Michigan

Searching for Hemingway

Feature

BECAUSE of his giant persona, Ernest Hemingway remains to us a mystery. Who was he? What was the impetus behind his writing– and his need to be a writer?

New Pop Lit’s editors recently journeyed to northern Michigan in search of answers. . . .

(Or, today we kick off our month-long Hemingway celebration! Read our write-up.)

Ernest Hemingway spent much time in Petoskey when he returned from his service in World War I. His story “Soldier’s Home” indicates that he felt out-of-sorts with his family and Oak Park neighborhood. So he escaped– fleeing to where the air was clean. In northern Michigan. He could refresh his thoughts. He could also write.

 

A Month of Hemingway!

Announcement

That’s what we have planned for the month of July anyway. Toward that end, New Pop Lit‘s editors drive up this weekend to Petoskey and environs in northern Michigan, looking for the ghost of Nick Adams. Searching for the elusive roots of “Papa” and his literary art.

Why Hemingway, you ask?

Because Ernest Hemingway was American literature’s greatest pop icon– the last writer whose persona was huge enough to overshadow other pop celebrities of his time– from movie actors to sports figures to pop singers. Sinatra, Gable, Dempsey, DiMaggio– Hemingway was a bigger cultural figure than any of them.

What do we have planned?

-Photos and descriptions of our Petoskey excursion.

-Answers to our second Big Lit Question, which concerns Ernest the Hem. See this.

-New work from two talented young writers, Samuel Stevens and Jess Mize, which if not completely Hemingway themed, is Hemingway inspired.

Our objective in presenting these two striking talents is to recreate some of the excitement that occurred when young Hemingway himself began writing, in his twenties, in the 1920’s– likely the most exciting American literary decade.

-Plus any and all other Hemingway ideas and stuff we can come up with and implement in coming weeks.

You will not want to miss ANY of it!