The Chris Hedges Report: Living in the Shadow of Ernest Hemingway, with Mark Kurlansky

Ernest Hemingway house in key west

Image by karlnorling via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Jul 1, 2022

Chris Hedges speaks with journalist and author Mark Kurlansky about living in the shadow of Ernest Hemingway and his new book The Importance of Not Being Ernest.

The writer Mark Kurlansky, by a series of coincidences, spent his life as a journalist and author in the shadow of Ernest Hemingway, starting with his presence in Idaho on the day Hemingway died. Kurlansky would reside and work during his career in Paris, the Basque region of Spain, Cuba, and Ketchum, Idaho—all places where Hemingway lived, and where his myth remains firmly implanted and celebrated.

Kurlansky struggled to free himself from the haunting presence of Hemingway, whose life—starting with the tales he told of being an ambulance driver in Italy in World War I—was a confusing blur of fact, exaggeration, hyperbole, and lies. There is much in Hemingway’s life and writing to admire, and much to reject.

Mark Kurlansky joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his new book The Importance of Not Being Ernest: My Life with the Uninvited Hemingway.

Transcript