Hemingway was a douche (see all details)?

This is a very good question. You've received so many good answers already, that I'll just briefly give my thoughts, leaving Hemingway to the other answers. (The answer is more for the sake of a good question than because I have something unique to say.)

To find out a favorite author is not one I can respect would change how I discuss said author, but not necessarily how I view the caliber or importance of his work. To be realistic, I may interpret his work through a jaundiced eye. I don't like to admit this, but I think I would be looking for something which would support what I know about the author on the supposition that his worldview and behavior will creep into the story somewhere.

Perhaps, though, the man was never meant to be put on a pedestal or be looked at as a role model. It is the work which deserves the pedestal. Since we know all men are fallible, a close examination of any author's life has the potential to disappoint us. Suddenly we find they are not bigger than life as we thought, but flesh and blood creatures with sometimes glaring faults.

Because that is so, I'd rather know nothing about the author until after I've read the works he or she has written. Is that trying to bury my head in the sand? Yep, that's about the size of it. Unfortunately for me, that is not always possible.

Case in point: someone gave me a mystery written by Anne Perry. I was disappointed to find out, before reading the book, that she is one and the same as Juliet Marion Hulme, one of the two girls who took part in the Parker-Hulme murder (depicted in the movie Heavenly Creatures with Kate Winslet).

***Edit: It doesn't seem to follow that a person with ability, creativity and talent must lead an exemplary life or even one which, though imperfect, lives up to our expectations. Even a thoroughly debased man, a scoundrel, may have genuine talent, don't you think?

I haven't had an experience like you have had with one of my very favorite authors. It's a good thing, too, since I would be just as disappointed and upset as you seem to be about Hemingway. I want to be able to admire and respect them, because their works mean so much to me.

First of all, I agree that Hemingway was a douche when it comes to who he was as a man. I watched a biography on television about him once and I was amazed at how the biographer portrayed him in such a way that you felt he was not a man of much integrity. I am reminded of a quote from Holden Caulfield:

"I used to think she was quite intelligent, in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not."

However, if anybody really wants a reason to dislike Hemingway, they should look to A Moveable Feast where (I want to say "In my opinion," but who can really disagree) Hemingway actually went out of his way to share private information about his "friend" F. Scott Fitzgerald. At one point in the book, a memoir, Hemingway decides that one of Fitzgerald's personal issues about his "manhood" should be put into print. Why would somebody write personal information of that nature about a friend in a book after they have died? He couldn't just let Fitzgerald be remembered for The Great Gatsby. He just couldn't resist an opportunity to one-up a dead man. That is the true definition of a douche.

To answer your main question, yes, it did affect me for a little bit. My whole life I grew up hearing Hemingway's name mentioned with such reverence. When I saw the biography and then read A Moveable Feast I couldn't shake the idea that this literary legend was such a douche. However, I did get over it. My mind has adjusted and I am able to see Hemingway mostly for his work and block out the negative personal stuff. I can't completely rid myself of the image I have of him, but I can overlook it in order to read books that have influenced the literature we know today. It took a while though. To me he is not the myth, the man, the legend...he's just an author.

I've never really looked into my favorite authors' personalities for this reason. It's kind of like when you read one book by an author and it's downright fantastic, and then you read another which may be a standalone or (worse) a sequel, but it's just awful. And then you just don't love that author as much anymore.

I've always felt like the author should be kept separate from their work. For example, JK Rowling is often called quite immoral, but her Harry Potter books don't reflect that at all. A lot of people think she's very money-hungry. Whether that's true or not, I'd rather not know. If it were true, I think it honestly *would* affect how I feel about the Harry Potter series, and I don't want that to happen.

Sorry if that didn't necessarily answer the question =)

Edit: Just to expand- If Rowling really is as immoral and money-hungry and all that as people say, it would make me question the authenticity of her novels. Did she really believe all this "love is strength" business when she wrote the series, or is she just trying to look good? I'd rather believe, even if falsely, that she did believe in what she wrote. Otherwise, the series would be blackened by her immoralness. *Cue dramatic music*

At first I laughed and thought this was a joke, but after I read what you said, I feel like Hemingway wasn't such a great guy. I suppose if I did find something out I couldn't respect about an author I might look at their work a little different. Some say that Lewis Carroll was a pedophile, but he was still a good writer..

This is an interesting paradox that is often not addressed in the school environment- Are they still a hero despite their misgivings? We are all human, and though I may disapprove of how they lived, I believe that does not make any of their stories and words any less meaningful.

