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Home , A Farewell to Arms, Carlos Baker, Death in the Afternoon, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Grace Hall Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa

theHemingway newsletter Publication of The Society | No. 73 | 2021

As the Pandemic Ends Yet the / Conference Remains Postponed Until Lynda M. Zwinger, editor 2022 the Hemingway Society of the Arizona Quarterly, as well as acquisitions editors Programs a Second Straight Aurora Bell (the University of Summer of Online Webinars.… South Carolina Press), James Only This Time They’re W. Long (LSU Press), and additional special guests. Designed to Confront the Friday, July 16, 1 p.m. Uncomfortable Questions. That’s EST: Teaching , moderated by Juliet Why We’re Calling It: Conway We’ll kick off the literary discussions with a panel on Two classic posters from Hemingway’s teaching The Sun Also Rises, moderated dangerous summer suggest the spirit of ours: by recent University of Edinburgh A Dangerous the courage, skill, and grace necessary to Ph.D. alumna Juliet Conway, who has a confront the bull. (Courtesy: eBay) great piece on the in the current Summer Hemingway Review. Dig deep into n one of the most powerful passages has voted to offer a series of webinars four Hemingway’s classic. in his account of the 1959 Fridays in a row in July and August. While Whether you’re preparing to teach it rivalry between matadors Antonio last summer’s Houseguest Hemingway or just want to revisit it with fellow IOrdóñez and Luis Miguel Dominguín, programming was a resounding success, aficionados, this session will review the describes returning to organizers don’t want simply to repeat last publication history, reception, and major and rediscovering the bravery year’s model. Led by Hemingway Review critical approaches that have shaped the of a citizenry he had met more than thirty- editor Suzanne del Gizzo, the team takes way we understand this important work. five years earlier when first inspired to its inspiration from another significant Panelists: Susan Farrell, Jeffrey Herlihy- immortalize the region in The Sun Also moment in when Mera, and Katie Warczak. Rises: Hemingway lists the “three great requisites Friday, July 23, 1 p.m. EST: Teaching “The faces that were young once were for a matador”: what is needed is “courage, Hemingway’s Short Stories, moderated old as mine but everyone remembered skill in his profession and grace in the by Frederic J. Svoboda how we were. The eyes had not changed.… presence of the danger of death.” A Zoom The editor of Kent State University No mouths were bitter no matter what webinar may not seem like much of an Press’s excellent Hemingway’s Short the eyes had seen. Bitter lines around the arena of mortal combat—unless your Stories: Reflections on Teaching, Reading, mouth are the first sign of defeat. Nobody Internet connection is wonky—but we do and Understanding (2019) will lead was defeated.” believe criticism is an exercise of courage, a roundtable on the advantages and The quote describes how many feel skill, and grace. challenges of including Hemingway’s as fifteen months of pandemic worry and Accordingly, please join us for the short fiction on syllabi of all levels. Does isolation fade amid the Great Reopening. following: the fabled “” resonate with It’s not an overstatement to say living Wednesday, July 14, 1 p.m. EST: through Covid-19 has posed professional Academic writing and publishing and personal challenges likely to be the webinar co-sponsored with the F. Scott Inside greatest we face in our lives. And while Fitzgerald Society and 's it feels good to unmask and re-immerse, The series kicks off with a webinar Hemingway: Participants, Critics, we do so with an abundance of caution, designed to help graduate students and and Society Members Respond...... 4 the most practical decision of which is to emerging scholars better understand the push what was supposed to be our 2020 publication process of journal articles, Remembering Stresa 2002...... 12 conference, and then our 2021 conference, monographs, and essay collections. back another year to July 17-23, 2022. Panelists will include del Gizzo, who Interviews...... 16 Faced with a second consecutive has helmed The Hemingway Review 2020 in Facts and Figures...... 23 summer of plans placed on hold, the for more than five years now, Lee board of the Hemingway Society, under Zimmerman of Hofstra University, editor In Memoriam...... 30 the advisement of the media committee, of Twentieth Century Literature, and 2021 | No. 73 | 1 On Being Postponed Again: A Pre-Post-Pandemic Letter Your Correspondent can’t remember exactly when the Wyoming/Montana conference was postponed the second time. Your Correspondent can’t quite remember much of what happened the past fifteen months, to be honest. I do know I was wrongly accused of punching Hemingway Society Leadership Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald in the stomach with dirty hands by an Internet twerp Carl P. Eby Ernest Hemingway with bull, near named McSweeney. Which would be Appalachian State University Pamplona, . 1927. a pretty good parlor trick considering President (2020-2022) students today? Do we teach too much that Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn’t even Gail Sinclair or not enough theme? What in the South of in 1920 when Independent Scholar works work best in the classroom? said punching was reputed to have taken Vice President (2020-2023) Should we stick to the classics, or place. Your Correspondent wasn’t either Verna Kale should we expose novice literature but that’s not the point. The point is Penn State University students to the unexpected Hemingway that had Your Correspondent knotted Treasurer (2021-2023) to upend their stereotypes? Panelists: Mr. Fitzgerald’s innards with a slug he Ross Tangedal, John Beall, Don Daiker, would have to have long reach. Your Matthew Nickel and Susan F. Beegel. Correspondent does have good reach, but Misericordia University Friday, July 30, 1 p.m. EST: transatlantic it’s not. Board Member (2019-2021) Hemingway and Race, moderated by Whether Your Correspondent Michael von Cannon Marc K. Dudley remembers exactly when the Wyoming/ Gulf Coast University How might the Black Lives Matter Montana conference was postponed a Board Member (2020-2022) movement affect the way we read, second time isn’t the point, either. The teach, and write about Hemingway? point is that with the alphabet boys from Kirk Curnutt Will it? If so, in what ways? Hemingway the CDC claiming the virus has been Troy University and Race is a large and complicated put down like a shark with a .22 to the Board Member (2021-2023) topic. Hemingway wrote about Native forehead it isn’t likely to be postponed Lisa Tyler peoples and had a long relationship a third time. And that means Society Sinclair Community College with the Latin world. This panel will members need to remember to remake Board Member (2020-2021) focus primarily on Hemingway’s the arrangements they had made almost interactions with Black people, his two years ago when we thought we Suzanne del Gizzo were headed there. Housing, travel, portrayals of Black characters, and his Chestnut Hill College registration—it all has to be done over. awareness of and relationship to social Ex Officio Member, Editor, Your Correspondent recommends getting movements related to race. Panelists: The Hemingway Review that housing done right away. Word has Gary Edward Holcomb, Ian Marshall, trickled down that AirBnBs in Cooke Joseph Flora Quentin D. Miller, and Peggy Wright- City are already as sparse as my adverbs. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Cleveland. You do not want to be the one who Ex Officio Member, Past-President Friday, August 6, 1 p.m. EST: shows up in Yellowstone National Park Cecil Ponder Hemingway and Sex, moderated by saying Well, I’ll be of unsavory parentage Independent Suzanne del Gizzo because I have no place to stay. We do not Business Systems Manager How does the #MeToo movement recommend camping out that week. affect the way we read, teach, and Sandra Spanier You know who does recommend you write about Hemingway? Gender and Penn State University camp out? sexuality have been defining topics Director, Hemingway Letters Project The coyotes, that’s who. in Hemingway scholarship for nearly So even though if you’re like Your forty years now, but #MeToo adds new Correspondent who isn’t exactly rushing levels of complexity to that already to the Internet to book travel when rich discussion, inviting us to think airlines are full of fistfights and hotel about the dynamics of sex, seduction, lobbies have more conflict than the The Hemingway Newsletter and sexual violence in Hemingway’s shores of the Piave in 1918, it’s time to. Your Correspondent: Kirk Curnutt work. Panelists include Carl Eby, Debra Reregistration for July 2022, our [email protected] Moddelmog, and Lisa Tyler. president reports, will reopen in August. Design/Layout: Julene Ewert We look forward to seeing Society And just to be clear, our president www.juleneewert.com members in Zoom one final summer is not also president of the Maine Tuna [email protected] before we can reunite in person in Club. How the pandemic affected that 2022! ■ fine organization is a chapter for another book. ■ 2 | Hemingway newsletter 2020 Lewis-Reynolds- Smith Founders Fellowship Recipient Iñaki Sagarna Describes What It’s Like for a Pandemic to Upend Research Plans—and How Perseverance Ultimately Pays Off

