Hemingway Huffington Post Trivia: Part one

Happy New year to all:

Below is the Huffington Post’s list of Hemingway Trivia BY TODD VAN LULING. A few were new to me. Best to all for 2018. Love, Christine

11 Things You Didn’t Know About Ernest Hemingway

By Todd Van Luling

1. Hemingway apparently once lived, got drunk and slept with a bear.

ernest hemingway

Former New Yorker staff writer Lillian Ross had a long profile of Hemingway published in 1950.

During a section of the story where she’s at a bar with Hemingway, talking about bears at the Bronx zoo, Ross includes an aside about how the writer gets along well with animals, writing, “In Montana, once, he lived with a bear, and the bear slept with him, got drunk with him, and was a close friend.”

As this fact simultaneously seems insane and doesn’t readily appear elsewhere, it’s unclear whether Ross’ aside was an exclusive for her interview or if the story is more of a legend.

2. F. Scott Fitzgerald once had Hemingway look at his penis to judge if it was adequate.

hemingway fitzgerald

In Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast — a collection of stories about his time in Paris as an expat during the 1920s — there’s a long interaction with the Great Gatsby author, F. Scott Fitzgerald. In this exchange, according to Hemingway, Fitzgerald confesses that his wife, Zelda, said that his penis is too small or exactly, “She said it was a matter of measurements.”

Hemingway tells Fitzgerald to follow him to the men’s room and then says, “‘You’re perfectly fine,’ I said. ‘You are OK. There’s nothing wrong with you.” He continued reassuring Fitzgerald, “You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened. Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile.’”

3. Hemingway once said that he can’t think of any better way to spend money than on champagne.

ernest hemingway
Image: Getty

In the New Yorker profile from 1950, Hemingway gets frustrated at the group he’s having lunch with for thinking they can leave the table before all of the champagne is finished.

“‘The half bottle of champagne is the enemy of man,’” Hemingway said. We all sat down again,” writes Ross in the New Yorker.

Hemingway is then quoted while pouring more champagne as saying, “If I have any money, I can’t think of any better way of spending money than on champagne.”

4. The KGB secretly recruited Hemingway to be their spy, and he accepted.

ernest hemingway

According to a 2009 story in The Guardian, Hemingway went by the code name “Argo,” while somewhat working for the KGB. The article talks about the publication of Yale University Press’ Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, which claims that Hemingway was listed as a KGB operative in America during Stalin-era Moscow.

According to the documents obtained by the book, Hemingway was recruited in 1941 and was fully willing to help, but never actually provided any useful information. It’s unclear if that’s because Hemingway was doing this all as a lark, or if he just wasn’t that good of a spy.

“The name’s Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway,” is a lot of syllables.

5. While in his later years, the FBI conducted surveillance on Hemingway.

ernest hemingway

Hemingway biographer and personal friend of the author for 14 years, A.E. Hotchner, wrote a New York Times opinion piece in 2011, claiming that Hemingway spent his last days incredibly paranoid that the FBI was following him and that this paranoia ended up being justified.

“It’s the worst hell. The goddamnedest hell. They’ve bugged everything. That’s why we’re using Duke’s car. Mine’s bugged. Everything’s bugged. Can’t use the phone. Mail intercepted,” Hotchner quotes Hemingway as telling him shortly after the author’s 60th birthday. Hotchner remembered thinking Hemingway was losing it as the author went on and on about how his phones were being tapped and his mail intercepted.

Hotchner was then shocked when the FBI released its Hemingway file due to a Freedom of Information petition, where they admitted Hemingway was put on the surveillance list in the 1940s by J. Edgar Hoover. “Over the following years, agents filed reports on him and tapped his phones,” Hotchner wrote. According to Hotchner, he’s had to find a way to reconcile his memories of Hemingway losing it in his final years — which partially led to extensive electroshock therapy — with the author actually being right.

6. Hemingway felt it “would be very dangerous” for someone to not attend multiple fights a year.

In that same New Yorker profile from 1950, Ross writes about what happened when she suggested what Hemingway thought was a lackluster fight:

Hemingway gave me a long, reproachful look. “Daughter, you’ve got to learn that a bad fight is worse than no fight,” he said. We would all go to a fight when he got back from Europe, he said, because it was absolutely necessary to go to several good fights a year. “If you quit going for too long a time, then you never go near them,” he said. “That would be very dangerous.” He was interrupted by a brief fit of coughing. “Finally,” he concluded, “you end up in one room and won’t move.”

