Phew! We Knew it.

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.

Echoes of a Literary Dynasty
by Riccardo De Palo
4 Minutes of Reading
martedì 24 giugno 2025, 20:06 – Last updated: 25 giugno, 00:20

“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.

With Gregory, i believe

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.

Pauline, second wife and being replac

‘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

Hemingway with Patrick, John “Bumby”, and Gregory “Gigi”), at Club . Greg is this writer’s father, far right.
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

Ernest Hemingway’s birthday reveals more than just the legacy of a literary genius. Beneath his clipped sentences and stoic characters lies a man torn between fame, failure, and flaws. His life was a quiet storm, which was contradictory, unforgettable, and as raw as the prose he crafted with such brutal honesty.
Ernest Hemingway

Happy Birthday, Ernest Hemingway: Here’s What They Don’t Teach in Literature Class (Picture Credit – Wikipedia)

July 21st marks the birth anniversary of one of the most iconic and influential writers of the 20th century—Ernest Hemingway. He’s remembered for his revolutionary prose, larger-than-life persona, and uncompromising vision of storytelling. His novels changed the way we think about masculinity, war, love, and loss. But what we often overlook in literature classes are the contradictions and shadows that make Hemingway more human than myth.
Let’s celebrate the writer whose legacy is inseparable from the pages of literary history, while also understanding the man behind the legend.

The Literary Giant Who Rewrote the Rules

Ernest Hemingway wasn’t just a writer; he was a craftsman. His prose—direct, sharp, and deceptively simple pioneered what is now called the “Iceberg Theory”: only a fraction of the story appears on the surface, the rest lingers underneath. In a time when literature was often flowery and verbose, Hemingway’s minimalism offered something radical. He stripped away excess and trusted readers to feel the weight of silence, implication, and restraint.
Works like ‘The Sun Also Rises’, ‘A Farewell to Arms’, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, and ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ didn’t just earn him readers, they earned him a Nobel Prize and a place in every literature syllabus worldwide. He captured the post-war disillusionment of a generation and did it with style that was lean but never hollow.

A Man of His Time

Hemingway’s worldview, shaped by two world wars, personal tragedies, and the rigid expectations of masculinity in early 20th-century America, was complicated. He believed in grit, endurance, and the nobility of suffering. He idolised courage, especially the quiet, unspoken kind. Critics and admirers alike agree that Hemingway was not interested in showing emotion, but rather in surviving it.
Many of his flaws, his often unfiltered bravado, his competitiveness, and his views on gender and race are unsettling when viewed through a modern lens. But to ignore the cultural context of his time would be to commit the same injustice we accuse others of: reducing a person to a stereotype.

The Fragile Side Behind the Tough Image

Much of Hemingway’s legacy is built around a hardened persona: the bullfighter, the deep-sea fisherman, the war correspondent, the rugged adventurer. Yet, behind all this was someone deeply sensitive to the world’s pain. Hemingway battled depression and survived multiple injuries, including two plane crashes in Africa. He lost close friends in war and love alike. His letters and later-life interviews reveal a man more introspective than most realise.
He wrote about trauma long before the term PTSD was coined. In ‘A Farewell to Arms’, Frederic Henry’s numbness after losing Catherine mirrors Hemingway’s own fear of vulnerability. ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ is, at heart, a quiet story about dignity in the face of failure—a theme Hemingway knew intimately.

On Women, Relationships, and Regret

Hemingway married four times, and each relationship revealed something about his struggle with intimacy. His relationship with fellow writer Martha Gellhorn was especially complex; he admired her independence but also felt threatened by it. Still, many of Hemingway’s female characters, particularly in later works, break the stereotype of the silent, obedient woman. Catherine Barkley in ‘A Farewell to Arms’ and Pilar in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ are far more nuanced than his critics often acknowledge.
It’s true that Hemingway’s views on gender and women were far from ideal by today’s standards. But they evolved, and so did his writing. He was a man trying to understand a changing world, even if he didn’t always get it right.

