With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba

Rating:
Summary: An important book about Hemingway
Review: It is astonishing that this book is so little known. Here is a memoir which records Hemingway's insights on writing as given to his only pupil, a young writer/hobo who shows up one day at Hemingway's Key West house hoping for a few words of advice. "He left me with that damned marvelous feeling you can have only once in a lifetime if you are a young man who wants to become a writer and you have just met the man you admire as the greatest writer alive and you know instinctively that he is already your friend." Impulsively Hemingway hires the twenty-two-year-old "tramp" to guard his new boat, the Pilar. Samuelson carefully records Hemingway's thoughts on writing (including a "mandatory" reading list for the young, aspiring writer). Not only does the book illuminate Hemingway, his life, his fishing, his family and his work, but it also tells the story of a fascinating individual who spent a year with him.

Rating:
Summary: Papa's protege
Review: The best quality of this book is the clean language worthy of Hemingway. Samuelson had an ear for exact quoting. His manuscript lay in a trunk until after his death, when his daughter found it, and decided to publish. Lucky us.