Ernest Hemingway is one of the most celebrated and most controversial of American writers. He is seen variously as a sensitive and dedicated artist and as a hedonistic adventurer, as a literary poseur and as the stylistic genius of the century. His personal life has become so involved with his work that the two are virtually inseparable in scholarly inquiry: critics persist, with some justification, in reading characters in his works as "real" people and in assuming that events and attitudes in the fiction directly correspond with those in Hemingway's personal life. Hemingway was a strong man of definite opinion, who lived a vigorous life devoted to artistic creation and to active participation in the world. He was said to fill a room the "moment he walked into it, and in those around him he inspired something close to hero worship. As Carlos Baker has said in Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (1969), the standard biography, at an early age Hemingway developed the "willed determination to be a free soul, untrapped by tradition, living his life in accordance with pragmatic principles." His behavior inspired admiration in some people and astonishment and dismay in others, including his parents, but no matter what his stature as a person, his position as a writer of enormous talent and influence is well established.
