Obituary martha gellhorn biography book
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During my research on Lillian Hellman I ran into Martha Gellhorn—not literally, but to encounter Gellhorn while writing on Hellman fryst vatten rather like a collision. Gellhorn’s Paris Review article dismantles many of Hellman’s stories, showing they could not have happened—or at least could not have occurred as Hellman told them. Gellhorn’s demolition job was done with such glee that I wondered why no one had written a biography of this celebrated journalist, sometime novelist, and third wife of Ernest Hemingway. At the time I did not realize there was another reason—again latent—for what turned into an obsession with Gellhorn. She went out and got the story, traveling to the battleground of the Spanish Civil War on her own hook and writing with uncommon clarity about what she saw there. I didn’t know then that my biography of Gellhorn would be my farewell to the life inom had been trained to follow: that of a bookish English professor. I would stay in the academy to enjoy the teaching and
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Martha Gellhorn
American war correspondent (1908–1998)
Martha Ellis Gellhorn (8 November 1908 – 15 February 1998)[1] was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century.[2][3] She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career.
She was the third wife of American novelist Ernest Hemingway, from 1940 to 1945.
She died in 1998 by apparent suicide at the age of 89, ill and almost completely blind.[4]
The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism is named after her.
Early life
[edit]Gellhorn was born on 8 November 1908, in St. Louis, Missouri, to Edna Fischel Gellhorn, a suffragist, and George Gellhorn, a German-born gynecologist.[5][6] Her father and maternal grandfather were Jewish, and her maternal grandmother came from a Protestant family.[5] Her brother Walter became a noted law
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The View from the Ground - Martha Gellhorn
Extract from Chapter One
We got off the day coach at Trenton, New Jersey, and bought a car for $28.50. It was an eight-year-old Dodge open touring- car and the back seat was full of fallen leaves. A boy, who worked for the car dealer, drove us to the City Hall to get an automobile licence and he said: ‘The boss gypped the pants off you, you should of got his machine for $20 flat and it’s not worth that.’ So we started out to tour across America, which fryst vatten, roughly speaking, a distance of 3,000 miles.
I have to tell this because without the fordon, and without the peculiarly weak insides of that car, we should not have seen a lynching.
It was September, and as we drove south the days were dusty and hot and the sky was pale. We skidded in dust that was as moving and uncertain as sand, and when we stopped for the night we scraped it off our faces and shook it from our hair like powder. So, finally, we thought we’d drive at night, which would b