Key West Hemingway: A Reassessment

"No other work has focused so sharply and revealed so clearly the vitality of Hemingway's time in Key West. Key West Hemingway shows that even as his Papa persona grew during the 1930s, Hemingway continued to generate a significant body of nuanced and complex (if also misunderstood) experimental prose. With keen scrutiny and brilliance, these fresh and readable essays rediscover and give us Hemingway's multifaceted American literary voices."--Linda Patterson Miller, editor of Letters from the Lost Generation

 "This impressive and cohesive collection of essays on Hemingway's Key West works and days puts into proper critical and biographical perspective one of the least understood yet most productive periods in his life. Husband, lover, father, son, fisherman, political activist, defender of the vets, essayist, and crafter of fiction--it's all here, close-up and wide-angle, the American Hemingway of 1928-1940, in all his facets, the rough diamond in the Florida sun."--Allen Josephs, author of Ritual and Sacrifice in the Corrida

 Conventional wisdom holds that Hemingway's Key West years were among his least productive, and many are dismissive of the works he produced during that time. In this collection, several leading Hemingway scholars focus on his overlooked short stories and essays, especially those written for Esquire from 1933 to 1936. They demonstrate how the island inspired some of his most vivid work and discuss how the "Hemingway industry" continues to endure.

Kirk Curnutt, professor and chair of English at Troy University, is the author of A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Critical Response to Gertrude Stein. Gail D. Sinclair is scholar in residence and executive director of the Winter Park Institute at Rollins College.