I wish you had been with us longer.
Author: Christine Whitehead
Silly but Fun: Annual Hemingway Look-alike contest in Key West!
David ‘Bat’ Masterson, center, celebrates his victory with past winners of the Hemingway Look-Alike Contest on July 20, 2024, outside Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West. Masterson, a 71-year-old retired helicopter pilot from Daytona Beach, bested 121 other contestants to take the look-alike title on his 10th attempt. The contest is a highlight of the island’s annual Hemingway Days festival that honors Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway, who lived and wrote in Key West during most of the 1930s.
Will Hemingway “survive Trump’s Crackdown on Cuba?” Your thoughts? Test your Spanish a little bit. If you deferred going to Cuba, you may have to wait a while. Best, Christine (A few photos added by me.)
When visiting Cuba, Ernest Hemingway used to stay in Hotel Ambos Mundos, in Havana. EFE/Ernesto Mastrascusa
Will Hemingway survive to Trump’s Crack Down on Cuba?
Donald Trump is expected to put an end to the rapprochement with Cuba initiated by former president Barack Obama two years ago. Trump’s White House plans to clamp down the emerging travel and business ties between the US and the communist island, in order to pressure the government of Raul Castro on human rights.
The restrictive measures, however, are going to affect both countries. For Cubans, basically, it will mean to loose potential of business opportunities brought by an increasing American tourism. And for Americans, it will mean that business and travel relations will be harder and more costly. For all those Americans who planned a visit to Havana and enjoy a mojito in La Bodeguita de el Medio, Ernest Hemingway favourite bar, it may be more complicated in the near future.
If US and Cuba make a step backwards in their diplomatic relations, Hemingway’s legacy can be “in danger” , alerted this week some of the speakers at the 16th International Colloquium Ernest Hemingway in Havana, as reported in EFE.
From June 15 to 18, Havana is hosting the 16h International Colloquium Ernest Hemingway, a biannual encounter of academics and experts on the American author. It takes place in the Ernest Hemingway House Museum, in the “Finca Vigía”, located in the neighborhood of San Francisco de Paula, where the author wrote one of his most famous novels, “The old man and the Sea” , winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. A year later, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Hemingway had a long affective relationship with Cuba, ever since he first arrived in 1928.
CONTENIDO RELACIONADO
“I think if President Trump reverses US-Cuba relations, he will really be disadvantaging his own country fellows,” said Valerie Hemingway, the American author’s daughter in law, and a guest speaker at the Colloquium, as reported in EFE. ” A setback in the thaw (between US and Cuba) is “a tragedy” because it would prevent other Americans from knowing “this wonderful paradise “and his” friendly and intelligent “people”, she said, as cited by EFE.
Valerie also said that since the reestablishment of bilateral relations two and a half years ago the University of Montana, where she resides, sends students to the island every year.
In case traveling to Cuba becomes really complicated, there are other ways to get closer with America’s famous author and Cuba lover. This Saturday, for example, the Ernest Hemingway Foundation in Oak Park (Chicago) is hosting a soiree to celebrate 100 years since the writer’s 1917 graduation from Oak Park and River Forest High School.
If you are in the Chicago area: July 19 Hemingway Lecture!
Hemingway Birthday Lecture with Prof. J. Gerald Kennedy
- Jul 19 at 3:00PM – 4:30PM
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834 Lake Street
Oak Park
60301 - Free
It is fitting that we welcome the editor of Norton Critical Edition of In Our Time, Professor J. Gerald Kennedy for this year’s Hemingway Birthday Lecture titled, The Rough Edges of In Our Time.
This year is the 100th anniversary of a strikingly original collection of short stories and accompanying vignettes that marked Ernest Hemingway’s American debut, called In Our Time. It is fitting that we welcome the editor of Norton Critical Edition of In Our Time, Professor J. Gerald Kennedy for this year’s Hemingway Birthday Lecture titled, The Rough Edges of In Our Time. J. Gerald Kennedy, Boyd Professor of English Emeritus, is a former chair of the Department of English. His Hemingway related books are Imagining Paris (Yale 1993), French Connections (St Martins 1998) co-edited with Jackson Bryer, and the Norton Critical Edition of In Our Time (2022). I was advisory editor for Vols 1-3 of the Cambridge Letters of Ernest Hemingway, and a co-editor of the final volumes of the letters, 1957-59, and 1959-61. This is a free event, but please register so we can plan accordingly.
