A review of Joe Haldeman's
The Hemingway Hoax, which I finished this morning, copied and pasted from my website:
Haldeman's short novel or novella,
The Hemingway Hoax (1990) won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novella, and it certainly confirms Haldeman as being one of the finest and most literary SF writers of the modern era. Haldeman draws on both his love of Hemingway's work, and his own awful experiences from the Vietnam war, to provide a rich, interesting and entertaining story. In 1922, Hemingway's first wife Hadley famously lost most of his unpublished fiction on a train at Paris Gare de Lyon station. This tragic episode set Hemingway back in his writing, and was chronicled in his autobiographical book,
A Moveable Feast, which covered his early writing life in Paris, as part of the 'Lost Generation'. As it happens, I read
A Moveable Feast immediately before I read Haldeman's work, which set me up beautifully to enjoy this book. I'd recommend reading them like this, if like me you're a Hemingway fan. (
A Moveable Feast is itself wonderful, by the way, as
George R. R. Martin recently reminded us on his
Not a Blog website) .
Haldeman's tale considers whether someone could write a pastiche of some of Hemingway's lost fiction. A Boston university professor decides to see if it is indeed possible to produce a hoax manuscript, which in theory could net millions of dollars. However, as soon as he begins the project, he is visited by a mysterious figure, who takes the guise of Hemingway himself, and who tells him he should not continue with the venture. Hemingway's works are clearly important to the stability of the multiverse; universe-hopping and time travel provide speculative elements, and these are dealt with expertly by Haldeman and whole is neatly drawn.
Haldeman is clearly a bit of a Hemingway scholar, and he says he's been interested in Hemingway's work and life for 25 years; in his afterword, he notes that, like the central protagonist of the story, he also was a Boston literary professor, and also vacationed at Key West. As a result, this short novel not only provides a lot of fun for Hemingway and SF fans, but adds detail to one's understanding and knowledge of the great writer. All-in-all, a super short read, that's highly recommended.
en.m.wikipedia.org
