PROJECT WORK
MY FAVOURITE AUTHOR
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
2003
CONTENTS
• Introduction • The aim of the Project Work • The Project Work My Favourite Author: • Childhood • World War I • A soldier’s home • The Paris years • An unparalleled creative flurry • Key West • Cuba • World War II • The last days • Denouement • Conclusions.
CHILDHOOD
ERNEST MILLER HEMINGWAY WAS BORN AT EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING ON JULY21, 1899 IN OAK PARK, ILLINOIS. IN THE NEARLY SIXTY-TWO YEARS OF HIS LIFETHAT FOLLOWED HE FORGED A LITERARY REPUTATION UNSURPASSED IN THE TWENTIETHCENTURY. IN DOING SO, HE ALSO CREATED A MYTHOLOGICAL HERO IN HIMSELF THATCAPTIVATED (AND AT TIMES CONFOUNDED) NOT ONLY SERIOUS LITERARY CRITICS BUTTHE AVERAGE MAN AS WELL. IN A WORD, HE WAS A STAR.Born in the family home at 439 North Oak Park Avenue (now 339 N. Oak ParkAvenue), a house built by his widowed grandfather Ernest Hall, Hemingwaywas the second of Dr. Clarence and Grace Hall Hemingway’s six children; hehad four sisters and one brother. He was named after his maternalgrandfather Ernest Hall and his great uncle Miller Hall.
[pic]
The Hemingway family: Ursula, Ernest and Marceline with parents, October1903
Oak Park was a mainly Protestant, upper middle-class suburb of Chicago thatHemingway would later refer to as a town of “wide lawns and narrow minds.”Only ten miles from the big city, Oak Park was really much farther awayphilosophically. It was basically a conservative town that tried to isolateitself from Chicago’s liberal seediness. Hemingway was raised with theconservative midwestern values of strong religion, hard work, physicalfitness and self-determination; if one adhered to these parameters, he wastaught and he would be ensured of success in whatever field he chose.[pic]Five year-old Ernest Hemingway trout fishing, July 1904
As a boy he was taught by his father to hunt and fish along the shores andin the forests surrounding Lake Michigan. The Hemingways had a summerhousecalled Windemere on Walloon Lake in northern Michigan, and the family wouldspend the summer months there trying to stay cool. Hemingway would eitherfish the different streams that ran into the lake, or would take therowboat out to do some fishing there. He would also go squirrel hunting inthe woods near the summerhouse, discovering early in life the serenity tobe found while alone in the forest or wading a stream. It was something hecould always go back to throughout his life, wherever he was. Nature wouldbe the touchstone of Hemingway’s life and work, and though he often foundhimself living in major cities like Chicago, Toronto and Paris early in hiscareer, once he became successful he chose somewhat isolated places to livelike Key West, or San Francisco de Paula, Cuba, or Ketchum, Idaho. All wereconvenient locales for hunting and fishing.When he wasn’t hunting or fishing his mother taught him the finer points ofmusic. Grace was an accomplished singer who once had aspirations of acareer on stage, but eventually settled down with her husband and occupiedher time by giving voice and music lessons to local children, including herown. Hemingway never had a knack for music and suffered through choirpractices and cello lessons, however the musical knowledge he acquired fromhis mother helped him share in his first wife Hadley’s interest in thepiano.
[pic]Ernest Hemingway feeding a stuffed squirrel, February 1910
Hemingway received his formal schooling in the Oak Park public schoolsystem. In high school he was mediocre at sports, playing football,swimming, water basketball and serving as the track team manager. Heenjoyed working on the high school newspaper called the Trapeze, where hewrote his first articles, usually humorous pieces in the style of RingLardner, a popular satirist of the time. Hemingway graduated in the springof 1917 and instead of going to college the following fall like his parentsexpected, he took a job as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star; the jobwas arranged for by his Uncle Tyler who was a close friend of the chiefeditorial writer of the paper.