Part two to appear in two weeks. Best, Christine

Hemingway Grooming products?

Good February to all: I saw this and thought it was fun and funny. Hemingway had his writing, his looks, his cats and dogs, his wit. However, he was not a fancy dresser at all and per wife # 3, Martha Gellhorn, who initially affectionately called him “the pig” and less affectionately when the marriage was sinking, he was not that big on grooming products. Still, this is interesting and fun. The Hemingway name sells furniture, booze, now grooming! Take a look. Best to all! Christine

EXCLUSIVE American writer Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961), in Cuba, July 1940. (Photo by Lloyd Arnold/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) **And well groomed!**

Ernest Hemingway Grooming Products Make Their Debut

Hemingway Accoutrements Product Line
Hemingway Accoutrements officially launches their line of premium shaving and skincare products available in the United States and Canada.

Having been in research and product development for well over a year, we are honored and excited to release world-class grooming products worthy of the Ernest Hemingway name. ”
— Allen Crawley

SCOTTSDALE, AZ, USA, January 31, 2018 /EINPresswire.com/ — Hemingway Accoutrements is excited to announce their new luxury line of men’s grooming products that bear the name of one of the most famous authors of the 20th century – Ernest Hemingway.
With that Hemingway creativity in mind, founder and entrepreneur Allen Crawley decided to revive the masculine grooming traits of an era gone by. Armed with an exclusive license and only the best botanical ingredients, Allen created Hemingway Accoutrements for the discriminating gentleman.
Reminiscent of the writings and travels of Hemingway, the products contain high-quality ingredients and pleasant, old-world aromas. The new line includes Aftershave tonic, Shave Crème, Post Shave Relief Balsam, Conditioning Beard Oil, Ultimate Strength Skin Repair & Remedy Salve and an Age Defending Facial Elixir.
“Having been in research and product development for well over a year, we are honored and excited to release world-class grooming products worthy of the Ernest Hemingway name,” said Crawley.
About:
Allen Crawley has always had a great love and passion for traditional wet shaving. A number of years ago a spark of nostalgia brought back memories of childhood barbershop visits and his father’s daily grooming routine. He longed to personally identify with this great tradition and began his own journey to bring those memories and traditions back to others. This led to the development and refinement of Hemingway Accoutrements. Please visit http://hemingwayaccoutrements.com for more information. Hemingway Accoutrements can also be found on http://facebook.com/hemingwayaccoutrements and http://instagram.com/hemingwayaccoutrements.
Allen Crawley
Hemingway Accoutrements
800-294-7066
email us here

Martha Gellhorn and Hemingway. (well groomed)

Lessons from Hemingway: A guide to Life

I found this article by Brandon King to be beautiful and profound. Perhaps you will too. Some photos added by me. Thank you for reading this blog and happy holidays to all! Best, Christine

Lessons from Hemingway: A guide to life

Brandon King / Red Dirt Report

“A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway.

BRANDON KING | DECEMBER 8, 2017

CATEGORY:

PRAIRIE OPINIONS

YUKON, Okla. — I’m sitting an office surrounded by books I’ve read time after time. Each word, each stanza says something different yet I keep reading.

This is what it must feel like to be religious and captured by something through and through.

Each day, I attempt to write something new and original in hopes to capture the spirit of something yet to be said.

This, and many other lessons, I learned from one of the greatest American writers who ever lived.

Ernest Hemingway is more than a writer; he is something which doesn’t pass through life often.

Hemingway was a man of originality who cursed clichés and lived as though death bit at his heels. Eventually, he would give up running.

I began reading Hemingway shortly after high school. As an 18-year- old who had grown up in the small, yet growing, town of Yukon, culture was a commodity few and far between. It was as barren as it was lonely. At the time, I was reading pieces from writers like Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. They were powerful yet they lacked a punch I wanted to read.

It wasn’t until a trip to Half-Price Books which my perspectives would change.

A blue book was fringed on the corners from being dropped too often. In silver letters, it read A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. As a literary nerd, I had heard the name yet the words and meanings were not there yet.

Since this time, I have read all but two of Hemingway’s pieces. In a near obsessive state, I have found a voice which echoes through the halls of time and continues to speak to those tired of the monotony of modern living.

