True at First Light
Encyclopedia
True at First Light is a book by American novelist Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
about his 1953–54 East African safari
Safari
A safari is an overland journey, usually a trip by tourists to Africa. Traditionally, the term is used for a big-game hunt, but today the term often refers to a trip taken not for the purposes of hunting, but to observe and photograph animals and other wildlife.-Etymology:Entering the English...
with his fourth wife Mary, released posthumously in his centennial year in 1999. The book received mostly negative or lukewarm reviews from the popular press and sparked a literary controversy regarding how, and whether, an author's work should be reworked and published after his death. Unlike critics of the popular press, Hemingway scholars generally consider True at First Light to be complex and a worthy addition in his canon
Canon (fiction)
In the context of a work of fiction, the term canon denotes the material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe's fan base. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction, which are not considered canonical...
of later fiction.
In January 1954, Hemingway and Mary were in two successive plane crashes in the African bush in a two-day period. He was reported dead by the international press, arriving in Entebbe
Entebbe
Entebbe is a major town in Central Uganda. Located on a Lake Victoria peninsula, the town was at one time, the seat of government for the Protectorate of Uganda, prior to Independence in 1962...
to face questions from reporters. The severity of his injuries were not completely diagnosed until months later when he returned to Europe. Hemingway spent much of the next two years in Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
, recuperating and writing the manuscript of what he called the Africa book, which remained unfinished at the time of his suicide in July 1961. In the 1970s, Mary donated his manuscripts to the John F. Kennedy Library
John F. Kennedy Library
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is the presidential library and museum of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. It is located on Columbia Point in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, next to the Boston campus of the University of...
, including the Africa book. The manuscript was released to Hemingway's son Patrick
Patrick Hemingway
Patrick Hemingway is Ernest Hemingway's second son, and the first born to Hemingway's second wife Pauline Pfeiffer. During his childhood he travelled frequently with his parents, and then attended Harvard University, graduated in 1950, and shortly thereafter moved to East Africa where he lived for...
in the mid-1990s. Patrick edited the work to half its original length to strengthen the underlying storyline and emphasize the fictional aspects. The result is a blend of memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
and fiction.
In the book, Hemingway explores conflict within a marriage, the conflict between the European and native cultures in Africa, and the fear a writer feels when his work becomes impossible. The book includes descriptions of his earlier friendships with other writers and digressive ruminations on the nature of writing.
Background
Hemingway went on safariSafari
A safari is an overland journey, usually a trip by tourists to Africa. Traditionally, the term is used for a big-game hunt, but today the term often refers to a trip taken not for the purposes of hunting, but to observe and photograph animals and other wildlife.-Etymology:Entering the English...
to Africa in 1933 with his second wife Pauline
Pauline Pfeiffer
Pauline Marie Pfeiffer was the second wife of the writer Ernest Hemingway. She was born in Parkersburg, Iowa, on July 22, 1895, moving to St. Louis in 1901 where she went to school at Visitation Academy of St. Louis...
and always intended to return. Two decades later in 1953, having finished writing The Old Man and the Sea
The Old Man and the Sea
The Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging fisherman who...
, he planned a trip to Africa to visit his son Patrick
Patrick Hemingway
Patrick Hemingway is Ernest Hemingway's second son, and the first born to Hemingway's second wife Pauline Pfeiffer. During his childhood he travelled frequently with his parents, and then attended Harvard University, graduated in 1950, and shortly thereafter moved to East Africa where he lived for...
who lived in Tanganyika
Tanganyika
Tanganyika , later formally the Republic of Tanganyika, was a sovereign state in East Africa from 1961 to 1964. It was situated between the Indian Ocean and the African Great Lakes of Lake Victoria, Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika...