World War I
[pic]Ernest Hemingway in his Spangolini uniform
At the time of Hemingway’s graduation from High School, World War I wasraging in Europe, and despite Woodrow Wilson’s attempts to keep America outof the war; the United States joined the Allies in the fight againstGermany and Austria in April 1917. When Hemingway turned eighteen he triedto enlist in the army, but was deferred because of poor vision; he had a
bad left eye that he probably inherited from his mother, who also had poorvision. When he heard the Red Cross was taking volunteers as ambulancedrivers he quickly signed up. He was accepted in December of 1917, left hisjob at the paper in April of 1918, and sailed for Europe in May. In theshort time that Hemingway worked for the Kansas City Star he learned somestylistic lessons that would later influence his fiction. The newspaperadvocated short sentences, short paragraphs, active verbs, authenticity,compression, clarity and immediacy. Hemingway later said: “Those were thebest rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I’ve never forgottenthem.”Hemingway first went to Paris upon reaching Europe, then traveled to Milanin early June after receiving his orders. The day he arrived, a munitionsfactory exploded and he had to carry mutilated bodies and body parts to amakeshift morgue; it was an immediate and powerful initiation into thehorrors of war. Two days later he was sent to an ambulance unit in the townof Schio, where he worked driving ambulances. On July 8, 1918, only a fewweeks after arriving, Hemingway was seriously wounded by fragments from anAustrian mortar shell, which had landed just a few feet away. At the time,Hemingway was distributing chocolate and cigarettes to Italian soldiers inthe trenches near the front lines. The explosion knocked Hemingwayunconscious, killed an Italian soldier and blew the legs off another. Whathappened next has been debated for some time. In a letter to Hemingway’sfather, Ted Brumback, one of Ernest’s fellow ambulance drivers, wrote thatdespite over 200 pieces of shrapnel being lodged in Hemingway’s legs hestill managed to carry another wounded soldier back to the first aidstation; along the way he was hit in the legs by several machine gunbullets. Whether he carried the wounded soldier or not, doesn’t diminishHemingway’s sacrifice.
[pic]Young Ernest Hemingway: At the Milan hospital in the fall of 1918
He was awarded the Italian Silver Medal for Valor with the official Italiancitation reading: “Gravely wounded by numerous pieces of shrapnel from anenemy shell, with an admirable spirit of brotherhood, before taking care ofhimself, he rendered generous assistance to the Italian soldiers moreseriously wounded by the same explosion and did not allow himself to becarried elsewhere until after they had been evacuated.” Hemingway describedhis injuries to a friend of his: “There was one of those big noises yousometimes hear at the front. I died then. I felt my soul or somethingcoming right out of my body, like you’d pull a silk handkerchief out of apocket by one corner. It flew all around and then came back and went inagain and I wasn’t dead any more.”Hemingway’s wounding along the Pave River in Italy and his subsequentrecovery at a hospital in Milan, including the relationship with his nurseAgnes von Kurowsky, all inspired his great novel A Farewell To Arms. A Soldier’s Home…
[pic]Ernest Hemingway stretched out in the Red Cross Hospital, Milan 1918
When Hemingway returned home from Italy in January of 1919 he found OakPark dull compared to the adventures of war, the beauty of foreign landsand the romance of an older woman, Agnes von Kurowsky. He was nineteenyears old and only a year and a half removed from high school, but the warhad matured him beyond his years. Living with his parents, who never quiteappreciated what their son had been through, was difficult. Soon after hishomecoming they began to question his future, began to pressure him to findwork or to further his education, but Hemingway couldn’t seem to musterinterest in anything.
He had received some $1,000 dollars in insurance payments for his warwounds, which allowed him to avoid work for nearly a year. He lived at hisparent’s house and spent his time at the library or at home reading. Hespoke to small civic organizations about his war exploits and was oftenseen in his Red Cross uniform, walking about town. For a time though,Hemingway questioned his role as a war hero, and when asked to tell of hisexperiences he often exaggerated to satisfy his audience. Hemingway’s story“Soldier’s Home” conveys his feelings of frustration and shame uponreturning home to a town and to parents who still had a romantic notion ofwar and who didn’t understand the psychological impact the war had had on
their son.The last speaking engagement the young Hemingway took was at the Petoskey(Michigan) Public Library, and it would be important to Hemingway not forwhat he said but for who heard it. In the audience was Harriett Connable,the wife of an executive for the Woolworth’s company in Toronto. AsHemingway spun his war tales Harriett couldn’t help but notice thedifferences between Hemingway and her own son. Hemingway appearedconfident, strong, intelligent and athletic, while her son was slight,somewhat handicapped by a weak right arm and spent most of his timeindoors. Harriett Connable thought her son needed someone to show him thejoys of physical activity and Hemingway seemed the perfect candidate totutor and watch over him while she and her husband Ralph vacationed inFlorida. So, she asked Hemingway if he would do it.Hemingway took the position, which offered him time to write and a chanceto work for the Toronto Star Weekly, the editor of which Ralph Connablepromised to introduce Hemingway to. Hemingway wrote for the Star Weeklyeven after moving to Chicago in the fall of 1920. While living at afriend’s house he met Hadley Richardson and they quickly fell in love. Thetwo married in September 1921 and by November of the same year Hemingwayaccepted an offer to work with the Toronto Daily Star as its Europeancorrespondent. Hemingway and his new bride would go to Paris, France wherethe whole of literature was being changed by the likes of Ezra Pound, JamesJoyce, Gertrude Stein and Ford Maddox Ford. He would not miss his chance tochange it as well.
