Strange Tribe: a family memoir, by John Hemingway

In Strange Tribe: a family memoir, by John Hemingway, the author laments efforts by his extended family to capitalize on the Hemingway name to sell everything from furniture to eye-wear. This memoir does much the same, but with key differences and more nuance.  The author is telling his story, and the story of his father, Greg Hemingway, which in turn relates to his father, Ernest Hemingway, and long shadow he cast over their lives.  But we wouldn’t read this book without Ernest Hemingway as its anchor.    

I suppose the greatest justification for this book, from a scholarly angle, is the light it sheds on Ernest Hemingway and gender.  Since Lynn’s biography in the late-eighties, scholars have cast a new, and entirely justified eye on Hemingway, his characters, and gender.  The fact that his youngest son, Greg Hemingway, cross dressed, and sometimes called himself female names, and began to transition to a woman late in life, is this supposed to give us insight into Ernest Hemingway’s  experiments with gender, both on or off the page.

I’m not entirely sure.  Authors experiment with whatever they wish to explore.  Perhaps it comes from their core, or maybe it is just a form of play.  Who knows?  Without that connection, this book is a very sad recitation of mental health issues, substance abuse, and child endangerment.  John Hemingway's parents were unable to parent him.  Hemingway or not.  This book is about a broken family.