Popular Culture Review 30.2
born , and Richard Bradford ? Unlike settled law , there is no settled biography , and even law is settled only so long as a precedent is not overturned .
Donaldson ’ s advocates imply something is amiss or missing in Hemingway biography . So , Valerie Hemingway ( Running with the Bulls : My Years with the Hemingways ) lauds Donaldson ’ s “ keen new insight into Hemingway ’ s elusive character .” Kirk Curnutt ( Coffee with Hemingway ) claims Donaldson “ does us the immense favor of separating certifiable facts from the inevitable conjecture and dramatizing that have come to encrust these scenes from a marriage .” Similarly , J . Gerald Kennedy ( Imagining Paris ) recommends the “ separating fact from fiction ,” and Jackson R . Bryer is impressed with how Donaldson “ debunks myths promulgated by previous biographers and critics ” �evidently a sorry lot . The capper comes with the final verdict from Suzanne de Gizzo ( The Hemingway Review ): “ Donaldson sets the record straight about Hemingway ’ s precious , tumultuous�and legendary�Paris years .”
This puffery would not matter so much if the book , in fact , delivered what is promised . Or if the author showed in detail how his predecessors got it wrong , and perhaps , why . Donaldson does do this kind of forensic work in The Impossible Craft : Literary Biography ( 2016 ), and I was hoping for more of the same in The Paris Husband . What goes wrong in this book may have something to do with the format . There are no source notes , which seems the modus operandi of the Simply Charly series , aimed at a broad audience , some of whom may not want to be bothered with sorting through the evidence . As a result , we have ungainly sentences that begin , for example : “ As Miami University of Ohio professor Donald Daiker has pointed out ...” All this to say certain Hemingway letters were “ more breezy than passionate .”
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