Wrestling With the Darkness

One cannot talk about Hemingway without acknowledging the deep emotional turbulence that haunted him. He had a famously volatile temper, often lashed out at friends and rivals, and struggled with alcoholism. He could be cruel, dismissive, and domineering—traits that damaged his personal relationships and public image. His need to assert dominance, especially over women and other writers, has been well documented. These patterns of behaviour weren’t simply quirks—they were signs of deeper insecurities and unresolved trauma. Yet the honesty with which he bled into his work makes those very flaws part of the literary conversation surrounding him today. Understanding Hemingway means recognising both his brilliance and his blind spots.

Why He Still Matters

Even today, Hemingway is read not just for his stories, but for what his stories awaken in us: silence, courage, resilience, despair, and above all, the search for meaning in a chaotic world. He showed us that writing doesn’t have to be elaborate to be profound. That a few carefully chosen words can say more than a paragraph.
The criticisms of Hemingway are not without merit, but neither is the praise. He was a product of his time, yes, but also a challenger of it. His work still forces us to wrestle with uncomfortable questions: about war, masculinity, isolation, and loss.

On his birthday, let’s remember Ernest Hemingway in full. Not just the myth, not just the man, but the mosaic of both. His legacy isn’t clean, but no great writer’s ever is. What matters is that his words remain alive—taught, quoted, wrestled with, and ultimately, understood more deeply with each generation.
To celebrate Hemingway is not to excuse his flaws but to recognise that greatness, like life, is complicated. And sometimes, the most enduring stories are born not out of perfection, but contradiction.

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

Part two of Ernest Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River”

Outdoor News presents a classic piece of literature that unfolds in America’s great outdoors. (Illustrations by Chris Wormell)

Editor’s note: Outdoor News presents the second part of its centennial reprint of Ernest Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” this week. As we explained in our last issue, the story originally appeared in 1925 in two parts, but for space considerations, we’re dividing it into four. The end of this “Part 2” syncs with the end of the original first half of the story. Readers are seeing the original text, representative of the era 100 years ago, which is why we haven’t edited words like “catchup.” “Part one” of the series can be read here.

PART 2 of 4

By Ernest M. Hemingway

Nick woke stiff and cramped. The sun was nearly down. His pack was heavy and the straps painful as he lifted it on. He leaned over with the pack on and picked up the leather rod-case and started out from the pine trees across the sweet fern swale, toward the river. He knew it could not be more than a mile.

Always a Fisherman

He came down a hillside covered with stumps into a meadow. At the edge of the meadow flowed the river. Nick was glad to get to the river. He walked upstream through the meadow. His trousers were soaked with the dew as he walked. After the hot day, the dew had come quickly and heavily. The river made no sound. It was too fast and smooth. At the edge of the meadow, before he mounted to a piece of high ground to make camp, Nick looked down the river at the trout rising. They were rising to insects come from the swamp on the other side of the stream when the sun went down. The trout jumped out of water to take them. While Nick walked through the little stretch of meadow alongside the stream, trout had jumped high out of water. Now as he looked down the river, the insects must be settling on the surface, for the trout were feeding steadily all down the stream. As far down the long stretch as he could see, the trout were rising, making circles all down the surface of the water, as though it were starting to rain.

The ground rose, wooded and sandy, to overlook the meadow, the stretch of river and the swamp. Nick dropped his pack and rod-case and looked for a level piece of ground. He was very hungry and he wanted to make his camp before he cooked. Between two jack pines, the ground was quite level. He took the ax out of the pack and chopped out two projecting roots. That leveled a piece of ground large enough to sleep on. He smoothed out the sandy soil with his hand and pulled all the sweet fern bushes by their roots. His hands smelled good from the sweet fern. He smoothed the uprooted earth. He did not want anything making lumps under the blankets. When he had the ground smooth, he spread his three blankets. One he folded double, next to the ground. The other two he spread on top.