e received the Lewis- Reynolds-Smith Founders Fellowship a month before Wthe outbreak of Covid-19. Our goal was to use the grant to gather extra information for an exhibit to open July 31, 2020. Thus, after receiving the fellowship, plans were made to visit , Barcelona, and Salamanca looking for references about the stay of Hemingway in the Basque Country. However, we only made it to Salamanca (the Spanish Civil archive is hosted there) before the lockdown. Fortunately for us, and thanks to the big and generous help of the Hemingway Society, key information was obtained to make a more comprehensive exhibit. Now that Covid-19 is fading away, the Basque Museum of Gernika has as of March 31, 2021, after a The opening of the Hemingway & Euskal Herria exhibition in late March 2021 at long time, opened the postponed the Euskal Herria Museum of Gernika-Lumo. Above, the cover of the sixty-four page exhibit, Hemingway & Euskal exhibit catalog. Herria. The different panels deal with Hemingway’s relationship with the Basque Country, and Basques over the whole world, including , Nevada and . The Founders fellowship support was instrumental to gain extra knowledge on the life of Basques such as Juan Duñabeitia, Jose Maria Uzelai, and Andres Unzain about their wanderings after the . Once the pandemic is over, we still hope to go to Madrid and Barcelona. ■

2021 | No. 73 | 3 The graphics for Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's documentary emphasized a point Society members have long understood: Hemingway was a man of words as much as action. (Courtesy PBS) Special Report: Part I: Familiar Society Faces Prove Scholars Can Be as Charismatic and Insightful on The Last Good Life Story the Screen as Any Talking-Head As the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick Documentary Superstar

Hemingway Premieres on PBS, the ED. NOTE: Although the documentary Literary Event of Spring 2021, the Reaction to Its featured input from such literary institutions as Edna O’Brien, Tobias Detailed, Nuanced Look at the Legend and the Art Wolff, and , among others, for many Society members it was a quartet of Demonstrates that No Two Readers Agree on How Hemingway colleagues who commanded the screen. We were so impressed we decided to an Icon’s Biography Should Be Told play four questions with our Fab Four.