With each novel and short story, Hemingway provides a lesson for each reader. This should be the goal for any writer worth his or her words. Without meaning, a writer is no more than words on a deaf ear.

Before reading Hemingway’s work, I would find myself asking questions that people could only speculate the answer to. By the time I was finished, I would wonder why I hadn’t thought of that solution before. Though his work deals with death and despair mixed with the feelings of age and war, Hemingway shows us that the world can be seen in any light.

Subjects like love and loss are covered in almost every piece of work. It’s easy to summarize the passing of someone you once loved as painful. It’s quite another thing to express it the way Hemingway did.

For most readers, we all have experienced what it’s like to fall in love with someone and have the hands of death snatch them before their time.

At least I have.

The lessons of Hemingway can give those without a voice a map to find how to express themselves. This is the problem with society as it progresses; just because civilization continues to survive does not mean that civilization grows.

For you, the reader, when was the last time you picked up a novel and read it for what it was worth? When was the last time you enjoyed yourself as you read something so profound that you could feel it touch your heart?

According to the PEW Research Institute, 26 percent of American adults have not read a single book over the past year. This means that no new ideas and possibly no creative endeavor has been established in over a year.

I could list every reason as to why you should learn the lessons of Hemingway but nothing good ever came free. As I’ve learned from Hemingway, “there is no friend as loyal as a book.”

Lessons come by easier for those wanting more out of life. Complacency is a mutual dish that is best served to those who want to survive. For writers and free-thinkers like Hemingway, there is more to life than survival.

It’s the stakes of being original and true. Listed below are the books that have helped me deal with certain issues. If you are interested, please invest in your local library and read on.

To quote Hemingway, “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

A Farewell to Arms: Depression, death and love

The Sun Also Rises: Masculinity, maturity and adventure

The Old Man and the Sea: Aging, death, trying against all odds

For Whom the Bell Tolls: War, destruction, and courage

A Moveable Feast: Dealing with family, memories, and depression

The Garden of Eden: Skepticism, faith and originality

Words for other writers out there

“For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.” ~ Ernest Hemingway

EXCLUSIVE American writer Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961), in Cuba, July 1940. (Photo by Lloyd Arnold/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Part Two

Continuing thoughts on the book by Nicholas Reynolds:

A good portion of the new book deals with Hemingway’s participation in World War II and the liberation of Paris. As those of you who follow this blog know, Hemingway had been working out of Cuba as the “crook factory” and it actually was more than fun and games. He kept very careful journals/records of what he and his gang saw. His crew ran from the former military people, friends, Jai Lai players, gamblers etc., and all kept alert for German submarines that were trolling the Caribbean.

However, when wife Martha Gellhorn became more actively involved as a war correspondent for Colliers, she very much wanted him to join her in Europe. He initially resisted, but finally did accept a position as a war correspondent.

Based on Reynold’s research, Hemingway actively participated in the fighting and in pitching in wherever needed. It was there that he met a friend who would be very close to him for the rest of his life, Colonial Lanham, a British officer known as “Buck” Lanham. Lanham was forever grateful for the friendship and was shocked that Hemingway, as a journalist who did not have to go into dangerous situations where he could be killed nevertheless did.

On one occasion, Hemingway had to cross a line of fire in order to get a message to the other side. Many had been shot trying. Hemingway was a lot of things that weren’t good and he could be a fairly obnoxious drunk. However, he was not lacking in true courage or in caring about other soldiers or people suffering. Lanham indicated in his writings that he would remember that moment for the rest of his life, seeing the big man – thus a large target – darting and running to get across.

Hemingway was so involved in the actual doing of things – his regiment of irregulars thought he was their leader despite knowing of course that he was the author and journalist, not a military commander – that charges were brought against him for violations of the protocols of war journalism. He ultimately was cleared of any wrongdoing but there’s no question that other journalists resented him and his notoriety and fame and his jumping into the action.

Hemingway was on the FBI watch list as a result of his activities in Spain and was eyed with suspicion by J. Edgar Hoover for that, as well as for living in Cuba. That surveillance which many thought was imagined by Hemingway was in fact real and fed into the paranoia he had in the last year of his life.

All in all a very good book that concludes Hemingway was not a spy per se. At moments, he was sought out by the Russians who would have liked to recruit him but who did not learn anything harmful to the U.S. Hemingway was too much of a dedicated American for that.