Hem with his father

With the ax he slit off a bright slab of pine from one of the stumps and split it into pegs for the tent. He wanted them long and solid to hold in the ground. With the tent unpacked and spread on the ground, the pack, leaning against a jackpine, looked much smaller. Nick tied the rope that served the tent for a ridgepole to the trunk of one of the pine trees and pulled the tent up off the ground with the other end of the rope and tied it to the other pine. The tent hung on the rope like a canvas blanket on a clothesline. Nick poked a pole he had cut up under the back peak of the canvas and then made it a tent by pegging out the sides. He pegged the sides out taut and drove the pegs deep, hitting them down into the ground with the flat of the ax until the rope loops were buried and the canvas was drum tight.

Across the open mouth of the tent Nick fixed cheesecloth to keep out mosquitoes. He crawled inside under the mosquito bar with various things from the pack to put at the head of the bed under the slant of the canvas. Inside the tent the light came through the brown canvas. It smelled pleasantly of canvas. Already there was something mysterious and homelike. Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent. He had not been unhappy all day. This was different though. Now things were done. There had been this to do. Now it was done. It had been a hard trip. He was very tired. That was done. He had made his camp. He was settled. Nothing could touch him. It was a good place to camp. He was there, in the good place. He was in his home where he had made it. Now he was hungry.

He came out, crawling under the cheesecloth. It was quite dark outside. It was lighter in the tent.

Nick went over to the pack and found, with his fingers, a long nail in a paper sack of nails, in the bottom of the pack. He drove it into the pine tree, holding it close and hitting it gently with the flat of the ax. He hung the pack up on the nail. All his supplies were in the pack. They were off the ground and sheltered now.

Nick was hungry. He did not believe he had ever been hungrier. He opened and emptied a can at pork and beans and a can of spaghetti into the frying pan.

“I’ve got a right to eat this kind of stuff, if I’m willing to carry it,” Nick said. His voice sounded strange in the darkening woods. He did not speak again.

He started a fire with some chunks of pine he got with the ax from a stump. Over the fire he stuck a wire grill, pushing the four legs down into the ground with his boot. Nick put the frying pan on the grill over the flames. He was hungrier. The beans and spaghetti warmed. Nick stirred them and mixed them together. They began to bubble, making little bubbles that rose with difficulty to the surface. There was a good smell. Nick got out a bottle of tomato catchup and cut four slices of bread. The little bubbles were coming faster now. Nick sat down beside the fire and lifted the frying pan off. He poured about half the contents out into the tin plate. It spread slowly on the plate. Nick knew it was too hot. He poured on some tomato catchup. He knew the beans and spaghetti were still too hot. He looked at the fire, then at the tent, he was not going to spoil it all by burning his tongue. For years he had never enjoyed fried bananas because he had never been able to wait for them to cool. His tongue was very sensitive. He was very hungry. Across the river in the swamp, in the almost dark, he saw a mist rising. He looked at the tent once more. All right. He took a full spoonful from the plate.

“Chrise,” Nick said, “Geezus Chrise,” he said happily.

He ate the whole plateful before he remembered the bread. Nick finished the second plateful with the bread, mopping the plate shiny. He had not eaten since a cup of coffee and a ham sandwich in the station restaurant at St. Ignace. It had been a very fine experience. He had been that hungry before, but had not been able to satisfy it. He could have made camp hours before if he had wanted to. There were plenty of good places to camp on the river. But this was good.

Nick tucked two big chips of pine under the grill. The fire flared up. He had forgotten to get water for the coffee. Out of the pack he got a folding canvas bucket and walked down the hill, across the edge of the meadow, to the stream. The other bank was in the white mist. The grass was wet and cold as he knelt on the bank and dipped the canvas bucket into the stream. It bellied and pulled held in the current. The water was ice cold. Nick rinsed the bucket and carried it full up to the camp. Up away from the stream it was not so cold.