. When Look
Look (American magazine)
Look was a bi-weekly, general-interest magazine published in Des Moines, Iowa from 1937 to 1971, with more of an emphasis on photographs than articles...
magazine offered to send him to Africa, paying $15,000 for expenses, $10,000 for rights to a 3500 word piece about the trip, and Earl Theisen as official photographer to go with him, he quickly accepted. Hemingway and Mary left Cuba in June, traveling first to Europe to make arrangements and leaving from Venice to Tanganyika a few months later. They arrived in August, and Hemingway was thrilled to be deputized as an honorary ranger, writing in a letter, "due to emergency [Mau Mau] rebellion been acting game ranger". Philip Percival
Philip Percival
Philip Hope Percival was a renowned white hunter and early safari guide in colonial Kenya. During his career he guided Teddy Roosevelt, Baron Rothschild, and Ernest Hemingway on African hunts. In fact, Hemingway modeled the fictional hunter Robert Wilson, in his story "“The Short Happy Life of...
, Hemingway's safari guide in 1933, joined the couple for the four-month expedition; they traveled from the banks of the Salengai
Salengai
Salengai is a settlement in Kenya's Rift Valley Province....
, where Earl Theisen photographed Hemingway with a herd of elephants, to the Kimana Swamp, the Rift Valley and then on to visit Patrick in central Tanganyika. After visiting Patrick at his farm, they settled for two months on the north slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. During this period Percival left their camp to return to his farm, leaving Hemingway as game warden
Game warden
A game warden is an employee who has the role of protecting wildlife. Game wardens may also be referred to as conservation officers or wildlife officers...
with local scouts reporting to him. Hemingway was proud to be a game warden and believed a book would come of the experience.
On January 21 Hemingway chartered a sightseeing flight of the Congo Basin
Congo Basin
The Congo Basin is the sedimentary basin that is the drainage of the Congo River of west equatorial Africa. The basin begins in the highlands of the East African Rift system with input from the Chambeshi River, the Uele and Ubangi Rivers in the upper reaches and the Lualaba River draining wetlands...
as a late Christmas present to Mary; two days later, on their way to photograph Murchison Falls
Murchison Falls
Murchison Falls, also known as Kabarega Falls, is a waterfall on the Nile. It breaks the Victoria Nile, which flows across northern Uganda from Lake Victoria to Lake Kyoga and then to the north end of Lake Albert in the western branch of the East African Rift....
from the air, the plane hit an abandoned utility pole and crashed, with the passengers sustaining minor injuries. That night they camped in the bush waiting for a response to their distress call. The crash site was seen by a passing airliner that reported no survivors and the news of Hemingway's death was telegraphed around the world. The next day they were found and picked up by a bush pilot
Bush flying
Bush flying is a term for aircraft operations carried out in remote, inhospitable regions of the world. Bush flying involves operations in rough terrain where there are often no prepared landing strips or runways, frequently necessitating that bush planes be equipped with abnormally large tires,...
, but his de Havilland
De Havilland
The de Havilland Aircraft Company was a British aviation manufacturer founded in 1920 when Airco, of which Geoffrey de Havilland had been chief designer, was sold to BSA by the owner George Holt Thomas. De Havilland then set up a company under his name in September of that year at Stag Lane...
caught fire during take-off, crashed and exploded, which left Hemingway with a concussion, scalp wound, double-vision, intermittent hearing in his left ear, a crushed vertebra, ruptured liver, spleen and kidney, and burns. The explosion burned their passports, "thirty rolls of exposed film, three pairs of Ernest's bifocals, all of their money, and their $15,000 letter of credit." The group traveled to Entebbe
Entebbe
Entebbe is a major town in Central Uganda. Located on a Lake Victoria peninsula, the town was at one time, the seat of government for the Protectorate of Uganda, prior to Independence in 1962...
by road where journalists from around the world had gathered to report his death. On January 26 Hemingway briefed and joked with the reporters, and spent the next few weeks in Nairobi
Nairobi
Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city and its surrounding area also forms the Nairobi County. The name "Nairobi" comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to "the place of cool waters". However, it is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun" and is...
recuperating and reading his obituaries. During his recuperation Hemingway immediately prepared the piece for Look. The magazine paid him an additional $20,000 for an exclusive about the plane crashes. Biographer Michael Reynolds writes that the piece, "ran for twenty magazine pages spread out over two issues", with the first issue bearing a publication date of 26 January.
