Name	Ernest Hemingway
Image alt	Dark-haired man in light colored short-sleeved shirt working on a typewriter at a table on which is an open book
Birth name	Ernest Miller Hemingway
Birth date	July 21, 1899
Birth place	Oak Park, Illinois, U.S.
Nationality	American
Death date	July 02, 1961
Death place	Ketchum, Idaho, U.S.
Death cause	Suicide
Education	Oak Park and River Forest High School
Occupation	Author, journalist
Spouse	Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1921–1927; divorced)Pauline Pfeiffer (1927–1940; divorced)Martha Gellhorn (1940–1945; divorced)Mary Welsh Hemingway (1946–1961; widow)
Children	Jack Hemingway (1923–2000)Patrick Hemingway (1928–)Gregory Hemingway (1931–2001)
Religion	Roman Catholic
Awards	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1953) Nobel Prize in Literature (1954)
Signature	Ernest Hemingway Signature.svg }}

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His distinctive writing style, characterized by economy and understatement, influenced 20th-century fiction, as did his life of adventure and his public image. He produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Many of his works are classics of American literature. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works during his lifetime; a further three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction works were published posthumously.

Hemingway was born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After leaving high school he worked for a few months as a reporter for ''The Kansas City Star'', before leaving for the Italian front to become an ambulance driver during World War I, which became the basis for his novel ''A Farewell to Arms''. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home within the year. In 1922 Hemingway married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives, and the couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent. During his time there he met and was influenced by modernist writers and artists of the 1920s expatriate community known as the "Lost Generation". His first novel, ''The Sun Also Rises'', was published in 1926.

After divorcing Hadley Richardson in 1927 Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer; they divorced following Hemingway's return from covering the Spanish Civil War, after which he wrote ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940; they split when he met Mary Welsh in London during World War II. During the war he was present at D-Day and the liberation of Paris.

Shortly after the publication of ''The Old Man and the Sea'' in 1952 Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in a plane crash that left him in pain or ill-health for much of the rest of his life. Hemingway had permanent residences in Key West, Florida, and Cuba during the 1930s and '40s, but in 1959 he moved from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961.

Biography

Early life

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. His father Clarence Edmonds Hemingway was a physician, and his mother, Grace Hall-Hemingway, was a musician. Both were well educated and well respected in the conservative community of Oak Park. Frank Lloyd Wright, a resident of Oak Park, said of the village: "So many churches for so many good people to go to". When Clarence and Grace Hemingway married in 1896, they moved in with Grace's father, Ernest Hall, after whom they named their first son. Hemingway claimed to dislike his name, which he "associated with the naive, even foolish hero of Oscar Wilde's play ''The Importance of Being Earnest''". The family's seven-bedroom home in a respectable neighborhood contained a music studio for Grace and a medical office for Clarence.

Hemingway's mother frequently performed in concerts around the village. As an adult Hemingway professed to hate his mother, although biographer Michael Reynolds points out that Hemingway mirrored her energy and enthusiasm. Her insistence that he learn to play the cello became a "source of conflict", but he later admitted the music lessons were useful in his writing, as in the "contrapuntal structure" of ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. The family owned a summer home called Windemere on Walloon Lake, near Petoskey, Michigan, where Hemingway learned to hunt, fish and camp in the woods and lakes of Northern Michigan. His early experiences in nature instilled a passion for outdoor adventure, and living in remote or isolated areas. Hemingway attended Oak Park and River Forest High School from 1913 until 1917 where he took part in a number of sports—boxing, track and field, water polo, and football—had good grades in English classes, and he and his sister Marcelline performed in the school orchestra for two years. In his junior year, he took a journalism class, taught by Fannie Biggs, which was structured "as though the classroom were a newspaper office". The better writers in class submitted pieces to the ''The Trapeze'', the school newspaper. Hemingway and his sister Marcelline both had pieces submitted to ''The Trapeze''; Hemingway's first piece, published in January 1916, was about a local performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He continued to contribute to and to edit the ''Trapeze'' and the ''Tabula'' (the school's newspaper and yearbook), for which he imitated the language of sportswriters, and used the pen name Ring Lardner, Jr.—a nod to Ring Lardner of the ''Chicago Tribune'' whose byline was "Line O'Type". Like Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis, Hemingway was a journalist before becoming a novelist; after leaving high school he went to work for ''The Kansas City Star'' as a cub reporter. Although he stayed there for only six months he relied on the ''Star'''s style guide as a foundation for his writing: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative."

World War I

Early in 1918 Hemingway responded to a Red Cross recruitment effort and signed on to be an ambulance driver in Italy. He left New York in May, and arrived in Paris as the city was under bombardment from German artillery. By June he was stationed at the Italian Front, and on his first day in Milan was sent to the scene of a munitions factory explosion where rescuers retrieved the shredded remains of female workers. He described the incident in his non-fiction book ''Death in the Afternoon'': "I remember that after we searched quite thoroughly for the complete dead we collected fragments". A few days later he was stationed at Fossalta di Piave. On July 8 he was seriously wounded by mortar fire, having just returned from the canteen to deliver chocolate and cigarettes to the men at the front line. Despite his wounds, Hemingway carried an Italian soldier to safety, for which he received the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery. Still only eighteen, Hemingway said of the incident: "When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you ... Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen to you." He sustained shrapnel wounds to both legs; underwent an operation at a distribution center; spent five days at a field hospital; and was transferred to the Red Cross hospital in Milan for recuperation. Hemingway spent six months in the hospital, where he met and fell in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, a Red Cross nurse seven years his senior. Agnes and Hemingway planned to marry, but she became engaged to an Italian officer in March 1919, an incident that provided material for the short and bitter work "A Very Short Story". Biographer Jeffrey Meyers claims Hemingway was devastated by Agnes' rejection, and that he followed a pattern of abandoning a wife before she abandoned him in future relationships. During his six months in recuperation Hemingway met and formed a strong friendship with "Chink" Dorman-Smith that lasted for decades.

Toronto and Chicago

Hemingway returned home early in 1919 to a time of readjustment. At not yet 20 years old, the war had created in him a maturity at odds with living at home without a job and the need for recuperation. As Reynolds explains, "Hemingway could not really tell his parents what he thought when he saw his bloody knee. He could not say how scared he was in another country with surgeons who could not tell him in English if his leg was coming off or not." That summer he spent time in Michigan with high school friends, fishing and camping; and in September he spent a week in the back-country. The trip became the inspiration for his short story "Big Two-Hearted River", in which the semi-autobiographical character Nick Adams takes to the country to find solitude after returning from war. A family friend offered him a job in Toronto; having nothing else to do he accepted. Late that year he began as a freelancer, staff writer and foreign correspondent for the ''Toronto Star Weekly''. and then moved to Chicago in September 1920 to live with friends, while still filing stories for the ''Toronto Star''.

In Chicago he worked as an associate editor of the monthly journal ''Cooperative Commonwealth'', where he met Sherwood Anderson. When St. Louis native Hadley Richardson came to Chicago to visit Hemingway's roommate's sister, Hemingway, who was infatuated, later claimed "I knew she was the girl I was going to marry". Hadley was red-haired, with a "nurturing instinct", and eight years older than Hemingway. Despite the difference in age, Hadley, who had an overprotective mother, seemed less mature than usual for a young woman her age. Bernice Kert, author of ''The Hemingway Women'', claims Hadley was "evocative" of Agnes, but that Hadley had a childishness that Agnes lacked. The two corresponded for a few months, and then decided to marry and travel to Europe. They wanted to visit Rome, but Sherwood Anderson convinced them to visit Paris instead. They were married on September 3, 1921; two months later Hemingway was hired as foreign correspondent for the ''Toronto Star''; and the couple left for Paris. Of Hemingway's marriage to Hadley, Meyers claims: "With Hadley, Hemingway achieved everything he had hoped for with Agnes: the love of a beautiful woman, a comfortable income, a life in Europe."

Paris

Early Hemingway biographer Carlos Baker believes that, while Anderson suggested Paris because "the monetary exchange rate" made it an inexpensive place to live, more importantly it was where "the most interesting people in the world" resided. There Hemingway would meet writers such as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Ezra Pound who "could help a young writer up the rungs of a career". The Hemingway of the early Paris years was a "tall, handsome, muscular, broad-shouldered, brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked, square-jawed, soft-voiced young man." Stein, who was the bastion of modernism in Paris, became Hemingway's mentor for a period, introducing him to the expatriate artists and writers of the Montparnasse Quarter. She referred to artists as the "Lost Generation"—a term Hemingway popularized with the publication of ''The Sun Also Rises''. A regular at Stein's salon, Hemingway met influential painters such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and Juan Gris. However, Hemingway eventually withdrew from Stein's influence and their relationship deteriorated into a literary quarrel that spanned decades. The American poet Ezra Pound, older than Hemingway by 14 years, met Hemingway by chance at Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company in 1922. The two toured Italy in 1923 and lived on the same street in 1924. They forged a strong friendship and in Hemingway, Pound recognized and fostered a young talent. Pound—who had recently finished editing T. S. Eliot's ''The Waste Land''—introduced Hemingway to the Irish writer James Joyce,

During his first 20 months in Paris, Hemingway filed 88 stories for the ''Toronto Star''. He covered the Greco-Turkish War, where he witnessed the burning of Smyrna; wrote travel pieces such as "Tuna Fishing in Spain" and "Trout Fishing All Across Europe: Spain Has the Best, Then Germany"; and an article dedicated to bullfighting—"Pamplona in July; World's Series of Bull Fighting a Mad, Whirling Carnival". Hemingway was devastated on learning that Hadley had lost a suitcase filled with his manuscripts at the Gare de Lyon as she was traveling to Geneva to meet him in December 1922. The following September, because Hadley was pregnant, the couple returned to Toronto, where their son John Hadley Nicanor was born on October 10, 1923. During their absence Hemingway's first book, ''Three Stories and Ten Poems'', was published. Two of the stories it contained were all that remained of his work after the loss of the suitcase, and the third had been written the previous spring in Italy. Within months a second volume, ''in our time'' (without capitals), was published. The small volume included six vignettes and a dozen stories Hemingway had written the previous summer during his first visit to Spain where he discovered the thrill of the ''corrida''. He missed Paris, considered Toronto boring, and wanted to return to the life of a writer, rather than live the life of a journalist.

Hemingway, Hadley and their son (nicknamed Bumby), returned to Paris in January 1924 and moved into a new apartment on the Rue Notre Dame des Champs. When ''In Our Time'' (with capital letters) was published in 1925, the dust jacket had comments from Ford. "Indian Camp" received considerable praise; Ford saw it as an important early story by a young writer, and critics in the United States claimed Hemingway reinvigorated the short story with his use of declarative sentences and his crisp style. Six months earlier, Hemingway met F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the pair formed a friendship of "admiration and hostility". Fitzgerald's ''The Great Gatsby'' had been published that year: Hemingway read it, liked it, and decided his next work had to be a novel.

Since his first visit to see the bullfighting at the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona in 1923, Hemingway was fascinated by the sport; he saw in it the brutality of war juxtaposed against a cruel beauty. In June 1925, Hemingway and Hadley left Paris for their annual visit to Pamplona accompanied by a group of American and British expatriates. The trip inspired Hemingway's first novel, ''The Sun Also Rises'', which he began to write immediately after the fiesta, finishing in September. The novel presents the culture of bullfighting with the concept of ''afición'', depicted as an authentic way of life, contrasted with the Parisian bohemians, depicted as inauthentic. Hemingway decided to slow his pace and devoted six months to the novel's rewrite. The manuscript arrived in New York in April, and he corrected the final proof in Paris in August 1926. Scribner's published the novel in October. ''The Sun Also Rises'' epitomized the post-war expatriate generation, received good reviews and is "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work". However, Hemingway himself later wrote to his editor Max Perkins that the "point of the book" was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever"; he believed the characters in ''The Sun Also Rises'' may have been "battered" but were not lost.

Hemingway's marriage to Hadley deteriorated as he was working on ''The Sun Also Rises''. In the spring of 1926, Hadley became aware of his affair with Pauline Pfeiffer, although she endured Pauline's presence in Pamplona that July. On their return to Paris, Hadley and Hemingway decided to separate; and in November she formally requested a divorce. They split their possessions while Hadley accepted Hemingway's offer of the proceeds from ''The Sun Also Rises''. The couple were divorced in January 1927, and Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer in May.

Pfeiffer was from Arkansas—her family was wealthy and Catholic—and before the marriage Hemingway converted to Catholicism. In Paris she worked for ''Vogue''. After a honeymoon in Le Grau-du-Roi, where he contracted anthrax, Hemingway planned his next collection of short stories, ''Men Without Women'', published in October 1927. By the end of the year Pauline, who was pregnant, wanted to move back to America. John Dos Passos recommended Key West, and they left Paris in March 1928. Some time that spring Hemingway suffered a severe injury in their Paris bathroom, when he pulled a skylight down on his head thinking he was pulling on a toilet chain. This left him with a prominent forehead scar, subject of numerous legends, which he carried for the rest of his life. When Hemingway was asked about the scar he was reluctant to answer. After his departure from Paris, Hemingway "never again lived in a big city".

Key West and the Caribbean

In the late spring Hemingway and Pauline traveled to Kansas City where their son Patrick Hemingway was born on June 28, 1928. Pauline had a difficult delivery, which Hemingway fictionalized in ''A Farewell to Arms''. After Patrick's birth, Pauline and Hemingway traveled to Wyoming, Massachusetts and New York. In the fall he was in New York with Bumby, about to board a train to Florida, when he received a cable telling him that his father had committed suicide. Hemingway was devastated, having earlier sent a letter to his father telling him not to worry about financial difficulties; the letter arrived minutes after the suicide. He realized how Hadley must have felt after her own father's suicide in 1903, and he suggested, "I'll probably go the same way."

Upon his return to Key West in December, Hemingway worked on the draft of ''A Farewell to Arms'' before leaving for France in January. The draft had been finished in August but he delayed the revision. The serialization in ''Scribner's Magazine'' was scheduled to begin in May, but by April, Hemingway was still working on the ending, which he may have rewritten as many as seventeen times. ''A Farewell to Arms'' was published on September 27. Biographer James Mellow believes Hemingway's stature as an American writer was secured with the publication of ''A Farewell to Arms'', which has a complexity not apparent in ''The Sun Also Rises''. While in Spain during the summer of 1929, Hemingway researched his next work, ''Death in the Afternoon''. He wanted to write a comprehensive treatise of bullfighting, with explanations of the ''toreros'' and ''corridas'', complete with glossaries and appendices, because he believed bullfighting was "of great tragic interest, being literally of life and death."

During the early 1930s Hemingway spent his winters in Key West and summers in Wyoming, where he found "the most beautiful country he had seen in the American West" and hunting that included deer, elk, and grizzly bear. His third son, Gregory Hancock Hemingway, was born on November 12, 1931 in Kansas City. Pauline's uncle bought the couple a house in Key West with the second floor of the carriage house converted to a writing den. While in Key West he enticed his friends to join him on fishing expeditions—inviting Waldo Peirce, John Dos Passos, and Max Perkins—with one all-male trip to the Dry Tortugas, and he frequented the local bar, Sloppy Joe's. He continued to travel to Europe and to Cuba, and although he wrote of Key West in 1933, "We have a fine house here, and kids are all well," Mellow believes he "was plainly restless."

