Both revealing self-portrait and dramatic fictional chronicle of his final African safari, Ernest Hemingway's last unpublished work was written when he returned from Kenya in 1953. Edited by his son Patrick, who accompanied his father on the safari, True at First Light offers rare insights into the legendary American writer.
The book opens on the day his close friend Pop, a celebrated hunter, leaves Ernest in charge of the safari camp and news arrives of a potential attack from a hostile tribe. Drama continues to build as his wife, Mary, pursues the great black-maned lion that has become her obsession and Ernest becomes involved with a young African girl whom he supposedly plans to take as a second bride. Increasingly enchanted by the local African community, he struggles between the attraction of these two women and the wildly different cultures they represent.Spicing his depictions of human longings with sharp humor, Hemingway captures the excitement of big-game hunting and the unparallel beauty of the landscape.Rich in laughter, beauty and profound insight. True at First Light is an extraordinary publishing event -- a breathtaking final work from one of our most beloved and important writers.
In True at First Light the glory days of the "great white hunters"are over and the Mau Mau rebellion is violently dislodging European farmersfrom Kenya's arable lands. But to the African gun bearers, drivers, andgame scouts who run his safari in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro,Hemingway remains a lordly figure--almost a god. Two parallel quests propelthe narrative: Mary, Hemingway's fourth and last wife, doggedly stalks anenormous black-maned lion that she is determined to kill by Christmas,while Hemingway becomes increasingly obsessed with Debba, a beautiful youngAfrican woman. What makes the novel especially strange and compelling isthat 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 forhis drinking, lack of discipline in camp, and condescending protectiveness.
As usual with Hemingway, atmosphere and attitude are far more importantthan plot. Mary at one point berates her husband as a "conscience-riddenmurderer," but this is precisely the moral stance that gives the huntingscenes their tension and beauty. "I was happy that before he died he hadlain on the high yellow rounded mound with his tail down," Hemingway writesof "Mary's lion," "and his great paws comfortable before himand looked off across his country to the blue forest and the high whitesnows of the big Mountain."
Passages like these--and there are many of them--redeem the book's ramblingstructure and occasional lapses into self-indulgent posturing. Joan Didiondismissed True at First Light in The New Yorker as "words setdown but not yet written," but this fails to acknowledge the power of thesewords. The value of True at First Light lies in its candor, itsnakedness: it provides a rare opportunity to watch a master working his waytoward art. --David Laskin--This text refers to the Hardcover edition. From Publishers Weekly Who wants to go on an 11-hour audio safari with an aging, ego-bloated Hemingway? That's the immediate drawback to listening to this posthumous memoir-turned-novel (edited into its current form by the legendary author's son Patrick). If anyone is capable of breathing life into Hemingway's late tale of big-game hunting with his wife in East Africa, however, it is Dennehy, one of the finest narrators in the spoken-audio field. Here he works to convey the essential nature of Hemingway's character; he contrasts the sparse elegance of Hemingway's descriptive prose style against the more swaggering posture of his ever-present pride. By the time Hemingway wrote this book, he was well aware of his celebrity, his aura, his powersAwas able to flatly say, "I love command." Dennehy plays up this self-conscious quality, offering it as a portrait of the author's psyche. It's that sense of performance that makes this audio adaptation spark to life. Based on the 1999 Scribner hardcover. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal It's not often that this column gets to cite something by a truly classic author, but here it is: Hemingway's last work, written after he returned from his 1953 safari and edited by his son, Patrick, in time for this July's centennial celebration. Hemingway even stars in this "fictional memoir," running the safari camp in the absence of friend and lead hunter Pop even as hostile tribes gather to attack. But he still has time to sneak in an affair with an African girl. Along with this work, Scribner will publish three new hardcover editions of Hemingway classics: The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories (ISBN 0-684-86221-2. $25), Death in the Afternoon (ISBN 0-684-85922-X. $35), and To Have and Have Not (ISBN 0-684-85923-8. $25). Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Booklist Hemingway never completed the untitled manuscript he began after a 1953 safari in Kenya. His son, Patrick, undertook the demanding work of editing his father's tale, and this intriguing "fictional memoir" is the result. Its title is taken from a line of Hemingway's that begins, "In Africa a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon," and this sense of shifting perspective and ephemerality permeates his provocative narrative. A man called Pop and a woman named Mary are camped in the Kajiado District of Kenya's game country at the dawn of Jomo Kenyatta's push for independence. They know that their privileged days as white hunters are numbered, so they give themselves over to the pleasures of life in the bush with conscious and slightly melancholy abandon. Mary is determined to kill a magnificent, black-maned lion. Pop is embroiled in a tricky romance with a woman in a nearby village, whom Mary refers to stoically as his fiancee. As they wait for the lion to reveal himself, and for love and politics to take their course, Pop, Mary, and
| 出版社 | Prentice Hall & IBD |
|---|---|
| 作者 | Ernest Hemingway |