“Hemingway’s literary apprenticeship was served in journalism, and his later work in the field earned him money and sent him to places where he wished to be. Yet his enthusiasm, his compassion, and his imagination made such writing far more than just timely stuff. Some readers will no doubt view the material as rounding out the Hemingway record; others, it is to be hoped, will regard it simply as among the best newspaper and magazine reporting available in our troubled times.
—William White, By-Line: Ernest Hemingway (February 16, 1967)”
This is a collection of Ernest Hemingway nonfiction pieces, specifically for journalistic outlets that cover a wide range of topics. The opening section calls Hemingway one of the best journalistic writers of the 20th century, and maybe with enough qualifications you can make a claim like that and have it make sense. Instead, I think Hemingway is one of the best writers of the 20th century, and his nonfiction writing is often very good, but I can’t tell you at all whether or not he’s any good at journalism, as these are mostly musings and travel sketches, with some light opinion pieces in as well. He’s similar enough to Orwell in style for that, though this does not include criticism pieces, so it’s hard to make that exact comparison. And of course Hemingway and Orwell differ quite a bit in style, so that comparison is not there either. Instead, what really emerges here is how much Hemingway sets the tone or in the same vibe as tone-setting writing from the 50s, 60s, and 70s with Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, and Norman Mailer, all of whom write very differently from Hemingway, but are taking on most of the same subjects.