In spite of his injuries, Hemingway joined Patrick and his wife on a planned fishing trip in February, but he was irascible and difficult to get along with. When a bushfire broke out, Hemingway fell into the fire while helping extinguish the flames, burning himself on his legs, front torso, lips, left hand and right forearm. Months later in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, Hemingway was diagnosed with two cracked discs
Intervertebral disc
Intervertebral discs lie between adjacent vertebrae in the spine. Each disc forms a cartilaginous joint to allow slight movement of the vertebrae, and acts as a ligament to hold the vertebrae together.-Structure:...
, a kidney and liver rupture, a dislocated shoulder
Dislocated shoulder
A dislocated shoulder occurs when the humerus separates from the scapula at the glenohumeral joint. The shoulder joint has the greatest range of motion of any joint in the body and as a result is particularly susceptible to dislocation and subluxation. Approximately half of major joint...
and a broken skull.
As soon as Hemingway returned to Finca Vigía
Finca Vigía
Finca Vigía was the home of Ernest Hemingway in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba, , and now houses a museum.-History of the property :...
in Cuba, he began work on a book about the safari, wanting to write while it was still vivid in his memory. He quickly wrote 10,000 words, despite his pain (eventually the manuscript grew to about 800 pages). In September 1954, Hemingway wrote in a letter, "At present I work at about 1/2 the capacity I should but everything is better all the time." However, three months later in late December he wrote in a letter: "This has been sort of a rough year .... We call this 'black-ass' and one should never have it. But I get tired of pain sometimes, even if that is an ignoble feeling."
Almost a year later in October 1955, he declared: "Am passed 650 pages in the book. Am trying to write now like a good sorcer's (sic) apprentice .... always start to write as an apprentice. By the end of the book you are a master but if you commence as master in writing anyway, you end as a bloody bore." Two months later, Hemingway was bedridden with kidney disease. By January 1956, he acknowledged, in a letter written on the second anniversary of the accidents, he was having trouble remembering the trip. In 1956, Hemingway agreed to work on the filming of The Old Man and the Sea
The Old Man and the Sea (1958 film)
The Old Man and the Sea is a 1958 film starring Spencer Tracy, in a portrayal for which he was nominated for a best actor Oscar. The screenplay was adapted by Peter Viertel from the novella of the same name by Ernest Hemingway, and the film was directed by John Sturges...
and abandoned work on the Africa book. He wrote to his editor, "I found it impossible to resume writing on the Africa book." Hemingway put the manuscript in a safe-deposit box in Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
, although after the 1959 Cuban revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
he feared the manuscript lost.
Synopsis
The book is set in mid-20th century Kenya ColonyKenya Colony
The Colony and Protectorate of Kenya was part of the British Empire in Africa. It was established when the former East Africa Protectorate was transformed into a British crown colony in 1920...
during the Mau-Mau
Mau Mau Uprising
The Mau Mau Uprising was a military conflict that took place in Kenya between 1952 and 1960...
rebellion. In his introduction to True at First Light, Patrick Heminway describes the Kikuyu and Kamba tribes at the time of the Mau-Mau rebellion. He explains that if the Kamba had joined the rebellion, Ernest and Mary Hemingway "would have then stood a good chance of being hacked to death in their beds as they slept by the very servants they so trusted and thought they understood." The book takes place in December while the narrator
Narrator
A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
Ernest and his wife Mary are in a safari camp in the Kenyan highlands on the flank of Mt. Kilimanjaro, where they find themselves temporarily at risk when a group of Mau-Mau rebels escape from jail.
The blend of travel memoir
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
and fiction opens with the white hunter Philip Percival leaving the safari group to visit his farm, handing control of the camp to Ernest who is worried about being attacked and robbed, because there are guns, alcohol, and food in the camp. Deputized as an assistant game warden, he makes daily rounds in the game reserve
Game reserve
A game reserve is an area of land set aside for maintenance of wildlife for tourism or hunting purposes. Many game reserves are located in Africa. Most are open to the public, and tourists commonly take sightseeing safaris or hunt wild game....
, and maintains communication with the local tribes. He is accompanied by two African game scouts, Chungo and Arap Meina and, for a period, the district game warden G.C (Gin Crazed). Other camp members include Keiti, who runs the camp, the safari cook Mbebia, and two stewards, Nguili and Msembi.