ED. NOTE: The April 5, 6, and 7 premiere of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s Susan F. Beegel: three-night, six-hour documentary on Ernest Hemingway prompted more commentary on the writer than any biography, film, or previously unpublished How did you prepare for your manuscript in recent memory. What was particularly striking was the breadth and interview? variety of the reaction. The lack of consensus had nothing to do with the quality; I prepare for interviews while doing reviewers and viewers alike concurred that the mixture of interviews, photography, things like prepping dinner, loading the film clips (Hello, Martha!), and even some inventive animation with manuscripts dishwasher, or walking the dog. These are was effective. What nobody could quite agree on is who Hemingway was. The range good times to rehearse in my head answers of response was particularly apparent when Society members gathered on Zoom to the questions I hope I will get asked. on April 10 for a post-watch party with special guest Geoffrey Ward, who wrote When I travel, I take along an excellent the documentary, in conversation with Krista Quesenberry, Paul Hendrickson, and pocket chronology of Hemingway’s life by Steven Florczyk. While the event was cathartic for aficionados just then beginning to Mike Reynolds to read in the airport or venture out after a year in pandemic lockdown, the roundtable also illustrated that hotel room the night before. This quick fix the Hemingway mystique remains as irresistible and impenetrable as ever. In this reminds me of episodes and connections it special report, we take a peek behind the scenes, survey the critics, and let Society might be fun to talk about and protects me members voice their opinions. against making errors about dates or other details. 4 | Hemingway newsletter Susan F. Beegel with Burns and producer Sara Botstein.

I also carry a copy of ’s really nothing to fear about taping. If you Was there anything you said that Life, still the most accurate, best- sneeze or your hair falls in your face or when you watched the documentary you documented, and easiest-to-use biography your shirt is buttoned crooked or you thought “Oh, I mangled that answer” or for rapid reference. The worst mistake botch a sentence or draw a blank or lose by contrast, was there a moment where you can make in an interview is the one your voice, the take can be done over or you thought, “Hey, I have no memory you don’t realize you’ve made until you edited out. The entire film crew has your saying that … but it sounds pretty good”! get home. All you have to do is say 1925 back. They are watching every detail There are no mangled answers in a instead of 1926, and you walk out the door and want you to look good—and no one Burns-Novick film. The mangled answers leaving behind a ruined take that might is better at this than the Burns-Novick are on the cutting room floor. What otherwise have been excellent material, team. I mean, the sound guy is looking at you see on screen represents just a few or, worse still, a take with an error that a digital readout of your voice that tells minutes chosen from a much longer makes its way onto national TV with your him you need a drink of water before you taped interview. I was happy with the name on it. It’s important to be sharp and know you’re thirsty. You are just having a material chosen from my interview—I feel fresh about details and ready to check very intense conversation with one other like the best things I said went in, along something if you are unsure and even ask person in a circle of very bright light. In with some more workaday quotations for a redo if need be. With luck, if you this case, that person is Ken Burns, who to help bridge the overall narrative or to review the night before, you won’t have to. is a master at relaxing people, drawing contrast with other speakers’ opinions. What was your greatest fear going them out, challenging them, and even Plus, a little kidding around. What was into the taping? bushwhacking them into a good interview. most meaningful to me was being used as I’ve done more than a dozen TV But, if I had one concern going in, it voiceover in a place or two. It was special documentaries and used to compete in was the heat. It was 98 degrees in NYC that to see how the directors visualized some of debate and extemporaneous speaking, day and to film we had to turn off the air- the things I spoke about. so I relish interviews and was especially conditioning, which was old and noisy. To If you could pick only one word to honored and excited to be interviewed by this, add klieg lights. I was worried about describe what it’s like to watch yourself someone of Ken Burns’s caliber. Nerves are maintaining my energy and focus and in a documentary, it would be? a good thing—adrenalin is a performance- concerned about everyone else, too. Whatever the word is, it’s the same one enhancing drug, after all—but there’s you’d use to describe seeing your written work in print.

2021 | No. 73 | 5 Watching myself in a Ken Burns production was absolutely surreal (my all-encompassing word). I’m thrilled and truly humbled by the experience. I’ve told both the film’s directors (Ken Burns and Lynn Novick) that this documentary experience (the filming, the consulting, the conversation with so many smart people) has been the most fun I’ve had since graduate school. My spotlight moment was surreal to say the least. I was flown to NYC, introduced to what seemed like a dozen folks on set, was prepped by make-up, and then placed in front of the camera and the lights (and I thought I heard the word “action”). I taped for over two hours; and I think I spent the better part of that Marc K. Dudley (Courtesy: .com) first hour just processing my present-day reality. I’m still not done processing! Verna with Hemingway’s favorite president at the Museum of Natural History, snapped Marc K. Dudley: by Susan on a break How did you prepare for your What was your greatest fear going interviews? into the taping? How did I prepare for the interview? I was afraid I would say something I didn’t. While I thought of prepping, I factually wrong or unintentionally honestly had no idea where to even begin, and disgrace myself. so I went in cold, crossing my fingers, insistent on just trying to enjoy the Was there anything you said that moment. And I did! when you watched the documentary you What was your greatest fear going thought “Oh, I mangled that answer” or into the taping? by contrast, was there a moment where That stage-fright would kick in and you thought, “Hey, I have no memory that I’d draw a blank when the cameras Verna Kale (Courtesy: imdb.com) saying that … but it sounds pretty good”! started rolling. I’m in the film really briefly—just a Was there anything you said that Verna Kale: few remarks about Gellhorn. One of the when you watched the documentary you public intellectuals I admire most (Tressie How did you prepare for your thought “Oh, I mangled that answer” or McMillan Cottom) tweeted about what interviews? by contrast, was there a moment where I said, which was kind of my worst fear I re-read my own book as a refresher. you thought, “Hey, I have no memory come true: saying that … but it sounds pretty good”! I had also already read a draft of Geoffrey I spent a couple of solid hours in that C. Ward’s script because I was serving as a interview chair, and I recall talking a great program advisor, so I had a sense of what deal about race-related matters, some of story the film was going to tell. I went to But maybe this will motivate me to the short stories, and Hemingway’s , for several days of meetings with finally publish the Gellhorn chapter of but I completely forgot being asked about the filmmakers before my scheduled tape ye olde dissertation. Overall though I The Sun Also Rises. Seeing myself for the day. We finished up our meetings early, so really enjoyed watching the series live and first time on-screen talking about that I had a day and a half free in New York. I following what people were saying in real novel was a pleasant surprise! don’t have a lot of free time in general, so time with the #HemingwayPBS hashtag. If you could pick only one word to instead of cramming for my interview, I It was a communal experience and describe what it’s like to watch yourself enjoyed the chance to go to the Museum people had some really witty and moving in a documentary, it would be? of Natural History with Susan Beegel (who took this picture of me and Teddy reactions. Roosevelt), to visit the Morgan Library, If you could pick only one word to and to meet up with at places that describe what it’s like to watch yourself don’t have kids meals. in a documentary, it would be Recognized.

