Latest news with #ErnestHemingway
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sixpennies: Penguin publishes its first paperback – archive, 1935
The middle-aged among us, when their thoughts turn to cheap books, recall as the best value in matter and make-up that they remember the scarlet and gold Nelson seven-pennies of prewar days. In many a household the best of Anthony Hope, Conan Doyle, and other favourites of the time still lives in these well-bound little volumes. Nothing quite so attractive in cheap form has followed them. But the Bodley Head Penguin Books at sixpence apiece, of which the first 10 have just appeared, have the same virtue of bringing books of wide variety within as easy range as a seat at the 'talkies' or a pint of ale. In the first batch the serious novelists are represented by, among others, Compton Mackenzie (Carnival), Mary Webb (Gone to Earth), and Susan Ertz (Madame Clair). A Dorothy Sayers and an Agatha Christie account for the crime tale. Mr Eric Linklater's exuberant Poet's Pub is of the number, and Mr Ernest Hemingway's Farewell to Arms has its own distinctive place. The type is clear; the boards stout enough to stand the wear and tear of pocket or haversack. The enterprise deserves a warm welcome.
Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Hemingway remains the most famous 20th-century American novelist
IN the early 1920s Ernest Hemingway was a little-known journalist slumming around Europe and getting into absinthe-fuelled scrapes. Then, a century ago, in 1925, he published 'In Our Time', a book of short stories; in July of that year he started working on 'The Sun Also Rises' , his first novel, which fictionalised his antics. It became the most celebrated book about the 'Lost Generation' in post-war Europe. Hemingway became famous in the same way one of his characters described going bankrupt: 'gradually and then suddenly'. Eight other novels and novellas followed, as did Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. He remains the most famous American novelist of his century, judged by mentions in Google's corpus of books. His Wikipedia page also gets more views than those of his contemporaries, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck (see chart). Why? Chart There are three reasons. First, nobody had written like him before. A short clean sentence is a fine thing. But if the writer has his story straight and his words true he can go long and hard as a bull after a picador and to hell with big words and adverbs and commas. He also knew what to leave out, as he explained: 'If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.' This lean style influenced writers of fiction—notably Norman Mailer, Cormac McCarthy and Raymond Carver—as well as journalists. Joan Didion's spareness reads like sober Hemingway. Second, his heroes attracted famous admirers. He defined courage as 'grace under pressure': martially, for the soldier Frederic Henry in 'A Farewell to Arms'; physically, for the fisherman Santiago in 'The Old Man and the Sea'; or sportingly, for the titular cuckolded character in 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber', who becomes a fearless hunter. In 1955 John F. Kennedy asked for Hemingway's permission to use this definition in 'Profiles in Courage', which won the Pulitzer prize for biography. John McCain's favourite novel was 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' (1940), about the Spanish civil war, which he quoted in a posthumous book: 'The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.' Barack Obama, a fan of the same novel, mentioned it in his eulogy to McCain. Less credibly, Donald Trump has dubbed himself the 'Hemingway of 140 characters'. Third, and perhaps most importantly, Hemingway's life became legend. He married four times, drank hard, feuded with rivals, was wounded in the first world war, reported on the Omaha Beach landings in the second, ran with the bulls in Spain and survived a plane crash in Africa. But beneath the bravado, his ego was fragile, he sometimes swapped gender roles in bed and suffered from depression. He was one of seven in his family to commit suicide. That has provided ample material for biographies and documentaries, including a six-hour series by Ken Burns in 2021. But adaptations of his work are scarce. Fitzgerald and Steinbeck enjoy higher ratings and more reviews on Goodreads, a books website. Perhaps Hemingway's stoic heroes—and hints of sexism and racism, at least in the voices of some characters—are becoming old-fashioned. If so, he may end up like Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde: read keenly by a few, read about by many. For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies,sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter
Economist
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Economist
Hemingway remains the most famous 20th-century American novelist
Photograph: Getty Images I N the early 1920s Ernest Hemingway was a little-known journalist slumming around Europe and getting into absinthe-fuelled scrapes. Then, a century ago, in 1925, he published 'In Our Time', a book of short stories; in July of that year he started working on 'The Sun Also Rises', his first novel, which fictionalised his antics. It became the most celebrated book about the 'Lost Generation' in post-war Europe. Our choices show how power is wielded and abused Two new books look at the heyday of Vanity Fair, Vogue and their ilk The conservative Babylon Bee is finding it easier than the Onion A tech bro created a viral reservation-trading website. The industry wants to shut it down Here are five of the best tracks by heavy metal's 'prince of darkness' Chances are you have come across a 'Strix' cushion or a 'Rinnig' tea towel
Business Times
21-07-2025
- Business
- Business Times
As interest rates normalise, private credit can help portfolios