In 1933 Hemingway and Pauline went on safari to East Africa. The 10-week trip provided material for ''Green Hills of Africa'', as well as the short stories "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber". They visited Mombasa, Nairobi, and Machakos in Kenya, then on to Tanganyika, where they hunted in the Serengeti, around Lake Manyara and west and southeast of the present-day Tarangire National Park. Hemingway contracted amoebic dysentery that caused a prolapsed intestine, and he was evacuated by plane to Nairobi, an experience reflected in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro". Their guide was the noted "white hunter" Philip Hope Percival, who had guided Theodore Roosevelt on his 1909 safari. On his return to Key West in early 1934 Hemingway began work on ''Green Hills of Africa'', published in 1935 to mixed reviews.

Hemingway bought a boat in 1934, named it the ''Pilar'', and began sailing the Caribbean. In 1935 he first arrived at Bimini, where he spent a considerable amount of time. During this period he also worked on ''To Have and Have Not'', published in 1937 while he was in Spain, the only novel he wrote during the 1930s.

Spanish Civil War and World War II

It was in Christmas 1936 when Hemingway first met war correspondent Martha Gellhorn at a bar in Key West, Florida. In 1937 Hemingway agreed to report on the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA). In March he arrived in Spain with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens. Ivens, who was filming ''The Spanish Earth'', needed Hemingway as a screenwriter to replace John Dos Passos, who left the project when his friend José Robles was arrested and later executed. The incident changed Dos Passos' opinion of the leftist republicans, which created a rift between him and Hemingway, who spread a rumor that Dos Passos was a coward for leaving Spain.

Martha Gellhorn went on to join him in Spain. Like Hadley, Martha was a native of St. Louis, and like Pauline, she had worked for ''Vogue'' in Paris. Of Martha, Kert explains, "she never catered to him the way other women did." Late in 1937, while in Madrid with Martha, Hemingway wrote his only play, ''The Fifth Column'', as the city was being bombarded. He returned to Key West for a few months, then back to Spain twice in 1938. He was present at the Battle of the Ebro, the last republican stand, and was among fellow British and American journalists who were some of the last to leave the battle as they crossed the river.

In the spring of 1939, Hemingway crossed to Cuba in his boat to live in the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana. This was the separation phase of a slow and painful split from Pauline, which had begun when Hemingway met Martha. Martha soon joined him in Cuba, and they almost immediately rented "Finca Vigia" ("Lookout Farm"), a property from Havana. Pauline and the children left Hemingway that summer, after the family was re-united during a visit to Wyoming. After Hemingway's divorce from Pauline was finalized, he and Martha were married November 20, 1940, in Cheyenne, Wyoming. As he had after his divorce from Hadley, he changed locations; moving his primary summer residence to Ketchum, Idaho, just outside the newly built resort of Sun Valley, and his winter residence to Cuba. Hemingway, who had been disgusted when a Parisian friend allowed his cats to eat from the table, "developed a passion for cats" in Cuba, keeping dozens of them on the property.

Gellhorn inspired him to write his most famous novel, ''For Whom the Bell Tolls,'' which he started in March 1939, finished in July 1940, and was published in October 1940. Consistent with his pattern of moving around while working on a manuscript, he wrote ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' in Cuba, Wyoming, and Sun Valley. ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' became a book-of-the-month choice, sold half a million copies within months, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and as Meyers describes, "triumphantly re-established Hemingway's literary reputation".

In January 1941 Martha was sent to China on assignment for ''Collier's'' magazine, and Hemingway accompanied her. Although Hemingway wrote dispatches for ''PM'', he had little affinity for China. They had returned to Cuba before the declaration of war by the United States that December, and he convinced the Cuban government to help him refit the ''Pilar'' to ambush German submarines.

During World War II, he was in Europe from June to December 1944. At the D-Day landing, military officials who considered him "precious cargo", kept him to a landing craft, although biographer Kenneth Lynn claims Hemingway fabricated accounts that he went ashore during the landings. Late in July he attached himself to "the 22nd Infantry Regiment commanded by Col. Charles 'Buck' Lanaham, as it drove toward Paris", and he led a small band of village militia in Rambouillet, outside of Paris. Of Hemingway's exploits, World War II historian Paul Fussell remarks: "Hemingway got into considerable trouble playing infantry captain to a group of Resistance people that he gathered because a correspondent is not supposed to lead troops, even if he does it well". This was in fact in contraversion to the Geneva Convention, and Hemingway was brought up on formal charges; he said he "beat the rap" by claiming that his entire participation was to give advice. On August 25 he was present at the liberation of Paris, although the assertion that he was first in the city, or that he liberated the Ritz is considered part of the Hemingway legend. While in Paris he attended a reunion hosted by Sylvia Beach, and "made peace with" Gertrude Stein. Hemingway was present at heavy fighting in the Hürtgenwald near the end of 1944. On December 17, a feverish and ill Hemingway had himself driven to Luxembourg to cover what would later be called The Battle of the Bulge. However, as soon as he arrived, Lanaham handed him to the doctors, who hospitalized him with pneumonia, and by the time he recovered a week later, the main fighting was over. The last time he saw her was in March 1945, as he was preparing to return to Cuba. Meanwhile, he had asked Mary Welsh to marry him on their third meeting.

Cuba and the Nobel Prize

Hemingway said he "was out of business as a writer" from 1942 to 1945. In 1946 he married Mary, who had an ectopic pregnancy five months later. Hemingway and Mary had a series of accidents and health problems after the war: in a 1945 car accident he "smashed his knee" and sustained another "deep wound on his forehead"; Mary broke her right ankle and then her left ankle in successive skiing accidents. In 1947 his sons Patrick and Gregory were in a car accident, leaving Patrick with a head wound and severely ill. Hemingway became depressed as his literary friends died: in 1939 Yeats and Ford Madox Ford; in 1940 Scott Fitzgerald; in 1941 Sherwood Anderson and James Joyce; in 1946 Gertrude Stein; and the following year in 1947, Max Perkins, Hemingway's long time Scribner's editor and friend. During this period he had severe headaches, high blood pressure, weight problems, and eventually diabetes—much of which was the result of previous accidents and heavy drinking. Nonetheless, early in 1946 he began work on ''The Garden of Eden'', finishing 800 pages by June. During the post–war years he also began work on a trilogy to be called "The Land", "The Sea" and "The Air" which he intended to combine in one novel titled ''The Sea Book''. However, both projects stalled and Mellow considers Hemingway's inability to continue "a symptom of his troubles" during these years.

In 1948 Hemingway and Mary traveled to Europe. During a several months long stay in Venice he fell in love with the then 19 year old Adriana Ivancich. The platonic love affair inspired the novel ''Across the River and Into the Trees'', published in 1950 to bad reviews. The relationship with Adriana lasted until 1955. In 1951 Hemingway wrote the draft of ''Old Man and the Sea'' in eight weeks, considering it "the best I can write ever for all of my life". ''The Old Man and the Sea'' became a book-of-the month selection, made Hemingway an international celebrity, and won the Pulitzer Prize in May 1952, a month before he left for his second trip to Africa.

In Africa he was seriously injured in two successive plane crashes. Hemingway chartered a sightseeing flight of the Belgian Congo as a Christmas present to Mary. On their way to photograph Murchison Falls from the air, the plane struck an abandoned utility pole and "crash landed in heavy brush." Hemingway's injuries included a head wound, while Mary broke two ribs. The next day, attempting to reach medical care in Entebbe, they boarded a second plane that exploded at take-off with Hemingway suffering burns and another concussion, this one serious enough to cause leaking of cerebral fluid. They eventually arrived in Entebbe to find reporters covering the story of Hemingway's death. He briefed the reporters, and spent the next few weeks recuperating and reading his obituaries. Despite his injuries, Hemingway accompanied Patrick and his wife on a planned fishing expedition in February, but pain caused him to be irascible and difficult to get along with. When a bushfire broke out he was again injured, with second degree burns on his legs, front torso, lips, left hand and right forearm. Months later in Venice, "according to Mary they learned the full extent of Hemingway's injuries". She reported to friends that he had two cracked discs, a kidney and liver rupture, a dislocated shoulder and a broken skull. The accidents may have precipitated the physical deterioration that was to follow. After the plane crashes, Hemingway, who had been "a thinly controlled alcoholic throughout much of his life, drank more heavily than usual to combat the pain of his injuries." In October 1954 Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He modestly told the press that Carl Sandburg, Isak Dinesen and Bernard Berenson deserved the prize, but the prize money would be welcome. Mellow claims Hemingway "had coveted the Nobel Prize", but when he won it, months after his plane accidents and the ensuing world-wide press coverage, "there must have been a lingering suspicion in Hemingway's mind that his obituary notices had played a part in the academy's decision." Because he was suffering pain from the African accidents, he decided against traveling to Stockholm. Instead he sent a speech to be read, defining the writer's life: "Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day."

From the end of the year in 1955 to early 1956, Hemingway was bedridden. He was told to stop drinking to mitigate liver damage, advice he initially followed but then disregarded. In October 1956 he returned to Europe and met Basque writer Pio Baroja, who was seriously ill and died weeks later. During the trip Hemingway became sick again, and was treated for "high blood pressure, liver disease, and arteriosclerosis".

In November, while in Paris, he was reminded of trunks he had stored in the Ritz Hotel in 1928 and never retrieved. The trunks were filled with notebooks and writing from his Paris years. Excited about the discovery, when he returned to Cuba in 1957 he began to shape the recovered work into his memoir ''A Moveable Feast''. By 1959 he ended a period of intense activity: he finished ''A Moveable Feast'' (scheduled to be released the following year); brought ''True at First Light'' to 200,000 words; added chapters to ''The Garden of Eden''; and worked on ''Islands in the Stream''. The latter three were stored in a safe deposit box in Havana, as he focused on the finishing touches for ''A Moveable Feast''. Reynolds claims that it was during this period he slid into depression, from which he was unable to recover.

The Finca Vigia became crowded with guests and tourists, as Hemingway, beginning to become unhappy with life there, considered a permanent move to Idaho. In 1959 he bought a home overlooking the Big Wood River, outside of Ketchum, and left Cuba—although he apparently remained on easy terms with the Castro government, telling the ''New York Times'' he was "delighted" with Castro's overthrow of Havana. He was in Cuba in November 1959, between returning from Pamplona and traveling west to Idaho, and the following year for his birthday; however, that year he and Mary decided to leave after hearing the news that Castro wanted to nationalize property owned by Americans and other foreign nationals. In July 1960 the Hemingways left Cuba for the last time, leaving art and manuscripts in a bank vault in Havana. After the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Finca Vigia was expropriated by the Cuban government, complete with Hemingway's collection of "four to six thousand books".

Idaho and suicide

Hemingway continued working on ''A Moveable Feast'' through the end of the 1950s, and in the summer of 1959 he visited Spain to research a series of bullfighting articles for ''Life Magazine''.By January he returned to Cuba and continued work on the ''Life'' magazine series. The manuscript grew to 63,000 words—''Life'' wanted only 10,000 words—and he asked A. E. Hotchner to help organize the work that would become ''The Dangerous Summer''. Hotchner found Hemingway to be "unusually hesitant, disorganized, and confused".

Although Hemingway's mental state was noticeable in the summer of 1960, he again traveled to Spain to obtain photographs for the manuscript. Without Mary, he was lonely and took to his bed for days, retreating into silence. The first installments of ''The Dangerous Summer'' were published in ''Life'' in September 1960 to good reviews. When he left Spain, he went straight to Idaho, but was worried about money and his safety.

Hemingway believed the FBI was actively monitoring his movements. In fact, the FBI had opened a file on him during WWII, when he used the ''Pilar'' to patrol the waters off Cuba, and J. Edgar Hoover had an agent in Havana watch Hemingway during the 1950s. Hemingway suffered from physical problems as well: his health declined and his eyesight was failing. Meyers writes that "an aura of secrecy surrounds Hemingway's treatment at the Mayo", but confirms that in December 1960 he received electroconvulsive therapy as many as 15 times, then in January 1961 he was "released in ruins".

Three months later, back in Ketchum, Mary found Hemingway holding a shotgun one morning. She called Dr. Saviers, who sedated him and had him admitted to the Sun Valley Hospital; from there he was returned to the Mayo for more shock treatments. While Hemingway consented to the additional treatments, he was bitter about their apparent effect on his memory and writing. As he put it,

"What these shock doctors don't know is about writers...and what they do to them...What is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient."

He was released in late June and arrived home in Ketchum on June 30. Two days later, in the early morning hours of July 2, 1961, Hemingway "quite deliberately" shot himself with his favorite shotgun. He unlocked the gun cabinet, went to the front entrance of their Ketchum home, and "pushed two shells into the twelve-gauge Boss shotgun, put the end of the barrel into his mouth, pulled the trigger and blew out his brains." Mary called the Sun Valley Hospital, and Dr. Scott Earle arrived at the house within "fifteen minutes". Despite his finding that Hemingway "had died of a self-inflicted wound to the head", the story told to the press was that the death had been "accidental". During his final years, Hemingway's behavior was similar to his father's before he himself committed suicide; his father may have had the genetic disease hemochromatosis, in which the inability to metabolize iron culminates in mental and physical deterioration. Medical records made available in 1991 confirm that Hemingway's hemochromatosis had been diagnosed in early 1961. His sister Ursula and his brother Leicester also committed suicide. Added to Hemingway's physical ailments was the additional problem that he had been a heavy drinker for most of his life. Writing in "Ernest Hemingway: A Psychological Autopsy of a Suicide", Christopher Martin evaluates the causes of the suicide: "Careful reading of Hemingway's major biographies and his personal and public writings reveals evidence suggesting the presence of the following conditions during his lifetime: bipolar disorder, alcohol dependence, traumatic brain injury, and probable borderline and narcissistic personality traits". Martin claims suicide was inevitable because Hemingway "suffered from an enormous burden of psychiatric comorbidities and risk factors for suicide", although without a clinical evaluation of the patient, Martin concedes a diagnosis is difficult.

Hemingway's family and friends flew to Ketchum for the funeral, which was officiated by the local Catholic priest, who believed the death accidental. Of the funeral (during which an altar boy fainted at the head of the casket), his brother Leicester wrote: "It seemed to me Ernest would have approved of it all."

In a press interview five years later Mary Hemingway admitted her husband had committed suicide.

Writing style

The ''New York Times'' wrote in 1926 of Hemingway's first novel: "No amount of analysis can convey the quality of ''The Sun Also Rises''. It is a truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame." ''The Sun Also Rises'' is written in the spare, tightly written prose, for which Hemingway is famous; a style that has influenced countless crime and pulp fiction novels. In 1954, when Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, it was for "his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in ''The Old Man and the Sea'', and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."

Henry Louis Gates believes Hemingway's style was fundamentally shaped "in reaction to [his] experience of world war". After World War I, he and other modernists "lost faith in the central institutions of Western civilization," by reacting against the "elaborate style" of 19th century writers; and by creating a style "in which meaning is established through dialogue, through action, and silences—a fiction in which nothing crucial—or at least very little—is stated explicitly."

{|class="toccolours" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:25em; max-width: 25%;" cellspacing="5" |style="text-align: left;"|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. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. |- |style="text-align: left;"|—Ernest Hemingway in ''Death in the Afternoon'' |}

Because he began as a writer of short stories, Baker believes Hemingway learned to "get the most from the least, how to prune language, how to multiply intensities and how to tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth." Hemingway referred to his style as the iceberg theory: in his writing the facts float above water; the supporting structure and symbolism operate out-of-sight. Writing in "The Art of the Short Story," he explains: "A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff that you, not your editors, omit."