6 | Hemingway newsletter only thing that mattered was Lynn’s face. left off. She is a terrific interviewer and, She not only asked wonderfully intelligent most of all, a terrific conversationalist. In questions, she responded to my answers Hemingway, she and Ken Burns and their with her mobile face, so that I couldn’t talented team brought forth a beautiful help but remain focused on her. I think and sensitive documentary, making her expressions conducted my answers, writing and even thinking come alive, managed the tempo, created emphases, and avoiding all pitfalls, pathos, and and elicited emotion, much as Zubin stereotypes. My admiring congratulations Mehta’s eyes and face and hands do when to them all. he conducts the Israel Philharmonic. It was a wonderful conversation, guided by that Part II: The Man in the expressive face of hers. I don’t remember how long it lasted, but I do remember that Mirror: Despite an Aggregated I enjoyed myself, the way one does when 89/100 Score on Metacritic. a class goes well, when you know that real com, Hemingway Proves Miriam Mandel (Courtesy: imdb.com) communication has taken place, when you feel that understanding has occurred and that Reviewers Remain Miriam Mandel: insights have been achieved. It was that Wildly Conflicted about the kind of a high. How did you prepare for your Was there anything you said that Writer’s Accomplishments and interviews? when you watched the documentary you Relevance I got to know Lynn beforehand. thought “Oh, I mangled that answer” or My part was filmed in at the 2018 by contrast, was there a moment where … why a film about Hemingway now, Hemingway Conference. Lynn came a you thought, “Hey, I have no memory and not, say, Faulkner? Is Faulkner not couple of times to my hotel, before the saying that … but it sounds pretty good”! a more vibrant figure, who prefigured in interview, and we met and had coffee and For two years I didn’t know if all that his Snopes stories and the age of talked and talked: she is a tremendously fun had ended up in film or on the cutting Trump and Derek Chauvin’s trial, and engaging person, a great listener, an open floor. Sandy Spanier and Verna Kale, who the Gordian knot of race that continues and intelligent speaker, and just fun to be were advising the documentary team and to choke large portions of our country? with. In no time at all we had exchanged saw previews, at one point told me I was In this context, Burns and Novick’s family histories and partner stories. By the in, or at least had been in, in the version Hemingway feels a little anachronistic, and time the day of the filming came around, they saw. Seeing the documentary itself “smells of the museums,” as Stein once said I felt we knew each other very well and was exciting, waiting to see if I indeed was of Hemingway.… could talk easily. in it, and when and where I would show Stein’s voice and her experiments with On the appointed day I went over to up. And yes, there I was, with my makeup sound are part of the spine of his work, her hotel, where the crew was, with my and silver earrings, my little black frock and how gripping is that? To realize that silver earrings and my very best little and my very worn copy of Death in the Hemingway’s famously muscular prose black frock carefully rolled up in a paper Afternoon nowhere to be seen. was born of admiration for a middle- bag. Lynn nixed the frock but allowed the If you could pick only one word to aged lesbian’s sui-generis sentences and earrings. She then turned me over to the describe what it’s like to watch yourself paragraphs? Absorbing Stein’s influence, makeup woman, who made me feel like in a documentary, it would be and admitting to his attraction, was one a movie star by brushing blush here and Odd. Watching myself was an odd way of getting at what he always longed drawing smudgy blue lines there, and then experience—odd but oddly pleasant. Even for: to be a girl in love with a powerful I was cautioned to step carefully over a odder was hearing myself before I was woman. —Hilton Als, bunch of cables and wires that decorated actually on screen, as happens a couple of the floor between me and the chair I was times in the documentary. Whatever you already know, or don’t to occupy. I clutched my very worn copy of There were a goodly number of emails know, about Ernest Hemingway and hoping to be asked that came to me after the documentary, his work—and his life—the new PBS to read from it. I don’t remember if I was. some from high school friends of long documentary Hemingway is certain to add What was your greatest fear going ago asking if that was me, and one very more to that body of knowledge. And, very into the taping? interesting missive from someone who likely, it will make you reassess much of That I would sound stilted. But Lynn responded to my accent, saying it filled it. As a Ken Burns and company literary made sure I didn’t. She sat across from him with nostalgia: he was a Cuban who biography, Hemingway is even better than me and the conversation began. It was the had come to Puerto Rico, had gone to the their previous documentary on Mark most natural and easygoing conversation same school I went to, and had had his Twain. And my levels of praise don’t get you can imagine, and although there was a Bar Mitzva in the synagogue my parents much higher than that. lighting person there, and a sound person, helped establish and in which I was —David Bianculli, NPR and a make-up person (who stopped the married. Someday I hope to meet him and proceedings at one point because my left see what his accent sounds like. ear had gotten too shiny and needed to Most of all, though, I hope to meet up be powdered), and a lot of equipment, the with Lynn again and pick up where we

