Green Hills of Africa in Around the World in 80 Books

Aug 04, 2009 Steve rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa is a curious piece of writing to judge. For the first hundred pages or so, I sensed the novelist pushing the boundaries of what was intended to be a piece of non-fiction. Literary detectives will have no trouble picking out the beginnings of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” Looking back, via Hemingway’s biography, things were starting to sour between Hemingway and his wife, Pauline. And I think it shows a bit in Green Hi Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa is a curious piece of writing to judge. For the first hundred pages or so, I sensed the novelist pushing the boundaries of what was intended to be a piece of non-fiction. Literary detectives will have no trouble picking out the beginnings of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” Looking back, via Hemingway’s biography, things were starting to sour between Hemingway and his wife, Pauline. And I think it shows a bit in Green Hills. I don’t think it a great jump to see that some of the early conversations between husband and wife are charged with a tension that is suggestive of discord beneath a brittle (and consciously projected) surface. There were times I felt the dialogue to be right up there with Hemingway’s best. But then he backs away from that darker path, and settles into a more surface level account of the hunt.

And yet things never flatten out totally, since the book alternates between Hemingway's meditations and his stalking and shooting stuff. At its best it combines the two. For example, there’s an almost mystical hunt for a rhino, which Hemingway shoots from a very long distance. I thought this was one of the book’s best passages, showing the author at his descriptive best. There’s also a good passage involving the stalking of an unseen lion. There is real danger, and Hemingway captures this beautifully. There are also numerous passages on writing and writers that reveals Hemingway as a true student of the craft. And there is also one strange stream of consciousness meditation on the Gulf Stream and life, which is accomplished with a two page sentence! Daring, yes, Faulkner might of loved it, but I’m not sure it fits the context of what, at least on surface, Hemingway was trying to accomplish. On the downside, there’s Hemingway’s personality, which can grate on you. Pompous, childish, often cruel, to know him, in a non-fiction setting, is not to love him. However, in Hemingway’s defense, there are several instances where he acknowledges these things about himself. Green Hills of Africa is an interesting read, but more for reasons of Hemingway’s overall biography, than for the book itself.
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Aug 29, 2013 Kent Winward rated it liked it

I don't hunt, but Hemingway is still Hemingway and his nonfiction safari jaunt across Africa was compelling, but it wasn't a clean shot, more of a gut shot as I ran around the pages bleeding out until the end. ...more

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Jan 10, 2010 Doina rated it liked it

Shelves: novels

This novel is classified as a memoir, with some fictional accounts thrown in. I love Hemingway's voice. I agree that he is wordy, and that he could have cut this in half and the account wouldn't have suffered, but then we would have missed the beautiful prosody of his writing. He took a subject that I find distasteful, and made it sound beautiful. If you are not a fan of Hemingway's long winded style of writing, stay away from this book. I found this enjoyable. ...more

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