call them . Such testimonials , it is supposed , are a form of tribute , not honest criticism . But , sometimes the touting is determinative , telling you something important about a book ’ s provenance , and also something that the author of the book is not quite willing to say for himself . In this instance , the blurbs are built right into the beginning of the book�not on the back cover as is customary�but inside the text proper before the author tunes up . This is not unprecedented : This form of fanfare occurs most often in paperbacks using a drumroll of authorities whose own achievements , it is assumed , entitle them to their encomiums of the author and his work .
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“ If there were a Mount Rushmore of Hemingway scholars , Scott Donaldson would belong ,” proclaims Mark Cirino , editor of the Reading Hemingway series . I wonder . Carlos Baker , the first comprehensive and still indispensable biographer has his place , but then what ? Michael Reynolds ’ s multi-volume work would seem to qualify him . And then ? Jeffrey Meyers ? James Mellow ? Kenneth Lynn ? Peter Griffin ? What about more recent entrants : James Hutchisson , Mary Deardoi : 10.18278 / pcr . 30.2.16