Ernest Hemingway As Newspaperman

Mary Antonacci
All Saints Academy, Breese

Few writers have achieved worldwide fame as did renowned journalist and author Ernest Hemingway. His books and newspaper articles have moved many readers. Though much is known about his life as an author, little is known about his career as a journalist.

Hemingway was a determined soul who thirsted for freedom of the mind and body. The fall of 1917 was significant for Hemingway. He graduated from Oak Park High School in Illinois and moved away from home to begin his journalism career in Kansas City, Missouri. Tyler Hemingway, Ernest's uncle, soon found him a job at the Kansas City Star. "And the Kansas City Star happened to be, in those years, the beau ideal of every newspaperman in America." Though his life's ambition was not to become a reporter, working at the Star pleased Hemingway. However, Ernest began longing for the action in Europe. By 1918 he left the Star to travel overseas. Against his father's wishes, he tried to join the U. S. Army but failed the medical examination. Later, he enlisted in the Ambulance Corps and left for Italy. On July 8, 1918, at the Italian front near Fassalta di Piave, he was wounded by a machine gun bullet, ending his career as an ambulance driver.

After being discharged from the Army, Hemingway returned home to take a job in Canada at the Toronto Star as a freelancer, staff writer, and foreign correspondent from 1920 to 1923. He was an amusing writer and, as Carlos Baker stated, "He was regarded as an expert in hunting, fishing, camping, and canoeing." His first year at the Star made him instantly famous. Hemingway was well known for his free advice, hunting and camping tips, and the preoccupation with detailing the preparation of food. His writing as well as his social life improved in the next three years. In 1921 he married Hadley Richardson and moved to Paris, France. There he became a correspondent for the Toronto Star covering the Greco-Turkish War. In 1923, his last year at the Star, his first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, was published in Paris by Robert McAlmon. In the same year, his first son, John, was born. Busy supporting a family, he became bored with the Star, and on January 1, 1924, resigned.

After his resignation, Hemingway's writing blossomed and grew into a major activity. In 1924 he wrote In Our Time, a collection of skits published by Three Mountains Press in Paris. In 1926 The Sun Also Rises was published, and A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929.

Eventually, Hemingway became a war correspondent in Spain, satisfying the people's hunger for information on the Spanish Civil War. However, it has been written that since Hemingway took poetic license in his reporting, it was not completely accurate. The following is an example of one of Hemingway's articles found in the Alliance:

As our Air-France plane from Toulouse flew down over the business section of Barcelona, the streets were empty. It looked as quiet as downtown New York on a Sunday morning.

The plane hit smoothly on a concrete runway and roared around to a stop before a little building, where, chilled through by our trip over the edge of snow-covered Pyrenees, we warmed our hands around bowls of coffee and milk while three pistol-armed, leather-jacketed guards joked outside.

In 1944 Hemingway signed a contract with Collier's, the same magazine his third wife, Martha, worked for. His duties included writing articles for the RAF. As a war correspondent, he became so engrossed with his writing that many of his articles were "wildly inaccurate," according to one critic.

More of his works, including Across the River and Into the Trees and The Old Man and the Sea, were published within the next twenty years. In 1960 Hemingway was hospitalized for high blood pressure, liver disease, diabetes, and depression. He committed suicide on July 2, 1961.

Ernest Hemingway's words will never be forgotten. He touched most the people who read his words and truly understood and appreciated them. In Hemingway's own words, "If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are truly a writer." His newspaper work is too often forgotten as part of his writing.-[From: Carlos Baker, Hemingway, the Writer as Artist, Dennis Brian, The True Gen; Anthony Burress, Ernest Hemingway and His World; Lloyd Wendt, Chicago Tribune, the Rise of a Great American Newspaper, "Hemingway," Toronto Star, Mar. 1, 1992.]

ILLINOIS HISTORY / APRIL 1997 49