Hemingway on War
Foreword
I am sure Ernest Hemingway would be pleased with the selection his grandson
Sen has made from his grandfather's writing on war. Any selection implies just
that: some things have been left out, but more than enough has been left in to
give the twenty-first-century reader the true gen on war as it was waged in the
last hundred years.
Hemingway was born in 1899 and had he lived as long as it is possible for a man
to live, he could have borne witness to the whole of the deadliest and most
war-torn century of which we have a historical record. Sadly, his health began
to fail at mid-century and drastically worsened when he was forced to choose by
the Cold War between his beloved Finca Vigía and his country. He died just
short of completing the second third of the twentieth century.
How much did his going to the wars affect his health and shorten his life? In
my opinion, a great deal. As a fortunate American, he chose to go to war rather
than, as an unlucky Spaniard or an even unluckier Pole, have it inevitably come
to him.
James Joyce, perhaps the greatest writer of the twentieth centu ... read full excerpt from Hemingway on War ebook
