[.ca] True at First Light (ISBN 0099282127)

From Amazon.com:
Ernest Hemingway's final posthumous work bears the rather awkward designation "a fictional memoir" and arrives under a cloud of controversial editing and patching--but all of that ends up being beside the point. Though this account of a 1953 safari in Kenya lacks the resolution and clarity of the best Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms) it is "real" Hemingway nonetheless. Let scholars work out where memoir leaves off and fiction begins: for the common reader, the prose alone casts an irresistible spell. In True at First Light the glory days of the "great white hunters" are over and the Mau Mau rebellion is violently dislodging European farmers from Kenya's arable lands. But to the African gun bearers, drivers, and game scouts who run his safari in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, Hemingway remains a lordly figure--almost a god. Two parallel quests propel the narrative: Mary, Hemingway's fourth and last wife, doggedly stalks an enormous black-maned lion that she is determined to kill by Christmas, while Hemingway becomes increasingly obsessed with Debba, a beautiful young African woman. What makes the novel especially strange and compelling is that Mary knows all about Debba and accepts her as a "supplementary wife," even as she loses no opportunity to rake her husband over the coals for his drinking, lack of discipline in camp, and condescending protectiveness. As usual with Hemingway, atmosphere and attitude are far more important than plot. Mary at one point berates her husband as a "conscience-ridden murderer," but this is precisely the moral stance that gives the hunting scenes their tension and beauty. "I was happy that before he died he had lain on the high yellow rounded mound with his tail down," Hemingway writes of "Mary's lion," "and his great paws comfortable before him and looked off across his country to the blue forest and the high white snows of the big Mountain." Passages like these--and there are many of them--redeem the book's rambling structure and occasional lapses into self-indulgent posturing. Joan Didion dismissed True at First Light in The New Yorker as "words set down but not yet written," but this fails to acknowledge the power of these words. The value of True at First Light lies in its candor, its nakedness: it provides a rare opportunity to watch a master working his way toward art. --David Laskin

second rate?:
So OK, this is NOT Hemingway's best book. Right, it needed editing (by the author himself of course); it's an incomplete work. For Hemingway it is maybe second rate. However, keep this in mind: second rate Hemingway is still better than 90% of all the other books out there.

True at First Light:
I can always trust Hemingay to be a good read as well as Baronesbooks to send me a quality book at an even better price, and within a reasonable shipping time frame. I no longer have to worry whether my book will come before or after my vacation--I can count on Baronesbooks to send it to me in plenty of time to relax and read on the beach! Baronesbooks lives up to the rating of 5 stars and is a dependable, trustworthy seller. Thanks Barones!

Only for the aficionado:
A Hemingway aficionado will read this book anyway, so this review is for those who are new to Hemingway. If this is the first Hemingway book you read, it is liable to put you off Hemingway for good, which would be a loss. For you, I would recommend "A Farewell to Arms," "The Old Man and the Sea," "The Sun Also Rises," or any book of his short stories. As for "True at First Light," only a diehard Hemingway fan will be able to put up with the endless and pointless dialogs, the truly pathetic jokes, and the way a group of adult people can act like eight-year-olds about the shooting of a lion. And at the way Miss Mary (Hemingway's wife) constantly reminds her husband about how open-minded she is about his having an African mistress in the Shamba, and about how much fun they're having, and that she really doesn't mind about his mistress in the Shamba, but if the mistress were white, it would be quite a different story, and so on. And on. And on. Come to think of it, even for aficionados, this novel is an embarrassment. The only thing to be said for it is that it is a cut above "Across the River and Into the Trees." But that's like saying that horse unprintable is superior to bull unprintable.

Not his best work:
This blend of autobiography and fiction, written when Hemingway returned from Kenyan safari in 1953, was edited into shape by the author's son years later. It focuses on Hemingway living in Kenya spending most of his time hunting, when not developing his burgeoning self-developed religion and talking with 'the natives'. He balances his personal life between Mary his wife, a petulant woman who highlights her insecurities whenever she denies them; and Debba, his native girlfriend. There is some glorious prose in this book, and some genuinely entertaining episodes, especially when Hemingway develops his own religion incorporating the Baby Jesus, animism and the Happy Hunting Grounds for a heavenly afterlife. But it is hard to feel for any of the characters - the whites come across as arrogant and mocking, the black Africans as comical and childlike. Much is made of Mary's 'need' to shoot a lion before Christmas, but even when it happens, she still complains. It is hard to believe the supposed respect of animals with the amount of killing included in the story. Isak Dinesen's published letters give a much more vivid and thought provoking portrait of Kenya, with a much less sentimental and condescending veneer. If it is vintage Hemingway you are after, try 'The Sun Also Rises' (also known as 'Fiesta') to read a great writer at his best.

Disappointing Posthumous Finale:
This book was published to coincide with what would have been Hemingway's 100th birthday. Unfortunately, it's not much of a tribute. Fortunately, it is supposed to be the final Hemingway work, so maybe the "picking at Papa's bones" has finally come to an end. Posthumous publications always raise the question of what would the author have wanted. Would Hemingway have wanted this book to see publication, particularly given the fact that it is need of heavy editing? I have my doubts that he ever intended for this book to see publication. He had shelved this project himself prior to his death and nothing I've read indicates he had any desire to see it to completion. The book is characterized as "A Fictional Memoir," and, rather than seeming to have been intended as a complete novel in and of itself, the book appears to be more of a collection of material out of which a novel might have been constructed. Hemingway began work on it in 1954, and it essentially describes Hemingway's trip to Kenya with his fourth wife, Mary Welsh. The line between what is fiction and what is memoir is fairly ambiguous throughout. Fans of Hemingway, such as myself, will be disappointed. There is no real plot or dramatic structure and what suspense there is, e.g., will Miss Mary kill her lion?, is disposed of before the book is half over. The book, which is reputed to have been edited down from over 800 pages, is in severe need of additional editing. Hemingway, who was famous for his self-editing, probably would have sheared off at least another quarter of the book. Still, there is enough of the old master present here to make it worth reading if you are a fan.