On Friday 18 May at 1pm BST we will be joined by Paul Hendrickson, the author of Hemingway's Boat, a book detailing the writer's life in Florida and Cuba and the importance of his boat, Pilar.

As the recent Observer review explains:

[Hendrickson's] "genius is to tack through the muddied waters of Hemingway's life by way of the thing he loved most purely: Pilar, the magical, black-hulled boat he bought in a Brooklyn shipyard in 1934. By keeping Pilar at the centre of the story, he manages to draw out the more gentle aspects of Hemingway's character, discovering beneath the mask of pantomime bully what's so often forgotten: that "underneath there was a bookish man in glasses trying to get his work done, and finding it harder with each passing year".'

In other words, Hendrickson is an ideal person to inform this month's Reading Group's ongoing debate about the idea of Hemingway being a "macho" writer – or not.

Hemingway's Boat is the result of seven years' work and a lifetime of scholarship and Hemingway interest. It contains some of the most convincing interpretations of Hemingway's behaviour I've read, alongside countless insights gained from interviews with family members, surviving friends and, yes, boat manufacturers. It weaves a gloriously eccentric path through many of the most important points in Hemingway's life (taking in Paris, and pre-adulthood hiking and fishing expeditions around Michigan and Illinois, as well as the places he took Pilar) and manages to provide a fresh take on all of them. There can be few Hemingway questions that won't find an informed answer here – so make the most of this excellent opportunity and ask away now. (Do note, however, that Paul doesn't claim to be an expert on On Our Time or A Moveable Feast, so perhaps avoid too specifically text-based questions...)

Paul will be joining us on 18 Friday May from 1pm – post your questions below.

We've posted the conversation to make it easier to follow.

Bonnybear asks:

I read your book earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed it particularly in terms of identifying the connection/bond between Hemingway, his family, friends and Pilar. Do you think Pilar really was the glue that bound Hemingway to everyone around him? It seemed from your book that he related best to his sons and his wives when he was on board rather than on land. Did the sea tame him? Also what about Pilar? Is there any chance that she could be returned to the sea and restored as some of the other boats of that period have been?

Paul Hendrickson replies:

Pilar was the organizing principle for the book I wrote. I believed and do believe Pilar was the single most important and beloved material possession in Hemingway's life, and he was often his best self while out there, expanding his horizons in both life and writing and the imagination of writing. He also could be a bully and a boor. He could treat people appallingly on shore and out on the water. But he deeply loved the sea. And he said in Islands in the Stream (has his character say) that the sea is eternal and you know you would never be anywhere else. So there was something spiritual about it all for him. But his devil was always the measure of his angel, and he took all of it with him. I saw the boat as a way to tell the story in a different light. No, the sea never "tamed" him. And the boat herself? She is there on the Havana hillside, and she has been restored, but she will never get into water again. Hitting the "reply" button now, so at least one "answer" to this unfortunate technological glitch has a chance of reaching you.

pogwilson asks:

And my question - when are we going to see a more comprehensive version of the Garden of Eden? I like the very short edit that came out in the 80s, which is probably the best of his posthumous publications, but it would be good to be able to read just how far Hemingway got with this key text, which I guess just adds to the tragedy.

Paul replies:

This is a wonderful question. I would love to see the full text, as splintered and unfinished as it is--see it published. In many ways it is Hemingway's absolutely bravest book. All the demons that were roiling inside him about his own ambivalent sexualities are there on the fractured page, and I think we owe it to him to see a full text published. But I have no idea if that will ever happen. I write in 'Boat' that Hemingway was far braver than we ever knew (as was his tortured transvestive/transsexual son, Gregory, or Gigi, who in many ways was life-long acting out what the father felt--or so I believe), and so I believe that we should honor this courage by seeing the full text, not the greatly abbreviated one that came out in 1986 from his publisher and from an editor who so took it down in length and organization.

ChilliSKF asks:

I'm writing an article about the Hemingway Home in Florida and it seems to me that he was rather selfish in his pursuit of adventure and appetite for new romance. He left his family at their home to move to Cuba for example. He also seems to be obsessed with displays of wealth.The Hemingway Home is now a celebrated tourist attraction but I find the perfectly preserved oversized mansion complete with the swimming pool Hemmingway wanted built (a luxury unheard of in the 1930's) to represent a conscientiously flamboyant man who revelled in his position as the owner of the biggest house in Key West - and ignored not only the poverty and injustice surrounding him in the strictly segregated post war America, but the needs of his family too. In context of his life in Key West do you agree or disagree with the sentiments above?