Jackson Benson believes Hemingway used autobiographical details as framing devices about life in general—not only about his life. For example, Benson postulates that Hemingway used his experiences and drew them out with "what if" scenarios: "what if I were wounded in such a way that I could not sleep at night? What if I were wounded and made crazy, what would happen if I were sent back to the front?" The concept of the iceberg theory is sometimes referred to as the "theory of omission." Hemingway believed the writer could describe one thing (such as Nick Adams fishing in "The Big Two-Hearted River") though an entirely different thing occurs below the surface (Nick Adams concentrating on fishing to the extent that he does not have to think about anything else).

The simplicity of the prose is deceptive. Zoe Trodd believes Hemingway crafted skeletal sentences in response to Henry James's observation that World War I had "used up words." Hemingway offers a "multi-focal" photographic reality. His iceberg theory of omission is the foundation on which he builds. The syntax, which lacks subordinating conjunctions, creates static sentences. The photographic "snapshot" style creates a collage of images. Many types of internal punctuation (colons, semicolons, dashes, parentheses) are omitted in favor of short declarative sentences. The sentences build on each other, as events build to create a sense of the whole. Multiple strands exist in one story; an "embedded text" bridges to a different angle. He also uses other cinematic techniques of "cutting" quickly from one scene to the next; or of "splicing" a scene into another. Intentional omissions allow the reader to fill the gap, as though responding to instructions from the author, and create three-dimensional prose.

{|class="toccolours" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:25em; max-width: 25%;" cellspacing="5" |style="text-align: left;"|In the late summer that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the trees. |- |style="text-align: left;"|—Opening passage of ''A Farewell to Arms'' showing Hemingway's use of the word ''and'' |} In his literature, and in his personal writing, Hemingway habitually used the word "and" in place of commas. This use of polysyndeton may serve to convey immediacy. Hemingway's polysyndetonic sentence—or in later works his use of subordinate clauses—uses conjunctions to juxtapose startling visions and images; Jackson Benson compares them to haikus. Many of Hemingway's followers misinterpreted his lead and frowned upon all expression of emotion; Saul Bellow satirized this style as "Do you have emotions? Strangle them." However, Hemingway's intent was not to eliminate emotion, but to portray it more scientifically. Hemingway thought it would be easy, and pointless, to describe emotions; he sculpted collages of images in order to grasp "the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always." This use of an image as an objective correlative is characteristic of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Proust. Hemingway's letters refer to Proust's ''Remembrance of Things Past'' several times over the years, and indicate he read the book at least twice. His writing was likely also influenced by the Japanese poetic canon.

Themes

Recurring themes in American literature exist with clarity in Hemingway's work. Leslie Fiedler sees the theme he defines as "The Sacred Land"—the American West—extended in Hemingway's work, to include mountains in Spain, Switzerland and Africa, and to the streams of Michigan. The American West is given a symbolic nod with the naming of the "Hotel Montana" in ''The Sun Also Rises'' and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls''. Although Hemingway writes about sports, Carlos Baker believes the emphasis is more on the athlete than the sport. According to Stoltzfus and Fiedler, Hemingway's nature is a place for rebirth, for therapy, and the hunter or fisherman has a moment of transcendence when the prey is killed. Robert Sholes admits that early Hemingway stories, such as "A Very Short Story", present "a male character favorably and a female unfavorably." According to Rena Sanderson, early Hemingway critics lauded his male-centric world of masculine pursuits, and the fiction divided women into "castrators or love-slaves." Feminist critics attacked Hemingway as "public enemy number one", although more recent re-evaluations of his work "have given new visibility to Hemingway's female characters (and their strengths) and have revealed his own sensitivity to gender issues, thus casting doubts on the old assumption that his writings were one-sidedly masculine." Nina Baym believes that Brett Ashley and Margot Macomber "are the two outstanding examples of Hemingway's 'bitch women.'"

The theme of women and death is evident in stories as early as "Indian Camp". The theme of death permeates Hemingway's work. Young believes the emphasis in "Indian Camp" was not so much on the woman who gives birth or the father who commits suicide, but on Nick Adams who witnesses these events as a child, and becomes a "badly scarred and nervous young man." Hemingway sets the events in "Indian Camp" that shape the Adams persona. Young believes "Indian Camp" holds the "master key" to "what its author was up to for some thirty-five years of his writing career." Stoltzfus considers Hemingway's work to be more complex with a representation of the truth inherent in existentialism: if "nothingness" is embraced, then redemption is achieved at the moment of death. Those who face death with dignity and courage live an authentic life. Francis Macomber dies happy because the last hours of his life are authentic; the bullfighter in the corrida represents the pinnacle of a life lived with authenticity. In his paper ''The Uses of Authenticity: Hemingway and the Literary Field'', Timo Müller writes that Hemingway's fiction is successful because the characters live an "authentic life", and the "soldiers, fishers, boxers and backwoodsmen are among the archetypes of authenticity in modern literature".

The theme of emasculation is prevalent in Hemingway's work, most notably in ''The Sun Also Rises''. Emasculation, according to Fiedler, is a result of a generation of wounded soldiers; and of a generation in which women such as Brett gained emancipation. This also applies to the minor character, Frances Clyne, Cohn's girlfriend in the beginning in the book. Her character supports the theme not only because the idea was presented early on in the novel but also the impact she had on Cohn in the start of the book while only appearing a small number of times. Baker believes Hemingway's work emphasizes the "natural" versus the "unnatural". In "Alpine Idyll" the "unnaturalness" of skiing in the high country late spring snow is juxtaposed against the "unnaturalness" of the peasant who allowed his wife's dead body to linger too long in the shed during the winter. The skiers and peasant retreat to the valley to the "natural" spring for redemption.

Influence and legacy

Hemingway's legacy to American literature is his style: writers who came after him emulated it or avoided it. After his reputation was established with the publication of ''The Sun Also Rises'', he became the spokesperson for the post–World War I generation, having established a style to follow. His books were burned in Berlin in 1933, "as being a monument of modern decadence", and disavowed by his parents as "filth". Reynolds asserts the legacy is that "he left stories and novels so starkly moving that some have become part of our cultural heritage." In a 2004 speech at the John F. Kennedy Library, Russell Banks declared that he, like many male writers of his generation, was influenced by Hemingway's writing philosophy, style, and public image. Müller reports that Hemingway "has the highest recognition value of all writers worldwide". Conversely, as early as the 1930s Hemingway's style was parodied, and criticized as "lazy" within the context of the "American literary tradition."

Benson believes the details of Hemingway's life have become a "prime vehicle for exploitation", resulting in a Hemingway industry. Hemingway scholar Hallengren believes the "hard boiled style" and the machismo must be separated from the author himself. In fact, during World War II, Salinger met and corresponded with Hemingway, whom he acknowledged as an influence. In a letter to Hemingway, Salinger claimed their talks "had given him his only hopeful minutes of the entire war" and jokingly "named himself national chairman of the Hemingway Fan Clubs."

The extent of Hemingway's influence is seen in the tributes and echoes of his fiction in popular culture. A minor planet, discovered in 1978 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh, was named for him (3656 Hemingway); Ray Bradbury wrote ''The Kilimanjaro Device'', with Hemingway transported to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro; The influence is evident with the many restaurants named "Hemingway"; and the proliferation of bars called "Harry's" (a nod to the bar in ''Across the River and Into the Trees''). A line of Hemingway furniture, promoted by Hemingway's son Jack (Bumby), has pieces such as the "Kilimanjaro" bedside table, and a "Catherine" slip-covered sofa. Montblanc offers a Hemingway fountain pen, and a line of Hemingway safari clothes has been created. The International Imitation Hemingway Competition was created in 1977 to publicly acknowledge his influence and the comically misplaced efforts of lesser authors to imitate his style. Entrants are encouraged to submit one "really good page of really bad Hemingway" and winners are flown to Italy to Harry's Bar.

In 1965 Mary Hemingway established the Hemingway Foundation and in the 1970s she donated her husband's papers to the John F. Kennedy Library. In 1980 a group of Hemingway scholars gathered to assess the donated papers, subsequently forming the Hemingway Society, "committed to supporting and fostering Hemingway scholarship."

Almost exactly 35 years after Hemingway's death, on July 1, 1996, his granddaughter Margaux Hemingway died in Santa Monica, California. Margaux was a supermodel and actress, co-starring with her sister Mariel in the 1976 movie ''Lipstick''. Her death was later ruled a suicide, making her "the fifth person in four generations of her family to commit suicide." Margaux's sister, Mariel, is an actress, model, writer and film producer.

Selected list of works

"Indian Camp" (1926)

''The Sun Also Rises'' (1926)

''A Farewell to Arms'' (1929)

"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1935)

''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' (1940)

''The Old Man and the Sea'' (1951)

''A Moveable Feast'' (1964, posthumous)

''True at First Light'' (1999)

See also

American literature

Family tree showing Ernest Hemingway's parents, siblings, wives, children and grandchildren

Notes

References

Sources

External links

Hemingway Archives: John F. Kennedy Library

Ernest Hemingway's Collection at The University of Texas at Austin

Ernest Hemingway In His Time at the University of Delaware Library.

The Hemingway Society

Rare, Unseen: Hemingway in Cuba — slideshow by ''Life magazine''

Hemingway-Pfeiffer timeline

FBI Records: The Vault, Subject: Ernest Hemingway

William Horne-Ernest Hemingway Letters at Newberry Library

nan:Ernest Hemingway

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name	Andy Rooney
birth name	Andrew Aitken Rooney
birth date	January 14, 1919
birth place	Albany, New York, U.S.
occupation	Writer, humorist, television personality
nationality	American
period	1949–present
citizenship	United States
alma mater	Colgate University
spouse	Marguerite Rooney (1942-2004, her death)
children	Brian, Emily, Martha, Ellen
influences	Harry Reasoner, Mike Wallace, E. B. White
awards	{{awd|awardEmmy| year2003 |titleLifetime Achievement| year2 1980| title2 "Tanks"| year3 1980| title3 "Grain"| year4 1978| title4 "Who Owns What in America"| year5 1968| title5 "Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed"}}

| signature = | website = | portaldisp = }} Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney (born January 14, 1919) is an American radio and television writer. He is most notable for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney," a part of the CBS News program ''60 Minutes'' since 1978.

Youth

Andrew Rooney was born in Albany, New York, the son of Walter Scott Rooney (1888–1959) and Ellinor (née Reynolds) Rooney (1886–1980). He attended The Albany Academy, and later attended Colgate University in Hamilton in Upstate New York, where he was initiated into the Sigma Chi fraternity, until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in August 1941. Rooney began his career in newspapers while in the Army when, in 1942, he began writing for ''Stars and Stripes'' in London during World War II. He later published a memoir, ''My War'' (1995) about his war reporting. In addition to recounting firsthand several notable historical events and people (like the entry into Paris, the concentration camps, etc.), Rooney describes how it shaped his experience both as a writer and reporter.

In February 1943, flying with the Eighth Air Force, he was one of six correspondents who flew on the first American bombing raid over Germany. Later, he was one of the first American journalists to visit the Nazi concentration camps near the end of World War II, and one of the first to write about them. During a segment on Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation," Rooney confessed that he had been opposed to World War II because he was a pacifist. He recounted that what he saw in those concentration camps made him ashamed that he had opposed the war and permanently changed his opinions about whether "just wars" exist.

CBS career

Rooney joined CBS in 1949, as a writer for ''Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts'', when Godfrey was at his peak on CBS radio and TV. It opened the show up to a variety of viewers. The program was a hit, reaching number one in 1952, during Rooney's tenure with the program. It was the beginning of a close life-long friendship between Rooney and Godfrey. He wrote for Godfrey's daytime radio and TV show ''Arthur Godfrey Time''. He later moved on to ''The Garry Moore Show'', which became a hit program. During the same period, he wrote for CBS News public affairs programs such as ''The 20th Century''.

According to CBS News's biography of him, "Rooney wrote his first television essay, a longer-length precursor of the type he does on ''60 Minutes'', in 1964, 'An Essay on Doors.' From 1962 to 1968, he collaborated with another close friend, the late CBS News correspondent Harry Reasoner — Rooney writing and producing, Reasoner narrating — on such notable CBS News specials as 'An Essay on Bridges' (1965), 'An Essay on Hotels' (1966), 'An Essay on Women' (1967), and 'The Strange Case of the English Language' (1968). 'An Essay on War' (1971) won Rooney his third Writers Guild Award. In 1968, he wrote two CBS News specials in the series 'Of Black America', and his script for 'Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed' won him his first Emmy." Rooney also wrote the script for the 1975 documentary ''FDR: The Man Who Changed America''.

In the 1970s, Rooney wrote and appeared in several prime-time specials for CBS, including ''In Praise of New York City'' (1974), the Peabody Award-winning ''Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington'' (1975), ''Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner'' (1976), and ''Mr. Rooney Goes to Work'' (1977). Transcripts of these specials, as well as of some of the earlier collaborations with Reasoner, are contained in the book ''A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney''. Another special, ''Andy Rooney Takes Off'', followed in 1984.

''A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney''

Rooney's "end-of-show" segment on ''60 Minutes,'' "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" (originally "Three Minutes or So With Andy Rooney"), began in 1978 as a summer replacement for the debate segment "Point/Counterpoint" featuring Shana Alexander and James Kilpatrick. The segment proved popular enough with viewers that beginning in the fall of 1978, it was seen in alternate weeks with the debate segment. At the end of the 1978-79 season, "Point/Counterpoint" was dropped altogether.

In the segment, Rooney typically offers satire on a trivial everyday issue, such as the cost of groceries, annoying relatives, or faulty Christmas presents. Rooney's appearances on "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" often include whimsical lists (e.g., types of milk, bottled water brands, car brands, sports mascots, etc.). In recent years, his segments have become more political as well. Despite being best known for his television presence on ''60 Minutes'', Rooney has always considered himself a writer who incidentally appears on television behind his famous walnut table, which he made himself.

Rooney's shorter television essays have been archived in numerous books, such as ''Common Nonsense'', which came out in 2002, and ''Years of Minutes'', released in 2003. He pens a regular syndicated column for Tribune Media Services that runs in many newspapers in the United States, and which has been collected in book form. He has won three Emmy Awards for his essays, which now number close to 1,000. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 2003. Rooney's renown has made him a frequent target of parodies and impersonations by a diverse group of comedic figures, including Frank Caliendo, Rich Little and Beavis.

Views

He has claimed on ''Larry King Live'' to have a liberal bias, stating, "There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias. I mean, I'm consistently liberal in my opinions." Though in a controversial 1999 book Rooney self-identified as agnostic, Rooney has, as of 2008, come out as an atheist. Over the years many of his editorials have poked fun at the concept of God and organized religion. Increased speculation on this was brought to a head by a series of comments he made regarding Mel Gibson's film ''The Passion of the Christ'' (2004).

Though Rooney has been called Irish-American, he once said "I'm proud of my Irish heritage, but I'm not Irish. I'm not even Irish-American. I am American, period."

In 2005, when four people were fired at CBS News perhaps because of the Killian documents controversy, Rooney said, "The people on the front lines got fired while the people most instrumental in getting the broadcast on escaped." Others at CBS had "kept mum" about the controversy.

