From the award-winning biography of Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway’s Boat: the poignant story of Arnold Samuelson, who looked to the great author for mentorship in writing and life.
He was a Midwesterner, a young journalist, haunted by inner demons, with a rambling gene, who headed down to Key West and was keen to establish his place in the pantheon of American writers. This was not Papa but Arnold Samuelson, a tormented and scarred young man who pocketed a newspaper photograph of his hero and role model and set off to find him in May of 1934. As luck would have it, Hemingway was home: he was in need of assistance on his new boat, Pilar, and happy to dole out writing advice between fishing and beers. This is the story of Hemingway the teacher, a rare glimpse of Hemingway sharing his craft—part education of a writer and part shadow story of a man who wanted to be Hemingway, and what that meant for him.
Paul Hendrickson is a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a winner of it once—for his 2003 Sons of Mississippi. His The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War was a 1996 finalist for the National Book Award. His 2011 Hemingway's Boat was a New York Times best seller and also a best seller in the UK. He has been the recipient of writing fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lyndhurst Foundation, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation. From 1998 to 2024, he was on the faculty of the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania, and for two decades before that he was a staff writer at The Washington Post.
View titles by Paul Hendrickson
From the award-winning biography of Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway’s Boat: the poignant story of Arnold Samuelson, who looked to the great author for mentorship in writing and life.
He was a Midwesterner, a young journalist, haunted by inner demons, with a rambling gene, who headed down to Key West and was keen to establish his place in the pantheon of American writers. This was not Papa but Arnold Samuelson, a tormented and scarred young man who pocketed a newspaper photograph of his hero and role model and set off to find him in May of 1934. As luck would have it, Hemingway was home: he was in need of assistance on his new boat, Pilar, and happy to dole out writing advice between fishing and beers. This is the story of Hemingway the teacher, a rare glimpse of Hemingway sharing his craft—part education of a writer and part shadow story of a man who wanted to be Hemingway, and what that meant for him.
Paul Hendrickson is a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a winner of it once—for his 2003 Sons of Mississippi. His The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War was a 1996 finalist for the National Book Award. His 2011 Hemingway's Boat was a New York Times best seller and also a best seller in the UK. He has been the recipient of writing fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lyndhurst Foundation, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation. From 1998 to 2024, he was on the faculty of the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania, and for two decades before that he was a staff writer at The Washington Post.
View titles by Paul Hendrickson
