A New Documentary Recasts Ernest Hemingway as Millennial Avatar

Truman Capote once described Ernest Hemingway as a “closet everything.” In the first 15 minutes of Hemingway, his first wife, Hadley Richardson, provides a more nuanced take on the dynamic Capote identified: “There were so many sides to him,” she’s quoted as saying, “that he defied geometry.”

Since Hemingway’s death nearly six decades ago, his absence from the world stage has lasted almost as long as the controversial life that he lived. The forthcoming six-hour, three-part reappraisal from the Emmy Award-winning duo Ken Burns and Lynn Novick—who’ve produced acclaimed documentaries together about the Vietnam War, baseball, jazz, and Prohibition—persuasively challenges the stereotypes of toxic masculinity that have evolved around this most divisive of literary figures. It begins airing April 5 on PBS.