Nick drove another big nail and hung up the bucket full of water. He dipped the coffee pot half full, put some more chips under the grill onto the fire and put the pot on. He could not remember which way he made coffee. He could remember an argument about it with Hopkins, but not which side he had taken. He decided to bring it to a boil. He remembered now that was Hopkins’s way. He had once argued about everything with Hopkins. While he waited for the coffee to boil, he opened a small can of apricots. He liked to open cans. He emptied the can of apricots out into a tin cup. While he watched the coffee on the fire, he drank the juice syrup of the apricots, carefully at first to keep from spilling, then meditatively, sucking the apricots down. They were better than fresh apricots.

The coffee boiled as he watched. The lid came up and coffee and grounds ran down the side of the pot. Nick took it off the grill. It was a triumph for Hopkins. He put sugar in the empty apricot cup and poured some of the coffee out to cool. It was too hot to pour and he used his hat to hold the handle of the coffee pot. He would not let it steep in the pot at all. Not the first cup. It should be straight Hopkins all the way. Hop deserved that. He was a very serious coffee drinker. He was the most serious man Nick had ever known. Not heavy, serious. That was a long time ago. Hopkins spoke without moving his lips. He had played polo. He made millions of dollars in Texas. He had borrowed carfare to go to Chicago, when the wire came that his first big well had come in. He could have wired for money. That would have been too slow. They called Hop’s girl the Blonde Venus. Hop did not mind because she was not his real girl. Hopkins said very confidently that none of them would make fun of his real girl. He was right. Hopkins went away when the telegram came. That was on the Black River. It took eight days for the telegram to reach him. Hopkins gave away his .22 caliber Colt automatic pistol to Nick. He gave his camera to Bill. It was to remember him always by. They were all going fishing again next summer. The Hop Head was rich. He would get a yacht and they would all cruise along the north shore of Lake Superior. He was excited but serious. They said good-bye and all felt bad. It broke up the trip. They never saw Hopkins again. That was a long time ago on the Black River.

Nick drank the coffee, the coffee according to Hopkins. The coffee was bitter. Nick laughed. It made a good ending to the story. His mind was starting to work. He knew he could choke it because he was tired enough. He spilled the coffee out of the pot and shook the grounds loose into the fire. He lit a cigarette and went inside the tent. He took off his shoes and trousers, sitting on the blankets, rolled the shoes up inside the trousers for a pillow and got in between the blankets.

on the Pilar

Out through the front of the tent he watched the glow of the fire, when the night wind blew on it. It was a quiet night. The swamp was perfectly quiet. Nick stretched under the blanket comfortably. A mosquito hummed close to his ear. Nick sat up and lit a match.

The mosquito was on the canvas, over his head. Nick moved the match quickly up to it. The mosquito made a satisfactory hiss in the flame. The match went out. Nick lay down again under the blanket. He turned on his side and shut his eyes. He was sleepy. He felt sleep coming. He curled up under the blanket and went to sleep.

Part 3 continues the story next week.

To own the complete version of Big Two-Hearted River in one handsome volume, check out the 2023 Mariner Classics version, which includes a lengthy forward from author and journalist John N. Maclean.

It’s available via online (this is an affiliate link from Outdoor News) and retail book-sellers everywhere.

Silly but Fun: Annual Hemingway Look-alike contest in Key West!

Papa winner

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
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?

Finca Vigia–Hemingway’s home in 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

Hemingway Birthday Lecture with Prof. J. Gerald Kennedy

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
The Funniest Times News of a Celebrity’s Death Was Greatly Exaggerated

Listen, the news business is tough. Yes, fact-checking is important, but when there’s a breaking story, there’s not always time to get it straight before those bastards at Insert Competing Publisher get the scoop. Sometimes, though, it pays to be cautious, at least if you don’t want some very powerful enemies because you forced them to read about their own deaths.

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.