“My father Gregory, the third son of Ernest Hemingway, loved to return to fish in Bimini, in the Bahamas, where The Old Man and the Sea was set. He often took a flight with a company that no longer exists, Chalk’s, which had one of the oldest seaplanes in the world, worn out by continuous travel, and which eventually crashed in a terrible accident. Once, off the coast of Cape Cod, a huge tuna bit the line, it must have weighed at least two hundred kilos. It took eight hours to drag it onto the boat, and on board was Norman Mailer, the writer. Drunk, he kept saying: ‘You will never match your father.’ And he replied: ‘Shut up, Norman.'” Speaking is John Patrick Hemingway, 65 years old, grandson of the great author of Fiesta and a writer himself, who will be at the 41st edition of the Prize established in honor of his grandfather, on Saturday in Lignano Sabbiadoro (among the awardees Alicia Giménez-Bartlett, Felicia Kingsley, Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan). A difficult life, his, spent fleeing from the curse of his family. “My grandfather killed himself when I was ten months old. My great-grandfather met the same fate. As did my cousin, the beautiful Margaux.” His father first began to dress as a woman and then changed his sex, calling himself Gloria. Was Gregory’s a rebellion against his father’s machismo? “You could say that. Yet, at the same time, there was a period when he was extremely macho. Once, in Cuba, he won a national skeet shooting competition, and his father was happy because he thought he had passed on the talent for precise aim. He also worked in Africa organizing hunting safaris. But he knew, like Ernest, that a man, to be truly such, must know his feminine side.” Did your grandfather also know it? “Yes, he explored this theme in his stories. In some, he talks about gays and lesbians.

And then there is The Garden of Eden (published posthumously in 1986), very explicit in this sense. My father, on the other hand, was a doctor. And then what does he decide to do? To become a woman, to undergo surgical operations.” Even his end is a story worthy of a novel. “He died in 2001 due to heart problems. He was detained in the female section of the Miami-Dade County jail, and the strange thing was that he died on the same day as his mother, who had passed away 50 years earlier. I remember when I looked at the date and talked about it with a Hemingway scholar from Piggott, Arkansas, where my grandmother was from, and she said: ‘Oh my God.’ I think it was simply too much for him. Because my grandfather blamed him for what happened to his mother, it was a horrible thing.” Meaning? “His father was no longer there to remind him, but Gregory had that thought fixed in his head. Pauline Pfeiffer was Ernest Hemingway’s second wife and had a rare form of adrenal gland cancer, which can be fatal during times of stress. Ernest called her on the phone and told her that my father had been arrested because he had entered the women’s bathroom of a cinema in Los Angeles. It was 1951, times were different, and the police had thrown him in jail.

‘You ruined him, you know that?’ my grandfather accused her. And she died of it.” Many in your family were bipolar. Have you spent your life running from your ghosts? “It is usually a disease that manifests at a young age, so now, at 65, I can consider myself out of danger. Coming to live in Italy helped me a lot. Because Italians have a very different idea of success and existence compared to Americans. Ernest also loved Italy and your beautiful language. He almost died there during the war. And then he found love in that Milan hospital, with the nurse Agnes von Kurowsky who inspired A Farewell to Arms. I also love speaking Italian. Give me a couple of days, and a couple of spritzes, and I’ll speak fluently again.” How long did you live in Italy? “A good 22 years. First in Milan, in Piazza Bottini. And the last two in Monza, not far from the Formula One track. I had also become a Milan fan because a friend took me to the stadium to watch the matches, at the time of Gullit and Van Basten. Then I decided to leave again, to return to live where I was born and raised, and to devote myself to writing. Today I live in Jacksonville, Florida.” Was there a turning point when you managed to leave the past behind? “When Michael was born, in Milan. At that point, I was no longer the son, I had become the father.” After your first memoir, “Una strana tribù,” also published in Italy, you returned to Pamplona in the footsteps of your grandfather for “Bacchanalia” in 2019. What is it about? “It was my interpretation of the bull run, a love story. I think it’s one of my best books. I am currently finishing a noir trilogy that began with Murder on the Florida Straits and continued with Ron Echeverría: A Miami Story, not yet published in Italian. Books full of violence, but also of love and sex.”

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