And a bit more about Cuts from FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (This is really interesting when he discusses with Perkins what he might change or did change.)

By April 20, 1940, he told Max Perkins that he had thirty-two chapters completed. That month he decided on a title. As he had done in the past, he turned to the Bible and Shakespeare for inspiration, and after considering some twenty-five possibilities he settled on The Undiscovered Country. But he was not completely satisfied with it. Persevering, he looked to the Oxford Book of English Verse where he found a quote from John Donne, which expressed the interconnectedness of humanity that matched the aspirations of his work. On April 21 he wired Max Perkins that he had decided on the title For Whom the Bell Tolls. By the beginning of July he was working on the last chapter and contemplating how to end it.

He considered having an epilogue, which he sent to Max Perkins, who describes it in some detail. However, he ultimately decided against it. On August 26 Hemingway wrote Perkins:

What would you think of ending the book as it ends now without the epilogue?

I have written it and rewritten it and it is okay but it seems sort of like going back into the dressing room or following Catherine Barclay to the cemetery (as I originally did in A Farewell to Arms) and explaining what happened to Rinaldi and all.

I have a strong tendency to do that always on account of wanting everything knit up and stowed away ship-shape. I can write it like Tolstoi and make the book seem larger, wiser, and all the rest of it. But then I remember that was what I always skipped in Tolstoi.

What do you think? . . .

You see that the epilogue only shows that good generals suffer after an unsuccessful attack (which isn’t new); that they get over it (that’s a little newer) Golz haveing killed so much that day is forgiving of Marty because he has that kindliness you get sometimes. I can and do make Karkov see how it will all go. But that seems to me to date it. The part about Andres at the end is very good and very pitiful and very fine.

But it really stops where Jordan is feeling his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.

You see every damn word and action in this book depends on every other word and action. You see he’s laying there on the pine needles at the start [see Figure 2] and that is where he is at the end [see Figure 8]. He has had his problem and all his life before him at the start and he has all his life in those days and, at the end there is only death there for him and he truly isn’t afraid of it at all because he has the chance to finish his mission.

An early false start of the epilogue is preserved among the papers at the Finca (Appendix III, n. 38), though no complete copy is known to exist.

Hemingway completed his manuscript on July 21, 1940, and hand-delivered it to Max Perkins at Scribner’s in New York around July 25. By August 25 he had sent the first batch of corrected galley proofs back to Scribner’s from Cuba (see Figures 9–10). The last corrected proofs were sent from Sun Valley on September 10. The book was published on October 31, 1940.

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.

There are many cases where Hemingway expands on passages from the first draft to make them more poignant, such as the lovemaking scenes between Robert Jordan and Maria (Appendix III, nn. 13–14, Figures 5–6) or El Sordo reflecting on life during his last stand on the hilltop (Appendix III, n. 25). The manuscript shows how Hemingway grappled with trying to translate certain words in the Spanish language (Appendix III, n. 5). He was also very familiar with the danger of censorship and its impact on book sales, having dealt with these issues in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms. In For Whom the Bell Tolls he tried to avoid such problems as much as possible at the outset while still conveying the realism that was central to his storytelling. His editor, Max Perkins, and publisher, Charles Scribner, had very few criticisms of the manuscript text. Scribner objected to the graphic wording of the scene in chapter 31 where Robert Jordan masturbates the night before battle. Hemingway cut the offending sentence, “There is no need to spill that on the pine needles now,” and wrote instead, “There are no pine needles that need that now as I will need it tomorrow.”

Martha, discoverer of the Finca and inspiration

In response to Scribner’s objection, Hemingway also changed at the galley stage Robert Jordan’s status as a card-carrying member of the Communist Party (Appendix III, n. 16) to someone working under communist discipline. However, while Perkins and Scribner were both concerned by Pilar’s discussion of the stench of death and suggested removing it, Hemingway insisted that it was important and left it as he wrote it originally. Despite the length of the manuscript, the differences between the published version and the original manuscript are relatively small. The missing epilogue and list of possible titles and a few draft pages preserved among my grandfather’s papers at the Ernest Hemingway Museum at the Finca in Cuba make clear that additional drafts and supporting materials existed.

For Whom the Bell Tolls depicts guerrilla warfare—a war of resilience involving small-scale skirmishes over an indefinite period of time. It is a type of combat that goes back at least to ancient Roman times. The term itself derives from the diminutive form of the Spanish word for war, guerre, and means “little war.” It became popular during the Peninsular War in the early nineteenth century when the Spanish and Portuguese people used the guerrilla strategy against Napoleon Bonaparte’s vastly superior army during his invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. Francisco Goya’s Disasters of War (1810–1820), his graphic etchings of the Spanish struggle against Napoleon’s army, were well known to my grandfather, who owned a set that was made from the original plates during the Spanish Civil War. Goya’s images of executions, such as the etching entitled “Y no hai remedio” (“And there is nothing to be done”), are a visual pretext for some of the more powerful scenes in the novel, like the brutal execution of citizens described by Pilar in chapter 10. In a passage cut from this very chapter of the novel, Hemingway wrote that “You heard about it; you heard the shots. You saw the bodies but no Goya yet had made the pictures” (Appendix III, n. 11).

