I mentioned last post that I’ve been re-reading Hemingway’s novels. I finished A Farewell to Arms and Across the River and into the Woods. I found so much more to love in A Farewell to Arms than my first few times around. While Catherine is dated in her attitude and her fawning for love, she still was working, living on her own, and in love. Frederic goes from looking for a fun time so loving Catherine deeply. I loved the scenes with Rinaldi and when he calls Frederic “baby.” Wonderful novel.
Across the River was not on the “best” list, At times, I found it hard to get through but it picked up in the end and I liked it but didn’t understand what The Colonel saw in Renata. She was young and beautiful but vapid and not even very spirited. However, Hemingway too was in love when writing it and Adriana, his prototype for Renata,was being seen through his eye. Still not a favorite. I liked the sense of Venice but not too much else.
Venice nights
Read “Hemingway’s Best Novels” for yourself. Link below.
This was a fun article to read. The comments were just as much fun because everyone has an opinion. It is interesting to see which novels are preferred, and whether only purists love the short stories best. I found the insights to be illuminating. My favorite novel is For whom the Bell Tolls, and among the short stories, I love The Snows of Kilimanjaro and A Clean Well-Lighted Place. The end of Something is also one I reread often.
It is not surprising to me that there continues to be so much interest in Hemingway even 53 years after his death. As far as I know, the following movies are in the works.
The Sun Also RisesCatherine and Frederic
1) A Moveable Feast, being either directed or produced by Mariel Hemingway. No word on who will be in it.
2) Hemingway and Fuentes, being produced and directed by Andy Garcia. Gregorio Fuentes was Hemingway’s Captain of the Pilar and also good friend. Hemingway was to be played by Anthony Hopkins, now replaced by Jon Voigt. I believe that Andy Garcia will be playing Gregorio Fuentes.
3) I don’t know the title but there is a movie in production about Maxwell Perkins, Hemingway’s editor (also Fitzgerald’s editor) to be played by Colin Firth. It focuses however on Perkins’ tempestuous relationship with James Jones (From Here to Eternity) more than on Hemingway or Fitzgerald but I’m sure both will figure prominently.
Midnight in Paris
Two fairly recent books have come out: Rene Villarreal, Hemingway’s Cuban Son. I just bought it and have not had a chance to read it yet. Rene was Hem’s major duomo at his Cuban home, The Finca Vigia. It sounds like a sweet and lovely portrayal.
Hemingway and Gellhorn
Hemingway Wives: This is a book about Hem’s wives through each one’s point of view. Apparently the author most identified with Pauline which is a change from most books. Most relate to Hadley or Martha. I have mine on pre-order.
I myself am working on a Hemingway themed novel. When far enough along, I’ll share some. I am pretty excited about it and hope that I can write it as well as I see it in my mind.
And that’s me following the Hem trail in Italy. I am not sure there is a Hemingway trail but of course there is Venice, the places that he went in the war, and Rapallo where I did spend time. I enjoyed the hotel where he wrote “The Cat in the Rain,” one of my favorites.
As usual, Hemingway is in the news everywhere. So what’s new?
1.) There apparently is news that there is a computer program that can predict whether you or I are the next Hemingway. You can send in a sample of your writing and the computer can tell you if you are in line with his style or just another wannabe.
I’d like to see Paris before I’m too old
We all know that there is so much more that went into his writing than on the surface. One of the prime theories that Hem put to the test was the iceberg theory. For every sentence that he wrote on the paper, there were ten that didn’t get down on the paper but that were distilled into making that one sentence. When Hemingway wrote about a waiter, he–in his head–knew the waiter’s whole history and it was his theory that by knowing that history, even though it didn’t make it to the paper and the story, it added some texture to what eventually got into the story. He wrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times and he wrote the last sentence of the The Sun Also Rises “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” many, many times until it had the exact inflection he wanted. No program can take that into account. So good luck with that computer
The Old Man and the Sea
program!
2.) The John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library has received a shipment of new documents that it has added to its Hemingway collection. One that is particularly interesting is the telegram by which Hem was advised that he’d won the Nobel Prize for literature. It was sent to him on October 28, 1954 at 11:00 a.m. It said:
At its session today the Swedish Academy decided to award you the 1954 Nobel Prize for literature and I would accordingly request you to notify me if you accept this award and whether in that case it would be possible for you to be present in Stockholm on Nobel Bay December 10 to receive the prize from the hands of His Majesty the King. Anders Obersterling, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, 7:00 p.m.
Hemingway was not in good enough health to go to Sweden. He’d just survived two plane crashes in Africa and, while he put on a brave face, the second crash left him impaired for life with pain that never went away. He wrote a brief statement that was read by John C. Cabot, the then U.S. Ambassador to Sweden.