Paul replies:

I respectfully disagree, sir or madam. It's too complicated to answer in full here, especially with the technical glitches we've had. There are certainly parts of what you say that are true but I feel your comment is too sweeping. Yes, he did leave his family for the pursuit of adventure and was capable of falling into adultery, but his aim was not to have the largest house in Key West. It's not that simple. Sorry for not being able to engage in a more nuanced discussion of this. I appreciate your point of view but cannot agree in the whole and on the whole.

leroyhunter asks:

Hi Paul - I have your book but haven't yet got round to reading it (although I'm looking forward to it immensely). So I don't have any specific queries related to that.

On a general note, it seems to be accepted even by many fans of Hemingway that his shorter work is much more accomplished than his novels. Do you think that's the case? Should we remember him primarily as a great stylist and innovator of the short story, or do his novels deserve more credit? I'm often surprised by how negatively people view For Whom the Bell Tolls, To Have and to Have Not etc., but I accept that spread over hundreds of pages the Hemingway style can be tough going.

Paul replies:

This is a wonderful question. I do believe Hemingway's genius is for the short rather than the long. His first novel (first real novel), The Sun Also Rises, is 60,000 lyrical words, published in 1926 when he was 27. Then A Farewell to Arms, also a rather short novel but certainly longer and fuller than the Sun. But by 1940 when he writes For Whom the Bell Tolls, the weight and force and self-consciousness of the Hemingway style shows deeply through. I think as a general statement it can be said that he is better in the short going than in the long; that the short stories themselves resonate inside us. I mean the very very short, like "Indian Camp," to the longish short story, like "Snows of Kilimanjaro." And most especially "Big Two-Hearted River," which to my mind is the greatest Hemingway story of all. Although it's not quite true, I think of modernism as beginning with that story, which is ostensibly only about a boy going deep into the woods to go fishing. When underneath all of those glorious descriptions is something troubling, and the troubling is a young man home from the war who is trying to get his mind back. But of course the word "war" never once appears. The story still goose-bumps me. But as to style and form and length and content: I think Hemingway knew himself that he was better over the short haul than the long; but fame and the critics kept expecting him to go for the "long ball," and in letters the long ball is always the novel, not the short story. And if you try to do that, and if it is not your natural stroke, you begin the false notes. That is a very generalized and over-stated expression of the story, and I have gotten only a kernel of it here. On to the next.

7sisters asks:

Paul, have not yet read your book- looking forward to it.
Two related questions-Given that Hemingway was married four times, do you think he was manipulated by women or was it the other way round?Also did "Pilar" represent another "woman" in his life?

Paul replies:

Ah, Pilar was the greatest "woman" in his life, you might say. He was faithful to "her" as he was to no other woman. He ALWAYS referred to her in the female person. As to the larger part of your question: I do believe that we are just beginning to discover that Hemingway's view of women was far more nuanced than we ever believed. Women were not doormats in his fiction. That was the early take by some feminist and male scholars, too. But I think he had an understanding that was subtle. Read "Cat in the Rain." That little story is all about the sympathy for the female character. In A Farewell to Arms, Catherine Barkley is heroic in dying in childbirth. But did women take advantage of him more than he took advantage of them in "life"? Great question. It might come out a draw, sir. He could be beastly to his women, and some of them could be beastly back. I do know he loved women. Which is why the claptrap of whether Hemingway was really a closeted gay is really. . .claptrap. He had tremendously roiling sexually ambivalent feelings as to his own masculinity, and he faced up to these in his fiction. But there is not a shred of evidence that I know of that he was ever attracted physically to other men. Nor was his transvestite/transsexual son, Gigi, who married multiple times and had 7 biological children (and one adopted). He was terribly tortured about his sexuality, but he was attracted to women. I will place every dime I have on it. As was the father. Forgive me: I realize I am floating afar somewhat from your question. But I am running out of time and typing energy and wanted to put this in for the record.