Andy Rooney was briefly interviewed on HBO's ''Da Ali G Show'', where he became one of the only guests to be so annoyed by Ali G that he furiously ended the interview several minutes into it. Before ending the interview, he repeatedly corrected Ali G when he used "does" as the conjugation of the verb "to do" in the second-person singular when addressing Rooney. When Ali G said, "I think that's an English/American thing going on," Rooney replied, "No, no. That's English. The English language is very clear. I have fifty books on the English language if you'd like to borrow one." Near the beginning of the interview, Rooney misspelled his own last name as ''Runey'' when Ali G asked him how it was spelled.

Racial remarks

Andy Rooney wrote a column in 1992 that it was "silly" for Native-Americans to complain about team names like the Redskins saying, "The real problem is, we took the country away from the Indians, they want it back and we're not going to give it to them. We feel guilty and we'll do what we can for them within reason, but they can't have their country back. Next question."

In a recent column for ''Tribune'' media services, he wrote, "I know all about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but today's baseball stars are all guys named Rodriguez to me." Rooney later commented, "Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said it, [but] it's a name that seems common in baseball now. I certainly didn't think of it in any derogatory sense."

Rooney has always denied that he is a racist. In the 1940s, he was arrested after sitting in the back of a segregated bus in protest. Also, in 2008, Rooney applauded the fact that "the citizens of this country, 80 percent of whom are white, freely chose to elect a black man as their leader simply because they thought he was the best choice." He said that makes him proud, and that it proves that the country has "come a long way - a good way."

Suspension by CBS

In 1990, Rooney was suspended without pay for three months. It is believed that this punishment was for saying that "too much alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions, cigarettes [are] all known to lead... to premature death." He wrote an explanatory letter to a gay organization after being ordered not to do so. After only four weeks without Rooney, ''60 Minutes'' lost 20 percent of its audience. CBS management then decided that it was in the best interest of the network to have Rooney return immediately.

After Rooney's reinstatement, he made his remorse public:

Remarks on Kurt Cobain's suicide

In a 1994 segment, Rooney attracted controversy with his remarks on Kurt Cobain's suicide. He expressed his dismay that the death of Richard Nixon was overshadowed by Cobain's suicide, stating that he had never heard of Cobain nor his band, Nirvana. He went on to say that Cobain's suicide made him angry. "A lot of people would like to have the years left that he threw away," Rooney said. "What's all this nonsense about how terrible life is?" he asked, and he added, speaking rhetorically to a young woman who had wept at the suicide, "I'd love to relieve the pain you're going through by switching my age for yours." "What would all these young people be doing if they had real problems like a Depression, World War II or Vietnam?" "If he applied the same brain to his music that he applied to his drug-infested life, it's reasonable to think that his music may not have made much sense either." Later, Rooney admitted that he might have been "unfair" and apologized on air.

Family life

His wife, Marguerite "Margie" Rooney (née Howard), died in 2004 of heart failure, after 62 years of marriage. Rooney later wrote, "her name does not appear as often as it originally did [in my essays] because it hurts too much to write it." He has four children, including a daughter, Emily Rooney, who is a TV talk show host and former ABC News producer; she currently hosts a nightly Boston-area public affairs program, ''Greater Boston'', on WGBH. Emily's identical twin, Martha, is Chief of the Public Services Division at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. The third daughter, Ellen, is a photographer based in London. His son, Brian Rooney, has been a correspondent for ABC since the 1980s.

Rooney currently lives in the Rowayton section of Norwalk, Connecticut and in Rensselaerville, New York, and is a longtime season ticket holder for the New York Giants.

Awards

2001 – Emperor Has No Clothes Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Books

Books written by Rooney:

''A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney'', 1981 (ISBN 0-689-11194-0)

''The Complete Andy Rooney'', 1983 (ISBN 0-446-11219-4)

''And More by Andy Rooney'', 1985 (ISBN 0-517-40622-5)

''Pieces of My Mind'', 1986 (ISBN 0-689-11492-3)

''The Most of Andy Rooney'', 1986 (ISBN 0-689-11864-3)

''Word for Word'', 1988 (ISBN 0-399-13200-7)

''Not That You Asked...'', 1989 (ISBN 0-394-57837-6)

''Most of Andy Rooney'', 1990 (ISBN 0-88365-765-1)

''Sweet and Sour'', 1992 (ISBN 0-399-13774-2)

''My War'', 1997 (ISBN 0-517-17986-5)

''Sincerely, Andy Rooney'', 1999 (ISBN 1-891620-34-7)

''Common Nonsense'', 2002, (ISBN 1-58648-144-4)

''Years of Minutes'', 2003 (ISBN 1-58648-211-4)

''Out of My Mind'', 2006 (ISBN 1-58648-416-8)

''60 Years of Wisdom and Wit'', 2009 (ISBN 1-58648-773-6)

See also

List of newspaper columnists

References

External links

CBS Biography

Archive of previous "A Few Minutes..." segments

Andy Rooney Podcast among other CBS podcasts

Snopes.com on Rooney E-Mail Snopes.com's article on false e-mail claims

Potential Racialism from Rooney

Category:1919 births Category:American atheists Category:American humorists Category:American television journalists Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:American memoirists Category:Colgate University alumni Category:Commentators Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Living people Category:Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal Category:People from Albany, New York Category:People from Norwalk, Connecticut Category:United States Army soldiers Category:War correspondents

de:Andy Rooney id:Andy Rooney no:Andy Rooney pt:Andy Rooney fi:Andy Rooney zh:安迪·朗尼

name	David Lynch
birth place	Missoula, Montana, U.S.
birth name	David Keith Lynch January 20, 1946
spouse	Peggy Lentz (1967–1974)Mary Fisk (1977–1987)Mary Sweeney (2006) Emily Stofle (2009–present)
partner	Isabella Rossellini (1986–1991)
citizenship	United States
education	Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, AFI Conservatory
occupation	Film director, screenwriter, producer, painter, musician
years active	1966–present
style	Nonlinear, Psychological, Neo-noir, Surrealistic, Horror
Notable works	''Twin Peaks'', '' Mulholland Drive'', '' Blue Velvet'', '' The Elephant Man'', ''Eraserhead''
influences	Franz Kafka, Stanley Kubrick, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Werner Herzog, Luis Buñuel, Billy Wilder, Jacques Tati, Ingmar Bergman, Roman Polanski, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren
influenced	Coen brothers, Quentin Tarantino, Darren Aronofsky, Jonathan Caouette, Adam Goldberg, Greg Harrison, Martin McDonagh }}

David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound design. Indeed, the surreal and in many cases violent elements to his films have earned them the reputation that they "disturb, offend or mystify" their audiences.

Born to a middle class family in Missoula, Montana, Lynch spent his childhood travelling around the United States, before going on to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he first made the transition to producing short films. Deciding to devote himself more fully to this medium, he moved to Los Angeles, where he produced his first motion picture, the surrealist horror ''Eraserhead'' (1977). After ''Eraserhead'' became a cult classic on the midnight movie circuit, Lynch was employed to direct ''The Elephant Man'' (1980), from which he gained mainstream success. Then being employed by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, he proceeded to make two films: the science-fiction epic ''Dune'' (1984), which proved to be a critical and commercial failure, and then a neo-noir crime film, ''Blue Velvet'' (1986), which was highly critically acclaimed.

Proceeding to create his own television series with Mark Frost, the highly popular murder mystery ''Twin Peaks'' (1990–1992), he also created a cinematic prequel, ''Fire Walk With Me'' (1992); a road movie, ''Wild at Heart'' (1990) and a family film, ''The Straight Story'' (1999), in the same period. Turning further towards surrealist filmmaking, three of his following films worked on "dream logic" non-linear narrative structures, ''Lost Highway'' (1997), ''Mulholland Drive'' (2001) and ''Inland Empire'' (2006). Meanwhile, Lynch proceeded to embrace the internet as a medium, producing several web-based shows, such as the animation ''Dumbland'' (2002) and the surreal sitcom ''Rabbits'' (2002).

In the course of his career, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and a nomination for best screenplay. Lynch has twice won France's César Award for Best Foreign Film, as well as the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival. The French government awarded him the Legion of Honor, the country's top civilian honor, as a ''Chevalier'' in 2002 and then an ''Officier'' in 2007, while that same year, ''The Guardian'' described Lynch as "the most important director of this era". Allmovie called him "the Renaissance man of modern American filmmaking", whilst the success of his films have led to him being labelled "the first popular Surrealist."

Life and career

Early life: 1946–1965

Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana on January 20, 1946. His father, Donald Walton Lynch, was a research scientist working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and his mother, Edwina "Sunny" Lynch (née Sundholm), was an English language tutor whose grandfather's parents had immigrated to the United States from Finland in the 19th century. Lynch was raised a Presbyterian. Due to Donald's job, the Lynch family often moved around according to where the Department of Agriculture assigned him. It was because of this that when he was two months old, David Lynch moved with his parents to Sandpoint, Idaho, and only two years after that, following the birth of his brother John, the family again moved, this time to Spokane, Washington. It was here that his sister Martha was born, before they once more moved, this time to Durham, North Carolina, then to Boise, Idaho and then to Alexandria, Virginia. Lynch found this transitory early life relatively easy to adjust to, noting that he found it fairly easy to meet new friends whenever he started attending a new school. Commenting on much of his early life, Lynch has remarked that "I found the world completely and totally fantastic as a child. Of course, I had the usual fears, like going to school… For me, back then, school was a crime against young people. It destroyed the seeds of liberty. The teachers didn't encourage knowledge or a positive attitude." Alongside this schooling, his father made him join the Boy Scouts, although he would later note that he only "became one so I could quit, and put it behind me." He rose to the highest rank of Eagle Scout. It was through being an Eagle Scout that he was present with other Boy Scouts outside of the White House at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, which took place on Lynch's birthday in 1961.

Lynch had become interested in painting and drawing from an early age, becoming intrigued by the idea of pursuing it as a career path when living in Virginia, where his friend's father was a professional painter. At Francis C. Hammond High School in Alexandria, Virginia, he did poorly academically, having little interest in school work, but was popular with other students, and after leaving decided that he wanted to study painting at college, thereby beginning his studies at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1964, where he was a roommate of Peter Wolf. Nonetheless, he left after only a year, stating that "I was not inspired AT ALL in that place", and instead deciding that he wanted to travel around Europe for three years with his friend Jack Fisk, who was similarly unhappy with his studies at Cooper Union. They had some hopes that in Europe they could train with the expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka at his school, however upon reaching Salzburg they found that he was not available, and disillusioned, they returned to the United States after spending only 15 days of their planned three years in Europe.

Philadelphia and short films: 1966–1970

Back in the United States, Lynch returned to Virginia, but since his parents had moved to Walnut Creek, California, he was forced to stay with his friend Tony Keeler for a while, before he decided to move to the city of Philadelphia, where, at the advice of Jack Fisk, who was already attending it, he decided to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, something he preferred far more than his previous art college in Boston, claiming that "In Philadelphia there were great and serious painters, and everybody was inspiring one another and it was a beautiful time there." It was here that he began a relationship with a fellow student, Peggy Reavey, and they were married in 1967. The following year, Peggy gave birth to their child, a girl whom they named Jennifer. Later describing this situation, Peggy stated that "[Lynch] definitely was a reluctant father, but a very loving one. Hey, I was pregnant when we got married. We were both reluctant." As a family, they moved to the Fairmount neighbourhood of Philadelphia, where they were able to purchase a large 12-room house for a relatively low $3,500 due to the high crime and poverty rates in the area. Later describing living there, Lynch stated that "We lived cheap, but the city was full of fear. A kid was shot to death down the street… We were robbed twice, had windows shot out and a car stolen. The house was first broken into only three days after we moved in… The feeling was so close to extreme danger, and the fear was so intense. There was violence and hate and filth. But the biggest influence in my whole life was that city." Meanwhile, in order to help financially support his family alongside his art studies, he took up a job printing engravings.

It was at the Philadelphia Academy that Lynch made his very first short film, which was entitled ''Six Men Getting Sick'' (1966). He had first come up with the idea when he developed a wish to see his paintings move, and he subsequently began discussing the idea of creating an animation with an artist named Bruce Samuelson. When this project never came about, Lynch decided to work on a film alone, and so purchased the cheapest 16mm camera that he could find in order to do so. Taking one of the abandoned upper rooms of the Academy as a working space, he spent $200 – which at the time he felt to be a lot of money – to produce ''Six Men Getting Sick''. Describing the work as "57 seconds of growth and fire, and three seconds of vomit", Lynch played the film on a loop at the Academy's annual end-of-year exhibit, where it shared joint first prize with a painting by Noel Mahaffey. This led to a commission from one of his fellow students, the wealthy H. Barton Wasserman, who offered him $1000 to create a film installation in his home. Spending $450 of that on purchasing a second-hand Bolex camera, Lynch produced a new animated short, but upon getting the film developed, realized that the result was simply a blurred, frameless print. As he would later relate, "So I called up Bart [Wasserman] and said, 'Bart, the film is a disaster. The camera was broken and what I've done hasn't turned out.' And he said, 'Don't worry, David, take the rest of the money and make something else for me. Just give me a print.' End of story."

Using this leftover money, Lynch decided to experiment on making a work that was a mix of animation with live action, producing a four minute short entitled ''The Alphabet'' (1968). The film starred Lynch's wife Peggy as a character known as The Girl, who chants the alphabet to a series of images of horses before dying at the end by haemorrhaging blood all over her bed sheets. Adding a sound effect, Lynch used a broken Uher tape recorder to record the sound of his baby daughter Jennifer crying, creating a distorted sound that Lynch felt to be particularly effective. Later describing where he had got inspiration for this work from, Lynch stated that "Peggy's niece was having a bad dream one night and was saying the alphabet in her sleep in a tormented way. So that's sort of what started ''The Alphabet'' going. The rest of it was just subconscious."

Learning about the newly founded American Film Institute, which gave grants to film makers who could produce for them both a prior work and a script for a new project, Lynch decided to send them a copy of ''The Alphabet'' along with a script that he had written for a new short film, one that would be almost entirely live action, and which would be entitled ''The Grandmother''. The Institute agreed to help finance the work, initially offering him $5000, out of his requested budget of $7,200, but later granting him the further $2,200 which he needed. Starring people he knew from both work and college and filmed in his own house, ''The Grandmother'' revolved around the story of a neglected boy who "grows" a grandmother from a seed to care for him. The film critics Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell later remarked that "this film is a true oddity but contains many of the themes and ideas that would filter into his later work, and shows a remarkable grasp of the medium".

Los Angeles and ''Eraserhead'': 1971–1979

In 1971, Lynch moved with his wife and daughter to the city of Los Angeles in California, where he began studying filmmaking at the AFI Conservatory, a place that he would later describe as being "completely chaotic and disorganized, which was great… you quickly learned that if you were going to get something done, you would have to do it yourself. They wanted to let people do their thing." He began writing a script for a proposed work entitled ''Gardenback'', which had "unfolded from this painting I'd done." In this venture he was supported by a number of figures at the Conservatory, who encouraged him to lengthen the script and add in more dialogue, something that he reluctantly agreed to do. Nonetheless, with all the interference on his ''Gardenback'' project, he became fed up with the Conservatory, and announced that he was quitting. Attempting to prevent this, many of the teachers at the centre asked him to reconsider, believing that he was one of their best students, and he finally agreed, albeit on the condition that he could create his own project that would not be interfered with. Feeling that ''Gardenback'' was "wrecked", he instead set about on a new film, which he called ''Eraserhead''.