New Hemingway book: Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy by Nicholas Reynolds: Part one

Happy New Year all readers of Hemingway! Hope you had a great holiday season!

I just listened with interest (via audio disc) to the new book about Hemingway’s involvement in soviet politics and communist causes. The book is called Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy by Nicholas Reynolds. I’m very familiar with Hemingway’s left-leanings, although my reading suggests not so much left-leaning as anti-fascist leanings. Even by those that would like to argue that he was very involved in communist causes, there is acknowledgement that his greatest leaning was the belief in the individual, which he felt fascism and communism both suppressed.

Reynolds traces the roots of his advocacy to the Key West hurricane of 1934 in which numerous veterans working for the New Deal were killed and left to decay on the beaches. Hemingway blamed the government for indifference. Generally he was on the side of the underdog. In the Spanish Civil War, it was evident that he was more anti-fascist than pro-communist. Still he was actively involved in the movie The Spanish Earth, a film advocating for the anti-Franco rebels, and did most of the narration. He also wrote the play The Fifth Column about that war.

Photos by Robert Capa, the renowned photographer

During his involvement in the Spanish Civil War and his frequent trips to Spain in the late 30s to cover the war and write about the war, it was clear to me that, unlike some journalists and sympathizers with the Republicans (the left side if we have to put labels on it, those against Franco), he was one of the few who was not just an observer but was willing to put his money and his life where his mouth was.

Ernest HEMINGWAY during Spanish Civil War.
In December 1937 Ernest Hemingway was covering the Loyalist assault on Teruel, the walled town in the bleak mountains of Southern Aragon, Gen. Franco was planning to use this corridor route to the Mediterranean thus seaparting Barcelona from Valencia and Madrid. Robert CAPA the photographer and Hemingway would with some colleagues drive daily to Teruel from Valencia and return each evening.
Valencia. Dec. 1937. Hemingway visiting the front line.

He provided the funding for the completion of The Spanish Earth when money ran out. There also was an interesting anecdote about Hemingway being in Spain with another journalist when the car in front of them was attacked and rolled over, its inhabitants gravely wounded, Hemingway jumped out of his vehicle and immediately was providing emergency medical aid and doing anything he could to assist. (He was an ambulance driver in World War I so did know some techniques. His father also was a doctor and he had some exposure to medical procedures during his youth).

ME: FYI. The Spanish Earth is available for viewing on YOUTUBE. About an hour long. Hemingway in NYC introduced it in a showing to raise money for the Republican cause.

The other journalist just continued taking notes and not lending a hand. Hemingway yelled at him to pitch in or he, Hemingway, would kill him. Numerous times when Hemingway could have been sitting comfortably in Key West or in Cuba, he put himself in dangerous situations. He was a person who believed the individual could make a difference in general, and that included him. He was fairly apolitical, but, that being said, he did take a stance against Hitler and the fascists and was really upset, as was his wife to be, Martha Gellhorn, a journalist in her own right, with the British and the French for not coming to the assistance of the Spanish Republicans.

Hemingway’s frequent visits to support the Republican cause also was crucial to his writing of For Whom the Bell Tolls. The hero in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Robert Jordan, was fighting for the Republicans and the book covers four days in which he’s tasked with blowing up a bridge that will halt the fascists’ progress when an offensive begins. Nevertheless, while exposing the atrocities of the fascists, For Whom the Bell Tolls also doesn’t sugarcoat some of the poor behavior by the communists. For that, he was roundly criticized by his leftist friends. He replied that he tried to tell the truth from both sides.

To be continued

Recent Reviews of Hemingway’s Key West Home and MuseumTour

Happy Holidays to all! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I live in CT so dreaming of warm locales comes naturally at this time of year. In case you are thinking of a Southern trip, may I suggest considering one of our territories (Puerto Rico if available and utilities restored by the time of your trip, the U.S. Virgin Islands, any of the beleaguered Caribbeans which rely on tourism to survive) including in particular our own Key West.

