In his 1972 biography of Ernest Hemingway, James McLendon talks of Key West as the place where Hemingway became Hemingway. It was here that he came to love the sea, where he wrote most of “A Farewell to Arms,” and where he began to gather up the inspiration for what would become his most famous work, “The Old Man and the Sea,” a simply-told and tragic story of a fisherman’s battle with a giant marlin.

Posted - Wednesday, July 16, 2008 10:07 AM EDT