Despite the fact that the film was planned to be about forty-two minutes long (it would end up being eighty-nine minutes long), the script for ''Eraserhead'' was only 21 pages long, and some of the teachers at the Conservatory were concerned that the film would not be a success with such little dialogue and action. Nonetheless, they agreed not to interfere as they had done with ''Gardenback'', and as such Lynch was able to create the film free from interference. Filming, which began in 1972, took place at night in some abandoned stables, allowing the production team, which was largely Lynch and some of his friends, including Sissy Spacek, Jack Fisk, cinematographer Frederick Elmes and sound designer Alan Splet to set up a camera room, green room, editing room, sets as well as a food room and a bathroom. Initially, funding for the project came from the AFI, who gave Lynch a $10,000 grant, but it was not enough to complete the work, and under pressure from studios after the success of the relatively cheap feature film ''Easy Rider'', they were unable to provide him with any more. Following this, Lynch was also supported by a loan given to him by his father, and by money that he was able to bring in from a paper round that he took up delivering the ''Wall Street Journal''. Not long into the production of ''Eraserhead'', Lynch and his wife Peggy amicably separated and divorced, and so he began living full-time on set. In 1977, Lynch would remarry, this time to a woman named Mary Fisk.

Filmed in black and white, ''Eraserhead'' tells the story of a quiet young man named Henry (Jack Nance) living in a dystopian industrial wasteland, whose girlfriend gives birth to a deformed baby whom she leaves in his care. The baby constantly cries, eventually leading to its accidental death, at which the world itself begins to fall apart. Lynch has consistently refused to either confirm or deny any interpretation of ''Eraserhead'', or to "confess his own thinking behind the many abstractions in the film." Nonetheless, he admits that it was heavily influenced by the fearful mood of Philadelphia, and referred to the film as "my ''Philadelphia Story''".

It was due to the financial problems with the production of ''Eraserhead'' that filming was haphazard, regularly stopping and starting again. It was in one such break in 1974 that Lynch created a short film entitled ''The Amputee'', which revolved around a woman with two amputated legs (played by Jack Nance's wife, Catherine Coulson) reading aloud a letter and having her stumps washed by a doctor (played by Lynch himself).

''Eraserhead'' was finally finished in 1976, after five years of production. Lynch subsequently tried to get the film entered into the Cannes Film Festival, but whilst some reviewers liked it, others felt that it was awful, and so it was not selected for screening. Similarly, reviewers from the New York Film Festival also rejected it, but it was indeed screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival, from where Ben Barenholtz, the distributor of the Elgin Theater, heard about it. He was very supportive of the movie, helping to distribute it around the United States in 1977, and ''Eraserhead'' subsequently became popular on the midnight movie underground circuit, and was later described as one of the most important midnight movies of the seventies along with ''El Topo'', ''Pink Flamingos'', ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'', ''The Harder They Come'' and ''Night of the Living Dead''. The acclaimed film maker Stanley Kubrick said that it was one of his all-time favorite films.

''The Elephant Man'' and mainstream success: 1980–1982

The cult success of ''Eraserhead'' on the underground circuit led to it being seen by Stuart Cornfeld, an executive producer to the producer Mel Brooks, who later remarked that "I was just 100 per cent blown away… I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. It was such a cleansing experience." Contacting Lynch, he agreed to help him with his next planned project, a film entitled ''Ronnie Rocket'' for which Lynch had already written a script. Nonetheless, Lynch soon realized that ''Ronnie Rocket'', a film that he described as being about "electricity and a three-foot guy with red hair", was not going to be picked up by any financiers, and so he asked Cornfeld to find him a script written by someone else which he could direct. Cornfeld went away and found him four possible scripts, but upon hearing the title of the first, ''The Elephant Man'', Lynch was already sure that that was the script for him, going on nothing but the title.

''The Elephant Man'' script – written by Chris de Vore and Eric Bergren – was based upon a true story, that of Joseph Merrick, a heavily deformed man living in Victorian London, who was held in a sideshow but was later taken under the care of a London surgeon, Frederick Treves. Lynch wanted to film it, but at the same time also had to make some alterations that would alter the story from true events, but in his view make a better plot. However, in order to do so he would have to get the permission of Mel Brooks, whose company, BrookFilms, would be responsible for production; subsequently Brooks viewed ''Eraserhead'', and after coming out of the screening theatre, embraced Lynch, declaring that "You're a madman, I love you! You're in."

The resulting film, ''The Elephant Man'', starred John Hurt as John Merrick (his name was changed from Joseph), as well as Anthony Hopkins as Frederick Treves. Filming took place in London, and Lynch brought his own distinctively surrealist approach to the film, filming it in color stock black and white, but nonetheless it has been described as "one of the most conventional" of his films. ''The Elephant Man'' was a huge critical and commercial success, and earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay nods for Lynch.

The De Laurentiis films, ''Dune'' and ''Blue Velvet'': 1983–1986

Following on from the success of ''The Elephant Man'', the film maker George Lucas, himself a fan of ''Eraserhead'', offered Lynch the opportunity to direct the third film in his ''Star Wars'' trilogy, ''Return of the Jedi''. Lynch however refused, arguing that Lucas should direct the film himself as the movie should reflect his own vision, not Lynch's take on it. Soon after however, the opportunity to direct another big-budget science fiction epic arose when Dino de Laurentiis of the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group asked him to create a film adaptation of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel ''Dune'' (1965). Lynch agreed, and in doing so was also contractually obliged to produce two other works for the company. He then set about writing a script based upon the original novel, initially with both Chris de Vore and Eric Bergren, and then just by himself when De Laurentiis wasn't happy with their ideas. Lynch also helped build some of the sets, attempting to create "a certain look" for the film, and he particularly enjoyed building the set for the oil planet of Giedi Prime, for which he "used steel, bolts, and porcelain to construct" it.

''Dune'' is set in the far future, when humans live in an interstellar empire run along a feudal system. The main character, Paul Atreides (played by Kyle MacLachlan), is the son of a noble who takes control of the desert planet Arrakis which grows the rare spice melange, the most highly prized commodity in the empire. Lynch however was unhappy with the work, later remarking that "''Dune'' was a kind of studio film. I didn’t have final cut. And, little by little, I was subconsciously making compromises" to his own vision. He produced much footage for the film that was eventually removed out from the final theatrical cut, dramatically condensing the plot. Although De Laurentiis hoped it would be as successful as ''Star Wars'', Lynch's ''Dune'' (1984) was a critical and commercial dud; it had cost $45 million to make, and grossed a mere $27.4 million domestically. Later on, Universal Studios released an "extended cut" of the film for syndicated television, containing almost an hour of cutting-room-floor footage and new narration. Such was not representative of Lynch's intentions, but the studio considered it more comprehensible than the original two-hour version. Lynch objected to these changes and had his name struck from the extended cut, which has "Alan Smithee" credited as the director and "Judas Booth" (a pseudonym which Lynch himself invented, inspired by his own feelings of betrayal) as the screenwriter.

Meanwhile in 1983 he had begun the writing and drawing of a comic strip, ''The Angriest Dog in the World'', which featured unchanging graphics of a tethered dog that was so angry that it could not move, alongside cryptic philosophical references. It ran from 1983 until 1992 in the ''Village Voice'', ''Creative Loafing'' and other tabloid and alternative publications. It was around this period that Lynch also got increasingly interested in photography as an art form, and travelled to northern England to take photos of the degrading industrial landscape, something that he was particularly interested in.

Following on from ''Dune'', Lynch was contractually still obliged to produce two other projects for De Laurentiis: the first of these was a planned sequel, which due to the film's lack of success never went beyond the script stage. The other was a more personal work, based upon a script that Lynch had been working on for some time. Developing from ideas that Lynch had had since 1973, the resulting film, ''Blue Velvet'', was set in the fictional town of Lumberton, USA, and revolves around a college student named Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), who finds a severed ear in a field. Subsequently investigating further with the help of friend Sandy (Laura Dern), he uncovers that it is related to a criminal gang led by psychopath Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), who has kidnapped the husband and child of singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) and repeatedly subjects her to rape. Lynch himself characterizes the story as "a dream of strange desires wrapped inside a mystery story."

For the film, Lynch decided to include pop songs from the 1950s, including "In Dreams" by Roy Orbison and "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton, the latter of which was largely inspirational for the film, with Lynch stating that "It was the song that sparked the movie… There was something mysterious about it. It made me think about things. And the first things I thought about were lawns – lawns and the neighbourhood." Other music for the film was also produced, this time composed by Angelo Badalamenti, who would go on to produce the music for most of Lynch’s subsequent cinematic works. Dino de Laurentiis loved the film, and it achieved support from some of the early specialist screenings, but the preview screenings to a mainstream audience were instead highly negative, with most of the audience hating the film. Although Lynch had found success previously with ''The Elephant Man'', ''Blue Velvet'''s controversy with audiences and critics introduced him into the mainstream, and became a huge critical and moderate commercial success. The film earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Woody Allen, whose film ''Hannah and Her Sisters'' was nominated for Best Picture, said that ''Blue Velvet'' was his favorite film of the year.

''Twin Peaks'', ''Wild at Heart'' and ''Fire Walk With Me'': 1987–1996

During the late 1980s, Lynch had begun to work in television as well as cinema, directing a short piece entitled ''The Cowboy and the Frenchman'' for French television in 1989. Around this time, he met the television producer Mark Frost, who had formerly worked on such projects as the television police series ''Hill Street Blues'', and they decided to start working together on a biopic of singer and actress Marilyn Monroe based upon Anthony Summers's book, ''The Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe''. Whilst this project never got off the ground, the duo went on to work on a comedy script entitled ''One Saliva Bubble'', but that did not see completion either. It was whilst they were talking in a coffee shop that Lynch and Frost both had the idea of a corpse washing up on the shore of a lake, and using this image as a basis subsequently set about on their third project, which they initially named ''Northwest Passage'' but which would eventually come to fruition as the television series ''Twin Peaks'' (1990–1991). A drama series set in a small Washington town where popular high school student Laura Palmer has been raped and murdered, ''Twin Peaks'' featured FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) as the investigator trying to unearth the killer, and discovering not only the supernatural elements to the murder but also the secrets of many of the local townsfolk – as Lynch himself summed it up, "The project was to mix a police investigation with the ordinary lives of the characters." In plotting out the series, Lynch later related that "[Mark Frost and I] worked together, especially in the initial stages. Later on we started working more apart." They subsequently pitched the series to the ABC Network, who agreed to finance the pilot episode, and once this was completed they also commissioned the first season, which comprised seven episodes.

A second season went into production soon after, which would last for a further 22 episodes. In all, Lynch himself only directed six episodes out of the whole series due to other responsibilities, namely his work on the film ''Wild at Heart'' (see below), but carefully chose those other directors whom he entrusted with the job. Meanwhile, Lynch also appeared in several episodes of the series, acting in the role of deaf FBI agent Gordon Cole. The series was a success, with high viewing figures both in the United States and in many nations abroad, and soon spawned a cult following. Nonetheless, the executives at the ABC Network, believing that public interest in the show was decreasing, insisted that Lynch and Frost reveal who the killer of Laura Palmer was prematurely, something that they only begrudgingly agreed to do, and Lynch has always felt that agreeing to do so is one of his biggest professional regrets. Following the revealing of the murderer and the series' move from Thursday to Saturday night on the ABC Network, ''Twin Peaks'' continued on for several more episodes, but following a ratings drop was cancelled. Lynch, who disliked the direction that the writers and directors had taken in the previous few episodes, chose to direct the final episode, which he ended on a cliffhanger, later stating that "that's not the ending. That's the ending that people were stuck with."

While ''Twin Peaks'' was in production, the Brooklyn Academy of Music asked Lynch and the composer Angelo Badalamenti, who had been responsible for the music in ''Twin Peaks'', to create a theatrical piece which would only be performed twice at their academy in New York City in 1989 as a part of the New Music America Festival. The result was ''Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted'', which starred such frequent Lynch collaborators as Laura Dern, Nicolas Cage and Michael J. Anderson as well as containing five songs sung by Julee Cruise. David Lynch produced a fifty-minute video of the performance in 1990. Meanwhile, Lynch was also involved in the creation of various commercials for different companies, including perfume companies like Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein and Giorgio Armani and for the Japanese coffee company Namoi, the latter of which involved a Japanese man searching the town of Twin Peaks for his missing wife.

Whilst still working on the first few episodes of ''Twin Peaks'', Lynch's friend, Monty Montgomery "gave me a book that he wanted to direct as a movie. He asked if I would maybe be executive producer or something, and I said 'That's great, Monty, but what if I read it and fall in love with it and want to do it myself?' And he said, 'In that case, you can do it yourself'." The book was Barry Gifford's novel ''Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula'', which told the tale of two lovers on a road trip, and Lynch felt that it was "just exactly the right thing at the right time. The book and the violence in America merged in my mind and many different things happened." With Gifford's support, Lynch set about to adapt the novel into a film, with the result being ''Wild at Heart'', a crime and road movie starring Nicolas Cage as Sailor and Laura Dern as Lula. Describing his plot as a "strange blend" of "a road picture, a love story, a psychological drama and a violent comedy", he altered much from the original novel, changing the ending, and incorporating numerous references to the classic film ''The Wizard of Oz''. Despite receiving a muted response from American critics and viewers, it won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.

Following on from the success of ''Wild at Heart'', Lynch decided to return to the world of the now-cancelled ''Twin Peaks'', this time without Mark Frost, to create a film that acted primarily as a prequel but also, in part, as a sequel, with Lynch stating that "I liked the idea of the story going back and forth in time." The result, ''Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me'' (1992), primarily revolved around the last few days in the life of Laura Palmer, and was much "darker" in tone than the television series, having much of the humour removed, and dealing with such topics as incest and murder. Lynch himself stated that the film was about "the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devestation of the victim of incest." ''Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me'' was financed by the company CIBY-2000, and most of the cast of the series agreed to reprise their roles for the film, although some refused, and many were not enthusiastic about the project. The film was, for the most part, a commercial and critical failure in the United States; however, it was a hit in Japan and British critic Mark Kermode (among others) has hailed it as Lynch's "masterpiece".

Meanwhile, Lynch continued working on a series of television shows with Mark Frost. After ''Twin Peaks'', they produced a series of documentaries entitled ''American Chronicles'' (1990) which examined life across the United States, the comedy series ''On the Air'' (1992), which was cancelled after only three episodes had aired, and the three-episode HBO mini-series ''Hotel Room'' (1993) about events that happened in the same hotel room but at different dates in time.

''Lost Highway'', ''The Straight Story'' and ''Mulholland Drive'': 1997–2001

Following his unsuccessful television ventures since ''Twin Peaks'', Lynch returned to making feature films. In 1997 he released the non-linear, noiresque ''Lost Highway'', co-written by Barry Gifford and starring Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette. The film failed commercially and received a mixed response from critics. However, thanks in part to a soundtrack featuring David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, Nine Inch Nails and The Smashing Pumpkins, it helped gain Lynch a new audience of Generation X viewers.