I thought for this post I would highlight the value of a trip to Hemingway’s house in Key West. I just randomly copied the most recent reviews on Trip Advisor, posted below. Hemingway bought the place on Whitehead Street – well actually his wife Pauline’s Uncle put up the money to buy the place – after Hem left his first wife, Hadley, and

The Finca in Cuba. compare to the below Key west house

married his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer. Pauline hailed from a wealthy St. Louis family, which made money in pharmaceuticals and her Uncle Gus was very generous to his family. Hemingway lived there from approximately 1930 to 1940, when he left Pauline for Martha Gellhorn and bought the place in Cuba.

the house in keywest. compare to the Cuban home above

It was on the advice of John Dos Passos, a fellow member of the “Lost Generation” of ex patriate artists and writers populating Paris during the 1920s, that Hemingway was first prompted to visit Key West. They were delayed in their journey due to car trouble.

He and Pauline rented a home for a few weeks waiting for the car and it was there that Hemingway continued his Paris habits of writing during the early mornings hoping to finish the war novel he’d begun. He then would explore his surroundings in the afternoons. The Hemingways spent three weeks waiting for their car, and it was during this very brief three-week interlude that Ernest finished the partially autobiographical novel about the First World War, “A Farewell To Arms.”

Both Ernest and Pauline grew to love Key West and its inhabitants, and soon decided to look for a permanent residence. After two seasons in Key West, Pauline’s Uncle Gus purchased the house on Whitehead Street for them in 1931.

The home was in great disrepair when the Hemingways took ownership (as was the Cuban home when Hemingway bought it), but both Ernest and Pauline could see beyond the rubble and ruin, and appreciated the grand architecture and stateliness of the home. The massive restoration and remodeling they undertook in the early 1930’s turned the home into the National Historical Landmark that thousands of tourists visit and enjoy today.

A unique and extraordinary feature of the grounds is the pool, built in 1937-38, at the staggering cost for the time of $20,000. It was the first in-ground pool in Key West, and the only pool within 100 miles. The exhorbitant construction costs once prompted Hemingway to take a penny from his pocket, press it into the wet cement of the surrounding patio, and announce jokingly, “Here, take the last penny I’ve got!” Tourists are invited to look for the penny, still embedded between flagstones at the north end of the pool.

It’s a more elegant place than the place in Cuba, had much more Pauline in it than her husband. It had some funny quirks though. There also is a urinal there that Hemingway salvaged from a bar that was being taken down and he had a sentimental attachment to the number of times he’d used it. I believe it is now used to house plants.

Anyway, if you’re in that vicinity it’s well worth a look. Best and happy holiday season, Christine

Recent reviews of the Hemingway House

1) Seeing Papa

the house is a tribute to the late author, whose exploits during his life are legendary. The tour guides shared several interesting stories about Hemingway and his various wives/mistresses. The cats were adorable (and I’m not a cat person). Plenty of interesting photos and examples…More

2) Fun visit, pleasantly surprised

Fun time, great tour guide. Not a huge Hemingway fan but would recommend a visit to all. Cats are very aloof.

3) Where do I start?

The Ernest Hemingway tour is a must for anyone visiting Key West! Whether you have read all of his books or none, it really doesn’t matter. The history of his house and life unfold eloquently and in a fun manner by the tour guides. They make this tour what it is, in my opinion by bringing the homes history and Hemingway’s history to life. And it is nice that you can manage the walking tour in under an hour, which leaves time to walk about the Hemingway grounds if you would like. Actual descendants of Hemingway’s cats are on premises! It was a fun and informative tour that I feel is a must visiting Key West!

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g34345-d130377-r539518496-The_Ernest_Hemingway_Home_and_Museum-Key_West_Florida_Keys_Florida.html#

The Six Word Story

This is a familiar story.

Hemingway famously bet someone that he could write a novel in six words. What he came up was:
“For sale, baby shoes, never used.”

And there you have it. The Glasgow Middle School sixth graders in Kentucky were challenged to find their inner Hemingway and write a memoir in six words. They certainly were able to come up with slogans for their lives in six words. Examples:

X-box made me hate the park.
Fighting over nothing is definitely something.
Keep running. Don’t stop. Not yet.
Rock music blaring made today exceptional.
Ignorance is bliss—that’s a lie.

My women’s group tried this and some of the outcomes were really interesting and illuminating. Given the fact that the exercise was announced and then we were given pens and paper to scrawl something in the next five minutes made the challenge harder.

Someone wrote, “Good girl, bad girl, okay woman.”

Anther wrote, “See you, see them, see me.”

Another answer, “Husband, work, kids, what about me?”

