(Reviewed by JD Jung)
“So much of Havana, and Cuba, centers on the sea, and in this beautiful but merciless sea lies a part of Hemingway’s spirit and a vast part of his literary genius.”
The sea, along with Cuba’s landscape, architecture, and most of all, its people, affected Hemingway’s writing and prompted him to make this his home for almost thirty years. Hemingway sought to represent the daily struggles of the common man in his writing. The fisherman knew his true character and in turn he understood the determination of the Cuban people.
These are the thoughts of Robert Wheeler who beautifully details this side of the man and the city he loved in Hemingway’s Havana: A Reflection of the Writer’s Life in Cuba.
Though Wheeler visited Cuba in the summer of 2015, he could still grasp the Havana of 1934, the year that Hemingway first arrived. This sensitivity would only work with a writer as perceptive as Wheeler. He also believes that if Hemingway stayed in Havana, his life would not have ended as tragically as it did. In fact, he gave his 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature to the the Cuban people. Wheeler also tells us how this empathy affected Hemingway’s political views of Cuba in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The expressive photographs throughout the book are gorgeous and very telling. Though I read this book in one sitting, the photos take extra time to relish.
Make sure to read the Foreword written by América Fuentes, the grandchild of Gregorio Fuentes. Gregorio was a friend of Ernest Hemingway, as well as the captain of Hemingway’s boat, the Pilar. This introduction sets the tone for the exquisite narrative that you will soon experience.
At the end, Wheeler gives recommendations on what to see and where to stay, eat and experience in Hemingway’s Havana.
“Hemingway was a romantic, and he was an Imagist poet, and he lived what he wrote and wrote what his eyes saw.”
I have never been to Cuba, but Hemingway’s Havana is definitely luring me.