While Hemingway told the press that Carl Sandburg, Isak Dinesen, and Bernard Berenson were far more deserving of the honor, but he could use the prize money so he accepted, I have to believe he was pleased. He should have won it for For Whom the Bell Tolls and fortunately he won it eventually for The Old Man and the Sea.
It’s wonderful to listen to him making the speech, which he made after the fact and recorded. The beginning of it goes as follows:
“Having no facility for speech making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this prize.
No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the price can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and conscience….Writing, at best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer, he must face eternity, or lack of it, each day….I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again, I thank you.”
Earlier this year, a trove of about 2,500 documents from Hemingway’s home in Cuba, Finca Vigia, were shipped to the Hemingway collection in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. They were digitized and many have already been made available. The documents include letters, lists, diaries, telegrams, insurance policies, bank statements, passports, a page of his son, Patrick’s, homework, and many Christmas cards.
The Old Man and the Sea
For those of us who love and follow all things Hemingway, it’s an enormous boon that he was a packrat. He seems to have saved everything. In 2008, another group of documents and letters were sent to the library, including an alternate ending for For Whom the Bell Tolls. Robert Jordan lives??
In reading about the material that went to Boston, I felt sad all over again. When Hemingway and Mary left, they didn’t know that they would not be going back. Books were left open, shoes were left out, a Glenn Miller record was on the phonograph.
John F. Kennedy
After Hemingway’s death in July of 1961, relations with Cuba could not have been much worse. The Bay of Pigs invasion occurred in April of 1961 and our two countries were not cozy. Nevertheless, John F. Kennedy quietly arranged for Mary Hemingway to travel to Havana and meet with Fidel Castro. They agreed that Mary could take paintings and papers out of the country and in return, she gave the Finca Vigia and its remaining contents to the Cuban people.
The property declined significantly, but due to the efforts of the Finca Vigia Foundation, which was started by Jenny Phillips, the granddaughter of Maxwell Perkins, Hemingway’s long-time editor, the decline has been arrested. Documents are being preserved and the house has been shored up with some repairs taking place.
Mary in older age
It was interesting to read about the documentation and how it came through in a very random way. In the middle of a folder of Christmas cards, a recipe might appear or an important letter about Hemingway’s style. A telegram from Archibald MacLeish congratulating him on For Whom the Bell Tolls is followed by Mary’s hamburger recipes. There are logs from his boat, the Pilar, as well as correspondence that Mary had. According to Susan Wrynn, the curator of the Hemingway collection at the JFK Library, Mary Hemingway, while packing up papers to take back to America also burned some messages which were sent to Mary but were believed not to be written by Hemingway but by a newspaper man named Herb Clark, an old flame of Mary’s in the Paris days. Perhaps she thought that her own correspondence wasn’t important?
Hem at typewriter
There are also stories with edits by Hemingway critiquing his own work, noting “you can phrase things clearer and better.” Or, “you can remove words which are unnecessary and tighten up your prose.” All in all, it’s quite a find and addition to this amazing collection.
EXCLUSIVE: Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast is being adapted for the big screen by Elizabeth screenwriter Michael Hirst and actress Mariel Hemingway.
The film version of A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway’s memoir about his time as a young writer in Paris in the 1920s, is edging closer toward production.
A script is now being written by Michael Hirst, the award-winning British writer of Working Title’s Elizabeth and Elizabeth The Golden Age and creator of historical drama series Vikings.
The project is being developed with actress and author Mariel Hemingway, who was Oscar nominated for her role in Woody Allen’s Manhattan and is the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway.
“I have waited years and years for that to be set up. Mariel Hemingway has set that up for me and I am enjoying it enormously,” Hirst commented of the project.
“It is just the greatest love story ever written – the most painful love story and the most honest,” Hirst observed of Hemingway’s memoir which was published in 1964, three years after its author’s death. “It is a challenge to do but it is such a worthy challenge.”
Hirst was speaking during the London junket for the second season of Vikings, a drama series made for History.
A Moveable Feast, which features Hemingway’s observations of such lauded literary figures as Gretrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerland, has provided inspiration and background material for several earlier features, among them Alan Rudolph’s The Moderns and Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris.
A hotel chain wants to have Hemingway themed hotels focusing on adventure and lust for life, I guess. The Hemingway Estate is working with them in this endeavor. Not sure what I think of this at the moment. ET TU?
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. Ernest Hemingway
Hem in ParisParis
It’s the beginning of a very rugged winter—or so it seems—in Connecticut. Yesterday the winds were grueling and temps were in the twenties. I’m writing this in November as I have a busy December and a trial in January so things will be even worse here by the time this is printed..
