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I have a graduate degree from Penn State. I studied at Penn State under a noted Hemingway scholar, Philip Young. I had an interest in thrillers, and it occurred to me that Hemingway wrote many action scenes: the war scenes in 'A Farewell to Arms' and 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' come to mind. But the scenes don't feel pulpy.

I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.

Like most writers, I've read a lot of Hemingway, and I admire him greatly.

Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.

I am not a Hemingway aficionado.

It had never occurred to me to write a historical novel, but then I found Hadley in the pages of Hemingway's 'A Moveable Feast' and wanted to know more about her - who she was, how she and Ernest met and fell in love, what it was like for her to be married to such a demanding and stormy force of nature.

Once, in an interview with 'V' magazine, I said that I preferred Fitzgerald to Hemingway. I think that Hemingway is an amazing writer, but by being related to him, I had it in my head that I had to like him.

When I first wrote 'Papa Hemingway,' there were too many people still alive, and the lawyers for Random House didn't want to OK it. But now all that's been filtered away by the passage of all these people. And having the fortune of surviving, I now feel that I am the custodian of what Ernest wanted the world to know about him and these women.

Hemingway seems to be in a funny position. People nowadays can't identify with him closely as a member of their own generation, and he isn't yet historical.

It would be hard to exaggerate Ernest Hemingway's influence over American literature, but his influence on our lives is probably larger still.