2021 | No. 73 | 7 Most surprisingly, the documentary shows a man who—far from being a relic of the past—is instead an avatar for the 21st century, with the narrative coalescing around themes near and dear to the millennial heart: gender inequity, mental health, and the thirst for fame. —Brin-Jonathan Butler, Bloomberg.com

It’s not that the documentary is uninformative—Burns and Novick seem to have access to every pertinent location, letter, photo, film clip, and interviewee related to their subject. But the overall tone and approach tends to remain no matter what the subject, whether it’s the Civil War, , baseball, the , or Ernest Hemingway. As always, there’s As The New Yorker’s illustration to Hilton Als’s review suggested, most critics strove to ’s warm narration, elegiac discover the 7/8 of Hemingway hidden beneath the surface. (Courtesy: The New Yorker) music, and a fairly simple narrative arc. What it adds up to, though, is a tendency fiction writers would now claim him Part III: Several Readers toward depoliticization, but by now Burns as a star to steer by. In comparison, the Write: Society Members Weigh is renowned for his ability to sand off influence of , transfigured the spikier, more interesting parts of his in the crucible of Toni Morrison’s genius In, Respectful but Varied in subjects. —Eileen Jones, Jacobin and legacy, can be detected everywhere. Reaction —Laura Miller, Slate … an engaging and beautifully I would like to see more about constructed character study and proof that Hemingway is unmistakably an attempt , Arkansas and the American whatever [Ken] Burns chooses to cover as to reassert the author’s place in the 20th- west. —Pat Atwater a filmmaker will more than likely become century literary canon, but Burns and the definitive documentary on that specific Novick do not shy away from telling you I recall the comment that among topic. In Hemingway’s case, it’s a story that things that may—and in my case definitely English language writers only Shakespeare is a lot more sensitive than one could’ve did—move you toward the conclusion that has had more written about him than imagined. —Kiko Martinez, Variety Hemingway was more problematic than has Ernest Hemingway. And why not? many celebrities who have been “canceled” Hemingway made his work out of his life. So what can Hemingway tell us in recent years. Midway through watching He also sought experiences, rich in their about what American writers owe to the series, I wrote in my notes, “I’m own right, which would serve as fodder Hemingway? Whatever that debt is, it’s a starting to get the sense that Burns and and he invited his contemporaries to view lot, according to the various writers and Novick don’t like Hemingway either.” his work in that context. The brilliance of literary scholars who appear as talking When the facts are bad enough, objectivity the documentary was in showing how the heads in the documentary, but they (Edna becomes its own judgment. —Scott Porch, themes of war, death, love and , so O’Brien, Tobias Wolff, Mario Vargas Llosa) The Daily Beast prominent in his work, were embedded in are fairly long in the tooth, and few young these life experiences. —William Berg 8 | Hemingway newsletter My reaction to the Ken Burns / Lynn (c) He had the characteristic strengths discuss in detail, are quickly summarized, Novick Hemingway documentary is and weaknesses of a self-made intellectual. their differences in technique from the mixed. The main issue is, for those that Independent in his thinking, but with large early stories not discussed, nor are their have studied Hemingway for any length lacunae that couldn’t be filled without a discussion of ongoing themes, such as of time, the documentary was necessarily lot of time and labor—which he had no , hunting, or Hemingway’s ongoing incomplete – at six hours. So, what to inclination to invest. fascination with gender roles. include? On one hand, the portions that (I wouldn’t claim to be immune to any Burns’s team did a superb job in focused on the writing were very effective, of these factors, myself—but who cares? finding illustrations, film clips, and but again, excluded, or too quickly If a mouse and an elephant are under interviews that I had never seen before, skimmed over some key works. On the examination, you can probably ignore the like the one with . And personal front, they took a necessarily mouse). they accompanied all with appropriate and unvarnished look at his complicated life, Any writer who discusses a famous even moving musical accompaniment. but again, that should still flow naturally writer this way is asking for trouble. But I Their talking heads were interesting within the confines of the film. At a couple can claim to be at least partially immune choices. Susan Beegel, Miriam Mandel, of key moments, it did not. For example, in all three categories. A: I’m minor- Mary Dearborn, Verna Kale, and Amanda there was a random clip of Patrick stating league famous and comparatively bland. Vaill are all extremely well-qualified that his father didn’t care much about B: Happily married for over a half-century Hemingway scholars—and they are all the Cuban people, so that’s what a viewer to the same woman, and C: Somewhat women, helping convey subliminally may come away with. This is contradicted guilty, but in fact I do have more formal that Hemingway is not just a beer- by the recent book, Ernesto by Andrew education than a writer needs. Mostly swilling, gun-toting misogynist. Patrick Feldman. The film also emphasizes a later in physical science and mathematics, Hemingway, of course, deserves to be in life letter regarding James Jones which fortunately—an M.F.A. doth not a scholar there by birth—the other sons are dead. arbitrarily attempts to inject race into make. —Joe Haldeman Michael Katakis’s presence, I assume, the conversation, as if Burns/Novick felt came through Patrick, for Katakis was pressured to check off a box. It doesn’t I appreciated the series and enjoyed the his literary manager for nineteen years; work well. If they wanted to address race experience of watching. Many photographs anyone who approached the Hemingway and Hemingway, they shouldn’t have I had not seen before. Otherwise, nothing estate (which Patrick ran after Mary’s breezed past and new for me, after a half-century of reading death) for publication rights had to go should have referred to the work of Toni Ernest’s works, except one thing. I never through Katakis. Morrison on Hemingway in Playing in the knew Gellhorn had a picture of Ernest in The authors who commented on Dark. —Julie S. Campbell her dormitory room. Hemingway and his influence—Wolff, If I watch the series again I shall mute Tim O’Brien, Verghese, Edna O’Brien, Last night we watched the last of the the commentary by the writers. They and Llosa—are all old enough to collect six-hour Ken Burns/Lynn Novick series added nothing to the discussion. Social Security. Which is to say that they on Ernest Hemingway, an author I’ve read —Barry Chafin are of generations affected more directly and studied for more than fifty years. Of by Hemingway, as were , course, there are moments in the six hours The three-part Ken Burns’ bio-pic playwright Tom Stoppard (who began as that one may, or must, argue about. But by Hemingway was meant for general a short story writer), and Ralph Ellison. and large it was an impressive job, both as audiences, not for literary scholars. Thus, But where are younger writers, those of scholarship and as entertainment. it emphasizes Hemingway’s life, those twenty-five, thirty-five, or fifty? How do Daniel Feinberg sums up the aspects more appealing, or more titillating, they feel about Hemingway? We don’t intellectual environment pretty well in two such as his romances with four wives know, because either Burns did not ask, or statements: and other women, and his experiments if he did, the answers he got were not in Is 2021 the worst time imaginable for with gender crossing. Literary texts are