Winter!
I’m sustaining myself by planning my springtime trip to Paris. I’ve never been to Paris unless you count passing through it one day in college. On that trip I stayed outside of the city of Paris in a little town called Meaux. I don’t know if I was particularly hungry but the restaurant in the small hotel that I stayed in was one of the best I’d ever had. I’ve always carried that fond memory of France with me.
For my June trip, I’ve rented an apartment for eight days. It’s located in the Marais district on a quiet street. I’ve heard that the Marais is quaint, has lots of boutiques and restaurants, and encompasses both the gay district and the Jewish district, an interesting juxtaposition.
Hem in the 20s
I’ve looked on the internet and found suggested Hemingway walks and tours. I’m sure that many of Hemingway’s places are no longer there but I can imagine. I’ll check out Shakespeare and Company, Montparnasse, the old home of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, the apartment where Hemingway and Hadley lived and the separate place where Hemingway rented a room to write. I know that we all romanticize Paris of that era and it doesn’t exist anymore except with the help of Woody Allen’s admirable efforts to revive it in Midnight In Paris. However, I’m still looking forward to the trip.
Gertrude Stein and Bumby in Paris
The Sun Also Rises
I’ve heard that Paris is the most magical city in the world. I’ve also heard that it’s just one more big, dirty city. I want to decide for myself.
If anyone has great ideas about places I should go or must see places that are Hemingway-related or just great places, please do let me know.
I’d like to see Paris before I’m too old
I’ve already booked dinner at a place that is featured in my new book. It’s a restaurant called Dans Le Noir where dinner is served completely in the dark. I’m told that it is really completely dark. The waiters and waitresses are blind and it’s supposed to be an amazing experience of your senses. In my new book, I’ve renamed it En La Obscuridad and made it a Spanish restaurant in New York City. A dramatic scene takes place there so I must try the original. As I’m clumsy anyway, this should be good: eating in the dark.
A Moveable Feast
Anyway, let me know your thoughts on “must see” and “must do” events in Paris.
This is a place to talk Hemingway and any topics related to him and his life. That gives us a lot of material: writing, Paris, divorce, relationships, Key West, Cuba, Idaho, fishing, boats, bulls, boxing, cats, horses, dogs, the Midwest, movies, other writers. Anything else? Oh right, drinking, awards, depression, friends, cruelty, generosity. Heard enough? Well, there’s still politics, women, religion, Fidel Castro, Gary Cooper, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Africa. Done yet? Uh, no. we’ve still got mothers, hair, sexual ambiguity, sons, daughters, actresses, sex, suicide, death, clothes, honor, hygiene, the IRS, psychiatrists.
And what would Papa say about a blog? Hmm, well, if I wanted to pull a page from Woody Allen, I’d say that he’d say: No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure. He was a journalist first and foremost and he kept up with the times so I think he’d be amused.
So what qualifies me to write this blog? Not too much that’s going to impress you. All I can say is that I love him, just as he was, flawed and fabulous, mean-spirited bully and most gracious of men, driven wordsmith and drunken raconteur, bigot and egalitarian, all of it. I’m no scholar. I’ll leave that to Timeless Hemingway, www.timelesshemingway.com, which does a superb job and is an unparalleled resource. However, I’ve read them all many times: the books, the short stories, the analyses, the biographies, the women, even the Hemingway cookbook which I actually cook from (the trout is delicious). I’m just an obsessed fan, uncluttered by the need to be neutral. I hope to learn from you too.
Finally, I find him fascinating, complex, and yes, manly but I think he actually “got” quite a bit about women contrary to popular myth. That’s a topic for another day. Also a topic for another day is why the mask above on the oh so lovely woman. Also a topic for another day is what do we call him in this blog? Ernest, Ernesto, Wemedge, Nesto, Ernie, Oinbones,Papa, Tatie, Hem, Hemingstein, Hems, or just plain Hemingway? We’ll see. Perhaps we’ll put it to a vote. I have a Hemingway party on his birthday every year (July 21) and I’ll take a poll there too and let you know the results.
Of course, none of my friends “get” it and think Hemingway was that guy who wrote in short sentences and wanted to fight with everyone and run with the bulls. They are partially right and mostly wrong. But hey, you can’t throw away old friends just because they don’t really read or have an informed opinion about Hemingway–or can you?
These posts will be short and fun (I hope) and will be up every Friday by midnight. I hope it’s enjoyable for Hemingway people as well as for casual observers. I’ve looked at the other blogs about Hemingway. Most are terrific but there still is room for a lighter take and for the unending discussion about why we continue to read him fifty years after his death. And if you have to ask . . .
Check me out when you have a chance. It’s going to be one hell of a ride.