For six months Mary has been tracking a large black-maned lion, determined to finish the hunt by Christmas. In subsequent chapters, Ernest worries that Mary is unable to kill the lion for various reasons: she is too short to see the prey in the tall grass; she misses her shots with other game; and he thinks she is too soft-hearted to kill the animal. During this period, Ernest becomes entranced with Debba, a woman from a local village, whom the others jokingly refer to as his second wife. From her and the villagers he wants to learn tribal practices and customs.
When Mary's lion is finally killed at the book's halfway mark, the local shamba (village) gathers for a ngoma (dance). Because she has dysentery
Dysentery
Dysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the faeces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.There are differences between dysentery and normal bloody diarrhoea...
Mary leaves for Nairobi to see a doctor; while she is gone Ernest kills a jaguar
Jaguar
The jaguar is a big cat, a feline in the Panthera genus, and is the only Panthera species found in the Americas. The jaguar is the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion, and the largest in the Western Hemisphere. The jaguar's present range extends from Southern United States and Mexico...
, after which the men have a protracted ngoma. When Mary returns from Nairobi, she asks Ernest for an airborne sightseeing tour of the Congo Basin as a Christmas present.
Ernest describes his close relationships with the local men; indulges in memories of previous relationships with writers such as George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
, and D.H. Lawrence; and satirizes the role of organized religion. Subjects as diverse as the smell of the pine woods in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, the nature of Parisian café
Parisian café
Parisian cafés serve as a center of social and culinary life in Paris. They have been around for centuries in one form or another, the oldest one still in operation is "Café Procope" at 13 Rue Ancienne Comédie, since 1686....
s , and the quality of Simenon
Georges Simenon
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known for the creation of the fictional detective Maigret.-Early life and education:...
's writing are treated with stream of consciousness digressions.
The back of the book includes a section titled "Cast of Characters", a Swahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
glossary
Glossary
A glossary, also known as an idioticon, vocabulary, or clavis, is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms...
, and the editor's acknowledgments.
Publication history
The ownership of Hemingway's manuscripts is complicated. Two books have been published from the African book manuscript: True at First Light, edited by Patrick Hemingway, and Under KilimanjaroUnder Kilimanjaro
Under Kilimanjaro is a non-fiction novel by Ernest Hemingway , edited and published posthumously by Robert W. Lewis and Robert E. Fleming. It is based upon journals that he wrote while he was on his last safari. It is a longer and re-edited version of True at First Light.True at First Light was...
, edited by scholars Robert Lewis and Robert Fleming
Robert E. Fleming
Robert Edward Fleming was born in 1936. He is an American literary scholar known for his work involving Ernest Hemingway. He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico. In 2005 he co-edited Robert Edward Fleming was born in 1936. He is an American literary scholar known...
. In 1965 Mary Hemingway established the Hemingway Foundation, and in the 1970s she donated her husband's papers to the John F. Kennedy Library
John F. Kennedy Library
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is the presidential library and museum of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. It is located on Columbia Point in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, next to the Boston campus of the University of...
. A group of Hemingway scholars met in 1980 to assess the donated papers when they formed the Hemingway Society, "committed to supporting and fostering Hemingway scholarship". After Mary Hemingway's 1986 death, Hemingway's sons John
John Hemingway
John Patrick Hemingway is an American author, whose memoir Strange Tribe: A Family Memoir examines the similarities and the complex relationship between his father Dr...
and Patrick asked the Hemingway Society to take on the duties of the Hemingway Foundation; in 1997 the Hemingway Estate and the Hemingway Society/Foundation agreed to a two-part publishing plan for the African book. An abridged trade
Paperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...
publication of True at First Light was to be published in 1999, to be edited by Patrick Hemingway; the Hemingway Foundation would then oversee the reworking of the entire text, to be published as Under Kilimanjaro. Of Under Kilimanjaro, the editors claim “this book deserves as complete and faithful a publication as possible without editorial distortion, speculation, or textually unsupported attempts at improvement”.