The Paris Years
The Hemingways arrived in Paris on December 22, 1921 and a few weeks latermoved into their first apartment at 74 rue Cardinal Lemoyne. It was amiserable apartment with no running water and a bathroom that was basicallya closet with a slop bucket inside. Hemingway tried to minimize theprimitiveness of the living quarters for his wife Hadley who had grown upin relative splendor, but despite the conditions she endured, carried awayby her husbands enthusiasm for living the bohemian lifestyle. Ironically,they could have afforded much better; with Hemingway’s job and Hadley’strust fund their annual income was $3,000, a decent sum in the inflatedeconomies of Europe at the time. Hemingway rented a room at 39 rueDescartes where he could do his writing in peace.
With a letter of introduction from Sherwood Anderson, Hemingway met some ofParis prominent writers and artists and forged quick friendships with themduring his first few years. Counted among those friends were Ezra Pound,Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, Max Eastman, Lincoln Stephensand Wyndahm Lewis, and he was acquainted with the painters Miro andPicasso. These friendships would be instrumental in Hemingway’s developmentas a writer and artist.Hemingway’s reporting during his first two years in Paris was extensive,covering the Geneva Conference in April of 1922, The Greco-Turkish War inOctober, the Luasanne Conference in November and the post war convention inthe Ruhr Valley in early 1923. Along with the political pieces he wrotelifestyle pieces as well, covering fishing, bullfighting, social life inEurope, skiing, bobsledding and more.Just as Hemingway was beginning to make a name for himself as a reporterand a fledgling fiction writer, and just as he and his wife were hittingtheir stride socially in Europe, the couple found out that Hadley waspregnant with their first child. Wanting the baby born in North Americawhere the doctors and hospitals were better, the Hemingways left Paris in1923 and moved to Toronto, where he wrote for the Toronto Daily Star andwaited for their child to arrive.John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway was born on October 10, 1923 and by Januaryof 1924 the young family boarded a ship and headed back to Paris whereHemingway would finish making a name for himself.
With a recommendation from Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Ford let Hemingway edithis fledgling literary magazine the Transatlantic Review. In recommendingHemingway to Ford, Pound said “…He’s an experienced journalist. He writesvery good verse and he’s the finest prose stylist in the world.”Ford published some of Hemingway’s early stories, including “Indian Camp”and “Cross Country Snow” and generally praised the younger writer. Themagazine lasted only a year and a half (until 1925), but allowed Hemingwayto work out his own artistic theories and to see them in print in arespectable journal.
An unparalleled creative flurry…
From 1925 to 1929 Hemingway produced some of the most important works of
20th century fiction, including the landmark short story collection In OurTime (1925) that contained “The Big Two-Hearted River.” In 1926 he came outwith his first true novel, The Sun Also Rises (after publishing Torrents ofSpring, a comic novel parodying Sherwood Anderson in 1925). He followedthat book with Men Without Women in 1927; it was another book of stories,which collected “The Killers,” and “In Another Country.” In 1929 hepublished A Farewell to Arms, arguably the finest novel to emerge fromWorld War I. In four short years he went from being an unknown writer tobeing the most important writer of his generation, and perhaps the 20thcentury.The first version of in our time (characterized by the lowercase letters inthe title) was published by William Bird Three Mountain Press in 1924 andillustrated Hemingway new theories on literature. It contained only thevignettes that would later appear as interchapters in the American versionpublished by Bonnie & Liveright in 1925. This small 32 page book, of whichonly 170 copies were printed, contained the essence of Hemingway aesthetictheory which stated that omitting the right thing from a story couldactually strengthen it. Hemingway equated this theory with the structure ofan iceberg where only 1/8 of the iceberg could be seen above water whilethe remaining 7/8 under the surface provided the iceberg dignity of motionand contributed to its momentum. Hemingway felt a story could beconstructed the same way and this theory shows up even in these earlyvignettes. A year after the small printing of in our time came out, Bonnie& Liveright published the American version, which contains ten shortstories along with the vignettes. The collection of stories is amazing,including the much anthologized “Soldier’s Home,” as well as “Indian Camp,”“A Very Short Story,” “My Old Man” and the classic “Big Two-Hearted River”parts one and two. “Big Two Hearted River” was an eureka story forHemingway, who realized that his theory of omission really could work inthe story form.
