The Son Also Rises

Young Ernest Hemingway fishing at Walloon Lake, Michigan, 1916 (Image from the Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Found on Wikimedia Commons)

Come see original Ernest Hemingway materials at the “Put it on Paper” exhibit! The exhibit, spotlighting creators and the creative process, can be seen at the Michigan Historical Museum in Lansing, September 29, 2012 – August 25, 2013. Other featured creators include authors Laura Ingalls Wilder and John Voelker, World Trade Center architect Minoru Yamasaki, artist Oscar Warbach and railroad horticulturist Olaf Jensen.

Ernest Hemingway and Michigan

The ideal summer reading selection is something relatively light, but engaging. If your summer plans include a getaway to northern Michigan, you might consider adding Ernest Hemingway’s short stories to your reading list. Of special note are his stories featuring the character Nick Adams.

The Nick Adams stories stem from Hemingway’s boyhood experiences on Walloon Lake, near Petoskey in the northeast Lower Peninsula. That’s particularly true of the five stories that make up the first section, “The Northern Woods.” Nick is a hunter and fisherman, much like Hemingway himself, and in these stories, the purity of the outdoor experience reflects the purity of childhood. Over the course of the narrative, Nick develops into a man and leaves the woods of Michigan, but his early experiences shape his approach to the world.

While Hemingway is most commonly associated with Paris and Italy (where he served as an ambulance driver during World War I), Michigan had a formative influence on his life and work. If you’d like to explore that influence in more depth, check out the resources of the Michigan Hemingway Society and the Hemingway’s Michigan Connections of the Clarke Historical Library.

Windemere, the Hemingway family’s cottage at Walloon Lake, Michigan (Photo by Michigan Tourist Council, 1972)