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The Killers | Author Biography

Ernest Hemingway is one of the most influential American writers of the twentieth century. His influence extends not only to novelists and short story writers but also to journalists, playwrights, critics, and filmmakers. Four decades after his death, biographies about him continue to appear. Born July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, Ernest Miller Hemingway was the second child of Clarence Hemingway, a doctor, and Grace (Hall) Hemingway. Hemingway’s middle-class upbringing was conventional, and after graduating in 1917 from Oak Park High School, he joined the Kansas City Star as a reporter. In 1918 Hemingway joined the Red Cross, driving an ambulance in Italy during the waning months of World War I. He was struck with shell fragments from an exploding mortar in July and had more than two hundred pieces of mortar removed from his leg. Over the next four years, Hemingway honed his writing skills as European correspondent for the Toronto Star and contributed ‘‘color pieces’’ (feature articles also known as ‘‘slice of life’’ pieces) to other publications. During this period, he also met American expatriate Gertrude Stein a writer and wealthy art collector who held gatherings in her Paris apartment, during which artists and writers could mingle and ‘‘talk shop.’’ Stein, along with American writers Ezra Pound and Sherwood Anderson were indispensable to Hemingway’s early career, providing him with contacts and recommending his work to various editors.

Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway

In 1925, Liveright released Hemingway’s first widely distributed book, In Our Time, a collection of short stories featuring Nick Adams, an autobiographical character who would also appear in future Hemingway stories. His second collection, Men Without Women (1927), contained many of what would become Hemingway’s most popular and anthologized stories, including ‘‘The Killers’’ and ‘‘Hills Like White Elephants.’’ In these stories, Hemingway perfected his spare, elliptical style, using dialogue almost exclusively to develop characters and drive his plot. His early novels, however, cemented his popularity and established Hemingway as the leading voice of his generation. The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929) both address the emotionally debilitating effects of World War I on characters that were fictional projections of Hemingway.

The quality of Hemingway’s work diminished after he had established an international reputation, though he did produce two critical and popular successes with his novels For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the latter of which helped Hemingway win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1954. While alive, Hemingway was a popular and much-admired celebrity, a man’s man, who cultivated a brawling, hard-drinking, hard-loving image. In 1961, his emotional and physical health deteriorating, ‘‘Papa’’ Hemingway, as he had become known, committed suicide by shooting himself at his home in Ketchum, Idaho. Hemingway’s father had also committed suicide. Posthumous works include A Moveable Feast (1964), which recounts Hemingway’s years in Paris in the 1920s and a number of reissued story collections and novels pieced together by editors, including Islands in the Stream (1970), The Nick Adams Stories (1972), and The Garden of Eden (1986).