Reviews
Bowman and Santos--both former journalists who know how to tell a story--say {Farson}'lived each day as if it were a door that needed kicking in.'... [He] had grabbed his existence as few men ever do--with both hands--and squeezed it for every drop.", Almost Hemingway is a revelation and a page turner -- the story of a 'mutinous existential renegade' who trekked the world by boat, car, train and horseback, won fame, faced dangers, wrote magnifient prose and lived by the creed that 'men who spent their time merely trying to get rich were pitiably dumb bastards.' Bowman and Santos capture Negley Farson's life in all its brilliance and daredeviltry. It's hard to put down a book that includes such lines as: 'After forcing Farson to make a drunken speech, the regiment carried him around the town square on their shoulders.', As Rex Bowman and Carlos Santos show in their fascinating and welcome biography, Almost Hemingway, Farson may not have equaled Hemingway in the quality and influence of his prose, but his body of work is significant, and he deserves to be better known and more widely read., "Negley Farson lived his life like a headlong attack, and Rex Bowman and Carlos Santos keep pace with him. Almost Hemingway is a beautifully written account of an avatar of a vanishing breed--the adventurer. It is a distinct pleasure to barrel through Farson's vivid life with the authors. "--Mary Dearborn, author of Ernest Hemingway: A Biography, [A] bustling debut biography... fans of the Lost Generation will be entertained by this rip-roaring account of a larger-than-life character mostly lost to history., Although Farson 'managed to hide the deepest parts of himself,' the authors draw on his memoirs, letters, and reportage to create a lively chronicle of his peripatetic adventures... A brisk tale of an eventful life., Negley Farson. The name alone conjures up the incredible life story. This twentieth century epic unfolds in the authors' capable hands, sweeping across the continents and spanning two world wars, bringing back the romance and excitement of the foreign correspondent. In lively prose, the authors show how he lived by his wits, struggled with alcohol, and needed little more than a manual typewriter and a telephone to do his job., Negley Farson lived his life like a headlong attack, and Rex Bowman and Carlos Santos keep pace with him. Almost Hemingway is a beautifully written account of an avatar of a vanishing breed--the adventurer. It is a distinct pleasure to barrel through Farson's vivid life with the authors., This now-obscure author deserves a place outside of Papa's shadow.... Never heard of him? You're not alone. But in Almost Hemingway: The Adventures of Negley Farson, Foreign Correspondent, authors Rex Bowman and Carlos Santos reveal the tale of this real-life daredevil, deadline-writer extraordinaire, and, in the words of one reviewer, "mutinous existential renegade."
