Ernest Hemingway was one of the greatest and most influential writers in American literature.

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s three-part, documentary series, HEMINGWAY is one of the best I’ve seen (SBS iView). It weaves together Hemingway’s biography with excerpts from his fiction, non-fiction and personal correspondence.

The film unpacks the mythology surrounding Hemingway – cultivated by his larger than life exploits, public bravado, and occasional self-aggrandising bullshit – to reveal a deeply troubled figure.

The film uses original manuscripts that show the painstaking process by which Hemingway created some of the most important works of fiction in American letters, including the novels, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea and the short stories, “Hills Like White Elephants,” “The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “Up in Michigan,” “Indian Camp” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” as well as nonfiction works, Death in the Afternoon and A Moveable Feast.

There should be red flag warning lights for PC writers and ideologues, who write about domestic violence, bad relationships with their parents, the hatred of the male psyche and animal activists. Because the doco is full of that. Hemingway was no choirboy.

Many have portrayed Hemingway as an arrogant arsehole but who cares? Saul Bellow was a fucking prick but a great writer.

I re-read For Whom the Bell Tolls last year and it shits on much contemporary middle brow writing today. It grabs you from the first sentence and there’s not a maudlin, self-referential line in it.

Rest easy, Papa, your reputation is assured.