Next came The Torrents of Spring, a short comic novel that satiredHemingway’s early mentor Sherwood Anderson and allowed him to break hisrelationship with Bonnie & Liveright to move to Scribner’s. Scribner’spublished Torrents (which Scott Fitzgerald called the finest comic novelever written by an American) in 1925, then a year later publishedHemingway’s second novel The Sun Also Rises, which the publisher had boughtsight unseen.The Sun Also Rises introduced the world to the “lost generation” and was acritical and commercial success. Set in Paris and Spain, the book was astory of unrequitable love against a backdrop of bars and bullfighting. In1927 came Men Without Women and soon after he began working on A FarewellTo Arms.
While he could do no wrong with his writing career, his personal life hadbegun to show signs of wear. He divorced his first wife Hadley in 1927 andmarried Pauline Pfeiffer, an occasional fashion reporter for the likes ofVanity Fair and Vogue, later that year. In 1928 Hemingway and Pauline leftParis for Key West, Florida in search of new surroundings to go with theirnew life together. They would live there for nearly twelve years, andHemingway found it a wonderful place to work and to play, discovering thesport of big game fishing, which would become a life-long passion and asource for much of his later writing. That same year Hemingway receivedword of his father’s death by suicide. Clarence Hemingway had begun tosuffer from a number of physical ailments that would exacerbate an alreadyfragile mental state. He had developed diabetes, endured painful angina andextreme headaches. On top of these physical problems he also suffered froma dismal financial situation after speculative real estate purchases inFlorida never panned out. His problems seemingly insurmountable, ClarenceHemingway shot himself in the head. Ernest immediately traveled to Oak Parkto arrange for his funeral.
Key West
The new Hemingways heard of Key West from Ernest’s friend John Dos Passos,and the two stopped at the tiny Florida Island on their way back fromParis. They soon discovered that life in remote Key West was like living ina foreign country while still perched on the southernmost tip of America.Hemingway loved it. “It’s the best place I’ve ever been anytime, anywhere,flowers, tamarind trees, guava trees, coconut palms…Got tight last nighton absinthe and did knife tricks.” After renting an apartment and a housefor a couple of years the Hemingways bought a large house at 907 Whitehead
Street with $12,500 of help from Pauline’s wealthy Uncle Gus.Pauline was pregnant at the time and on June 28, 1928 gave birth to Patrickby cesarean section. It was in December of that year that Hemingwayreceived the cable reporting his father’s suicide. Despite the personalturmoil and change Hemingway continued to work on A Farewell to Arms,finishing it in January of 1929. The novel was published on September 27,1929 to a level of critical acclaim that Hemingway wouldn’t see again until1940 with the publication of his Spanish war novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.In between Hemingway entered his experimental phase, which confoundedcritics but still, to some extent, satisfied his audience.In 1931 Pauline gave birth to Gregory, their second son together, and thelast of Hemingway’s children.[pic]Editor and author: Max Perkins (left) and Ernest Hemingway (right), KeyWest, Florida, 1935
After A Farewell to Arms Hemingway published his 1932 Spanish bullfightingdissertation, Death in the Afternoon. While writing an encyclopedic book onbullfighting he still managed to make it readable even by those who had noreal interest in the corrida. He inserts observations on Spanish culture,writers, food, people, politics, history, etc. Hemingway wrote about thepurpose of his Spanish book, “It is intended as an introduction to themodern Spanish bullfight and attempts to explain that spectacle bothemotionally and practically. It was written because there was no book whichdid this in Spanish or in English.”Though a non-fiction book, Death in the Afternoon does codify one ofHemingway’s literary concepts of the stoical hero facing deadly oppositionwhile still performing his duties with professionalism and skill, or “graceunder pressure,” as Hemingway described it. Many critics took issue with anapparent change in Hemingway from detracted artist to actual character inone of his own works. They disliked a blustery tone Hemingway drifted into,particularly when discussing writers, writing and art in general. It wasthe genesis of the public “Papa” image that would grow over the remaining30 years of his life, at times almost obscuring the serious artist within.Returning to fiction in 1933, Hemingway published Winner Take