Following ''Lost Highway'', Lynch went on to work on directing a film from a script written by Mary Sweeney and John E. Roach. The resulting motion picture, ''The Straight Story'', was, like ''The Elephant Man'' before it, based upon a true story, that of Alvin Straight (played in the film by Richard Farnsworth), an elderly man from Laurens, Iowa, who goes on three hundred mile journey to visit his sick brother (played by Harry Dean Stanton) in Mount Zion, Wisconsin, riding the whole way there upon an electric lawnmower. Commenting on why he chose this script, Lynch would simply relate that "that's what I fell in love with next", and displayed his admiration for Straight, describing him as being "like James Dean, except he's old." Once more, Angelo Badalamenti produced the music for the film, although he created instrumentation that was "very different from the kind of score he's done for [Lynch] in the past." Having many differences with most of his work, particularly in that it did not contain any profanities, sexual content or violence, ''The Straight Story'' was rated G (general viewing) by the Motion Picture Association of America, and as such came as "shocking news" to many in the film industry, who were surprised that it "did not disturb, offend or mystify." As Le Blanc and Odell stated, the plot made it "seem as far removed from Lynch's earlier works as could be imagined, but in fact right from the very opening, this is entirely his film – a surreal road movie".

The same year, Lynch approached ABC once again with ideas for a television drama. The network gave Lynch the go-ahead to shoot a two-hour pilot for the series ''Mulholland Drive'', but disputes over content and running time led to the project being shelved indefinitely. However, with seven million dollars from the French production company StudioCanal, Lynch completed the pilot as a film, ''Mulholland Drive''. The film, a non-linear narrative surrealist tale of the dark side of Hollywood, stars Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Justin Theroux. The film performed relatively well at the box office worldwide and was a critical success, earning Lynch a Best Director prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival (shared with Joel Coen for ''The Man Who Wasn't There'') and a Best Director award from the New York Film Critics Association. In addition, Lynch also received his third Academy Award nomination for Best Director.

Internet work and ''Inland Empire'': 2002–present

With the onset of popularity of the internet, Lynch decided to utlilize this new medium, releasing several new series that he had created exclusively on his website, davidlynch.com. In 2002, he created a series of online shorts entitled ''Dumbland''. Intentionally crude both in content and execution, the eight-episode series was later released on DVD. The same year, Lynch released a surreal sitcom via his website – ''Rabbits'', which revolved around a family of humanoid rabbits. Later, he showed his experiments with Digital Video in the form of the Japanese-style horror short ''Darkened Room''.

In 2006, Lynch's feature film ''Inland Empire'' was released. At almost three hours, it was the longest of Lynch's films. Like ''Mulholland Drive'' and ''Lost Highway'' before it, the film did not follow a traditional narrative structure. It starred Lynch regulars Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, and Justin Theroux, with cameos by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring (voices of Suzie and Jane Rabbit), and a performance by Jeremy Irons. Lynch described the piece as "a mystery about a woman in trouble". In an effort to promote the film, Lynch made appearances with a cow and a placard bearing the slogan "Without cheese there would be no ''Inland Empire''".

In 2009, Lynch produced a documentary web series directed by his son, Austin Lynch and friend Jason S. called Interview Project. Interested in working with Werner Herzog, Lynch collaborated with him in 2009 to produce Herzog's film ''My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done''. Another film with with a nonstandard narrative, the film was based on the true story of an actor who committed matricide whilst acting in a production of the Oresteia, and starred Grace Zabriskie, a Lynch regular.

Lynch plans to direct a documentary on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi consisting of interviews with people who knew him.

In 2010, Lynch began making guest appearances on the ''Family Guy'' spin-off, ''The Cleveland Show'' as Gus the Bartender. He had been convinced to appear in the show by its lead actor, Mike Henry, who is a fan of Lynch's and who felt that his whole life had changed after seeing ''Wild at Heart''.

''Lady Blue Shanghai'', written, directed and edited by Lynch, is a 16-minute promotional film made for Dior and released on the Internet in May 2010.

Lynch directed a concert by English New Wave band Duran Duran on March 23, 2011. The concert was streamed live on YouTube from the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles as the kickoff to the second season of ''Unstaged: An Original Series from American Express''. "The idea is to try and create on the fly, layers of images permeating Duran Duran on the stage," Lynch said. "A world of experimentation and hopefully some happy accidents.”

Cinematic influences and themes

Influences

Lynch admits that his work is more similar in many respects to those of European film makers than American ones, believing that most films that "get down and thrill your soul" were by European directors. Lynch has commented on his admiration for such film makers as Stanley Kubrick, Federico Fellini, Werner Herzog and Jacques Tati. He has also stated that Billy Wilder's ''Sunset Boulevard'' (1950) is one of his favourite films, as is Kubrick's ''Lolita'' (1962).

Recurring motifs

There are several recurring themes within Lynch's work, leading film critics Le Blanc and Odell to state that "his films are so packed with motifs, recurrent characters, images, compositions and techniques that you could view his entire output as one large jigsaw puzzle of ideas". One of the key themes that they noted was the usage of dreams and dreamlike imagery within his works, something they related to the "surrealist ethos" of relying "on the subconscious to provide visual drive". This can be seen in John Merrick's dream of his mother in ''The Elephant Man'', Agent Cooper's dreams of the red room in ''Twin Peaks'' and the "dreamlike logic" of the narrative found in ''Eraserhead'', ''Mulholland Drive'' and ''Inland Empire''. Discussing his attitude to dreams, Lynch has stated that "Waking dreams are the ones that are important, the ones that come when I'm quietly sitting in a chair, letting my mind wander. When you sleep, you don't control your dream. I like to dive into a dream world that I've made or discovered; a world I choose… [You can't really get others to experience it, but] right there is the power of cinema."

Another of Lynch's prominent themes include industry, with repeated imagery of "the clunk of machinery, the power of pistons, shadows of oil drills pumping, screaming woodmills and smoke billowing factories", as can be seen with the industrial wasteland in ''Eraserhead'', the factories in ''The Elephant Man'', the sawmill in ''Twin Peaks'' and the lawn mower in ''The Straight Story''. Describing his interest in such things, Lynch stated that "It makes me feel good to see giant machinery, you know, working: dealing with molten metal. And I like fire and smoke. And the sounds are so powerful. It's just big stuff. It means that things are being made, and I really like that."

Another theme is the idea of a "dark underbelly" of violent criminal activity within a society, such as with Frank's gang in ''Blue Velvet'' and the cocaine smugglers in ''Twin Peaks''. The idea of deformity is also found in several of Lynch's films, from the protagonist in ''The Elephant Man'', to the deformed baby in ''Eraserhead'', as is the idea of death from a head wound, found in most of Lynch's films. Other imagery commonly used within Lynch's works are flickering electrictity or lights, as well as fire and the idea of a stage upon which a singer performs, often surrounded by drapery.

With the exception of ''The Elephant Man'' and ''Dune'', which are set in Victorian London and a fictitious galaxy respectively, all of Lynch's films have been set in the United States, and he has stated that "I like certain things about America and it gives me ideas. When I go around and I see things, it sparks little stories, or little characters pop out, so it just feels right to me to, you know, make American films." A number of his works, including ''Blue Velvet'', ''Twin Peaks'' and ''Lost Highway'' are intentionally reminiscent of the 1950s American culture even though they were set in the later decades of the 20th century. Lynch later commented on his feelings for this decade, which was that in which he grew up as a child, by stating that "It was a fantastic decade in a lot of ways… there was something in the air that is not there any more at all. It was such a great feeling, and not just because I was a kid. It was a really hopeful time, and things were going up instead of going down. You got the feeling you could do anything. The future was bright. Little did we know we were laying the groundwork then for a disastrous future."

Lynch also tends to feature his leading female actors in multiple or "split" roles, so that many of his female characters have multiple, fractured identities. This practice began with his choice to cast Sheryl Lee as both Laura Palmer and her cousin Maddy Ferguson in ''Twin Peaks'' and continued in his later works. In ''Lost Highway'', Patricia Arquette plays the dual role of Renee Madison/Alice Wakefield, while in ''Mulholland Drive'', Naomi Watts plays Diane Selwyn/Betty Elms and Laura Harring plays Camilla Rhodes/Rita and in ''Inland Empire'', Laura Dern plays Nikki Grace/Susan Blue. By contrast, Lynch rarely creates multi-character roles for his male actors.

Recurring collaborators

Lynch is also widely noted for his collaborations with various production artists and composers on his films and multiple different productions. He frequently works with Angelo Badalamenti to compose music for his productions, former wife Mary Sweeney as a film editor, casting director Johanna Ray, and cast members Harry Dean Stanton, Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, Naomi Watts, Isabella Rossellini, Grace Zabriskie, and Laura Dern.

Other art

Painting

Lynch first trained as a painter, and although he is now better known as a filmmaker, he has also produced much painting work. Lynch has stated that "all my paintings are organic, violent comedies. They have to be violently done and primitive and crude, and to achieve that I try to let nature paint more than I paint." Many of his works are very dark in colour, and Lynch has described this as being because "I wouldn't know what to do with [colour]. Colour to me is too real. It's limiting. It doesn't allow too much of a dream. The more you throw black into a colour, the more dreamy it gets… Black has depth. It's like a little egress; you can go into it, and because it keeps on continuing to be dark, the mind kicks in, and a lot of things that are going on in there become manifest. And you start seeing what you're afraid of. You start seeing what you love, and it becomes like a dream."

Many of his works also contain letters and words added to the painting, something which he explains: "The words in the paintings are sometimes important to make you start thinking about what else is going on in there. And a lot of times, the words excite me as shapes, and something'll grow out of that. I used to cut these little letters out and glue them on. They just look good all lined up like teeth... sometimes they become the title of the painting."

Lynch considers the Anglo-Irish 20th century artist Francis Bacon to be his "number one kinda hero painter", stating that "Normally I only like a couple of years of a painter's work, but I like everything of Bacon's. The guy, you know, had the stuff."

Lynch was the subject of a major art retrospective at the Fondation Cartier, Paris from March May 3–27, 2007. The show was entitled ''The Air is on Fire'' and included numerous paintings, photographs, drawings, alternative films and sound work. New site-specific art installations were created specially for the exhibition. A series of events accompanied the exhibition including live performances and concerts. Some of Lynch's art include photographs of dissected chickens and other animals as a "Build your own Chicken" toy ad.

Between 1983 and 1992, Lynch wrote and drew a weekly comic strip called ''The Angriest Dog in the World'' for the ''L.A. Reader''. The drawings in the panels never change, just the captions.

Music

Lynch has also been involved in a number of music projects, many of them related to his films. Most notably he produced and wrote lyrics for Julee Cruise's first two albums, ''Floating into the Night'' (1989) and ''The Voice of Love'' (1993), in collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti who composed the music and also produced. Lynch has also worked on the 1998 Jocelyn Montgomery album ''Lux Vivens''. He has also composed bits of music for ''Wild at Heart'', ''Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me'', ''Mulholland Drive'', and ''Rabbits''. In 2001, he released ''BlueBob'', a rock album performed by Lynch and John Neff. The album is notable for Lynch's unusual guitar playing style: he plays "upside down and backwards, like a lap guitar", and relies heavily on effects pedals. Most recently Lynch has composed several pieces for ''Inland Empire'', including two songs, "Ghost of Love" and "Walkin' on the Sky", in which he makes his public debut as a singer. In 2009, his new book-CD set Dark Night of the Soul was released. In 2008, he started his own record label called David Lynch MC on which its first release ''Fox Bat Strategy: A Tribute to Dave Jaurequi'' was released in early 2009. In August 2009, it was announced that he was releasing Afghani/American singer Ariana Delawari's ''Lion of Panjshir'' album in conjunction with Manimal Vinyl Records in October 2009.

In November 2010, Lynch released two electro pop music singles, "Good Day Today" and "I Know", through the independent British label Sunday Best Recordings. Describing why he created them, he stated that "I was just sitting and these notes came and then I went down and started working with Dean [Hurley, his engineer] and then these few notes, 'I want to have a good day, today' came and the song was built around that". His forthcoming album of solo electro-pop will be called ''Crazy Clown Time'' and features guest vocals on one song by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

In April 2011, Interpol performed live at the Coachella music festival with an animated short film collaboration with Lynch playing in the background, The video 'I Touch a red button' has the Interpol Song 'Lights' accompanying the clip throughout.

Personal life

Lynch has had several long-term relationships. In 1967, he married Peggy Lentz in Chicago, Illinois. They had one child, Jennifer Chambers Lynch, born in 1968, who is a film director. They filed for divorce in 1974. On June 21, 1977, Lynch married Mary Fisk, and the couple had one child, Austin Jack Lynch, born in 1982. They divorced in 1987, and Lynch began dating Isabella Rossellini after filming ''Blue Velvet''. Lynch and Rossellini broke up in 1991, and Lynch developed a relationship with Mary Sweeney, with whom he had one son, Riley Lynch, in 1992. Sweeney also worked as Lynch's longtime film editor/producer and co-wrote and produced ''The Straight Story''. The two married in May 2006, but divorced that July. Lynch married actress Emily Stofle, who appeared in his 2006 film ''Inland Empire'', in February, 2009.

Politically, Lynch has stated that he admired former president Ronald Reagan. He was drawn to Reagan for his "cowboy" image and belief in personal freedom. However, Lynch endorsed the Natural Law Party in the 2000 presidential election and has said that he's "not a political person".

Transcendental Meditation

Lynch advocates the use of meditation techniques in bringing peace to the world. He was first initiated into Transcendental Meditation in July 1973, and has practiced the technique consistently since then. Lynch says he met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the TM movement, for the first time in 1975 at the Spiritual Regeneration Movement center in Los Angeles, California. He reportedly became close with Maharishi during a month-long "Millionaire's Enlightenment Course" held in 2003, the fee for which was 1 million.

In July 2005, he launched the David Lynch Foundation For Consciousness-Based Education and Peace, established to help finance scholarships for students in middle and high schools who are interested in learning the Transcendental Meditation technique and to fund research on the technique and its effects on learning. He promotes his vision on college campuses with tours that began in September 2005.

Lynch is working for the building and establishment of seven buildings, in which 8,000 salaried people will practice advanced meditation techniques, "pumping peace for the world". He estimates the cost at $7 billion. As of December 2005, he had spent $400,000 of personal money, and raised $1 million in donations. In December 2006, the ''New York Times'' reported that he continued to have that goal.

Lynch's book, ''Catching the Big Fish'' (Tarcher/Penguin 2006), discusses the impact of the Transcendental Meditation technique on his creative process. He is donating all author's royalties to the David Lynch Foundation.

Lynch attended the funeral of the Maharishi in India in 2008. He told a reporter, "In life, he revolutionised the lives of millions of people. ... In 20, 50, 500 years there will be millions of people who will know and understand what the Maharishi has done." In 2009, he went to India to film interviews with people who knew the Maharishi as part of a biographical documentary.

In 2009, Lynch organized a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall for the David Lynch Foundation. On April 4, 2009, the "Change Begins Within" concert featured Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Donovan, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, Moby, Bettye LaVette, Ben Harper, and Mike Love of the Beach Boys.

''David Wants to Fly'', released in May 2010, is a documentary by German filmmaker David Sieveking "that follows the path of his professional idol, David Lynch, into the world of Transcendental Meditation (TM)."

An independent project starring Lynch is called ''Beyond The Noise: My Transcendental Meditation Journey.'' It is directed by young film student Dana Farley, who has severe Dyslexia and Attention deficit disorder. Farley started Transcendental Meditation when she was 16 and it enabled her to overcome the stresses of getting through her last years of high school and into college. Filmmaker Kevin Sean Michaels is one of the producers and the film will be at film festivals in 2011.