MISTAKEN DEATH ANNOUNCEMENTS: NOT SURE HOW “FUNNY” THEY WERE. Hemingway after 2 bad plane crashes–Not funny. Photo added by Me
The Funniest Times News of a Celebrity’s Death Was Greatly Exaggerated
Sometimes, it pays to be cautious
Mark Twain
Of course, preeminent American humorist Mark Twain most famously announced that “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” but he actually had to do it twice. The first time, his cousin’s illness resulted in a game of telephone that led to his notorious quip, but 10 years later, after The New York Times reported that his boat was lost at sea, he wrote an article for the same newspaper investigating his own possible death. At least, after both mistakes, we got some great writing out of it.
Gabriel García Márquez
Alice CooperUnlike most such mistakes, Melody Maker knew exactly what they were doing when they published a satirical obituary of Alice Cooper in 1973. They were talking about the death of his career, but so many fans reached out to them in confused anguish that they had to publish a retraction, quoting the man himself as saying, “I lost $4,000 … at blackjack last night. I could have died!” and “Am I alive? Well, I’m alive and drunk as usual.”
Ernest Hemingway
To be fair, it wasn’t that big of a leap to assume that Hemingway had died in a plane crash in Africa in 1954. He was hurt very badly, and he’d actually been involved in two plane crashes, and it’s not like the mid-1950s were a great time for surviving such incidents. But survive, he did, and he was so amused by his own obituaries that he collected them in a scrapbook to read every morning over a glass of champagne. We like Twitter and cold brew, but you do you, Ernie.
Like, All of CNN’s Pre-Written Obituaries
As morbid as it might seem, a lot of famous people’s obituaries are written ahead of time. People are on deadlines, and you know, sometimes the writing’s on the wall, so it might as well be in the CMS. That practice came back to bite CNN in 2003, however, when trolls found out they could access the news organization’s stockpile of unpublished obituaries, which didn’t remain unpublished for long. The best part is that they appeared to be placeholders full of wildly inaccurate filler, mostly based on the obituary of the Queen Mother, who had died the previous year. For example, former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was described as “the U.K.’s favorite grandmother.” Cheney has been called a lot of things, but definitely never that.
Sad day: July 2, 1961. Hemingway dies in Home in Idaho.
Comments on the Lillian Ross Article about Hem: did she purposedly malign him to advance her own journalistic profile or was it a fun, fair portrayal?
This is a familiar debate for Hemingway scholars and us amateur scholars. I added a few photos. You be the judge.
Letters from Our Readers
Readers respond to Adam Gopnik’s piece about Lillian Ross’s Profile of Ernest Hemingway and Burkhard Bilger’s article about high-school marching bands.
Ernest Response
As the current custodian of the letters from Ernest Hemingway to Lillian Ross, I’d like to add a bit of context to Adam Gopnik’s recent piece about Ross’s Profile of the novelist (A Critic at Large, February 17th & 24th). Immediately after leaving Ross in New York, Hemingway wrote to her from the S.S. Île de France, “And you can write any god-damn thing you want except we must avoid lible and hurting people and get the names right”—instructions Ross underlined. When Ross sent Hemingway the Profile proofs, asking for his “corrections and changes” prior to publication (now a bygone practice), he demurred: “I will say nothing about the piece because according to my code if you change, alter or correct then you authorize a piece. Hope I don’t talk that way; but if that is how it sounds to you then you have a perfect right to write it that way.” He did ask her to “delete any reference to my mother,” gave vague answers to her questions about a scar and the coat of arms on his suitcase, and thanked her for “laying off the war and all the things you could have written that people don’t know.”
In a subsequent letter, after Hemingway reread the proofs, he wrote to Ross, “It is a good, funny, well intentioned, well inventioned piece,” and predicted, “Piece will make me many, many enemies,” adding, “But I guess an enemy is not nearly as dangerous, basically, as a friend.” In quoting this, Gopnik left out “well inventioned”—Hemingway’s clear nod to the creative slant that he perceived in Ross’s Profile—as well as his perhaps pointed evaluation of the relative dangers from friends and from enemies.
Sarah Funke Butler
Providence, R.I.
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Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail@newyorker.com. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
Wish List! It is not clear who can go. Too late for this year but i’m interested in how to Apply to be included or invited. Best, Christine
Cuba announces 20th Ernest Hemingway International Colloquium
HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 10 (ACN) Promoting the life and work of U.S. writer and journalist Ernest Hemingway based on recent research is the main goal of the 20th International Colloquium named after the 1954 Literature Nobel prizewinner, to be held on June 25 to 28 in Havana.
