‘Hemingway’ insights found in JFK Library

BOSTON — A new documentary on Ernest Hemingway — powered by vast but little-known archives kept at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston — is shedding new light on the acclaimed novelist.

“Hemingway,” by longtime collaborators Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, premiering on PBS on three consecutive nights starting today, takes a more nuanced look at the author and his long-standing reputation as an alcoholic, adventurer, outdoorsman and bullfight-loving misogynist who struggled with internal turmoil that eventually led to his death by suicide at age 61.

The truth about the man many consider America’s greatest 20th-century novelist — whose concise writing style made him an outsized celebrity who became a symbol of unrepentant American masculinity — is much more complex, Novick said.

That complexity would have been nearly impossible to detail without the largest-in-the-world Hemingway collection that ended up at the JFK Library.

Although the two men never met, they admired each other and corresponded briefly. When Hemingway’s fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, was figuring out what to do with her late husband’s effects, she asked Jackie Kennedy if they could be housed at the JFK Library.

The archives contain Hemingway’s manuscripts, personal correspondence and about 11,000 photographs. Much of the material used in the documentary has not been widely seen in public, if at all, Novick said.

Burns had been to the JFK Library on multiple occasions for several functions, but he had no idea about the extent of the Hemingway archives until they started researching the film.

“The Hemingway collection was central to the process,” Burns said. “It helped us understand just what a disciplined writer he was.”

Much of the documentary deals with Hemingway’s complicated relationship with the women in his life — from his mother and sisters, to the nurse he fell in love with while recovering from wounds suffered in World War I, to his four wives.

“So much of what he did in life was about love: running to it, running from it and ruining it,” Burns said.

While Hemingway is often considered an archetype of American manhood, the truth about his masculinity was more complex, the filmmakers found.

When he was a child, Hemingway’s mother treated him and one of his sisters as twins, often dressing them in identical outfits — sometimes as boys, sometimes as girls. He explored gender fluidity both in his books and in life, letting his hair grow as his wives cropped theirs short.

Novick’s favorite parts of the collection were Hemingway’s manuscripts. They show in great detail his thinking process as he wrote, rewrote, amended and edited his works through cross-outs, scribbles and notes in the margins.