Nothing, avolume of short stories. The book contained 14 stories, including “A CleanWell Lighted Place,” “Fathers and Sons,” and “A Way you’ll Never Be.” Thebook sold well despite a mediocre critical reception and despite theterrible economic depression the world was then mired in. James Joyce, oneof Hemingway’s friends from his early Paris days, wrote glowingly of “AClean, Well Lighted Place” as follows: “He has reduced the veil betweenliterature and life, which is what every writer strives to do. Have youread Clean, Well Lighted Place…It is masterly. Indeed, it is one of thebest stories ever written…”In the summer of 1933 the Hemingways and their Key West friend CharlesThompson journeyed to Africa for a big game safari. Ever since reading ofTeddy Roosevelt’s African hunting exploits as a boy, Hemingway wanted totest his hunting skills against the biggest and most dangerous animals onearth. With a $25,000 loan form Pauline’s uncle Gus (the same uncle whohelped them buy their Key West home) [pic]Hemingway boxing at Bimini, Bahamas, 1935
Hemingway spent three months hunting on the Dark Continent, all the whilegathering material for his future writing. In 1935 he published Green Hillsof Africa, a pseudo non-fiction account of his safari. Unfortunately, hepicked up where he left off in Death in the Afternoon. While the bookcontained some decent writing about Africa and its animals it wasovershadowed by Hemingway’s again digression into the blustery tone of hisalter ego. In the book Hemingway harshly criticizes his supposed friends,making the reader cringe at his insensitivity. He portrays himself ascourageous, skillful and cool while depicting others, including his friendCharles Thompson, as mean-spirited and selfish. In a telling review theprominent literary critic Edmund Wilson poked at Hemingway, saying, “he hasproduced what must be the only book ever written which makes Africa and itsanimals seem dull.”
Oddly though, from the same safari Hemingway gathered the material for twoof his finest short stories, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The ShortHappy Life of Francis Macomber.” In both stories the protagonist shows aweakness that is contrary to what the typical Hemingway hero exhibits.Harry, the dying writer in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” laments his wastedtalent, a talent diminished by drink, women, wealth and laziness. Macomberin “The Short Happy Life…” shows cowardice under pressure and just as he
redeems himself his wife shoots him.As in other Hemingway stories, a curious effect can be seen in theseAfrican tales. Often in Hemingway’s non-fiction work the truth is obscuredby Hemingway’s need to promote his public personality, his need to portrayhimself as above fear, above pettiness, above any negative quality thatwould tarnish that image. In his fiction though, certain negativequalities, whatever they might be, are in the characters as flaws thatoften lead to their destruction. Beyond that, in a biographical context,the actual events of Hemingway’s life end up in his fiction rather than inhis non-fiction. For example: Hemingway’s World War I injuries more closelyresemble those of Frederic Henry in A Farewell To Arms than the accountsyou see repeated in old biographical blurbs which tell of how he foughtwith the elite Italian forces, how after being hit by a mortar he carried awounded soldier through machine gun fire to the field hospital, and how herefused medical treatment until others were treated before him.[pic]Hemingway at work on For Whom The Bell Tolls, Sun Valley, Idaho, December1939
When you want to find the truth about Hemingway’s life, look first to hisfiction.In March 1937 Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil Warfor the North American Newspaper Alliance. The civil war caused a maritalwar in the Hemingway household as well. Hemingway had met a young writernamed Martha Gellhorn in Key West and the two would go on to conduct asecret affair for almost four years before Hemingway divorced Pauline andmarried Martha. Pauline sided with the Fascist Franco Regime in Spainbecause of is pro-catholic stance, while Hemingway supported the communistloyalists who in turn supported the democratically elected government.Often travelling with Gellhorn, the two fell in love as they competed forquality stories. They would eventually marry in November of 1940, nearlyfour years after meeting at Sloppy Joe’s bar in Key West in December 1936.Eventually the loyalist movement failed and the Franco led rebels won thewar and installed a dictatorial government in the spring of 1939. Thoughhis side lost the war Hemingway used his experiences there to write thenovel For Whom the Bell Tolls, a play titled “The Fifth Column” and severalshort stories.