Website

Lynch designed his personal website, a site exclusive to paying members, where he posts short videos and his absurdist series ''Dumbland'', plus interviews and other items. The site also featured a daily weather report, where Lynch gives a brief description of the weather in Los Angeles, where he resides. Until June 2010, this weather report (usually no longer than 30 seconds) was also being broadcast, on his personal YouTube-channel ''David Lynch – Daily Weather Report''. An absurd ringtone ("I like to kill deer") from the website was a common sound bite on ''The Howard Stern Show'' in early 2006.

Lynch is an avid coffee drinker and even has his own line of special organic blends available for purchase on his website. Called "David Lynch Signature Cup", the coffee has been advertised via flyers included with several recent Lynch-related DVD releases, including ''Inland Empire'' and the Gold Box edition of ''Twin Peaks''. The possibly self-mocking tag-line for the brand is "It's all in the beans ... and I'm just full of beans." This is also a quote of a line said by Justin Theroux's character in ''Inland Empire''.

Discography

Eraserhead (Original Soundtrack)

Twin Peaks: Season Two Music And More

The Air is on Fire (Exhibition Soundscape) (2007)

Polish Night Music (2007)

Ghost of Love - single (2007)

Good Day Today / I Know - single (2010)

Crazy Clown Time (2011)

Filmography

Features

''The Elephant Man (film) ''Dune (film) ''Blue Velvet (film) ''Wild at Heart (film) ''Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me'' ''Lost Highway (1997 film) ''The Straight Story'' ''Mulholland Drive (film) ''Inland Empire (film)

rowspan=2	Year	Film	! colspan=2	BAFTA		! colspan=2	Cannes Film Festival
Nominations	Wins		Nominations	Wins	Nominations	Wins	Nominations	Wins
1977	''Eraserhead''	|
1980	The Elephant Man'' ||	8		7	3	4
1984	Dune'' ||	1
1986	Blue Velvet'' ||	1				2
1990	Wild at Heart'' ||	1		1		1		Palme d'Or	Palme d'Or
1992	|							Palme d'Or
1997	Lost Highway'' ||
1999	|	1				2		Palme d'Or
2001	Mulholland Drive'' ||	1		2	1	4		Palme d'Or	Best Director
2006	Inland Empire'' ||

Short films

Year	! Film	! Available
1966	''Six Men Getting Sick''	''The Short Films of David Lynch''
1967	''Absurd Encounter with Fear''
1967	''Fictitious Anacin Commercial''
1968	''The Alphabet''
1970	''The Grandmother''
1974	''The Amputee''
1988	''The Cowboy and the Frenchman''
1990	''Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted''
1995	''Premonitions Following an Evil Deed''
2002	''Darkened Room''
2006
2007	Boat (2007 film)>Boat''
2007	''Bug Crawls''
2008	''Scissors''
2010	''Lady Blue Shanghai''

Television series

!Year	!Series	!Episodes
1990–1991	''Twin Peaks''	30
1992		7
1993	''Hotel Room''	3

Online series

!Year	!Series	!Episodes	!Available on DVD
2002		8	The Lime Green Set DVD
2002	''Dumbland''	8	The Lime Green Set DVD
	''Out Yonder''		The Lime Green Set DVD
2009	''Interview Project''

Music videos

!Year	!Song	!Musician
1982	''I Predict''
1990	''Wicked Game'' (film version)	Chris Isaak
1992		Michael Jackson
1995
1996		Rammstein
2009	''Shot in the Back of the Head''	Moby

Other

In October, 2008, at the OMMA Video Conference, Jen Gregono, chief content officer at On Networks, announced that her company signed Lynch to a webisode series based on his book, ''Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity''.

Awards and nominations

'''Academy Awards:

1980: Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay (''The Elephant Man'', nominated)

1987: Best Director (''Blue Velvet'', nominated)

2002: Best Director (''Mulholland Dr.'', nominated)

'''BAFTA Awards:

1981: Best Direction (''The Elephant Man'', nominated)

1981: Best Screenplay (''The Elephant Man'', nominated)

'''Cannes Film Festival:

1990: Golden Palm (''Wild at Heart'', won)

1992: Golden Palm (''Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me'', nominated)

1999: Golden Palm (''The Straight Story'', nominated)

2001: Best Director (''Mulholland Dr.'', won Tied with Joel Coen for ''The Man Who Wasn't There)

2001: Golden Palm (''Mulholland Dr.'', nominated)

'''DGA Award:

1981: Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (''The Elephant Man'', nominated)

'''Emmy Awards:

1990: Outstanding Achievement in Main Title Theme Music (''Twin Peaks'', nominated)

1990: Outstanding Achievement in Music and Lyrics (''Twin Peaks'' for the song "Into the Night", nominated)

1990: Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series (''Twin Peaks'' for the pilot episode, nominated)

1990: Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series (''Twin Peaks'' for the pilot episode, nominated)

1990: Outstanding Drama Series (''Twin Peaks'')

'''Golden Globes:

1980: Best Director (''The Elephant Man'', nominated)

1987: Best Screenplay (''Blue Velvet'', nominated)

2002: Best Director (''Mulholland Dr.'', nominated)

2002: Best Screenplay (''Mulholland Dr.'', nominated)

'''Independent Spirit Awards:

1987: Best Director (''Blue Velvet'', nominated)

1987: Best Screenplay (''Blue Velvet'', nominated)

2000: Best Director (''The Straight Story'', nominated)

2007: Special Distinction Award (Shared with Laura Dern for their collaborative work, won)

'''Saturn Awards:

1993: Best Writing (''Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me'', nominated)

1993: Life Career Award (won)

2002: Best Director (''Mulholland Dr.'', nominated)

'''Venice Film Festival:

2006: Future Film Festival Digital Award (''Inland Empire'' won)

2006: Career Golden Lion (won)

'''WGA Award:

1981: Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium (''The Elephant Man'', nominated)

1987: Best Original Screenplay (''Blue Velvet'', nominated)

Recurring cast

Lynch has cast certain actors in multiple films. ''The Elephant Man'' is not listed because it does not include any collaborated actors.

!	! ''Eraserhead''	Dune (film)>Dune''	Blue Velvet (film)>BlueVelvet''	Wild at Heart (film)>Wild atHeart''	Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me>Twin Peaks: FireWalk with Me''	Lost Highway (1997 film)>Lost Highway''	The Straight Story>The StraightStory''	Mulholland Drive (film)>MulhollandDrive''	Inland Empire (film)>InlandEmpire''
Jeanne Bates
Laura Dern
Jack Fisk
Laura Harring
Diane Ladd
Sheryl Lee
Kyle MacLachlan
Jack Nance
Isabella Rossellini
Harry Dean Stanton
Charlotte Stewart
Dean Stockwell
Justin Theroux
Naomi Watts

References

;Notes

;Footnotes

;Bibliography }}

''David Lynch: Interviews'', a collection of interviews with Lynch from 1977 to 2008, edited by Richard A. Barney for the series Conversations with Filmmakers (University Press of Mississippi, 2009, ISBN 978-1-60473-237-5 [paperback], ISBN 978–1604732369 [hardback]). This volume covers topics that include Lynch's filmmaking, furniture design, painting, and music career.

''Lynch on Lynch'', a book of interviews with Lynch, conducted, edited, and introduced by filmmaker Chris Rodley (Faber & Faber Ltd., 1997, ISBN 0–571–19548–2; revised edition published by Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2005, ISBN 0–571–22018–5).

''The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood'' by Martha Nochimson (University of Texas Press, 1997, ISBN 0–292–75565–1).

''The Complete Lynch'' by David Hughes (Virgin Virgin, 2002, ISBN 0–7535–0598–3).

''Weirdsville U.S.A.: The Obsessive Universe of David Lynch'' by Paul A. Woods (Plexus Publishing. UK, Reprint edition, 2000, ISBN 0–85965–291–2).

''David Lynch'' (Twayne's Filmmakers Series) by Kenneth C. Kaleta (Twayne Publishers, 1992, ISBN 0–8057–9323–2).

''Pervert in the Pulpit: Morality in the Works of David Lynch'' by Jeff Johnson (McFarland & Company, 2004, ISBN 0–7864–1753–6).

''Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity'' by David Lynch (Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2006, ISBN 978-1-58542-540-2 / 978–1585425402).

''Snowmen'' by David Lynch (Foundation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, 2008, ISBN 978–3–86521–467–6).

''David Lynch: Beautiful Dark'' by Greg Olson (Scarecrow Press, 2008, ISBN 0–8108–5917–3).

''The Film Paintings of David Lynch: Challenging Film Theory'' by Allister Mactaggart (Intellect, 2010, ISBN 978–1–84150–332–5).

''David Lynch – Un cinéma du maléfique'', by Enrique Seknadje, Editions Camion Noir, 2010. ISBN 978–2–35779–086–5

''David Lynch in Theory'', a collection of essays edited by Francois-Xavier Gleyzon (Charles University Press, 2010) ISBN 978–80–7308–317–5.

External links

David Lynch Foundation : Education : Transcendental Meditation

World of David Lynch

David Lynch at Allmovie

David Lynch at Moviefone

David Lynch at Rotten Tomatoes

Site about the Artwork of Lynch

Bibliography of books and articles about Lynch via UC Berkeley Media Resources Center

Interviews

* Film Threat interview

* Wired interview

* Guardian interview

* Interviews for Cinefantastique

Category:1946 births Category:American artists Category:American animators Category:American comic strip cartoonists Category:American composers Category:American experimental filmmakers Category:American film directors Category:American Film Institute Conservatory alumni Category:American musicians Category:American painters Category:American Presbyterians Category:César Award winners Category:Eagle Scouts Category:Surrealist filmmakers Category:American people of Finnish descent Category:Living people Category:People from Missoula, Montana Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners Category:Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Officiers of the Légion d'honneur

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name	Michael Palin
birth name	Michael Edward Palin
birth date	May 05, 1943
birth place	Broomhill, Sheffield, England, United Kingdom
spouse	Helen Gibbins(married 1966 – present)
known for	Monty Python and Travel documentaries
occupation	Actor, writer, television presenter, comedian
years active	1965–present
website	Palin's Travels
children	3 }}

Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS (born 5 May 1943) is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries. Palin wrote most of his comedic material with Terry Jones. Before Monty Python, they had worked on other shows such as ''The Ken Dodd Show'', ''The Frost Report'' and ''Do Not Adjust Your Set''. Palin appeared in some of the most famous Python sketches, including "Argument Clinic", "Dead Parrot", "The Lumberjack Song", and "The Spanish Inquisition".

Palin continued to work with Jones after Python, co-writing ''Ripping Yarns''. He has also appeared in several films directed by fellow Python Terry Gilliam and made notable appearances in other films such as ''A Fish Called Wanda'', for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. In a 2005 poll to find ''The Comedian's Comedian'', he was voted the 30th favourite by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

After Python, he began a new career as a travel writer and travel documentarian. His journeys have taken him across the world, including the North and South Poles, the Sahara desert, the Himalayas and, most recently, Eastern Europe. In 2000 Palin was honoured as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to television.

Early life and career

Palin was born in Broomhill, Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, the second child and only son of Mary Rachel Lockhart (née Ovey) and Edward Moreton Palin. His father was an engineer working for a steel firm. He started his education at Birkdale Preparatory School, Sheffield, and later Shrewsbury School. His sister Angela was nine years older than he was. Despite the age gap the two had a close relationship until her suicide in 1986.

When he was five years old, Palin had his first acting experience at Birkdale playing Martha Cratchit in a school performance of ''A Christmas Carol''. At the age of 10, Palin, still interested in acting, made a comedy monologue and read a Shakespeare play to his mother while playing all the parts. After his school days in 1962 he went on to read modern history at Brasenose College, Oxford. With fellow student Robert Hewison he performed and wrote, for the first time, comedy material at a university Christmas party. Terry Jones, also a student in Oxford, saw that performance and began writing together with Hewison and Palin. In the same year Palin joined the Brightside and Carbrook Co-Operative Society Players and first gained fame when he won an acting award at a Co-Op drama festival. He also performed in the Oxford Revue with Jones.

In 1966 he married Helen Gibbins, whom he first met in 1959 on holiday in Southwold in Suffolk, where he has returned in recent years to live. This meeting was later fictionalised in Palin's play ''East of Ipswich''. The couple have three children and a grandchild. His youngest child, Rachel (b.1975) is a BBC TV director, whose work includes Masterchef: The Professionals, shown on BBC2 throughout October and November 2010. While still a baby, his son William briefly appeared in ''Monty Python and the Holy Grail'' as "Sir Not-appearing-in-this-film". His nephew is the theatre designer Jeremy Herbert.

After finishing university in 1965 Palin became a presenter on a comedy pop show called ''Now!'' for the television contractor Television Wales and the West. At the same time Palin was contacted by Jones, who had left university a year earlier, for assistance in writing a theatrical documentary about sex through the ages. Although this project was eventually abandoned, it brought Palin and Jones together as a writing duo and led them to write comedy for various BBC programmes, such as ''The Ken Dodd Show'', ''The Billy Cotton Bandshow'', and ''The Illustrated Weekly Hudd''. They collaborated in writing lyrics for an album by Barry Booth called Diversions. They were also in the team of writers working for ''The Frost Report'', whose other members included Frank Muir, Barry Cryer, Marty Feldman, Ronnie Barker, Ronnie Corbett, Dick Vosburgh, and future Monty Python members Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Eric Idle. Although the members of Monty Python had already encountered each other over the years, ''The Frost Report'' was the first time all the British members of Monty Python (its sixth member, Terry Gilliam, was at that time an American citizen) worked together. During the run of ''The Frost Report'' the Palin/Jones team contributed material to two shows starring John Bird: ''The Late Show'' and ''A series of Bird's''. For ''A series of Bird's'' the Palin/Jones team had their first experience of writing narrative instead of the short sketches they were accustomed to conceiving.

Following ''The Frost Report'' the Palin/Jones team worked both as actors and writers on the show ''Twice a Fortnight'' with Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Jonathan Lynn, and the successful children's comedy show ''Do Not Adjust Your Set'' with Idle and David Jason. The show also featured musical numbers by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, including future Monty Python musical collaborator Neil Innes. The animations for ''Do Not Adjust Your Set'' were made by Terry Gilliam, who joined the cast on Cleese's recommendation and began working with the Palin/Jones team for the first time. Eager to work with Palin sans Jones, Cleese later asked him to perform in ''How to Irritate People'' together with Chapman and Tim Brooke-Taylor. The Palin/Jones team were reunited for ''The Complete and Utter History of Britain''.

During this period Cleese contacted Palin about doing the show that would ultimately become ''Monty Python's Flying Circus''. On the strength of their work on ''The Frost Report'' and other programmes, Cleese and Chapman had been offered a show by the BBC, but Cleese was reluctant to do a two-man show for various reasons, among them Chapman's reputedly difficult personality. At the same time the success of ''Do Not Adjust Your Set'' had led Palin, Jones, Idle, and Gilliam to be offered their own series and, while it was still in production, Palin agreed to Cleese's proposal and brought along Idle, Jones, and Gilliam. Thus the formation of the Monty Python troupe has been referred to as a result of Cleese's desire to work with Palin and the chance circumstances that brought the other four members into the fold.

