Family Snapshots

MY BROTHER, ERNEST HEMINGWAY (283 pp.) -- Leicester Hemingway --World ($4.95).

Ernest Hemingway continues posthumously to be good for the publishing business; eight books and nonbooks are currently in print about him and his work, with more sure to come. The two latest are examples of sibling nonrivalry: Older Sister Marcelline's clutch of childhood memories recently serialized in the monthly Atlantic, and this collection of Kid Brother Leicester's reminiscences serialized in Playboy.

Leicester Hemingway, dubbed by Ernest "The Baron" for reasons unexplained, reveals himself as the archetypal kid brother. He was 16 years younger. He adored "Stein," as he called him. And he took naturally to Stein's patronizing pontifications on how to do anything, from landing a fish to landing a woman, and was happy to serve as batman, drink mixer, errand boy and good listener whenever the Great Man felt the urge. His book about his brother is not really a biography. But as a chronological series of personal memories, plus cullings from Hemingway's letters, it adds some warm flesh tones to the growing picture of the supersensitive he-man who did much to mold the living as well as the writing style of an era.

Most notable is Leicester's account of Hemingway's last years. The stricken Hemingway was much sicker than any one knew. He hurt from serious internal injuries suffered in his African air crashes.

He was plagued by cirrhosis of the liver, high blood pressure and severe mental depression. In November 1960, he went to the Mayo Clinic, where he received 15 electroshock treatments; in April he went back for ten more. "Temporarily he seemed more alert, less withdrawn, less depressed." But when he was released at the end of June, his weight was down from his normal 200 to a gaunt 155.

A friend drove him and his wife, Mary Welsh, to their house in Ketchum, Idaho. "He watched the road a great deal; he was concerned about reaching each appointed destination--seemed worried about the gas supply, the tires, and the road, and followed their progress constantly on a large map which he carried." About 7 o'clock two mornings after they arrived, "he took the final positive action of his life. Like a samurai who felt dishonored by the word or deed of another, Ernest felt his own body had betrayed him. Rather than allow it to betray him further, he, who had given what he once described as the gift of death to so many living creatures in his lifetime, loaded the weapon he held and then leaned forward as he placed the stock of his favorite shotgun on the floor of the foyer, and found a way to trip the cocked hammers of the gun."

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