'HOW did you go bankrupt?' 'Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.' – Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises Often quoted and widely recycled, that response from Mike Campbell – the fictional once-wealthy friend of Jake Barnes, narrator in Hemingway's novel – captures more than just personal financial woes. It's an apt description of how long-running trends unravel – first with subtle shifts, then with violent clarity. Economist Rudiger Dornbusch put it more clinically: 'In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.' Both sentiments apply to today's bond market. For nearly four decades, falling interest rates created a generational tailwind for fixed income. Bonds didn't just pay income, they delivered capital appreciation, diversification, and ballast. Now, that dynamic is breaking down. Prices have fallen, and correlations have flipped. The 40 per cent in a 60/40 portfolio – which comprises fixed income, the supposedly steady part – has become a problem. But there's one corner of the market that has held steady amid all this instability: private credit. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up From tailwind to headwind The bond bull market began in 1981, when then-Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker engineered a brutal double-dip recession to break inflation's back. At the time, the 10-year Treasury yield peaked near 16 per cent. What followed was a 39-year stretch of disinflation, financial globalisation, and central bank credibility, which drove yields lower and bond prices higher. For fixed income investors, it was a golden era where being long duration paid off. A simple strategy of buying 10-year Treasuries and rolling them annually would have delivered over 8 per cent in annualised returns from 1981 to 2020. The Bloomberg Barclays Aggregate Bond Index returned a similarly impressive 8 per cent over that same period. Bonds weren't just a buffer against equity risk; they were a consistent source of performance. But that golden era followed a very different one. In the 35 years before 1981, yields climbed steadily and were far more volatile. Bondholders clipped coupons while watching principal values erode. Price appreciation simply wasn't part of the fixed income playbook. There were no 'total return' bond funds because, frankly, there was no total return to chase. The middle ground We're not heading back to the 1970s. The US economy is structurally stronger; the Fed is more disciplined; and the lessons of the Volcker era still hold. But we're also not in a new bond bull market. Instead, we're in a period of normalisation where rates are higher than the recent past but still lower than long-term historical norms. Following the global financial crisis (GFC), the Fed supported the bull market in bonds with quantitative easing. But in 2022, the central bank began reducing its balance sheet, and by continuing to let its Treasury holdings mature without reinvesting the proceeds, it has kept upward pressure on rates with the increased supply. Increased fiscal spending and higher deficits bring uncertainty and expectations of higher future Treasury issuance, increasing the term premium demanded by investors. This middle ground comes with consequences: greater volatility and interest rate risk, less price support, and less reliable diversification. We've written extensively about how rising rates scramble traditional asset class relationships. In 2022, when the Fed launched its most aggressive hiking cycle in decades, the longstanding negative correlation between stocks and bonds broke down. Since then, the two have moved in the same direction in 31 of the past 40 months, nearly 80 per cent of the time – a dynamic that undermines the very foundation of balanced portfolios. If you believe that we're beginning a normalised inflationary regime, different from the sub-2 per cent post-GFC era, the unreliable stock-bond correlation is likely to continue. Based on historical data, the stock-bond correlation becomes positive beginning at 2 per cent inflation, strengthening as inflation increases. It's not just the lack of diversification that's troubling. Bond market volatility, once rare, is becoming routine as a result of policy uncertainty. Modest data surprises or policy comments now trigger exaggerated moves across the yield curve, and central banks retreating as a steady source of demand has reduced market liquidity that helped keep bond prices stable and predictable. Once major buyers of Treasuries, central banks are pulling back as rising yields in markets such as Germany and Japan make US Treasuries less appealing, especially after factoring in currency hedging costs. At the same time, heightened uncertainty has caused the term premium to resurface, hitting an 11-year high in May. Investors are demanding more compensation for interest rate risk, reflecting a structurally different regime. In April, high-yield bond prices suffered their steepest drop since the early days of the pandemic – second only to March 2020. Private credit's quiet consistency While public credit markets have endured drawdowns and dislocations, private credit has functioned as intended, providing financing to borrowers and liquidity to private equity sponsors without disruption. That resilience is showing up in the data. April's tariff-driven volatility caused liquid credit spreads to swing sharply – widening in one of the most significant moves in history, before recovering around 71 per cent by early May. In contrast, the private credit market operated as usual, providing a stable source of funding for companies throughout the turmoil. Private credit's advantages are structural. In a world of higher rates and unpredictable correlations, it can offer insulation from policy shifts, with floating rates and lower correlation to public markets. The private credit model brings lenders (investors) directly to borrowers in a 'farm to table' model, reducing the role of bank intermediaries and giving back this spread to investors. The strategy's floating rate nature reduces exposure to interest rate risk, leaving credit risk as the primary concern – one that experienced managers seek to address through careful underwriting, active portfolio management, and within private investment-grade credit, a focus on first-lien senior secured debt. Historically, private credit has delivered steady cash flows, limited volatility, and a reliable alternative source of return. Importantly, the private credit space extends far beyond traditional direct lending. Today, the total addressable market