Pauline, second wife and being replaced by Martha

Hemingway counted Stendhal as among the most important literary predecessors for his novel. In a famous interview with Lillian Ross, Hemingway, using the metaphor of boxing, said that he had fought two draws with Stendhal and that he thought he had the edge in the last one. Hemingway saw For Whom the Bell Tolls as his first great bout with Stendhal and Across the River and Into the Trees, which he had just finished at the time he spoke with Ross, as his second. There are distinct similarities between Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma, where a participant in the Battle of Waterloo gives the reader a strong sense of battle from a soldier’s perspective, and For Whom the Bell Tolls; Hemingway even calls out the book as a superlative example of war literature in a passage he cut from the novel (Appendix III, no. 10).As Graham Greene wrote in his review of the book, For Whom the Bell Tolls is “a record more truthful than history.”

Hemingway and Fitzgerald: It never gets old. We just can’t stop figuring out how to compare them. See new play below. Best, Christine

Bullfight on Third Avenue, Bewley’s Cafe: Ghosts of Hemingway and Fitzgerald meet in an Irish bar

Bullfight on Third Avenue

Bewley’s Café Theatre, Dublin Until August 3

From left: Ross Gaynor as Fitzgerald, Dave Duffy as bar owner Costello and Rex Ryan as Hemingway

Katy Hayes

July 13 2019 2:30

Eddie Naughton’s new play continues his series of chamber dramas of the literary left. His neat plays are tightly focused on great or significant characters, real or literary, and draw the audience into an already familiar world, creating an interesting dramatic dynamic between the real and the imagined.

Here we have Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald meeting up in Tim Costello’s bar in New York in 1937, just before Hemingway departs for Spain to write about the civil war. Fitzgerald is at this stage living and working in Hollywood. The third character is the Irish bar owner, Costello, a socialist republican who left Ireland in disappointment at its post-revolutionary state.

In Naughton’s vision of this meeting, Fitzgerald sets about dissuading Hemingway from making the trip to Spain, accusing him of glorifying war and leading the American youth astray.

The men discuss their work and their wives. Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda is in a sanatorium in California; Hemingway’s second marriage, to Pauline Pfeiffer, is in trouble. Bubbling underneath all the conversation is the homophobic atmosphere of the times, which prevented men from even thinking about homoeroticsm, let alone really talking about it.

Rex Ryan is terrific as Ernest Hemingway, full of a bristling machismo, ready to throw a punch at small provocations. Ross Gaynor’s Fitzgerald is suave and stylish, but the cracks in his psyche are not sufficiently apparent – he is not vulnerable enough. Dave Duffy as the bar owner makes a decent fist of playing third wheel on this high-powered date. He has the difficult job of drawing parallels between the Irish and Spanish civil wars – during this material the writing feels overly schematic.

Lisa Krugel creates a simple, elegant set design in sober bar-room green. Her costumes have tremendous precision. Karl Shiels’ direction comes on too strong at the beginning, with the characters overly loud, as if straining to assert themselves and generate energy. The tone does settle down but has to win back ground. There are fine bits of staging, arm-wrestles and a mock bullfight, that give this conversational drama a winning physicality.

Taking imaginary forays into the minds of well-known people is an intriguing prospect. Though the Irish contextualising feels a little strained, Hemingway and Fitzgerald’s ghosts still have a good arm-wrestle, as well as a very satisfying wrestling with words.

Indo Review

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

An Irish writer follows Hem/Fitzgerald Trail

Ciara O’Callaghan, who is a travel writer for the Irish Times, just wrote an article on trailing F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway and following their European, American, and Caribbean travels. Noting that they were the Jekyll and Hyde equivalent in the literary world with Hemingway being the ultimate man’s man, bullfighter, and womanizer and Fitzgerald being the eternal outsider and hopeless romantic, Ms. O’Callaghan notes that they nevertheless shared in common a fondness for hard and heavy drinking and quality writing.

They first met in Paris in 1925 when Fitzgerald was close to the top of the literary world and Hemingway was a mere newly-arrived hopeful. Ms. O’Callaghan traipsed from the Dingo Bar in Paris where the two writers first met, to Harry’s New York, and The Ritz, all in Paris and then traveled to the Finca Vigia outside Havana. While in the vicinity, she visited the El Floridita to sample some Papa Dobles plus a few daiquiris and sit next to the bronze statue of Papa at the bar.