Try it yourself and see what emerges. It is a truly interesting dinner party game over coffee and dessert.

Hemingway’s Letters: Volume 4 is out (1929-1931)

Happy Thanksgiving to All! Next volume available. These years cover the success of The Sun Also Rises, marriage to Pauline, serialization of A Farewell to Arms, and the rise of celebrity. Good reading there! Best, Christine

Fourth volume of ‘The Letters of Ernest Hemingway’ series available Nov. 3

New book features Hemingway’s personal correspondence from 1929 to 1931

November 1, 2017

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — “Sweet, deferent, generous, dutiful, responsible, arrogant, belligerent" — these are just a few of the traits that Penn State Liberal Arts Professor of English Sandra Spanier said Ernest Hemingway reveals in a series of personal correspondence that she and her team have collected and published in the fourth volume of "The Letters of Ernest Hemingway (1929-1931)."

The book, published by Cambridge University Press and available in the U.S. on Friday, Nov. 3, is edited by Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel and captures an important turning point in Hemingway’s life as he — for the first time — begins to contend with celebrity.

The new book picks up where the third volume left off in April 1929, just as Hemingway is returning to Paris with his second wife and just before Scribner’s Magazine serialized his novel “A Farewell to Arms” from May 1929 to October 1929. Spanier, who serves as general editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, explained that Hemingway’s correspondence reveals an internal struggle in dealing with his meteoric rise to international fame.

“On the one hand,” Spanier said, “Hemingway was highly interested in how his work was being received, but he is also increasingly intent on keeping his private life separate from his writing life.” Among the 430 letters to 125 correspondents in the volume is an October 1929 note from Hemingway to his mother in which he writes, “If anyone ever wants to interview you about me please tell them that you know I dislike any personal publicity and have promised me not to even answer any questions about me.”

In addition to coping with his newfound fame, the editors identified other themes emerging from Hemingway’s letters, including his reflections on mortality, depression, his professional persona and international politics.

“We also see an unfamiliar aspect of Hemingway’s personality — that of a mentor,” Spanier said, citing correspondence with other writers, including a note to George Albee in October 1931. Among Hemingway’s other literary correspondents are John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Archibald MacLeish, Ezra Pound, Thornton Wilder and the legendary editor Maxwell Perkins.

“Keep on writing — you will write damned good stuff — but I can’t take that story and go to bat for it because it isn’t right yet — But it’s better to write a new one than re-write an old one — If this advice is punk — remember you asked for it.”

— Ernest Hemingway to George Albee, 1931

Spanier said that she is continually amazed at the enduring and intense public interest in Hemingway: “We are producing these volumes as a comprehensive scholarly collection, but we have a very wide general readership.”

“Reading Hemingway’s letters is to go back in time by stepping into the fascinating world of a revolutionary wordsmith; a voyage through decades to the very moments when literature was taking a sudden bend in the road; a shift that was being steered by the father of modern literature. Indeed, the value of these letters cannot be overstated.”

— Nick Mafi, Esquire

Spanier directs an international team of scholars working to collect and publish more than 6,000 letters from Ernest Hemingway in a projected 17-volume series. Her work has taken her around the globe.

In addition, Spanier engages a team of Penn State graduate and undergraduate students in the Hemingway Letters Project. Undergraduate interns assist in maintaining the extensive master archive of more than 25,000 documents, while graduate research assistants work closely with volume editors to research annotations, the informative notes that explain Hemingway’s numerous and often obscure references to people, literary works and historical events. With strict procedures in place for documenting research, one footnote might generate dozens of pages of recorded information behind the scenes.

One former graduate student, Assistant Research Professor of English Verna Kale, received her doctorate from Penn State in 2010 and now serves as the project’s associate editor. Kale said that public interest in Hemingway adapts with cultural trends. “After World War II people were interested in heroism in Hemingway’s stories; more recently we’ve seen a focus on how he deals with issues of gender and sexuality. His appeal is as timeless as it is universal,” said Kale.

More information about the Hemingway Letters Project and the most recent volume is available on the Hemingway Society Website.

Hemingway’s Final Steps: Read Eric Althoff’s article and journey

Read Eric’s Travels excerpted here. Best, Christine (some photos i added of the house and mountains.)