In the early 1970s, portions of the manuscript had been serialized in Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
and anthologized
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
. Mary Hemingway approved the segments published by Sports Illustrated: segments described by Patrick Hemingway as a "straight account of a shooting safari". In a 1999 talk presented at the annual Oak Park Hemingway Society dinner, Patrick Hemingway admitted ownership of Ernest Hemingway's manuscripts had "a rather tortuous history". Access to the Africa manuscript—and to other Hemingway material—required a lawsuit and an eventual agreement with the Hemingway Society.
Scribner's
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...
requested a book of fewer than 100,000 words. Patrick Hemingway worked for two years with the 200,000-word manuscript—initially converting to an electronic format, and then editing out superfluous material. He strengthened the storyline, and eliminated long descriptive passages with disparaging remarks about family members and living persons. He explains the manuscript was a draft lacking "ordinary housekeeping chores" such as character names. The cuts made, he said, maintained the integrity of the story and "the reader is not deprived of the essential quality of the book".
True at First Light was published on July 7, 1999 with a print run of 200,000. For the publicity campaign, Patrick Hemingway appeared on the Today Show on the day of publication. The book became the main selection for the Book of the Month Club
Book of the Month Club
The Book of the Month Club is a United States mail-order book sales club that offers a new book each month to customers.The Book of the Month Club is part of a larger company that runs many book clubs in the United States and Canada. It was formerly the flagship club of Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc...
(BOMC), was serialized in the New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, and rights were sold for translations to Danish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish, and Swedish. A sound recording was released in 2007.
Genre
In The New York Times James Woods described True at First Light as a travel journalTravel journal
A travel journal, also called road journal or travelogue, is a record made by a voyager. Generally in diary form, a travel journal contains descriptions of the traveler's experiences, is normally written during the course of the journey, intended on updating friends or family on the journey...
that became a "fanciful memoir" and then a novel of sorts. Patrick Hemingway believed adamantly the manuscript was more than a journal. He emphasized the storyline because, as he explains, "the essential quality of the book is an action with a love interest". He tightened the hunting scenes, and to honor his father's statement to the reader that "where I go, you go" he emphasized the mid-20th century Africa scenes and "the real relation between people ... on that continent". Although he fictionalized the storyline, Patrick Hemingway said of the characters, "I knew every single one ... very well indeed". Hemingway scholar Robert Fleming (who reworked the manuscript as Under Kilimanjaro) considers Patrick Hemingway's editing essentially to be correct because he believes the work shows evidence of an author unable to "turn off the mechanism that produces fiction". The marital conflict is where Fleming believes the book took "a metafictional turn". The published book is marketed as fiction.
| In Africa a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon and you have no more respect for it than for the lovely, perfect weed-fringed lake you see across the sun-baked plain. You have walked across that plain in the morning and you know that no such lake is there. But now it is there, absolutely true, beautiful and believable. |
| —Ernest Hemingway's epigraph Epigraph (literature) In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional... for True at First Light |
Fleming considers True at First Light similar to Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa
Green Hills of Africa
Green Hills of Africa is a 1935 work of nonfiction written by Ernest Hemingway . Hemingway's second work of nonfiction, Green Hills of Africa is an account of a month on safari he and his wife, Pauline Marie Pfeiffer, took in East Africa during December 1933...
and A Moveable Feast
A Moveable Feast
A Moveable Feast is a set of memoirs by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years in Paris as part of the American expatriate circle of writers in the 1920s. The book describes Hemingway's apprenticeship as a young writer in Europe during the 1920s with his first wife, Hadley...
—a book that presents a primary topic as a backdrop interspersed with internal dialogue. Unlike the other two books, True at First Light is without a preface "indicating the intentions of the author or dictating how he intended to have the book read". Fleming thinks Hemingway regarded Green Hills of Africa as experimental and A Moveable Feast as fiction. Rose Marie Burwell, author of Hemingway: The Postwar Years and the Posthumous Novels, believes Hemingway enjoyed writing the "strange combination of memoir and fiction". She thinks in the fictional aspects of True at First Light he is free to imagine a second wife and to jettison his Protestant background.
