Looking for Hemingway

Spain, the Bullfights, and a Final Rite of Passage

Tony Castro

Named by Boston’s NPR News Station as one of the Best Books of 2016

In 1959, the most famous literary figure of his time set out in the twilight of his life to recapture his early success in the 1920s. The experience tested all the credos of bravery and grace under pressure he had lived by.

Just months before turning sixty, Ernest Hemingway headed for Spain to write a new epilogue for his bullfighting classic Death in the Afternoon, as well as an article for Life magazine. His hosts were Bill and Anne Davis, wealthy Americans in pursuit of the avant-garde life of the 1920s’ post-war expatriates, who lavishly entertained celebrities and the literati, from Noel Coward to Laurence Olivier, at their historic villa, La Consula. This hacienda would become Hemingway’s home during the most pivotal months of the Nobel laureate’s denouement, and Bill Davis—fellow adventurer who had survived the Depression running arms during the Spanish Civil War—would become his friend and bullfight-traveling companion.

Looking for Hemingway explores that incredible friendship and offers a rare intimate look into the final period of the legendary author’s life, giving comprehension not only of a writer’s despair but of suicide as a not unreasonable conclusion to a blasted existence.

Globe Pequot / Lyons Press

Pages: 272 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-4930-1822-2 • eBook • November 2016 • $18.00 • (£13.99)

Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Literary Figures, History / United States / 20th Century

Looking for Hemingway

Spain, the Bullfights, and a Final Rite of Passage

eBook

Summary

Named by Boston’s NPR News Station as one of the Best Books of 2016

In 1959, the most famous literary figure of his time set out in the twilight of his life to recapture his early success in the 1920s. The experience tested all the credos of bravery and grace under pressure he had lived by.

Just months before turning sixty, Ernest Hemingway headed for Spain to write a new epilogue for his bullfighting classic Death in the Afternoon, as well as an article for Life magazine. His hosts were Bill and Anne Davis, wealthy Americans in pursuit of the avant-garde life of the 1920s’ post-war expatriates, who lavishly entertained celebrities and the literati, from Noel Coward to Laurence Olivier, at their historic villa, La Consula. This hacienda would become Hemingway’s home during the most pivotal months of the Nobel laureate’s denouement, and Bill Davis—fellow adventurer who had survived the Depression running arms during the Spanish Civil War—would become his friend and bullfight-traveling companion.

Looking for Hemingway explores that incredible friendship and offers a rare intimate look into the final period of the legendary author’s life, giving comprehension not only of a writer’s despair but of suicide as a not unreasonable conclusion to a blasted existence.

Details

Globe Pequot / Lyons Press

Pages: 272 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-4930-1822-2 • eBook • November 2016 • $18.00 • (£13.99)

Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Literary Figures, History / United States / 20th Century

Author

Tony Castro is a historian, Hemingway scholar, journalist, and author of multiple books including the best-selling Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son, hailed by The New York Times as the definitive biography about the baseball Hall of Fame legend. A former national correspondent for The Washington Post, Castro has also written for the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Texas Observer, and Sports Illustrated. He was given a special tour of La Finca Vigía, Hemingway’s home in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba, arranged for him by Fidel Castro in 1967, was among the first to view the collection of Hemingway papers opened to researchers by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, and has long known screenwriter Teo Davis, the son of Bill and Anne Davis, the American expatriates who hosted Hemingway’s last visits to Spain. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

I had no idea there was so much still to be written about Hemingway. Tony Castro has found much gold left behind by the authors and scholars who came before him. At the start of a single chapter, I found anecdotes about Lauren Bacall, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hollywood that I’d never heard before – and I am an avid collector of such anecdotes. Looking for Hemingway is a different way of looking at Hemingway and should shape all our attitudes about the man and his work from here on in.
— Allen Barra, author of Mickey and Willie: The Parallel Lives of the Golden Age of Baseball

Ernest Hemingway was a great writer, a lousy husband, a braggart, and often treated his friends terribly. But as Tony Castro has written in Looking for Hemingway, the man fascinated the world from his birth to his death. Through Castro’s narrative, I got to meet Ava Gardner, Manolete, Picasso, Lauren Bacall, and Bill and Anne Davis, the couple that hosted EH for the last years of his life. Like one of Woody Allen’s movies, I was taken back to the era of the Lost Generation, and I loved every minute of it.
— Peter Golenbock, author of American Prince (with Tony Curtis) and Presumed Guilty (with Jose Baez.)

Tony Castro's Looking for Hemingway is an intriguing glimpse into the life of the aging Ernest Hemingway in 1959, as he makes another trip to Spain and continues his decades-long fascination with bullfighting. In Castro’s lively yet poignant portrayal, Hemingway's glamorous 60th birthday party in his friends' beautiful villa contrasts with his efforts to recapture his youth. A worthwhile addition to the literature on Hemingway and his circle.
— Deborah Kalb, journalist and co-author of Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama

Looking for Hemingway

Spain, the Bullfights, and a Final Rite of Passage

Tony Castro

Looking for Hemingway

Spain, the Bullfights, and a Final Rite of Passage

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