accordance with his script. a six-hour documentary about Ernest mentioned, briefly scrutinized, and then Hemingway was indeed the most Hemingway? we’re on to the next woman. Valuable was famous writer of the twentieth-century. Maybe. the discussion of Dr. Ed Hemingway’s Men’s magazines of the fifties, from Argosy Is 2021 the best time imaginable for mental problems, which Ernest and to Playboy regularly featured stories by a six-hour documentary about Ernest his sons inherited, as well as Ernest’s or about him; furniture and rum are still Hemingway? concussions and alcoholism. sold under his name. Almost no writers Maybe. Short stories such as “,” today exclusively use the stripped-down, Hemingway’s work is a prism through “Hills Like White Elephants,” and “The simple declarative sentences that initially which we can observe (a) the twentieth Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” made Hemingway famous, but almost all century, (b) human nature, and (c) get a fair amount of attention, though not of them have followed him in discarding literature, with large caveats— all that they deserve. The scholars who O. Henry surprise endings in favor of a (a) The author’s fame and powerful commented talk of Hemingway’s bare- portrait of a situation with psychological personality distort the environment bones style, his sparse sentences (true ramifications—which, in Hemingway’s around him like a neutron star. only of his early work), and how much has case, he left for the reader to supply. He (b) He was both susceptible to and been left out. They don’t say what has been was not the first to emphasize psychology blind to women. left out, and that’s a pity, but only from over plot twists, and Chekov my perspective. The novels, too long to were there before him. But Hemingway 2021 | No. 73 | 9 made James readable for the common human and therefore relatable through for his literary work. His final inability to man, and writers today of literary his faults and desires, yet at the same time write overcame any promise he made to pretensions follow him in portraits of beyond the grasp of the ordinary through son Jack who said they agreed to never kill behavior and their meanings. —Peter Hays his work and the life he pursued. themselves. Without writing and his art, I —Justin Rodstrom believe, he ceased to live. Ken Burns and Lynn Novick deserve If people read and appreciate his a Hemingway hat tip. This was no As a contributor of my discovery literary work more due to the series, I hagiography but all the better for that. A of Ernest Hemingway’s long lost believe it will have succeeded. tough, at times, but rewarding watch with home movies, filmed in on —Scott Schwar plenty for both students and scholars. April 7,1935, with an assist by F. Scott Reminded the fans of the greatness of Fitzgerald’s granddaughter Eleanor A triumph not only for Hemingway Hemingway while rescuing the man and Lanahan in 2003, I was amazed in how it and his work, but an equal triumph for the writer from the virtual dustbin of was put to great use in episode two, among Hadley, Pauline, Martha, Mary, and history. All topped off by honest, insightful the treasure trove of photos and other Patrick. Heartbreak and humanity as only commentary from such as the great Edna footage housed at the JFK Library in the Florentine Films can expose. O’Brien. Thank you, Ken and Lynn for Hemingway Collection and felt despite —Ross Tangedal giving us back our man. —Angus Laverty the time constraints of the nearly six-hour documentary, Ken Burns and Florentine I read Hemingway as a boy growing up Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s Films did a master work of humanizing the in Montana. I knew he was often boorish, documentary does an excellent job of legendary and self-mythologized Ernest coarse, rude and aggressive but I didn’t reviving a much-needed new focus Hemingway. Grateful Ken included me realize until watching the Burns-Novick on Hemingway for the 21st century. and Cristen Hemingway Jaynes in the documentary that many of those rough Choosing familiar celebrities and writers credits. — Scott Rossi spots were actually signs of psychosis. Tobias Wolff, Edna O’Brien made it less I was bewildered by the way he treated intimidating for audiences unfamiliar his I appreciated hearing your enthusiasm his wives (even beating Mary), ditched work. There were many wonderful pictures for the Burns-Novick Hemingway series. his boys, turned on Stein and Anderson not widely or previously shared. However, Lynn was at the 2016 Hemingway Society and loved the grotesque slaughtering of I would have preferred even more scholars Conference in Oak Park/River Forest animals. I learned from Hemingway what speaking about Hemingway, and his time to talk about the work that they were no biography ever told me, that the man period, as there is a huge resurgence of doing on the documentary. I’m glad that who wrote “The Last Good Country” was scholarship. I was hoping to see more it increased your feelings for his writing. sadistic for a good share of his life. The about his relationships with various For many years, I looked forward to a Burns-Novick film made me very sad for I modernist writers like Fitzgerald, Ring major discussion on Hemingway the Artist love Hemingway. —Dave Thomas Lardner, , Dos Passos, and not solely on the man and myth. and . —Gloria Monaghan Hemingway was a hard-working artist This must be a well-known anecdote who got up early on a daily basis to write in the Hemingway community, but it is Burns and Novick’s Hemingway will and that often gets lost. His short stories something that has stayed with me since I undoubtedly provoke argument and and then later released novels also explore read Dearborn’s biography of Hemingway. invite corrections. It may well enlighten many themes that are still hot topics today “I just want to say that Hemingway made those with only a surface awareness of such as date rape, abortion, sex change, it possible for me to be who I am,” she the legends that have gathered around the androgyny and dealing with injuries. Read documents an attendant saying, noting Papa figure and largely obscured the writer a novel of the time, and you can see how that it was difficult to determine the inside. It may well harden the views of he changed English language expression. speaker’s gender. Edna O’Brien remarks Hemingway’s detractors on any number of I know his history, but seeing again in the documentary how some parts art and behavioral issues. But it may also how the concussions, posttraumatic stress, of could have been spur some new readers in Hemingway’s bodily and head injuries (cars and planes written by a woman. Though Hemingway’s direction. It also will help to affirm how and war), family inherited mental illness androgyny has been recognized since the and why we connect with lasting literature. and the problems of self-medicating that 1980s, there is something truly satisfying —Steve Paul (from his review of the exasperated alcoholism made me wonder in how the filmmakers highlight this documentary in The Kansas City Star) in some appreciation as to how he could important aspect of Hemingway that we even write during his last of decade. don’t often give him enough credit for: the An unflinching portrait of a brilliant Eventually, with the shock treatments and ways that he made room for multiplicity and complex artist, the Hemingway its loss of memory, he couldn’t. Patrick and for fluidity. —Elena Zolotariof ■ documentary both grounded the author in told me that losing his home in Cuba was a his life and illustrated how he was able to major blow since it contained his library of transcend his literary forebears to become 9000 books. After we started going there, the 20th century’s most singular American the Cubans began studying his library writer. Burns and Novick push the viewer and found that roughly 1/3 of the books to at once feel that Hemingway is deeply had marginalia, often research oriented