Take for instance Helen Keller, the sweetheart of overcoming physical adversary but what few people know that because of her struggles she had a firm belief in socialism as the answer to the struggles of people like her after finding out that many like her were born into poverty and were unable to receive proper medical and educational needs . Upon hearing this people tuned her out, saying that since she could not learn without the help of another she must have been brain washed. So did her activism make her achievements any less fruitful?

I do not think so.

Interesting question. I think that it is unrealistic to expect good literature to be written only by "good" people. As a matter of fact, I kind of think that most good writers are or were probably somewhat maladjusted. People who are well-adjusted and get along well with others probably wouldn't have much motivation to seek such a difficult means of expression as writing novels. Writing novels generally requires that a person isolate themselves from others for long periods. What normal person does that?

I guess I've never expected writers to be exemplary human beings, so I have not really been let down. I certainly don't think I ever imagined Hemingway as some kind of nice guy. In that respect, I have to wonder how you ever imagined him as such a wonderful guy. Reading him it is clear that his (and his characters') preferences for hunting, being tough, being egotistical, drinking too much, etc, all fill some kind of emptiness in him (or them). Hemingway himself seems to know his egotism is a front for the emptiness he feels within. I never got the idea that he was lying. I think your misinterpretation of the man came about from popular misconceptions of Hemingway which focused on the surface of the man and seemed to miss the fact that he struggled with the nothingness and loss of meaning within.

It is interesting that even though a writer may have tremendous insight into his problems, the insight doesn't seem to help in his personal life. A similar paradigm seems to exist in the more recent Richard Yates who seemed to have tremendous understanding of male anitipathy toward women, but still never treated women very nicely himself.

It sounds like you favor writers like Wolfe whose maladjustments were on the timid, sensitive side. There are, however, a whole slough of writers (Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, etc.) who seemed to love acting in anti-social ways. I imagine there are numerous people who are not like me, and, if they found out there favorite author were a Jew, a homosexual, a bully, or a someone else to their distaste, would re-evaluate the writer's work. I am glad you still see the value of Hemingway's work.

I think your question would be very interesting to apply to someone like James Frey whose autobiographical memoir A Million Little Pieces turned out to be mostly fiction. As I understand it, Frey is a good writer, and it seems a shame that he had to be so inauthentic to sell his book. In Frey's case, the book turned out to be something different than readers were led to believe.

According to Hotchner's biography -- and Hotch spent some time with the man -- Hemingway and Fitzgerald were quite supportive of each other. The bio tells the story of how they met. They retired to a hotel room and talked all night. Hemingway said of it, "I realized after that that we would always have to protect him." I think his criticisms were probably not mean, but high-level artistic. However, Hemingway lost me with the suicide. I'm sympathetic. I see quite clearly that they intellectually bankrupted him and then hounded him to death. Nevertheless, the suicide will cost him his stature, as Phil Ochs' did him. You cannot get away with that, and that goes for every man jack and boy jill of you.

I recently found that one of my "idols" per say, was not the person I thought he was. After many days of waking up to a soiled image, I had a decision to make.

I went with the image I had prior to finding out he was not what I thought! I'm still second guessing myself. I weighed the good with the bad. The good won out.

We have very few idols this day and age. Everyone has dirty laundry somewhere along the line. Do I feel "clean", no. But, maybe I can grow from this.

I read some where one time the the whole thing about JK Rowling just being a struggling mom on Welfare, but came out on top blah blah blah story was false. She actually CHOSE to quit her job and go on Welfare to write.

I really didn't check into the credibility of the source, so I don't know if that's true or not. But even the thought of that being true kind of dinged my perception of JK Rowling.

However, it has not at all changed my love for her books.

My similar experience stems from starting to read English literature a lot more about 20 years ago, when I was in Singapore. Being German, I started with easy reading material but enjoyed the books of one Jeffrey Archer (Kane and Abel etc) and read most of his books. Recommended them to others.

Once I arrived in England I realised this was a crookster and liar who had committed fraud and perjured himself, spent 4 years in prison (an open prison he was allowed to go out and work in a theater). But due to his connections in high places he was only expelled from the Conservative party for 5 years, he still got his peerage and is now a Lord, sits in the upper house of the UK parliament and walks around as if he had the moral high-ground on people. When he speaks on TV he appears to be a rather unpleasant character.

This is a typical upper class story in the UK that those in high places never fall as low as other people. I threw all my books in the garbage. Did not want to donate them.