Cuba
After returning from Spain and divorcing Pauline, Hemingway and Marthamoved to a large house outside Havana, Cuba. They named it “Lookout Farm”,and Hemingway decorated it with hunting trophies from his African safari.He had begun work on For Whom The Bell Tolls in 1939 in Cuba and worked onit on the road as he traveled back to Key West or to Wyoming or to SunValley, finishing it in July of 1940. The book was a huge success, bothcritically and commercially, prompting Sinclair Lewis to write that it was“the American book published during the three years past which was mostlikely to survive, to be know fifty years from now, or possibly ahundred…it might just possibly be a masterpiece, a classic…” Oddly, thebook was unanimously voted the best novel of the year by the Pulitzer Prizecommittee, but was vetoed for political reason by the conservativepresident of Columbia University; no prize was awarded that year. The booksold over 500,000 copies in just six months, and continues to sell welltoday.
The next ten years would be a creatively fallow period for Hemingway, (itwould be 1950 before he would publish another novel) but while he lookedmore interested in bolstering his public image at the expense of his work,he was actually immersed in several large writing projects which he couldnever seem to complete. During the 1940’s he worked on what would becomethe heavily edited and posthumously published novels Islands In The Streamand The Garden Of Eden. In between he would also cover (and some sayparticipate in) World War II, and he would divorce his third wife Martha tomarry his fourth, Mary Welsh. In an insightful essay on Hemingway, E. L.Doctorow writes of Hemingway’s work during the 40’s, discussing The Gardenof Eden in particular. “That is exciting because it gives evidence, despitehis celebrity, despite his Nobel, despite the torments of his own physicalself punishment, of a writer still developing. Those same writingstrategies Hemingway formulated to such triumph in his early work came toentrap him in the later…I would like to think that as he began “TheGarden of Eden,” his very next novel after that war work (For Whom the Bell
Tolls), he realized this and wanted to retool, to remake himself. That hewould fail is almost not the point – but that he would have tried, which isthe true bravery of a writer…” After his work covering the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent work onhis novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway took on another assignment,covering the Chinese-Japanese war in 1941. He traveled with his wife Marthaand wrote dispatches about the war for PM Magazine. It was a tedious tripand Hemingway was glad to return to Cuba for some well-deserved rest. Hedidn’t stay still long. By 1942 Hemingway had undertaken an undercoveroperation to hunt down German submarines in the Atlantic Ocean off thecoast of Cuba. Hemingway gathered some of his friends, as well as a fewprofessional operatives and then outfitted his boat Pillar with radioequipment, extra fuel tanks and a nice quantity of ordnance, hoping that ifhe ever located a German sub he could get close enough to drop a bomb downthe hatch. He called the gang the “Crook Factory.” Nothing ever came oftheir sub hunts except a good time fishing and drinking together, in theprocess irritating Martha who thought Hemingway was avoiding theresponsibilities as a great writer to report the real war then raging inEurope.
World War II
[pic]Hemingway during World War II
In the spring of 1944 Hemingway finally decided to go to Europe to reportthe war, heading first to London where he wrote articles about the RAF andabout the war’s effects on England. While there he was injured in a carcrash, suffering a serious concussion and a gash to his head, whichrequired over 50 stitches. Martha visited him in the hospital and minimizedhis injuries, castigating him for being involved in a drunken auto wreck.Hemingway really was seriously hurt and Martha’s cavalier reactiontriggered the beginning of the end of their marriage while in LondonHemingway met Mary Welsh, the antithesis of Martha. Mary was caring,adoring, and complimentary while Martha couldn’t care less, had lost anyadmiration for her man and was often insulting to him. For Hemingway it wasan easy choice between the two and like in other wars, Hemingway fell inlove with a new woman.Hemingway and Mary openly conducted their courtship in London and then inFrance after the allied invasion at Normandy and the subsequent liberationof Paris. For all intents and purposes Hemingway’s third marriage was overand his fourth and final marriage to Mary had begun. Hemingway wrote,“Funny how it should take one war to start a woman in your damn heart andanother to finish her. Bad luck.” In late August of 1944 Hemingway and his band of irregular soldiers enteredParis. Hemingway was always fond of saying he was the first to enter Parisen route to its liberation, but the story is a stretch. He did liberate hisfavorite bar and hotel though. He set up camp in The Ritz Hotel and spentthe next week or so drinking, carousing and celebrating his return to thecity that meant so much to him as a young man.Next, Hemingway traveled to the north of France to join his friend GeneralBuck Lanham as the allied forces (the 22nd Infantry Regiment in particular)pushed toward Germany. Hemingway spent a month with Lanham, long enough towatch American forces cross over into Germany. The fighting was some of thebloodiest of the war and was obliquely recorded by Hemingway in Across theRiver and into the Trees.
