Ken Burns and Lynn Novick usually make documentaries on extensive topics: baseball, jazz, the Vietnam War. But with their new project, Burns and Novick have zoomed in on the life of one person: Ernest Hemingway, the self-styled “dad” of American literature.
‘Hemingway’, a three-part documentary film that airs on PBS on Monday, paints an astonishingly complex portrait of the man and writer. Burns and Novick honor his excellent prose without shying away from the toxic dimensions of his tumultuous life: misogyny, racism and anti-Semitism; the personal betrayal, verbal abuse and casual cruelty.
Burns and Novick, from archival material and scientificity, try to break through the mythology of Hemingway and break down the male bravado to haunt a layered, deeply insecure person haunted by mental illness. (The series of literary headlines, including authors Edna O’Brien, Tobias Wolff, and Mary Karr, contain important insights.)
In a Zoom conversation last week, Burns and Novick discussed their interest in Hemingway’s endless “contradictions” as well as their own personal relationships with his celebrated work. Burns also responded to recent criticism of PBS over a lack of diversity and an “excessive reliance” on his non-fiction work. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
NBC News: The film highlights how often Hemingway adorns or exaggerates his own life story and cultivates a mythology surrounding his public image of macho. Which parts of the Hemingway myth were you most interested in deconstructing?
Ken Burns: This is a wonderful question. I’m not sure we had a different agenda than trying to reconcile this extraordinary writer and his complicated life, but I knew that mythology would be an obstacle we would have to avoid.
For us it is basic: we say yes [to the project], and it means yes to marry Ernest Hemingway for years in all the complexity, all the contradictions, all the awful things and all the wonderful things. As we begin to gather a working sense of the biography, we see the toxic, toxic nature of Hemingway’s self-created myth.
I remember giving an introductory speech a number of years ago, and my advice to the elderly was that we all make ourselves liars. I think this is a truth. And with regards to Hemingway: From an early age, his vulnerability, sensitivity, and perhaps mental illness helped persuade him to construct this mythology that would be so constricting.
Lynn Novick: Mary Karr says in the film, “[Hemingway’s] masculinity must have been so narrowing. “It stuck with us, because I do not think I really thought of it as a limiting problem. But in many ways he was captivated by this macho persona – a hyper-muscular persona that was seen as a positive thing at the time.
Burns: Mary implies how tiring it must be. It’s tiring to maintain that building because it’s an attempt to maintain a kind of control that none of us have.
It is so interesting that his writing is so candid and direct about the lack of control that any of us have. He is well aware of the finite nature of our existence, and yet so much of what we all do is [say], “Notice the dark-clad figure with the diaper behind the curtain.”
Ken, “Hemingway” is only the second time you’ve profiled a novelist. What drew you both to Hemingway as a documentary? Did any of you have a special affinity for his work?
Novick: We both have an affinity. I read him in English class in high school, and I was completely mesmerized and caught up with ‘The Sun Also Rises’. The world he conjures up and the characters portrayed so vividly looked like real people. It was a wonderful way to become a serious reader of literature.
I then went to visit his home in Key West in the 1990s. Ken and I worked together for a few years, and I came back and said, ‘We have to do Hemingway.’ He had been thinking of Hemingway before, so it was a big confluence.
Burns: I read him like Lynn in high school. I was attracted to him, enchanted by him. I wanted to become a writer. I am reading [the short story] “The Killers” at 15 and it took me out because there was so much unsaid.
Novick: I think it’s challenging to make a film about a writer. The author’s work is on the page, but we need to bring it to life and somehow give the audience a chance to see how we think the fiction plays out. The work is put in your own room with your typewriter or pencil, but it is not very cinematic, and therefore we had to come up with ways to represent his creative process and the real masterpieces.
The version of Hemingway you present is extraordinarily complicated: a brilliant prose stylist and storyteller who can be misogynistic, racist and cruel to the people around him. Do you find it challenging to separate the art from the artist?
Burns: It is our job as filmmakers to show it all together – the complexity, good and bad – and not to separate the art from the artist in the film.
There is simplified storytelling, there is moralistic storytelling, there is storytelling where someone with a white hat is good and anyone with a black hat is bad. But life does not work that way, and real people do not. Everyone is complicated; a complicated person is superfluous. We as storytellers are obliged to look for it.
We are not afraid to say that he can be one thing and another thing, and we do not feel that we should step in and make an easy judgment about him that will force him into the dust heap or the pantheon of history not. He belongs in both places or not one – it really does not matter.
He is a man who has left an indelible mark on literature. He has many negative traits that need to be questioned. We do not have the power to make a final verdict. We just have to say, ‘Here’s what it looks like. Here is racism, unbearable anti-Semitism, bad treatment of women, sometimes a toxic environment for children and unnecessary cruelty to friends – and then this job, and sometimes a loving husband, and sometimes a loving father. ”
Novick: You have to look at the whole thing. We hope to investigate [Hemingway’s life], the audience can make their own thinking.
There are moments in the film in which we expose many difficult, problematic aspects of his life and his writing. Abraham Verghese, a writer we love and admire, shakes his head at one point [in the film] and says, ‘He is deeply flawed, like you and me. But there he is. “It does not mean that it is OK, but we say, ‘There it is.’
In a letter issued last week, nearly 140 non-fiction producers criticized PBS executives for a lack of diversity and relied too much on white creators. I wanted your answer to the letter.
Burns: First of all, I wholeheartedly support the goals of the letter writers. I think this is very important, and one of the reasons we were in public television was a commitment to inclusion and diversity, and it was one that we not only adopted in our topics, but also in our own business. .
But can we do better? Of course we can. Can PBS do better? Of course they can.
We are going to work with some of our underwriters to see if we can address this specifically in terms of real dollars. Most of the money we raise does not come from PBS; it comes from outside sources. We may be uniquely positioned to be able to help in some way, while PBS and the letter writers struggle with an ongoing American story.
I’m just very proud of it [PBS] do it just like anyone else. The fact that it’s still not good enough? It just means we all have room for improvement.