June, 2016 | The Blog Also Rises

Aaron Hotchner and Hemingway

The Moth presents, Moved: Stories of Safe Passage. The Players Club, New York. 03/16/2012. Stories by Tom Bodett, A.E. Hotchner, Pha Le, Sarah Ryan-Knox, Lizz Winstead. Host Jenny Allen.

Dear Readers:

Sorry about my last post. I wrote the post on Aaron Hotchner and Ernest Hemingway and pulled some photos and forgot to include the blog post! Brilliant! So here we go!

Aaron Edward Hotchner and Ernest Hemingway had a special relationship. They met in 1948 when Aaron was dispatched to Cuba on assignment by Cosmopolitan magazine to get an article from Hemingway about “the future of literature.” The magazine was putting out an issue about the future of everything: architecture, cars, movies, culture. So the thinking went, why not have the lion of literature—Ernest Hemingway—give an interview on the future of literature?

Aaron—at the time only 28 years old to Papa’s 49—wrote a note to Hemingway saying that he’d been sent down on “this ridiculous mission, but do not want to disturb you, and if you could simply send me a few words of refusal, it would be enormously helpful to ‘the future of Hotchner’.” Instead Hemingway rang him up the next day. The conversation as noted in Aaron Hotchner’s Papa Hemingway went this way.

“This Hotchner?” Papa asked.

“Yes,” Aaron said.

“Dr. Hemingway here. Got your note. Can’t let you abort your mission, or you’ll lose face with the Hearst organization, which is about like getting bounced from a leper colony. You want to have a drink around 5:00? There’s a bar called El Floridita. Just tell the taxi.”

That was the beginning. Aaron was a slim, handsome fellow and Hemingway was 6 feet tall and in 1948 weighed in at close to 200 lbs. He didn’t have the beard yet as a permanent fixture. For whatever reason, Hotchner and Hemingway became really fast friends. Aaron produced a number of Hemingway’s stories on television; he worked with him in editing articles in particular when Hemingway was having trouble editing an extremely long bullfighting article for Life; and he enjoyed many outings with Hemingway both in Europe and in America. My reading suggests that he was an extremely loyal friend up to the bitter end and including the bitter end.

Hotchner went on to become a famous author in his own right as well as a buddy and good friend of Paul Newman. Together they were involved in various ventures and charitable ventures.

Aaron is now over 90 years old. I wrote to him recently in Westport where I believe he lives, but I didn’t hear back. I totally understand that. I’m sure he’s inundated, particularly from Hemingway fans wanting to know the real scoop.

Aaron recently released some of the letters between him and Hemingway and, as noted above, he wrote a memoire of that period of time entitled Papa Hemingway. He was close to Mary Hemingway as well until after Hemingway’s death when she felt that she did not want the fact that Hemingway committed suicide made public. She did not want his book Papa Hemingway published at all and considered it an act of huge disloyalty and thus a breach in the friendship happened and remained.

Mr. Hotchner was one of Hemingway’s inner circle and I believe—just my opinion from what I have read—that Hemingway was honest with him and he saw the good, the bad, the ugly, and the grand. I highly recommend reading books by Hotchner about Hemingway.

Coming Soon (I hope) my new novel: Hemingway’s Daughter

Second Novel: winner of Kindle scout selection!

I am delighted to announce that my second novel, The Rage of Plum Blossoms, just won the Kindle Scout selection for publication by Kindle Press. Thank you to all of those who voted, thereby helping call attention of the Kindle Scouts to the book. I truly can’t thank you enough for your interest and kind attention. Look for it on Kindle and Amazon in October (we estimate). love, Christine

Attorney Quinn Jones is in over her head. Her husband, Jordan Chang, Annapolis grad and superstar businessman, has been found dead outside their Greenwich Village brownstone. He’s wearing clothes that aren’t his, and was last seen at a place he never went while consorting with people he shouldn’t—and he’s vastly richer than he ought to be. Since NYPD has labeled Jordan’s death a suicide, Quinn is on her own to uncover the truth. Courtrooms, Quinn knows. Chanel No. 5, horses, frizzy hair, and martial arts, she knows. Murder, she doesn’t know but she’s learning fast in order to stay alive. With a few clues to work with, including a photo of Jordan with a stunning unknown Asian woman and a copy of a 1986 check payable to Jordan for twelve million dollars, Quinn stalks the back streets of Chinatown, haunted by the need to know what happened that day and why.