She then moved on to Montgomery, Alabama to soak up some F. Scott ambiance. It was in Alabama that Fitzgerald made a home with his wife Zelda and ultimately their daughter Scotty.

Zelda came from a wealthy established Alabama family and her father–a Judge–was quite sure that this “writer” could not meet his daughter’s needs. Zelda, however, was in love and Fitzgerald was crazy over-the-moon in love with Zelda and off they went to Europe as a young married couple.

As Fitzgerald’s star began to fade, primarily due to drink and lack of focus which probably was due to drink, Hemingway’s star began to rise. Ms. O’Callaghan notes that Hemingway is often cast in the role of Hyde, i.e. more fiend than friend, known for criticizing Fitzgerald behind his back. Less known are his kind words to Fitzgerald and his constant reassurance that “you can write twice as well now as you ever could.”

My reading suggests that they both were always seeking reassurance from each other and even when they had a falling out, they would communicate indirectly through Max Perkins wondering what the other was doing. Perkins would accommodate and let each know something about the other. Fitzgerald always referred to Hemingway as “the greatest living writer of this century.” The were the original frenemies, before there was a word for it.

In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway does backhandedly put Fitzgerald down, but please let’s recall that it was published posthumously in 1964 without editing by Hemingway. For all we know, he would have changed that significantly. He could be cruel but he also could be extremely generous and loyal to his friends.

Ms. O’Callaghan ends her article by quoting Hemingway who once said that, “You should never go on trips with anyone you do not love,” and she notes that luckily for herself she loves both writers and enjoyed her travels with “them.”. Ditto here, although Hemingway is always first in my heart.

Visit To the Hemingway Collection in Boston Part 1

Kennedy Library, home of the Hemingway Collection, Boston

I was in Boston for a few days and took the opportunity to visit the Hemingway collection at the JFK Library and Museum. It’s about 20 minutes depending on traffic from downtown in a cab but shuttle buses travel out there more inexpensively as well. It is right on the water and very modern as you can see.

The present exhibit at the Hemingway Collection is entitled Hemingway Between the Wars, which covers much if not most of his career. The Old Man and the Sea, The Dangerous Summer, A Moveable Feast, among others came after World War II, (some posthumously. Hem died in 1961 and A Moveable Feast came out in 1964, edited primarily by Hemingway’s surviving wife, Mary. Garden of Eden was also posthumously published.) but The Sun Also Rises, Men Without Women, A Farewell to Arms, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and many of the more famous short stories, i.e. The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, Green Hills of Africa, all were done between the wars.

Although Hemingway had his first great romance (with Agnes Von Kurowsky, his attending nurse after Hemingway was injured) during the war–not between the wars, the famous photo of her and Hemingway was in the exhibit. While I knew well that F. Scott Fitzgerald had done some serious editing on The Sun Also Rises and cut out the beginning and told Hemingway to start at a different place—and the rest is history—they had the actual letter Fitzgerald wrote to Hemingway expressing his disappointment at the beginning and making his suggestion to cut in strong terms. Uncharacteristically and probably because he was young and not yet confident, Hemingway did not resist and took Fitzgerald’s advice, much to the improvement of the book.

1918 Nurse Agnes von Kurowsky and American Red Cross volunteer Ernest Hemingway, Milan, Italy. Photograph in the Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

There also was a list of titles that Hemingway considered for The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1936). For those of you not familiar with this story, it is set in Africa and was published in September 1936 in Cosmopolitan Magazine concurrently with The Snows of Kilimanjaro. The story was eventually adapted to the screen as “The Macomber Affair” (1947).

The story deals with a dysfunctional marriage between Francis and Margot who are on a big game safari in Africa with a professional hunter Robert Wilson. On his first time out, Francis had panicked when a wounded lion charged him, which humiliated him in front of his wife who took far too much pleasure in mocking him about his act of cowardice. It is suggested that she sleeps with Robert Wilson. The next day the party hunt buffalo. Two are killed and one is wounded and retreats. It’s generally bad form, not to mention cruel all around, to leave a wounded animal as it is, and Francis and Wilson proceed to track him so that they can put him out of his misery. When they find the buffalo, it charges Francis Macomber. He stands his ground and fires, but his shots are too high. At the last second Macomber kills the buffalo with his last bullet and Margot fires a shot from her gun, which hits Macomber in the skull and kills him. Good times!

(Sorry, as a divorce lawyer I sometimes have a dark sense of humor on relationships.) Anyway, at the exhibit, there is a list of some of the alternate titles that Hemingway considered such as Marriage is a Dangerous Game, A Marriage has Terminated, The Cult of Violence, Marriage as a Bond.

Fitzgerald's advice typed up so we can read it easily. Actual handwritten letter was in the display. — HAPPY On the Sea

TO BE CONTINUED Next POST!