Tracing Hemingway’s final steps in Ketchum, Idaho

By Eric Althoff – The Washington Times – Saturday, October 7, 2017

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

You drive for three hours from Boise, through largely empty high desert country, to come to the place where Ernest Hemingway spent his final years, and where, on July 2, 1961, he chose to silence the demons forever.

Ketchum, Idaho, is also where many of Hollywood’s elite have second or third (or however many in the ordinal list) homes. For it is said that in the surrounding Sun Valley community, they can be unbothered in a way that is perhaps not so viable in Park City, Utah, the other ski community known for the glitziness of its populace away from Tinseltown.

I am met at the Sun Valley Lodge (1 Sun Valley Rd., Sun Valley, Idaho, 83353, 800/786-8259) by Jim Jaquet and his wife Wendy, who together run Jaquet Guide Services, wherein the couple offers specialized tours of Sun Valley that include restaurants, galleries and the Hemingway sites. .

As we drive away from the Sun Valley Lodge, Jim and Wendy point to various homes that belong to the rich and famous. Time was when they would take pilgrims closer, but a sense of privacy now pervades in Ketchum, and so today I must enjoy the posh homes from afar.

What I can get up close and personal to, however, is the Hemingway Memorial on Trail Creek Rd., erected in 1966 by friends and family of the deceased wordsmith on what would have been his 67th birthday. The bust of “Papa” Hemingway sits in a quiet alcove above a creek bed, and at its base is an inscription:

“Best of all he loved the fall
the leaves yellow on cottonwoods
leaves floating on trout streams
and above the hills
the high blue windless skies
… Now he will be a part of them forever.”

After a quick jaunt through the heart of town, Jim and Wendy take me to a spot on the outskirts of Ketchum and pull over. Jim hands me a pair of binoculars to spy, far in the distance, the privately owned Mary and Ernest Hemingway House and Preserve, where the scribe lived in his final tumultuous years, anguished that he was no longer able to write as he once had.

As no tourists are allowed near the home (the road leading up to it is also privately run), Jim shows me photographs of what the cabin looked like when Hemingway occupied it. Eerily, the shotgun he used to end his own life is in one of the photos, which can’t help but give me a chill.

Jim tells me that one of the accepted theories about Hemingway’s suicide was that it was brought on by depression, magnified by his decreasing ability to write to his own liking, as well as the rather copious amounts of alcohol he was known to consume. Furthermore, some have posited that both the physical and “invisible” injuries he suffered during his time in the ambulance corps during the First World War may have later reared their ugliness as Hemingway sank deeper and deeper into despair until he could take it no more.

Add to this a condition called hemochromatosis, or too much iron in the blood, his diabetes and various other problems.

The midcentury Hemingway cabin is now run by The Community Library, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today I shall get no closer.

It’s only appropriate that our next stop is Hemingway’s final resting place, the Ketchum Cemetery, located at 1026 N Main St. Papa’s grave is easy to find: Pilgrims leave pennies on the gravestone, as well as tributes like a half-finished bottle of Jameson today.

There’s also a journal, in which visitors can inscribe their thoughts. Not knowing precisely what to say, but knowing I must write something, I set pen to paper, allowing the ink to move me:

“One writer to another, may our language be the better angels of man. — EFA, May 14, 2017”

Friends and relatives of Papa are also interred here, including Margaux Hemingway, Hemingway’s granddaughter and a respected actress in her day. Unfortunately, like Ernest, Margaux was afflicted by depression and battled a chronic alcohol problem. She was found dead at her L.A. home July 1, 1996, the result of a sedative overdose.

Margaux and Hem’s son, Jack, Mariel on far right

Margaux was the fifth member of her immediate family to commit suicide, according to the IMDB. She is buried a few feet away from her grandfather.

Margaux’s sister, Muriel, is also an actress, and earned an Oscar nomination at the tender age of 19 for her role in Woody Allen’s 1979 film “Manhattan.” She still acts to this day.

From atop one of the lava cones, I look back to the northwest and the Sawtooth National Forest, whose accompanying mountain ranges enclose Ketchum and Sun Valley. My view from here is prosaic and inspiring — doubtless part of the reason Hemingway chose this central Idaho wonderland to try to re-stoke the artistic fires within.

It proved to be too large a task even for the glories of nature.

I enjoyed the article and the respect for Hemingway’s love of this area, this home, his legacy. Best to all and hope your Thanksgiving was lovely. Christine