Along with Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years

by Peter Griffin, Jack Hemingway (Foreword)

In this compelling biography, Peter Griffin draws on a wealth of previously unpublished material--including numerous letters and five of Hemingway's early short stories that appear in their entirety--to trace the formative years of one of America's most celebrated and influential authors. Along with Youth examines in richer detail than any previous account Hemingway's midwestern childhood, his relations with his parents, his journalistic apprenticeship, and his experiences as a Red Cross volunteer in Italy during World War I. It sheds new light on his wartime romance with Agnes von Kurowsky, his first love (and a model for the character of Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms ), as well as on the circumstances surrounding his wounding and convalescence. It closes with Hemingway on the brink of the literary career that would bring him worldwide fame.
The five short stories--"The Mercenaries," "Crossroads," "Portrait of an Idealist in Love," "The Ash Heel's Tendon," and "The Current"--reveal that the Hemingway vision and style preceded the 1920s, his Paris years with Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. The book also contains many other newly uncovered documents--including letters written by Ernest to his closest friend, Bill Horne, before and after the Kurowsky love affair--which provide a rich new perspective on Hemingway's emotional development and his beginnings as a writer. Jack Hemingway, Ernest's son by his first wife, Hadley Richardson, made his mother's complete correspondence available to Griffin and also contributed a foreword in which he writes, "[Griffin] has shown me insights into my own father's character and behavior I would not have thought possible in view of the time lapse between Hemingway's death and the research he accomplished."
This is the first installment of a projected three-volume life which promises to be the definitive Hemingway biography for this generation.

Genres: Biography, Biography Memoir, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Furrydestroyer 420 · Rating 5 out of 5]

HEHEHEHEHEHE HEY LOIS LOOK IM IN 1664 HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE

[Paul Hedeen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Griffin's academic biography is straightforward presentation of Ernest Hemingway's early years: growing up in Chicago and Michigan, his Kansas city career in journalism, volunteer service in WWI Italy, early failed romance with the love of his life, and first marriage to Hadley. I found myself wishing the volume had a simple chronology of his life to which the many insights could be referred. There are many letters and reminiscences and quite a lot of detail about years glossed over by other biographies. What emerges is an upbringing in a large and loving family, an immersion in his parents' failed relationship, war trauma, a broken heart, and an utterly conventional romance, courtship, and marriage. One realizes that Hemingway never quite grew out of the hurt and resentments of his youth. He was a hyper-literate, over-mothered, sensitive and depressive boy of a conventionally failed marriage, which never ended but also never succeeded and, more to the point, never helped the boy understand how two dissimilar people might relate and deeply support each other emotionally. Hemingway emerges as a perfect blend of his parents: privileged, intelligent, disciplined, gifted, art-loving, sensitive, sentimental, unintentionally and intentionally cruel, controlling, and nature-bound. Griffin's volume (which began as a PhD dissertation) is a crucial addition to Hemingway scholarship and a must-read for Hemingway lovers. Don't expect, however, a psychologized analysis purporting to figure out the writer's future and end. Griffin is far too respectful of and responsible toward his complex subject for that.

[Azu Rikka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of unpublished short stories and correspondence between Ernest and his parents, his best friends and Hadley, during their courtship. In the first half, also excerpts from his mother's journal.
The author put a lot of effort into his research and explained in detail all the life forming social, political and historical events in Ernests life up to him moving, newly wed, to Paris.

[Rusty · Rating 1 out of 5]

This author is very sloppy in his research. He takes heresay provided by single individuals long after having known or met Hemingway, as fact. He uses Hemingway's fiction as a biographical source, quoting large sections including dialogue as accurate biography, even when these stories were written years after the events which may or may not have inspired them. But to this author they are fact.
He believes Hemingway tall tales such as the Mae Marsh story, known to be nonsense long before this book was written (1985). He attempts to portray Hemingway as a stud football player and serial seducer of women since his teens. Things all other biographers, except one or two basically writing Hemingway fan fiction, have rejected long ago.
He attempts to present Hemingway as having learned his basic style whilst writing his juvenile stories for high school, and not from the Kansas city style sheet. A nice try but an absurd idea. Griffiin presents Hemingway as some sort of teenage writing genius at the expense of his sister, not telling the reader that it was the sister, not Hemingway, who won an award for fiction in high school.
At other times Griffin takes such wild flights of fancy based on obscure incidents that he gives the impression he is making things up to fill out a thin story. The absurdities piled so high I continually flipped to his sources to see where he got this stuff from, but the references given do not cover all the ridiculous assertions made by Griffiin.

[Rissa Flores · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this up because I can't seem to stop looking for more information on Agnes von Kurowsky & Ernest Hemingway's relationship whenever I drop by my school's library. Great read. I don't know how accurate the stories are, but it was a very nice read nonetheless. Had a lot of details and had a good structure.

[Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent in every way. You get a real feel for Hemmingway in this biography.