Hemingway returned to America in March of 1946 with plans to write a greatnovel of the war, but it never materialized. The only book length work hewould produce about the war was Across the River and Into the Trees. Ittells the bittersweet story of Richard Cantwell, a former brigadier generalwho has been demoted to colonel after a disastrous battle, which had beenblamed on him. The aging Cantwell, with his heart problem that threatenedto kill him at any moment, falls in love with the young Italian countessRenata. They carry out a love affair and through their conversations andmonologues we learn the source of Cantwell’s bitterness…an inept militarythat fails to appreciate his talents and in fact sends him orders that areimpossible to fulfill, in effect guaranteeing his failure and disgrace, anex-wife (based on Martha Gellhorn) that uses her relationship with Cantwellto gain access to the military brass for information important to her
journalism career and a general distaste for the modern world.Banking on Hemingway’s reputation, Scribners ran an initial printing of75,000 copies of Across the River and Into the Trees in September of 1950after it had already appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in the February-Juneissues of the same year. Generally slammed by the critics as sentimental,boorish and a thin disguise of Hemingway’s own relationship with a youngItalian woman named Adriana Ivancich, the novel actually contains some ofHemingway’s finest writing, especially in the opening chapters. The criticswere expecting something on the scale of For Whom The Bell Tolls and weredisappointed by the short novel and its narrow scope.
The Last Days
[pic]
Stung by the critical reception of Across the River and Into the Trees,Hemingway was determined to regain his former stature as the world’spreeminent novelist. Still under the muse of Adriana Ivancich, Hemingwaybegan work on a story of an old man and a great fish. The words pouredforth and hit the page in almost perfect form,requiring little editing after he’s completed the first draft. It had beena story simmering in Hemingway’s subconscious for some time…in fact hehad written about just such a story in one of his Esquire magazinedispatches as early as 1936. Max Perkins periodically tried to persuadeHemingway to write the story, but Hemingway felt he wasn’t yet ready towrite what his wife Mary would later call “poetry in prose.”
Hemingway often described competition among writers in boxing terms. Hefelt he has been sucker punched and knocked to the canvas by the critics onAcross the River and Into the Trees, but as if he has been saving it forjust such an occasion, he believed the fish story would allow him to regainhis position as “champion.”In September of 1952 The Old Man and the Sea appeared in Life magazine,selling over 5 million copies in a flash. The next week Scribners rolledout the first hardcover edition of 50,000 copies and they too sold outquickly. The book was a huge success both critically and commercially andfor the first time since For Whom The Bell Tolls in 1940 Hemingway was atopthe literary heap…and making a fortune. Though Hemingway had known greatsuccess before, he never had the privilege of receiving any major literaryprizes. The Old Man and the Sea changed that, winning the Pulitzer Prizefor fiction in 1953.Flush with money from the Old Man and the Sea Hemingway decided to exercisehis wanderlust, returning to Europe to catch some bullfights in Spain andthen to Africa later in the summer for another safari with his wife Mary.In January of 1954 Hemingway and Mary boarded a small Cessna airplane totake a tour of some of east Africa’s beautiful lakes and waterfalls. Thepilot, Roy marsh, dove to avoid a flock of birds and hit a telegraph wire.The plane was badly damaged and they had to make a crash landing. Thegroup’s injuries were minor, though several of Mary’s ribs were fractured.After a boat ride across Lake Victoria they took another flight in a deHaviland Rapide, this time piloted by Reginald Cartwright. Heading towardUganda the plane barely got off the ground before crashing and catchingfire. Cartwright, Mary and Roy Marsh made it through an exit at the frontof the plane.
Hemingway, using his head as a battering ram, broke through the main door.The crash had injured Hemingway more than most would know. In his biographyof Hemingway Jeffrey Meyer lists the various injuries to the writer. “Hisskull was fractured, two discs of his spine were cracked, his right arm andshoulder were dislocated, his liver, right kidney and spleen were ruptured,his sphincter muscle was paralyzed by compressed vertebrae on the iliacnerve, his arms, face and head were burned by the flames of the plane, hisvision and hearing were impaired…” Though he survived the crashes andlived to read his own premature obituaries, his injuries cut short his lifein a slow and painful way.
