All about Hemingway
Minn. native Mary Hemingway, wife of Ernest, memorialized in Bemidji
Mary was Hemingway’s fourth wife and his widow. She took a fair amount of abuse. I was never certain if she truly loved him that much or if she loved being Mrs. Ernest Hemingway that much. She survived his infatuation with Adriana Ivancich, his bad behavior and heavy drinking that was the precursor to that bad behavior and she helped as ill health hit both of them, but particularly Hemingway.
Hemingway seemed to like all sorts of women but the kind that he married was level headed and smart. He never left Pauline for Jane Kendall Mason, beautiful though she was, as she was emotionally unstable. Hadley, Pauline, Martha, and Mary were all stable, intelligent women. All but Hadley were journalists in their own right. All but Martha were very deferential to Hemingway and perhaps that’s why he always said that was the one marriage he regretted.
Anyway, Mary is being honored in her hometown in MN. All of the other three wives strangely were from St. Louis.
You may be baffled, as you read letter one, by Hemingway’s arrogance. READ ON. Really fun and funny by two writers at the top of their powers and who at least at that point, genuinely liked and admired the other’s skills and persona.
Now that Cuba has opened a bit, more opportunities for on location filming is possible. The new biopic about Hem’s declining years was just filmed and it sounds like the producer was able to use the actual Cuban locations. However, more of this should be possible in the future.
Hemingway brings to life the pleasures of a warm and friendly café, in his Paris memoir, A Moveable Feast.
A fellow Hemingway fan, Will TIncher, has written a work of about 66,000 words exploring a fictional setting that follows Hemingway as an old man on a road trip with his aspiring baseball player neighbor, just before the actual death of Hemingway. He reconstructed possible conversations from all of Hemingway’s works and tried to show the sum of the man at the end of an incredible life. The text also offers a parallel narrative of the young ball player’s future experiences in the Vietnam War. Take a look!
This is beyond amusing. Try one. I earlier posted the one of A Farewell to Arms. I think Hemingway would laugh like crazy, drink in hand.
Hemingway’s house is being restored to its former loveliness. Not as elegant as his Key West home, I think it suited him better. Visitors To his Cuban home still cannot go in but can peek through the windows. The excitement of getting to view the places he wrote is catching and I hope to make Cuba my next trip.
The above article discusses Hemingway’s time in Cuba, self-medication perhaps with alcohol, and his love for his Cuban home. Very interesting. Best, Christine
This article is interesting. While we often remember the first line of a favorite novel, this writer talks about the power of the last line, with his favorite being the last line of THE SUN ALSO RISES. Read other moving final lines.