for private credit exceeds US$30 trillion, a significant expansion from less than US$100 billion prior to the GFC. Private asset-backed financing has become a vital source of capital for companies in high-growth areas such as energy, digital infrastructure, and transportation, while providing investors with hard asset collateral, amortising cash flows and over-collateralisation. The continued growth of these sectors may expand the asset-backed financing opportunity and potentially give investors an increasingly diverse mix of private credit strategies, providing more resilient portfolios. That's good news for investors, because as they confront the 40 per cent problem – the end of easy returns and automatic diversification from public traditional fixed income – they'll need to adapt. In a portfolio that's no longer self-balancing, we believe that tools like private credit are essential. The writer is chief investment strategist, Blackstone Private Wealth Solutions
NDTV
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- NDTV
Exclusive: Inside A 200-Year-Old Havana Bar With The Ghost Of Ernest Hemingway
Sometime in 1960, writer Ernest Hemingway found himself with a bitter pill to swallow. It was the last glass of daiquiri he was downing in his favourite bar in Havana. The communists and their revolution had made it difficult for Hemingway to stay on in Havana, the Cuban capital he had fallen in love with and moved to twenty-one years ago. He had to leave. The Cold War made it inevitable: he had to pick from between US and Cuba, and the writer chose the former. Hemingway left Havana for its mightier neighbour. He went to Idaho but not without a promise: he was going to return to the Havana where he wrote, played, loved and lived. The next year, Hemingway shot himself in the head. A few thousand miles away, Havana mourned Papa, the name it had bestowed on its wayward child. A Birth Anniversary Like Any Other Hemingway, today, is long gone. The classics shelves in bookstores around the world store a thin paperback copy of Old Man And The Sea as birth anniversaries come and go. Everywhere, Hemingway is a memory at best. Not in Havana. The city that Hemingway loved and let crush him, loves him back equally devastatingly. It is a love affair for the ages; one that outlasted all of Hemingway's four marriages put together. The writer first made a stop in Havana on a layover to Spain in 1928. He spent three nights in the city and made up his mind. He was going to return. In 1932, he came to Havana for the second time, and brought along two friends. He stayed at Hotel Ambos Mundos on that visit and walked down a few minutes for a drink. This was going to be the first time Hemingway set foot in a bar called El Floridita. He did not know that he was to change the history of that bar with that visit. The Most Famous Landmark In Havana Ask anyone in Havana the address of El Floridita. A seven-minute walk from the Capitol, down a boulevard lined with colourful vintage Fords and Chevrolets, you'll bump into the occasional beggar asking you for a dollar. Men in bright-yellow scooped-out coconut-shell-shaped taxis wait for a ride. A toothless grin follows if you ask them for directions to Hemingway's favourite bar in the whole wide world; and there you have it: the Cuban revolution anthem Guantanamera performed by the band Quinteto D'Amore bellowing out of the glass doors, bowtied bartenders ruffling up rows after rows of syrupy-sweet daiquiris, and patrons lining up for a 'Hemingway Special'. You have entered El Floridita. You are expected to know why you are at the bar when you're at the bar. El Floridita holds the hype for being one of the most famous bars in the world. No trip to Havana is complete without it. No trip to Cuba is complete without it. A Seat For Papa Once you're done taking in the mixologist's dance to your right, your eyes go left. There, a life-size bronze statue by Jose Villa Soberon of Cuba's most famous expat sits at the bar. Meet Ernest Hemingway; world-famous writer and mad lover of Havana. The Hemingway corner is the most famous spot at the mahogany table. You'll find a queue of patrons waiting to throw their arms around Papa, as their friends go clickety-click on their phones. There are framed photos of Hemingway with a host of personalities. The one with Fidel Castro mid-conversation is arguably the most popular. The Birthplace Of Daiquiri All of it is a moment for Instagram. Hemingway might have scoffed it off but El Floridita is happy cashing in on it. A Hemingway Special daiquiri is the most expensive cocktail at the bar. While a regular daiquiri in the land of rum would cost you INR 350, Hemingway's favourite will set you back by double the amount. Price inclusive of history and Hemingway. El Floridita is the bar where the daiquiri was invented. In 1914, Catalan immigrant Constantino Ribalaigua Vert moved to the bar as its bartender. Four years later he bought the place. In 1931, the experimenter that Constantino - 'Constante' to his guests - was, he created the daiquiri. Rum cocktails were his favourite. A year later, the fame of Floridita's daiquiris brought Hemingway to Constance. The writer wasn't disappointed. His daiquiri was special. It helped his pen flow, as it did deal with difficult people. Hemingway, a diabetic, had his daiquiri sugarless. Today at El Floridita, you find a Hemingway Special the same way; except for the sugar. You need to ask if you want it the way Hemingway had. Hemingway's Havana In 1939, Ernest Hemingway moved lock stock and barrel to Havana with his third wife, Martha Gellhorn. The couple bought a 'lookout farm' in Havana the following year. Finca Vigia was home to the Hemingways and a dozen cats that shared the place with them. The Third Mrs Hemingway soon made way for the fourth, but the writer's love for daiquiris stayed constant. Hemingway regularly drove down the half-hour way from his home to El Floridita for the drink. Posing with Papa. Photo: Author When the daiquiri hits you, Quinteto D'Amore sings out Guantanamera at the top of their voices, busy patrons jostle for a space next to Papa's bronze statue... you might catch Hemingway winking. This is his Havana. This is the Havana he loved. Now you too know why.
