Ruark's "The Old Man and The Boy", and "The Old Man's Boy Grows Older" are classics, and Ruark, born in SC in 1915 had a way different childhood and parenting than did Hemingway, born in Oak Park Ill. in 1899. The had several things in common: Alcohol, war experiences, many wives and also a strong newspaper writing style that was terse and clear at the same time.
Hemingway wrote about life as he saw it unfold over his 60 years, much as did Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorn Clemens)--and he used his experiences in living that life to develop his novels and short stories-- WW1-- "A Farewell To Arms" and "The Sun Also Rises", his summers as a boy in MI near Charlevoix-- "Up In Michigan" and "In Our Time'-- His involvement in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930's gave us one of his best works ever- "For Whom The Bell Tolls"- and the fitting title, from a 1666 era poem by John Dunne- "No Man Is an Island"-- And Hemingway was also influenced, mainly in a negative way, by his domineering mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, and also by Gertrude Stein, Alice Toklas and Sylvia Beach in his Paris early writing years and with his marriage to first of 4 wives, Hadley Richardson.
I will agree to some extent that one can take your position of EMH's life-long body of writing can be seen as depressive- so was his life in many ways, and alcohol was one of the sources of comfort EMH turned to when fits of "The Old Black Ass" came over him- his term for depression.
\There is a saying: "Those whom the Gods bless with great gifts they also curse with a growing and all-consuming madness: Vincent Van Gogh, Wolfgang Mozart, Ludwig Von Beethoven, Frederich Hegel, Toluse LaTrec, and Ernest Miller Hemingway.
Robert Chester Ruark, who died from cancer about 4 years after Hemingway's suicide in July, 1961, was not, IMO, blessed with any great gift, he became a good writer due to his early career in newspapers, and was able to survive during the Depression with that craft well mastered- Read his novel "The Honey Badger" and see his alter ego Alex Barr live this out in print- great read.
But to put Ruark in the same class as a writer of substance and standing like Hemingway-- is like mixing George Dickel with STP--RWTF Your Observant Servant and literary guru.