Despite his ailments, Hemingway and Mary traveled on to Venice one lasttime and then headed back to Cuba. On October 28, 1954 Hemingway won theNobel Prize for Literature, but due to his injuries was unable to attendthe ceremonies in Sweden. Instead, he sent a written acceptance, read tothe Nobel Committee by John Cabot, the US Ambassador to Sweden. Denouement
After 1954 Hemingway battled deteriorating health, which often kept him
from working, and when he was working he felt it wasn’t very good. He hadwritten 200,000 words of an account of his doomed safari tentatively titled“African Journal” (a heavily edited version was published in July of 1999as True At First Light), but didn’t feel it publishable and didn’t have theenergy to work it into shape. There were no short stories forthcomingeither and those he had written he put aside as well, disappointed with hiseffort. He was struggling creatively as much as he was physically, and as away to satisfy his writing “compulsion” he returned to those subjects heknew well and felt he could write about with little struggle.In 1959 Life magazine contracted with Hemingway to write a short articleabout the series of bullfights between Antonio Ordonez and Louis MiguelDominguin, two of Spain’s finest matadors. Hemingway spent the summer of1959 travelling with the bullfighters to gather material for the article.When he began writing the story however, it quickly grew to some 120,000words, words that Hemingway couldn’t edit into short form. He asked hisfriend A. E. Hotchner to help (something he would have never considered inhis prime) and together they succeeded in cutting it down to 65,000 words.Despite reservations about the article’s length the magazine published thearticle as “The Dangerous Summer” in three installments in 1960. This wasthe last work that Hemingway would see published in his lifetime.Besides highlighting Hemingway’s increasing problem with writing the clear,effective prose which made him famous, his physical deterioration hadbecome obvious as well during that summer of his 60th year. Pictures showHemingway looking like a man closer to eighty than one of sixty. At timesdespondent, at others the life of the party, the swings in his moods,exacerbated by his heavy drinking of up to a quart of liquor a day, weretaking a toll on those close to him.During this time Hemingway was also working on his memoirs, which would bein 1964 as A Moveable Feast. Hemingway wouldn’t live to see the success ofthis book, which critics praised for its tenderness and beauty and for itsrare look at the expatriate lifestyle of Paris in the 1920’s. There was acontrol in his writing that hadn’t been evident in a long time.By this time Hemingway had left Cuba, departing in July of 1960, and hadtaken up residence in Ketchum, Idaho where he and Mary had alreadypurchased a home in April of 1959. Idaho reminded Hemingway of Spain andKetchum was small and remote enough to buffer him from the negativetrappings of his celebrity. He had first visited the area in 1939 as aguest of Averill Harriman who had just developed Sun Valley resort andwanted a celebrity like Hemingway to promote it. He had always liked thecool summers there and the abundance of wild land for hunting and fishing.But even the beautiful landscapes of Idaho couldn’t hide the fact thatsomething was seriously wrong with Hemingway. In the fall of 1960 Hemingwayflew to Rochester, Minnesota and was admitted to the Mayo Clinic,ostensibly for treatment of high blood pressure but really for help withthe severe depression his wife Mary could no longer handle alone. AfterHemingway began talking of suicide his Ketchum doctor agreed with Mary thatthey should seek expert help. He registered under the name of his personaldoctor George Savvies and they began a medical program to try and repairhis mental state. The Mayo Clinic’s treatment would ultimately lead toelectro shock therapy. According to Jeffrey Meyers Hemingway received“between 11 to 15 shock treatments that instead of helping him mostcertainly hastened his demise.” One of the sad side effects of shocktherapy is the loss of memory, and for Hemingway it was a catastrophicloss. Without his memory he could no longer write, could no longer recallthe facts and images he required to create his art. Writing, which hadalready become difficult was now nearly impossible.
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Hemingway’s gravesite near Ketchum, Idaho
Hemingway spent the first half of 1961 fighting his depression andparanoia, seeing enemies at every turn and threatening suicide on severalmore occasions. On the morning of July 2, 1961 Hemingway rose early, as hehad his entire adult life, selected a shotgun from a closet in thebasement, went upstairs to a spot near the entranceway of the house andshot himself in the head. It was little more than two weeks until his 62nd
birthday.