10 | Hemingway newsletter To What End? ometimes, when faced with As always, thought provoking the legend and the truth, print and eloquent comments, Mike. It’s the legend. I believe that is an worth noting that Hemingway did Sold journalistic saw. Some truths are not want his personal correspondence private and are meant to be so. There published, though eventually his son is another trite saying. If you don’t Patrick allowed it. On the other hand, have anything nice to say, you probably consider Hem’s own words which were ought not say it. The good nuns beat quoted in Burn’s piece: that into us. They disliked tattlers. “I’m trying in all my stories to get Every one of us is a bundle of the feeling of the actual life across—not goodness and moral disappointments. to just depict life—or criticize it—but to The documentary’s authors could actually make it alive. So that when you have focused more on those things have read something by me you actually that made Hemingway a great experience the thing. You can’t do this man to us ... the great writer of the without putting in the bad and the ugly Twentieth Century. To dredge up as well as what is beautiful. Because if private, secret, and intimate details Ernest Hemingway, six years old, it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. connects Hemingway to his suicide no 1905. Things aren’t that way.” more than the documentary’s authors The question “To what end?” possible twisted lives predicts the same might be answered in the same outcome for them. The good nuns imperfect human being, as am I and so way we confirm study of any tragic also taught that calumny is a terrible too the authors. God knows how to sort figure or event. So long as there is wrong, a sin of grave proportions. Even through those matters with care. We a commitment to truth, I believe if a thing is true, to utter it when the humans must never presume to attempt reflecting on the good and the bad of a affect is to sully someone’s name or applying His higher powers and implying life is worthwhile. Hemingway seems reputation is despicable and mortal. conclusions that are reserved for Him to have thought so. He was certainly Calumny is a form of moral cancer. alone. I believe that the documentary’s occupied with the perplexity of life and Lastly, I knew Mary Hemingway, authors crossed a line. They can rationalize its inevitable end. better than her husband who seemed ad infinitum ... but, TO WHAT END? One of my favorite Hemingway more inward and reserved at the time. Otherwise, the authors produced a fine quotes in A Farewell to Arms is Mary Hemingway was a delightful piece. :) TO WHAT END? illustrative: “The world breaks everyone person. She was most pleasant and I did enjoy some familiar scenes. I and afterward many are strong at the outgoing. I prefer to accept her simple noticed Toby Bruce in one fleeting view. broken places. But those that will not and uncomplicated explanation I screamed to my wife with excitement, break it kills. It kills the very good of Hemingway’s suicide. It was “That’s Toby!” The view went by so fast she and the very gentle and the very brave tendered to my mother and me at replied, “Where?” She will have to trust impartially. If you are none of these lunch. I was sixteen or seventeen at the me. I was also hoping to see a 1928 Ford you can be sure it will kill you too but time.... audacious enough to ask. “He Coupe. As an aside, I recently was directed there will be no special hurry.” Beyond [Hemingway] was so depressed that he to a photograph of Hemingway and the his willingness to examine the world in couldn’t write anymore.” That is all that Key West ’28 Ford. The person who did this way (at the ripe old age of thirty), I I needed to know. the directing said that the snapshot was detect compassion and an appreciation In the Beginning was the Word. In in a private collection on the computer. of life in these seemingly morose the End the Word was lost to him. Supposedly, the conservator wanted words. The way he lived his life seems At best, the authors of the money to view the photo. To date, I to bear that out. documentary could have waited a bit have not been so inclined to indulge Ernest Hemingway is one of until all who knew the Hemingways the conservator. I think I’ll stick with the most compelling persons I have had passed on. To me the APT piece the yellow ’28 Ford stock-photograph ever encountered. I am extremely was an unnecessary truth that should that I recently submitted with the Dink appreciative of the multitude of studies be relegated to a matter between the Bruce homage for the Newsletter. As of his life and art, and yet, I cannot Creator and Ernest Hemingway; an with the APT piece, sometimes reality is really get my head around him. I bet unnecessary. — Michael Bonamy that study and failure would be okay with him. —Adam Morel ■