Sincerest thanks! Christine

Hemingway in Bimini

Professor Ashley Oliphant of Nebraska is researching a narrow niche in Hemingway’s history. She’s writing a book entitled Hemingway and Bimini: The Birth of Sport Fishing at “The End of the World.” Her book will be about Hemingway’s brief time (about 3 years) visiting 1930’s Bimini, which is an island off of Miami. At the time, big game fishing was just starting to catch on and Bimini was considered one of the best fishing grounds in the world.

Ms. Oliphant, a longtime Hemingway fan, noted that little has been written about this period in Hemingway’s life, so she undertook the task herself. I did not know that for a period of time, Hemingway was the International Game Fishing Association’s Vice President at its inception.

Oliphant just made her first visit to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston which, as most of you know, is the home of the Hemingway collection and some of the best representations of his writing, memorabilia, and letters. Ms. Oliphant spent three days in the library searching for any previously undiscovered letters or photograph that might shed light on Hemingway’s time in Bimini. She is an English professor at the Pfeiffer University (as in “Pauline”) and a Lincoln County resident.

Professor Oliphant also has spent time with the founder of Humane Voters of Lincoln County—a non-partisan political organization aiming to get animal-friendly candidates elected to the Board of Commissioners. If my path ever crosses with hers, it’s likely we would be great friends since we both love Hemingway and animals. We also both hate bullfighting and are realistic about the dark side of Hemingway, as much as we admire aspects of him and his work.

So, be on the lookout for this new book: Hemingway in Bimini: The Birth of Sport Fishing at “Tthe End of the World.”

Hemingway Exhibit at the JFK Library in Boston

In a post in November, 2015, I noted that the Hemingway exhibit was on display at the Morgan Library in New York City. It has moved to Boston’s Kennedy Museum, where it will be until December 31^st.

As those of you who read this blog know, the largest exhibit on Hemingway’s writings, notes, memorabilia and displays is at the JFK Museum in Boston. After Hemingway’s death, his widow, Mary, was permitted to return to their home in Cuba to gather up belongings and Hemingway possessions. Fortunately, she took drafts of manuscripts, letters, notes and all that she could. John Kennedy had been a fan of Hemingway and, after Hemingway’s death and then President Kennedy’s death, Mary and Jackie Kennedy met and agreed that the planned JFK Library would be the repository of the largest collection of Hemingway writings and memorabilia.

Patrick Hemingway 2013 at Hemingway Collection

I was able to get to the Morgan Exhibit but only briefly while I was in NY at a writer’s conference. I’ll be heading to Boston this summer to view the exhibit in a more leisurely fashion.

I’m particularly interested in the drafts of various endings to A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway apparently penned forty-seven possible endings. Eight of those are on display at the new exhibit. I must admit to wishing that Catherine had survived along with the baby, but that’s not the ending Hemingway chose to go with.

Patrick Hemingway, the only surviving child of Hemingway, was on hand on the opening day of the exhibit in Boston. He presently makes his home in Bozeman, Montana.

Interesting trivia: John Kennedy wrote to Hemingway asking permission to use the phrase “Grace under pressure” in the opening of his own profiles in courage. Hemingway agreed. Hemingway was, however, too ill to accept President Kennedy’s invitation in January of 1961 to attend the inauguration. During that year, he killed himself.

Cuba, Hemingway, and President Obama

As we all know, President Obama made an historic visit to Cuba recently as the U.S. and Cuba began to normalize relations. Patrick Hemingway, grandson of writer Ernest Hemingway (Hemingway also had s a son named Patrick, his last surviving child. This is Gregory’s son, Patrick), believes that his grandfather who lived on a farm called The Finca Vigia for 20 years, would have supported the recent change in relations between Cuba and the United States “He is considered, not only a cultural icon here, but one of Cuba’s own,” he said of his grandfather.

When talking with Cubans about the recent visit of President Obama, most Cubans agree with Patrick Hemingway when he noted that he felt Cuba had a bright future. They also viewed the President’s visit as a symbolic statement of commitment to the evolution of that relationship. Nothing adds to the picture that Cuba is moving toward a more open society and rejoining the world than the performance of the Rolling Stones on Friday, March 25^th in Havana. While the Pope asked for a postponement as it was Good Friday, the show did go on as originally planned.