Themes
Hemingway is "most definitely on vacation" in True at First Light writes Fleming; and Burwell sees an author who is willingly and happily enjoying a vacation, behaving childishly, blissfully unaware of the effect his behavior has on the members of camp. The impression is of a man seeking to delve into cultural conflicts in Africa, which takes a fictional turn in the Debba storyline. Mary is characterized as a nag whereas the character of the writer is presented as "placid, mature, and loving", immersing himself in native culture.Burwell and Fleming says the book's subtext is about aging, as symbolized by the writer's attraction to the younger fertile woman, and Hemingway used fertility imagery to symbolize "the aging writer's anxiety about his ability to write". The images of the old elephant symbolize the aging and unproductive writer, and Burwell approves Patrick Hemingway's decision to retain those pieces of the manuscript. Hemingway scholar Hilary Justice writes the work shows an emphasis on "the writer not writing", which for Hemingway would have been a fate worse than aging. Thus, she says, True at First Light invokes a paradox with "an aging writer for whom writing is becoming increasingly difficult in the moment of writing about the not-writing author". Writing, for Hemingway, had always been difficult. He revised his work endlessly and stuck to the practice of writing "one true sentence" and stopping each writing session when he still had more to write. Tom Jenks, editor of an earlier posthumously published book The Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is the second posthumously released novel of Ernest Hemingway, published in 1986. Begun in 1946, Hemingway worked on the manuscript for the next 15 years, during which time he also wrote The Old Man and the Sea, The Dangerous Summer, A Moveable Feast, and Islands in the...
, says Hemingway shows the worst of his writing in True at First Light: presenting himself as a "self-pitying, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing" persona in a book that is no more than a mass of fragmentary material. Jenks thinks Hemingway is simply aimlessly writing and the plot lacks the tension notable in his earliest works such as The Sun Also Rises
The Sun Also Rises
The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel, it received...
. However, he thinks Hemingway had good material to work with and some skeletal thematic structures show promise.
True at First Light shows the nature of mid-20th century conflict in Africa. Colonialism
Scramble for Africa
The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa or Partition of Africa was a process of invasion, occupation, colonization and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between 1881 and World War I in 1914...
and imperialism
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
pressured African tribes and wildlife. Hemingway shows an awareness of the political future and turmoil in Africa according to Patrick Heminway who, although he lived in Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
(formerly Tanganyika) for decades, was surprised at the degree of perception apparent in his father's mid-century writing about Africa. Hemingway scholar Anders Hallengren notes the thematic similarities in Hemingway's posthumous fiction, particularly in the final books. The genesis of True at First Light was an African insurrection, also symbolically depicted in The Garden of Eden: "The conviction and purposefulness of the Maji-Maji in The Garden of Eden, corresponds to the Kenyan Mau-Mau context of the novel True at First Light ". Writing for The Hemingway Review, Robert Gadjusek says the clash of cultures is "massively active" in the book with Hemingway exploring tribal practices; Christianity and Islam are juxtaposed against native religions; and the Mary/Debba triangle is symbolic of the white "Memsahib and the native girl".
Similar to his first African book, Green Hills of Africa, Hemingway embeds in True at First Light digressions and ruminations about the nature of writing, with particular attention to James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
and D.H. Lawrence. Patrick Hemingway explains his father was interested in D.H. Lawrence's belief that each region of the world "should have its own religion"—apparent when the male character invents his own religion. Mary's intent to decorate a tree for Christmas mystified the native camp members, and Hemingway seemed to realize that Africa was a place without an influential and established religion—a place where religion could be redefined.
Reception
Although it was listed on The New York Times Best Seller list, the book received poor reviews from the popular press with better reviews from Hemingway scholars. In a pre-publication review for The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Ralph Blumenthal said that True at First Light was not as good as Hemingway's earlier autobiographical fiction, and he questioned whether Hemingway would have wanted his "reputation and last printed words entrusted solely to any editor, even a son". Blumenthal wondered about the autobiographical aspects of the work: the relationship between Hemingway and Debba; the background of the Look magazine photoshoot; the safari itself; and the subsequent plane accidents. In the 1999 The New York Times review, James Wood claimed Hemingway knew True at First Light was not a novel though the editors billed it as one. He believes Hemingway's later work became a parody of the earlier work. True at First Light represents the worst of Hemingway's work according to a review in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
.
