Looking for Hemingway

Spain, the Bullfights, and a Final Rite of Passage

Description

Named by Boston’s NPR News Station as one of the Best Books of 2016

In 1959, the most famous literary figure of his time set out in the twilight of his life to recapture his early success in the 1920s. The experience tested all the credos of bravery and grace under pressure he had lived by.

Just months before turning sixty, Ernest Hemingway headed for Spain to write a new epilogue for his bullfighting classic Death in the Afternoon, as well as an article for Life magazine. His hosts were Bill and Anne Davis, wealthy Americans in pursuit of the avant-garde life of the 1920s’ post-war expatriates, who lavishly entertained celebrities and the literati, from Noel Coward to Laurence Olivier, at their historic villa, La Consula. This hacienda would become Hemingway’s home during the most pivotal months of the Nobel laureate’s denouement, and Bill Davis—fellow adventurer who had survived the Depression running arms during the Spanish Civil War—would become his friend and bullfight-traveling companion.

Looking for Hemingway explores that incredible friendship and offers a rare intimate look into the final period of the legendary author’s life, giving comprehension not only of a writer’s despair but of suicide as a not unreasonable conclusion to a blasted existence.

Reviews

I had no idea there was so much still to be written about Hemingway. Tony Castro has found much gold left behind by the authors and scholars who came before him. At the start of a single chapter, I found anecdotes about Lauren Bacall, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hollywood that I’d never heard before – and I am an avid collector of such anecdotes. Looking for Hemingway is a different way of looking at Hemingway and should shape all our attitudes about the man and his work from here on in.

Allen Barra, author of Mickey and Willie: The Parallel Lives of the Golden Age of Baseball

Tony Castro's Looking for Hemingway is an intriguing glimpse into the life of the aging Ernest Hemingway in 1959, as he makes another trip to Spain and continues his decades-long fascination with bullfighting. In Castro’s lively yet poignant portrayal, Hemingway's glamorous 60th birthday party in his friends' beautiful villa contrasts with his efforts to recapture his youth. A worthwhile addition to the literature on Hemingway and his circle.

Deborah Kalb, journalist and co-author of Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama

Ernest Hemingway was a great writer, a lousy husband, a braggart, and often treated his friends terribly. But as Tony Castro has written in Looking for Hemingway, the man fascinated the world from his birth to his death. Through Castro’s narrative, I got to meet Ava Gardner, Manolete, Picasso, Lauren Bacall, and Bill and Anne Davis, the couple that hosted EH for the last years of his life. Like one of Woody Allen’s movies, I was taken back to the era of the Lost Generation, and I loved every minute of it.

Peter Golenbock, author of American Prince (with Tony Curtis) and Presumed Guilty (with Jose Baez.)

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