WCMU to air Hemingway documentary
Ernest Hemingway, one of American’s greatest authors, spent a lot of time in northern Michigan.
A new three-part Public Broadcasting Service documentary, “Hemingway” by Lynn Novick and Ken Burns detailing those times and more, will begin airing on WCMU Public Media at 8 p.m. Monday, April 5.
Hemingway’s relationship with Michigan began in 1898 when his parents, who lived in Oak Park, Illinois, purchased property and built a cottage on Walloon Lake where the family spent its summers.
Hemingway would return to the area in 1919 after serving in WWI. He would spend time in nearby Horton Bay and Petoskey.
The writers of the documentary used former Central Michigan University history professor Michael Federspiel’s book, “Picturing Hemingway’s Michigan” for their research.
They also used the Hemingway Collection from CMU’S Clarke Historical Library, which includes many of his books and writings,
personal letters and family scrapbooks, among other memorabilia, as another source of information.
Hemingway’s family would later buy a farm across from their cottage where they grew fruit trees, potatoes and vegetables.
“Ernest (Hemingway) would spend his teenage years often overworking on the farm, reporting back to his dad about how the crops were growing there,” Federspiel said in an interview with the Detroit Free Press. “So, Ernest Hemingway the farmer is not one of the images that quickly comes to mind when people reference Hemingway. But that farm was on the Horton Bay side of Walloon Lake, so that also put him over there, and he would oftentimes spend nights actually there on that farm, even though there wasn’t a home there for him to stay in.”
He said that Hemingway returned to Michigan every year until he married his first wife.
“I think he just absorbed northern Michigan,” Federpiel noted during the interview. “I think it show sup as a writer when he finally understood that after writing crime fiction, in essence, stories that he thought would sell in popular magazines, he realized and took the advice of experienced writers who said, ‘write what you know.’”
Hemingwy used those northern Michigan experiences in his “Nick Adams” stories, which total 38 in all.
The documentary will include the voices of Jeff Daniels as Hemingway, along with Meryl Streep, Keri Russell, Mary-louise Parker and Patricia Clarkson as his four wives.
The six-hour series will also feature photographs of Hemingway’s time spent in northern Michigan, and detail his experiences in Paris, WWI, the Spanish Civil War and Cuba.
For more information on the documentary visit WCMU.ORG. Ernest Hemingway’s relationship with Michigan began in 1898 when his parents, who lived in Oak Park, Illinois, purchased property and built a cottage on Walloon Lake where the family spent its summers.