Author: Christine Whitehead
Very interesting interview of John Patrick Hemingway, one of Gregory’s sons, Grandson of Ernest Hemingway. Good read. It is formatted run on so a bit difficult to read but worth it. Best Christine (A few photos added by me.)
Echoes of a Literary Dynasty
John Patrick Hemingway reflects on his family’s complex legacy, from fishing in Bimini to personal transformations and literary pursuits.

“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.”
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

de Cazadores del Cerro, Cuba. Photograph in Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
This article is automatically translated
Belated Happy Birthday due to Mail Chimp Issues! This was done on July 21. And this is why we still study and read him.
Happy Birthday, Ernest Hemingway: Here’s What They Don’t Teach in Literature Class

Happy Birthday, Ernest Hemingway: Here’s What They Don’t Teach in Literature Class (Picture Credit – Wikipedia)
The Literary Giant Who Rewrote the Rules
A Man of His Time
The Fragile Side Behind the Tough Image
On Women, Relationships, and Regret
Wrestling With the Darkness
Why He Still Matters
I missed part one of “Big Two-Hearted River.” It is referenced below. Wonderful to go back to this one and the other Nick Adams stories. Some photos added by me. Best, Christine
Happy Birthday, Mr. Hemingway! July 21, 1899 Oak Park, Ill
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.)

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
-
834 Lake Street
Oak Park
60301 - Free
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

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.