''Monty Python''

In ''Monty Python'', Palin played various roles, which ranged from manic enthusiasm (such as the lumberjack of the Lumberjack Song, or host of the game show "Blackmail") to unflappable calmness (such as the Dead Parrot vendor, Cheese Shop proprietor, or Postal Clerk). As a straight man he was often a foil to the rising ire of characters portrayed by John Cleese. He also played timid, socially inept characters such as Arthur Putey, the man who sits idly by as a marriage counsellor (Eric Idle) makes love to his wife (Carol Cleveland), and Mr. Anchovy, a chartered accountant who wants to become a lion tamer. He also appeared as the "It's" man at the beginning of most episodes.

Palin frequently co-wrote sketches with Terry Jones, including "The Lumberjack Song" and "Spam". Palin also initiated the "Spanish Inquisition sketch", which included the catchphrase "''Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

Other work

After the ''Monty Python'' television series ended in 1974, the Palin/Jones team worked on ''Ripping Yarns'', an intermittent television comedy series broadcast over three years from 1976. They had earlier collaborated on the play ''Secrets'' from the BBC series ''Black and Blue'' in 1973. He starred as Dennis the Peasant in Terry Gilliam's 1977 film ''Jabberwocky''. Palin also appeared in ''All You Need Is Cash'' (1978) as Eric Manchester (based on Derek Taylor), the press agent for The Rutles.

In 1980, Palin co-wrote ''Time Bandits'' with Terry Gilliam. He also acted in the film.

In 1982, Palin wrote and starred in ''The Missionary'', co-starring Maggie Smith. In it, he plays the Reverend Charles Fortescue, who is recalled from Africa to aid prostitutes.

In 1984, he reunited with Terry Gilliam to appear in ''Brazil''. He appeared in the comedy film ''A Fish Called Wanda'', for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Cleese reunited the main cast almost a decade later to make ''Fierce Creatures''.

After filming for ''Fierce Creatures'' finished, Palin went on a travel journey for a BBC documentary and, returning a year later, found that the end of ''Fierce Creatures'' had failed at test screenings and had to be reshot.

Apart from ''Fierce Creatures'', Palin's last film role was a small part in ''The Wind in the Willows'', a film directed by and starring Terry Jones. Palin also appeared with John Cleese in his documentary, ''The Human Face''. Palin was in the cast of ''You've Got Mail'', the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romantic comedy as a subplot novelist, but his role was eventually cut entirely.

He also assisted Campaign for Better Transport and others with campaigns on sustainable transport, particularly those relating to urban areas, and has been president of the campaign since 1986.

Palin has also appeared in serious drama. In 1991 Palin worked as producer and actor in the film ''American Friends'' based upon a real event in the life of his great grandfather, a fellow at St John's College, Oxford. In that same year he also played the part of a headmaster in Alan Bleasdale's Channel 4 drama series ''G.B.H.''.

Palin also had a small cameo role in Australian soap opera ''Home and Away''. He played an English surfer with a fear of sharks, who interrupts a conversation between two main characters to ask whether there were any sharks in the sea. This was filmed while he was in Australia for the ''Full Circle'' series, with a segment about the filming of the role featuring in the series.

Television documentaries

Travel

Palin's first travel documentary was part of the 1980 BBC Television series ''Great Railway Journeys of the World'', in which, humorously reminiscing about his childhood hobby of train spotting, he travelled throughout the UK by train, from London to the Kyle of Lochalsh, via Manchester, York, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Edinburgh and Inverness. At the Kyle of Lochalsh, Palin bought the station's long metal platform sign and is seen lugging it back to London with him.

In 1994, Palin travelled through Ireland for the same series, entitled "Derry to Kerry". In a quest for family roots, he attempted to trace his great grandmother – Brita Gallagher – who set sail from Ireland 150 years ago during the Great Famine (1845–1849), bound for a new life in Burlington, New Jersey. The series is a trip along the Palin family line.

Starting in 1989, Palin appeared as presenter in a series of travel programmes made for the BBC. It was after the veteran TV globetrotter Alan Whicker and journalist Miles Kington turned down presenting the first of these, ''Around the World in 80 Days'', that gave Palin the opportunity to present his first and subsequent travel shows. These programmes have been broadcast around the world in syndication, and were also sold on VHS tape and later on DVD:

''Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days'' (Travel 1988; Programme release 1989): travelling as closely as possible the path described in the famous Jules Verne story without using aircraft.

''Pole to Pole'' (Travel 1991; Programme release 1992): travelling from the North Pole to the South Pole, following as closely as possible the 30 degree line of longitude, over as much land as possible, i.e., through Europe and Africa.

''Full Circle with Michael Palin'' (Travel 1996/97; Programme release 1997): in which he circumnavigated the lands around the Pacific Ocean counter-clockwise; a journey of 80,000 kilometres starting on Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait and taking him through Asia, Oceania and the Americas.

''Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure'' (1999): retracing the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway through the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean.

''Sahara with Michael Palin'' (Travel 2001/02; Programme release 2002): in which he trekked around and through the world's largest desert.

''Himalaya with Michael Palin'' (Travel 2003/04; Programme release 2004): in which he travels through the Himalaya region.

''Michael Palin's New Europe'' (Travel 2006/07; Programme release 2007): in which he travels through Central and Eastern Europe.

Following each trip, Palin wrote a book about his travels, providing information and insights not included in the TV programme. Each book is illustrated with photographs by Basil Pao, the stills photographer who was on the team. (Exception: the first book, ''Around the World in 80 Days'', contains some pictures by Pao but most are by other photographers.)

All seven of these books were also made available as audio books, and all of them are read by Palin himself. ''Around the World in 80 Days'' and ''Hemingway Adventure'' are unabridged, while the other four books were made in both abridged and unabridged versions, although the unabridged versions can be very difficult to find.

For four of the trips a photography book was made by Pao, each with an introduction written by Palin. These are large coffee-table style books with pictures printed on glossy paper. The majority of the pictures are of various people encountered on the trip, as informal portraits or showing them engaged in some interesting activity. Some of the landscape photos are displayed as two-page spreads.

Palin's travel programmes are responsible for a phenomenon termed the "Palin effect": areas of the world that he has visited suddenly become popular tourist attractions – for example, the significant increase in the number of tourists interested in Peru after Palin visited Machu Picchu. In a 2006 survey of "15 of the world's top travel writers" by ''The Observer'', Palin named Peru's Pongo de Mainique (canyon below the Machu Picchu) his "favourite place in the world".

He is currenly working on a new TV travel series and book about Brazil which is expected to be broadcast in four parts in Autumn 2012.

Art and history

In recent years, Palin has written and presented occasional documentary programmes on artists that interest him. The first, on Scottish painter Anne Redpath, was ''Palin on Redpath'' in 1997. In ''The Bright Side of Life'' (2000), Palin continued on a Scottish theme, looking at the work of the Scottish Colourists. Two further programmes followed on European painters; ''Michael Palin and the Ladies Who Loved Matisse'' (2004) and ''Michael Palin and the Mystery of Hammershøi'' (2005), about the French artist Henri Matisse and Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi respectively. The DVD ''Michael Palin on Art'' contains all these documentaries except for the Matisse programme.

In November 2008, Palin presented a First World War documentary about Armistice Day, 11 November 1918, when thousands of soldiers lost their lives in battle after the war had officially ended. Palin filmed on the battlefields of northern France and Belgium for the programme, called ''The Last Day of World War One'', produced for the BBC's ''Timewatch'' series.

Activism

In July 2010, Palin sent a message of support for the Dongria Kondh tribe of India, who are resisting a mine on their land by the company Vedanta Resources. Palin said, "I’ve been to the Nyamgiri Hills in Orissa and seen the forces of money and power that Vedanta Resources have arrayed against a people who have occupied their land for thousands of years, who husband the forest sustainably and make no great demands on the state or the government. The tribe I visited simply want to carry on living in the villages that they and their ancestors have always lived in".

On 2 January 2011 Palin became the first person to sign the UK-based Campaign for Better Transport's Fair Fares Now campaign.

Recognition

Each member of Monty Python has an asteroid named after him. Palin's is Asteroid 9621 Michaelpalin.

In honour of his achievements as a traveller, especially rail travel, Palin has two British trains named after him. In 2002, Virgin Trains' new £5m high speed Super Voyager train number 221130 was named "Michael Palin" – it carries his name externally and a plaque is located adjacent to the onboard shop with information on Palin and his many journeys. Also, National Express East Anglia have named a British Rail Class 153 (unit number 153335) after him. In 2008, he received the James Joyce Award of the Literary and Historical Society in Dublin.

Palin was instrumental in setting up the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children in 1993.

In recognition of his services to the promotion of geography, Palin was awarded the Livingstone Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in March 2009, along with a Fellowship to the Society.

In June 2009 Palin was elected for a three-year term as President of the Royal Geographical Society.

Because of his self-described "amenable, conciliatory character" Michael Palin has been referred to as unofficially "Britain's Nicest Man."

Bibliography

Travel books

''Around the World in 80 Days'' (1989) ISBN 0-563-20826-0

''Pole to Pole'' (1992) ISBN 0-563-37065-3

''Full Circle'' (1997) ISBN 0-563-37121-8

''Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure'' (1999) ISBN 0-297-82528-3

''Sahara'' (2002) ISBN 0-297-84303-6

''Himalaya'' (2004) ISBN 0-297-84371-0

''New Europe'' (2007) ISBN 0-297-84449-0

All his travel books can be read at no charge, complete and unabridged, on his website.

Autobiography (contributor)

''The Pythons'' Autobiography by The Pythons (2003) ISBN 0-7528-5293-0

Diaries

''Diaries 1969–1979''. 2006. ISBN 0-297-84436-9

''Diaries 1980–1988: Halfway to Hollywood – The Film Years''. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2009. ISBN 978-0-297-84440-2

Fiction

''Hemingway's chair'' (1995) ISBN 0-7493-1930-5

''Bert Fegg's Nasty Book for Boys and Girls'' w/Terry Jones, illus Martin Honeysett, Frank Bellamy et al. (1974) ISBN 0-413-32740-X

''Dr Fegg's Encyclopaedia of all world knowledge'' (1984) (expanded reprint of the above, with Terry Jones and Martin Honeysett) ISBN 0-8722-6005-4

Children's books

''Small Harry and the Toothache Pills'' (1982) ISBN 0-416-23690-1

''Limerics'' or ''The Limerick Book'' (1985) ISBN 0-09-161540-2

''Cyril and the House of Commons'' (1986) ISBN 1-85145-078-5

''Cyril and the Dinner Party'' (1986) ISBN 1-85145-069-6

''The Mirrorstone'' with Alan Lee and Richard Seymour (1986) ISBN 0-224-02408-6

Plays

''The Weekend'' (1994) ISBN 0-413-68940-9

Selected filmography

''And Now for Something Completely Different'' (1971)

''Monty Python and the Holy Grail'' (1975)

''Three Men in a Boat'' (1975)

''Jabberwocky'' (1977)

''Monty Python's Life of Brian'' (1979)

''Time Bandits'' (1981)

''Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl'' (1982)

''The Missionary'' (1982)

''Monty Python's The Meaning of Life'' (1983)

''A Private Function'' (1984)

''Brazil'' (1985)

''A Fish Called Wanda'' (1988)

''American Friends'' (1991)

''The Wind in the Willows'' (1996)

''The Willows in Winter'' (1996)

''Fierce Creatures'' (1997)

''Not the Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy)'' (2010)

Television

''Now!'' (October 1965 – middle 1966)

''The Ken Dodd Show''

''Billy Cotton Bandshow''

''The Illustrated Weekly Hudd''

''The Frost Report''. (10 March 1966 – 29 June 1967)

''The Late Show'' (15 October 1966 – 1 April 1967)

''A Series of Bird's'' (1967) (3 October 1967 – 21 November 1967 screenwriter (guest stars)

''Twice a Fortnight'' (21 October 1967 – 23 December 1967)

''Do Not Adjust Your Set'' (26 December 1967 – 14 May 1969)

''Broaden Your Mind'' (1968)

''How to Irritate People'' (1968)

''Marty (TV series)'' (1968)

''The Complete and Utter History of Britain'' (1969)

''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' (5 October 1969 – 5 December 1974)

''Saturday Night Live'' (Hosted 27 January 1979) with Musical Guests The Doobie Brothers

''Ripping Yarns'' (1976–1979)

''Great Railway Journeys of the World'', episode title "Confessions of a Trainspotter" (1980)

''East of Ipswich'' (1987) writer

''Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days'' (1989)

''GBH'' (1991)

''Pole to Pole'' (1992)

''Great Railway Journeys'', episode title "Derry to Kerry" (1994)

''Full Circle with Michael Palin'' (1997)

''Palin On Redpath'' (1997)

''Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure'' (1999)

''Michael Palin On... The Colourists'' (2000)

''Sahara with Michael Palin'' (2002)

''Life on Air'' (2002)

''Himalaya with Michael Palin'' (2004)

''Michael Palin's New Europe'' (2007)

''Around the World in 20 Years'' (30 December 2008)

Awards

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films

1982 Nominated – Saturn Award for Best Writing for ''Time Bandits'' (shared with Terry Gilliam)

Evening Standard British Film Awards

1986 Won – "Peter Sellers Award for Comedy"

Writers' Guild of Great Britain

1991 Won – Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for "Film – Screenplay" for ''American Friends'' (shared with Tristram Powell)

DVD Exclusive Awards

2001 Nominated – "Video Premiere Award for Best Audio Commentary" for ''Monty Python and the Holy Grail'' (shared with John Cleese and Eric Idle)

British Comedy Awards

2002 Won – British Comedy Award for "Lifetime Achievement"

BAFTA Awards

1984 Nominated – BAFTA Award for "Best Original Song" (the award was discontinued after the 1985 ceremonies) for Every Sperm is Sacred from ''The Meaning of Life'' (shared with André Jacquemin, Dave Howman and Terry Jones)

1989 Won – BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for ''A Fish Called Wanda'' (as ''Ken Pile'')

1992 Nominated – British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for ''G.B.H.''

2005 Won – BAFTA Special Award

2009 Won – BAFTA Special Award as part of the Monty Python team for outstanding contribution to film and television

References

Further reading

Novick, Jeremy (2001), ''Life of Michael: an Illustrated Biography of Michael Palin'' Headline Publishing (a division of Hodder Headline) ISBN 0747235295

Ross, Robert (1997). ''Monty Python Encyclopedia'' B.T. Batsford Ltd, London ISBN 1-57500-036-9

Wilmut, Roger (1980). ''From Fringe to Flying Circus: Celebrating a Unique Generation of Comedy 1960–1980'' Eyre Methuen Ltd ISBN 0-413-50770-X

Jones, Mark (2010), ''The Famous Charisma Discography'' The Record Press/Bristol Folk Publications ISBN 978-0-9563531-1-5 – discography of Monty Python's record label, includes foreword by Michael Palin

External links

Michael Palin – BBC Guide to Comedy

Michael Palin – Comedy Zone

Palin's Travels – official website for the travel series

Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children

Michael Palin: A Life in Pictures – BAFTA event at Ely Cathedral

Category:1943 births Category:Living people Category:BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor Category:Alumni of Brasenose College, Oxford Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:English comedians Category:English comedy writers Category:English diarists Category:English film actors Category:English screenwriters Category:English television actors Category:English television presenters Category:English television writers Category:English travel writers Category:Honorary Fellows of Brasenose College, Oxford Category:Monty Python members Category:Old Salopians Category:Old Birkdalians Category:People from Sheffield Category:People from Suffolk Category:Sheffield Legends

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