Christopher Ondaatje
Christopher Ondaatje
Sir Philip Christopher Ondaatje, OC, CBE is a Sri Lankan-Canadian businessman, philanthropist, adventurer, writer and Olympian. He lives in the United Kingdom.-Overview:...
writes in The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
that the existence of a Hemingway-industry tends to overshadow his posthumous work. He considers Hemingway's African stories to be among his best although the posthumous work about Africa has been disregarded or overlooked. In her piece for Nation
Nation
A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up...
, Brenda Wineapple describes the book as "poignant but not particularly good". However, she points out that it "reminds us of Hemingway's writing at its most touching, acute and beautiful best". The review in Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
is much the same saying the "old Hemingway magic flashes sporadically, like lightning, but not often enough".
Hemingway scholars think the work is more complicated and important than a cursory read suggests. With the publication of True at First Light critics saw a more humane and empathetic Hemingway, and began to shift their emphasis away from the image of the "white man with a gun." Robert Fleming considers True at First Light to be part of the Hemingway canon declaring, "This is a more complicated book than it appears to be, and Hemingway deserves far more credit for it than the reviewers of the popular press have given it. Serious critics dealing with the late works would be advised not to ignore it". Gadjusek praises the prose style, which he says is a new direction in Hemingway's writing; he also believes, despite the editing, the book is cohesive and whole with well-ordered themes. Burwell considers the edits to the manuscript generally well-done, though she laments losses that she thinks contribute to some of the subtexts in the book. Biographer Kenneth Lynn criticized Hemingway's sons for editing the manuscript but of Hemingway he says the "memorist is being totally, indeed helplessly honest," and Gray concedes the publication of the book "underscores Hemingway's courage as a writer". Despite what he considers poor workmanship in the book, Wood considers Hemingway even at his worst a compelling writer and he says the literary estate should be left alone to save the literary influence.
Publication controversy
Many reviewers and writers were critical of the manner in which Patrick Hemingway edited the work. Paul Gray titled his review of the book "Where's Papa?", answering with the opening sentence, "He's hard to find in his fifth posthumous work", pointing directly to Patrick Hemingway's editing of the manuscript. Lynn thinks Hemingway would have been "outraged by his sons' refusal to honor his judgment that the manuscript was unworthy of publication" and was outraged that "Patrick Hemingway declares that his two brothers, Jack and Gregory, share his belief that 'this job was worth doing' ". Burwell also wonders whether Hemingway wanted the Africa book published, pointing to his statement, "I think maybe it would be better to wait until I'm dead to publish it", although she concedes that works by ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
, Shakespear
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, and Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
were unfinished and published posthumously. During the final two decades of his life, Hemingway had published two novels but since his death, works continue to be published. Writing in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
in 1998, Joan Didion
Joan Didion
Joan Didion is an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation...
was extremely critical of the Hemingway family and estate for commercializing and profiting from his reputation and writing rather than protecting his legacy. "The publication of unfinished work is a denial of the idea that the role of the writer in his or her work is to make it", she wrote, adding that True at First Light should not have been "molded" and published.
True at First Light was published in Hemingway's centennial year, to a marketing campaign that attracted criticism. Hemingway's sons licensed the family name and released that year items such as Thomasville
Thomasville Furniture Industries
Thomasville Furniture Industries entered the first decade of the 20th century as Thomasville Chair Company in a railroad-side community in the triad area of North Carolina, near High Point, the furniture capital. Founded in 1904, it was just one of many chair manufacturers scattered throughout...
furniture with labels showing the Hemingway lifestyle—"the Pamplona Sofa and the Kilimanjaro Bed", and the Hemingway Ltd. brand which Lynn describes as "tastefully chosen fishing rods, safari clothes, and (surely the ultimate triumph of greed over taste) shotguns".
External links
- Hemingway Archives, John F. Kennedy LibraryJohn F. Kennedy LibraryThe John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is the presidential library and museum of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. It is located on Columbia Point in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, next to the Boston campus of the University of...