Strange Tribe: A Family Memoir »

John Hemingway is a writer and translator who lives with his wife, Ornella, and their two children, Michael and Jacqueline, just outside of Milan in Italy.

A family memoir revealing the fascinating dynamics between Ernest Hemingway and his youngest son, Gregory, written by John Hemingway (grandson of Ernest and son of Gregory).

Publishers Weekly

The author, grandson of Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway, and son of his youngest child, Gregory, investigates the similarities between these two paternal figures and seeks to find his place in their "strange tribe" with a "famous last name." Sure to excite fans and Hemingway scholars, the book does much to complicate Ernest's image as a macho man, cataloguing both his dependence on women and his gender-bending proclivities. However, the true heart of the book is in exploring the Hemingways' failure as parents and how the familial disposition toward manic-depression created a genetic "Hemingway curse." The author, having escaped the disease, paints his father and grandfather in blunt strokes as loving and generous men who had little understanding of their psychological disorder; the most endearing and comprehensive portrait is of his father's struggles as a transvestite son of a "pillar of American manhood." When describing his own parents' early neglect (his mother was schizophrenic) and, later, his partial reconciliation with his father, the book focuses on the author's generation of Hemingways but mostly the book is intent upon setting the record straight about Ernest, his youngest son and their similarities. John Hemingway writes honestly and is a sympathetic scrutinizer of this complicated and famous man, the family he parented and the myths to which his writing has given birth. (May)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Acknowledgments     11
Memories     15
Bad Beginnings     19
Getting to Know Him     29
My Parents: The Odd Couple     35
If the Shoe Fits     45
Similarities     59
Les and Doris     73
Fort Benton     87
Los Angeles     103
Rewriting the Past     125
The Falling Out     151
The Wilderness     171
Reconciliation     181
End Game     203
Epilogue     213
Endnotes     217