martha gellhorn: well chronicled if not demystified

books:


	• Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life Caroline Moorehead Amazon Remainders Account, 2003 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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Fills in the Gaps

I have been reading Gellhorn's non-fiction and am generally dispondent that I have found myself at the end of what is readily available. I picked up a copy of Travels with Myself and Another at random and became fascinated by Gellhorn. On the strength of another reviewers recommendation, I selected this book rather than others. I was not disappointed. It is a strange thing to read someone through their own eyes and then to see them without their own filter. Her own professional writing portrays her as a strong woman at ease on her own, while excerpts of her private letters suggest that she was very lonely. In any event, I zipped through the book and was surprised at the manner in which her life ended. Although, on reflection, I shouldn't have been.

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martha gellhorn: well chronicled if not demystified

Caroline Moorehead captures the passion of trend-setting journalist Martha Gellhorn in this biography. She follows Gellhorn through the Spanish Civil War, a turbulent marriage to (fellow friend of Spanish loyalists) Ernest Hemingway, and Gellhorn's success in breaking tradition by accompanying the invading Allied armies in World War II. Moorehead's sense of history is acute and she avoids the pitfall of over-dramatizing.

The book falls short only in its failure to resolve the contradictions of Gellhorn's personality...the promiscuous woman who was ambivalent toward sex...the egalitarian who cultivated the high and mighty...the compulsive wanderer and adventurer who cherished the companionship of her mother and close friends. We want to like Gellhorn, but we don't understand her well enough to get there.

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Sour Grapes?

I'm a Gellhorn fan, no doubt. However, I'm able to separate the journalist from the legend and the myth from the woman, who like so many of us, had clay feet. It's interesting to me how many men develop a virulent dislike of her, while most women can see past her many flaws, admire her courage, and take the inspirational parts of her life for what they are. I suppose if you have very set ideas about what a woman should be like, then Martha Gellhorn's bio is not for you.

However, I'd recommend her work and this biog. For the open minded.

Witness to war

I found this book thoroughly absorbing, a meal for the intellect and the soul.

Martha Gellhorn was a woman ahead of her time. Carolyn Moorehead does a good job of chronicling each chapter of Gellhorn's illustrious life as a war correspondent and writer. And what an amazing span of history Martha witnessed, from the Spanish Civil War up to the invasion of Panama. A rather fearless woman who "ran with the wolves", Gellhorn had friendships and love affairs with legends. Of course, she is known for having been married to Ernest Hemingway... but she was also friend and confidant of H.G. Wells, Eleanor Roosevelt, Leonard Bernstein... and she crossed paths with Diego Rivera, Colette, Adlai Stevenson, and many other notables of the 20th Century.

Marha really had two great loves in her life: being where the action was, where the great issues of the century were being decided, and secondly , escaping to colorful places where she could find solitude. She best loved the places that afforded freedom and sun, like Mexico, Cuba and Kenya.

Of course,she was full of contradictions, personally, and unsuited for motherhood. I wish only that this book had exposed more of her acute observations about the way that the world works, and her true courage. This is a woman who at 85 yrs. of age, suffering from macular degeneration and other maladies, made a valiant effort to continue speaking for the oppressed.

She was sharp until the end of her days. Moorehead has of this writing published a book of Gellhorn's letters which better illuminates Martha's character, and should serve as a good companion to this biography.

Christiane Amanpour, Lara Logan et. al. owe a great debt to this woman, though they can hardly hope to match her reportorial savvy and brilliance. As Moorehead acknowledges, Martha inspires nostalgia for the days when a reporter went to the core of things, with words honestly written in simple notebooks--words that could be believed.

She believed all governments inexorably abused power. She said of Lyndon Johnson: "Never trust a Texan further than you can throw a rhino."

Martha, you rocked.

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Gellhorn: Lightning Rod for Various Opinions

Martha Gellhorn was a controversial journalist, and as anyone can see, this biography is either loved or hated without a lot of opinion in between.I fall in the love camp.The book is a good job at capturing the subject, warts and all.The author has clearly gone to great lengths to gather information that allowed her to capture the public and private essence of Gellhorn.Moorehead backed up her presentation many times with quotes from Gellhorn's voluminous correspondence.This is not the author's first biography and it shows;it is a first class job at piecing together the subject's long and complex life.The author is frequently clever in her wording and general handling of the book.If I have any criticism it is that the narrative occasionally moves forward without preparing the reader for a change in subject.
I did not find this book boring.It is a book that would interest most readers that enjoy reading about 20th century history.Gellhorn's strong personality,wartime reporting,travel episodes ,love and sex life,marriage to Hemingway,and general passage through life offer a lot of spice for the reader. Though Gellhorn was a bit prickly or "difficult" at times,she was a witness to a substantial number of historical events.Her reports were first class and continue to be popular today within the reading public (The Face of War,Travels with Myself and Another, etc).Unquestionally she was a controversial character, but she counted and is an appropriate subject of interest.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

The first major biography of legendary war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, whose life provides a unique and thrilling perspective on world history in an extraordinary time

Martha Gellhorn's heroic career as a reporter brought her to the front lines of virtually every significant international conflict between the Spanish Civil War and the end of the Cold War. The preeminent-and often the only-female correspondent on the scene, she broke new ground for women in the male preserve of journalism. Her wartime dispatches, marked by a passionate desire to expose suffering in its many guises and an inimitable immediacy, rank among the best of the twentieth century.

A deep-seated love of travel complemented this interest in world affairs. From her birth in St. Louis in 1908 to her death in London in 1998, Gellhorn passed through Africa, Cuba, China, and most of the great cities of Europe, recording her experiences in first-rate travel writing and fiction. A tall, glamorous blonde, she made friends easily-among the boldface names that populated her life were Eleanor Roosevelt, Leonard Bernstein, and H. G. Wells-but she was as incapable of settling into comfortable long-term relationships as she was of sitting still, and happiness often eluded her despite her professional success. Both of her marriages ended badly-the first, to Ernest Hemingway, publicly so.

Drawn from extensive interviews and with exclusive access to Gellhorn's papers and correspondence, this seminal biography spans half the globe and almost an entire century to offer an exhilarating, intimate portrait of one of the defining women of our times.

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