More about Hemingway’s Letters

For readers of Ernest Hemingway, it can be tempting to mix the iconic writer’s fictional characters with the public persona of the writer himself. He never kept a journal and apparently integrated many of his personal experiences into his art.

More of Hemingway’s letters are being published and they are so revealing and fun. For example, Hemingway is known as being a bit of a bully to his wives yet some of the letters show great sensitivities to Martha Gellhorn and admiration and support for her career as a writer. Please take a look when you have time.

Best, Christine

EH5598P 1940 Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn in Sun Valley, Idaho, 1940. Photographer unknown in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston. — EH5598P 1940
Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn in Sun Valley, Idaho, 1940. Photographer unknown in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

Play in LA about Hem and Scott: UPDATE RE CAST!

Ty Mayberry and Adam J. Harrington in Scott and Hem at the Falcon Theatre (photo by Jill Mamey).

If you are in the Toluca Lake area, this looks good, fun, thought provoking! There is a new cast member playing F. Scott Fitzgerald: now played by Kevin Blake. Please go to see it if you can! I have heard good things.

Love, Christine

Scott and Hem is a brilliant play about two brilliant literary giants– F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway– being presented at the Falcon Theatre from Oct. 14 to Nov. 15. The show puts the spotlight on F. Scott Fitzgerald (Kevin Blake) and Ernest Hemingway (Ty Mayberry) wrestling with the personal destruction that comes with their sparks of art and the perils of their creativity. It is a combative comedy fueled by Scott and Hem’s friendship and intense rivalry. The two legendary authors reunite in 1937 at Fitzgerald’s home in Hollywood’s fabled Garden of Allah, chaperoned by the saucy Ms. Eve Montaigne (Jackie Seiden). There they explore their mysterious bond and the genius that first brought them together, and ultimately tore them apart. It is written by Mark St. Germain, and Dimitri Toscas is at the helm of the show so perfectly cast. Scott and Hem is presented by Garry Marshall’s Falcon Theatre in Toluca Lake. Go to www.falcontheatre.com. #

More Hemingway and Fitzgerald

Scott and Zelda as seen in Midnight in Paris

In the world of renowned and important authors, it can be argued that no writer has ever given us as many interesting real life tales and correspondence than the “Papa” of 20th century fiction: Ernest Hemingway

They were the top dogs, supporters and admirers of the other. A few anecdotes of their relationship. note however that much as I love Hemingway, some of the anecdotes in A Moveable Feast may be read with some sense of possible embellishment–on occasion. Still, the relationship between Hem and Fitz is always fascinating.

THE NEXT VOLUME OF HEMINGWAY’S LETTERS 1926-1929

Just when you think everything that can possibly be written about Hemingway or his life or his writing has been done, another level of knowledge is uncovered.

The third volume of Hemingway’s letters, which covers the period 1926 to 1929, has been published. Those were truly wonderful years. He wrote The Sun Also Rises in about six weeks—at least for the first draft—in 1926. It was published in 1927. These letters cover correspondence with some of the literary luminaries of the day as well as cover a very rich and turbulent period for Hemingway.

We are all familiar with the spare prose and tight structure of his writing. Consequently, his letters are surprisingly rambling and fun. He writes very honestly about his divorce from his first wife, Hadley, and of the pain of falling in love with a woman who became their mutual friend, Vogue journalist Pauline Pfeiffer. He also wrote of the drama of the birth of his first son, Patrick, by cesarean section during which Pauline almost died. It also was at this period of time that he relocated to Key West and completed his second book Men Without Women.

While Hemingway aficionados are familiar with his dislike of his mother throughout his life, it may be less well known that he was very fond of his father who killed himself. In the letter to Pauline’s mother following his father’s suicide, he wrote, “I was awfully fond of my father—and still feel very badly about it all and not able to get it out of my mind and my book into my mind.”

Seventy percent of the letters have never been published before. They reveal a side to Hemingway that has had very little exposure: his intense drive to be the best writer out there, his insecurities, his enjoyment of a little gossip. He wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald asking him to write “all the dirt.”

It also seems clear that the culminating event in A Farewell to Arms, i.e. Catherine’s death during childbirth—is based in large part on Pauline’s difficulties. At the end of A Farewell to Arms when the nurse asks Frederic Henry if he’s proud of his newborn son, Frederic’s response is almost verbatim from a Hemingway letter in which he replied, “No, he nearly killed his mother.”

Hemingway had always asked that his letters never be published, but his fourth wife Mary agreed to the publication of some and I’m not familiar enough with the details of the estate to know exactly how these came to be published.

Read the letters and enjoy. Also, if you’re in New York catch the exhibit that’s at the Morgan Library. You won’t regret it. Love, Christine