According to Isbel Ferreiro Garit, deputy director of the Finca Vigia Museum, the event also intends to highlight several commemorations related to the author of The Old Man and the Sea, among them the 90th anniversary of the first publication of the novel Green Hills of Africa (1935), the 85th anniversary of For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and the 65th anniversary of the conclusion of A Moveable Feast (1960), as well as the important meeting he held 65 years ago with Fidel Castro Ruz.
The event will feature the presentation of research works made by scholars, academicians, university professors, and Cuban and foreign writers―including eight papers prepared by participants from Japan, Argentina, Canada and the United States―in addition to a digital version of the novel The Sun Also Rises and La Habana de Hemingway y otros relatos, by the renowned Cuban journalist and essayist Ciro Bianchi Ross.
Visits to sites where the famous American novelist left his mark, such as the restaurant Terraza de Cojimar, the Club Nautico, the bars El Floridita and Sloppy Joe’s, and Finca Vigía―his Cuban home―will also be part of the program.
Hemingway or Steinbeck: Who best captured the American Spirt? (Is that a real question?)
Ernest Hemingway vs. John Steinbeck: Which Literary Titan Captured the American Spirit Best? (Picture Credit – IMDB)
American literature is rich with voices that define its identity, but few stand as tall as Ernest Hemingwayand John Steinbeck. These literary giants, writing in the same era yet with vastly different styles, offered distinct portraits of the American experience. Hemingway’s sharp, minimalistic prose highlighted personal struggle and existential questions, while Steinbeck’s sweeping narratives shed light on the collective hardships of working-class Americans. Which of these titans best captured the true American spirit? Their works, themes, and legacies hold the answer.
Hemingway’s America: Grit, Isolation, and the Individual
Ernest Hemingway’s writing was defined by brevity, masculinity, and an unwavering focus on the individual. His “iceberg theory” of storytelling, where much of the meaning lay beneath the surface, reflected a uniquely American form of resilience. Novels like ‘The Sun Also Rises’ and ‘A Farewell to Arms’ portrayed stoic, disillusioned protagonists navigating a world marred by war and loss. His characters were loners, often seeking purpose in adventure, love, or violence.
Hemingway’s America was one of action and consequence, where survival was won through courage and perseverance. His spare, declarative sentences mirrored the rugged individualism that has long been mythologized in American culture. His influence on American writing remains unparalleled, shaping generations of authors who sought to write with honesty and precision.
Steinbeck’s America: Compassion, Community, and Social Justice
John Steinbeck, in contrast, painted a broader canvas of American life. His works delved into the struggles of the working class, depicting their hardships with deep empathy. Novels like ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ and ‘Of Mice and Men’ presented raw, unfiltered accounts of economic despair and the resilience of human connection. His characters were not just individuals; they were part of a larger social fabric, often grappling with issues of injustice, poverty, and displacement.
Steinbeck’s prose was rich and descriptive, capturing the land and its people with poetic intensity. His belief in the dignity of the common man made him a champion of social realism in literature. Through his writing, he emphasized the interconnectedness of American life, reminding readers that the fate of one was tied to the fate of all.
Who Defined the American Spirit Best?
Choosing between Hemingway and Steinbeck is like choosing between solitude and solidarity. Hemingway embodied the rugged, individualistic spirit often associated with the American dream—the belief that one must carve out their destiny through sheer will. Steinbeck, on the other hand, captured the collective struggle, emphasizing that resilience comes not just from within, but from the strength of the community.
Both authors remain towering figures in American literature, shaping its themes and stylistic evolution. Hemingway’s crisp, unadorned prose and Steinbeck’s compassionate storytelling continue to inspire readers and writers alike. The answer to who best captured the American spirit may depend on what version of that spirit resonates most with each reader.
Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck presented contrasting yet equally vital facets of the American experience in their literary works: Hemingway, with narratives deeply rooted in individual resilience and stoicism, and Steinbeck, with stories focused on communal struggles and empathetic portrayals of hardship. These distinct perspectives are both essential for a comprehensive understanding of the nation’s rich and complex literary soul, capturing different aspects of American life and values.
GIRISH SHUKLAAUTHORA dedicated bibliophile with a love for psychology and mythology, I am the author of two captivating novels. End of Article