¿Dónde está el Hemingway?*
Review of the Skyhorse hardcover edition (2018)

I rather enjoyed writer/photographer Robert Wheeler's previous Hemingway related book Hemingway's Paris: A Writer's City in Words and Images (2015). Although it was also a contemporary production, the use of black & white photography gave it more of a historical aura. Most of its scenes were without people, which could give the illusion that actual period photographs were being used. Its running text also had more of an authentic Hemingway feel to it, drawing on locations and people all the way from The Sun Also Rises (1926) through to A Moveable Feast (1964).

This more recent production is lacking in most of those aspects. The photographs are in colour and very few of them are specifically Hemingway related. The text is more of an imagined romantic fantasy which muses about what Hemingway might have felt or thought about certain views of the ocean, the city or various objects.

See photograph at https://i.pinimg.com/564x/fb/08/30/fb08307eacd75eb4ecbe8df6e4ff7e8d.jpg
A view of 'Pilar', Hemingway's beloved fishing boat, now preserved in Cuba. Image sourced from Pinterest

The most shocking aspect is how few actual Hemingway related photographs are in the book. There is an opening 1 photo homage to Hemingway's fishing boat first mate Gregorio Fuentes and a lovely tribute written by his grand-daughter América Fuentes. There are only 2 photographs of the "Pilar" fishing boat itself, a view of a fishing chair and a head-on-view of its prow. There is a photograph of a photograph of Hemingway himself. There is a photograph of a painting of 4th wife, Mary Welsh Hemingway. There are only 4 interior room photographs and 2 of tabletop knickknacks & souvenirs from the Finca Vigia (Spanish: Lookout Farm), the Hemingway residence outside of Havana. And that's it! Out of 112 photographs in total.

The rest are random ocean and street views, non-Hemingway related boats and buildings, artwork and murals, flowers and posters, a bottle of rum and of a Papa Doble (Hemingway's version of a daiquiri cocktail, without sugar and double the rum). OK, maybe you can say that last one is Hemingway related, but a photograph of a cocktail glass is not exactly something very evocative.

I may have missed out on something as almost none of the photographs are actually identified as to location. The reader's guesswork and imagination is required to make something out of it. Anyway, this was a disappointment, with no-related photographs of 3rd wife Martha Gellhorn, who found the Finca Vigia for Hemingway and made its first renovations, no views of the Hotel Ambos Mundos where Hemingway first lived in Cuba, no mention of the Hooligan Navy (Hemingway's anti-Nazi submarine patrols in Cuban waters during WW2) or of the Crook Factory (Hemingway's perhaps somewhat imagined network of anti-Nazi spies in Cuba, also during WW2), no views of his favourite El Floridita Bar and the Hemingway statue enshrined there, no exterior views of the Finca Vigia main building & its guest house & its tower, no overall full length views of the 'Pilar' boat, etc.

Trivia
* Spanish for "Where is the Hemingway?" ( )