Traces Hemingway's critical fortunes over the ninety years of his prominence, telling us something about what we value in literature and why scholarly reputations rise and fall.
Hemingway burst on the literary scene in the 1920s with spare, penetrating short stories and brilliant novels. Soon he was held as a standard for modern writers. Meanwhile, he used his celebrity to create a persona like the stoic, macho heroes of his fiction. After...