2021 | No. 73 | 11 A typical view from the veranda of the Hotel La Palma in July 2002

ED. NOTE: This is the eighth in our series looking back to Hemingway Society conferences of yore. 2014’s remembrance of Paris 1994, 2015’s trip back to Schruns RememberingGolden Spots Stresa, 2-7 of July Time 2002 1988, 2016’s return to Lignano 1986, 2017’s recollection of Madrid 1984, 2018’s look by Rena Sanderson back to 2000, 2019’s postmortem of Key West 2004, and last year’s fortieth uring I, on July 8, 1918, one month after the eighteen- anniversary celebration of Thompson Island (1980), the ur-conference, all pay respect to year-old Ernest Hemingway reported for duty with the American Red the adventures and anxieties of organizing DCross Service at the Italian front, he was, as all Hemingway scholars an international conference. The subject of know, seriously wounded at Fossalta di Piave. During his treatment and this year’s nostalgic jaunt, Stresa 2002, was extended stay at the Red Cross Hospital in , he fell in love with Agnes notable for its emphasis on Hemingway’s von Kurowsky, an American nurse seven years his senior. His first visit to convalescence after his WWI wounding and for the setting’s influence on A Farewell to Stresa was on a ten-day convalescent leave, (September 23-October 3, 1918), Arms. It was also the occasion of one of during which Agnes was not with him. Nevertheless, he clearly had a good the most famous photos in the Hemingway time. On September 29, on stationery of the Grand Hotel des Îles Borromées, Society’s now forty-one-year history. he wrote his family that he was on leave at Stresa, “a little resort on Lake (We were only twenty-two back then). Ultimately, the conference established what Maggiore one of the most beautiful of the Italian Lakes” and that he was “to has become the cardinal rule of Hemingway return to the Milan hospital for more electrical treatments” for his leg. He conferences: There Must Be a Boat Ride. reported that he was limping “pretty badly” but could row on the lake and had taken the cog railway to the top of Mount Mottarone.

12 | Hemingway newsletter “In spite of ,” he wrote, the “wonderful” Grand Hotel was “very well filled with an awfully good bunch,” including aristocracy and wealthy high society. He was getting spoiled by counts and countesses and learning “polite sassiety” Italian. He remembered Stresa well, and ten years later, when he wrote A Farewell to Arms, he presented Stresa and Lago Maggiore as the setting for Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley’s escape by boat from to Switzerland. The young Hemingway was smitten with Italy and Italian culture. It was the first foreign place to seduce him and his creative imagination. He loved it with the pride and passion of an explorer and enjoyed sharing his discovery with friends. It probably never occurred to him that one day these same magical spots would be enjoyed by a large band of scholars following his lead. It was John Sanford, the son of Hemingway’s sister Marcelline and a board member of the Hemingway Society, who served as site director and at least two years in advance started planning the 10th International Conference at Stresa for July 2–7, 2002. By the fall of 2000, after a visit to Stresa and with the assistance of H. R. Stoneback, he reserved the Hotel La Palma as conference center. In addition, he also already sketched out some of the special local events. When John became ill and required extended medical treatments, Scott Donaldson, then-president of the Hemingway Society and Foundation, Program director Rena Sanderson (who generously wrote this article!) with then trustee and stepped in. In a wonderful display of future three-term Society president James Hughes Meredith, one of the invaluable volunteers collaborative effort, a fine team of local who helped run the registration table experts assisted him in finalizing local arrangements, from transportation, hotels and restaurants, to local financial of the lake dotted by the Borromean would find their way from the various support. Members of this team were Islands and of nearby Italian and Swiss corners of the world and arrive safely. Two Paul Montgomery, a retired journalist mountains. It featured an attractive mix days later, what a relief and joy it was to and resident of Lausanne, Switzerland; of architecture, from elegant hotels with see the growing crowd fill the gardens and Winifred Bevilacqua, an American lavish green lawns and perfectly groomed terrace of the elegant Villa Rosmini at the professor of the University of Turin; flower hedges to modest, colorful houses opening reception. Here they were, some John , Hemingway’s with shuttered windows and clothes lines a little travel-worn but merry and glad to grandson (Gregory’s son), who lived fluttering on the balconies. Known for have made it. There was much hugging, and taught in Milan and participated in its mild climate, it was rich in parks and clinking of glasses raised for toasts, and a the conference; and Luca Gandolfi, who gardens that were green oases of tropical rising volume of happy chatter and laughter. offered to guide a tour of Hemingway trees and exotic flowers. A landscaped Looking at my old program, I’m sites in Milan that turned out to be promenade along the lake shore and the reminded of the organizational challenges very popular. I was honored to serve as town’s central plaza & cobbled narrow and how many people it takes to create program director, but there would have streets invited visitors to stroll and linger. a successful conference, especially one been no conference without all those I arrived at the small, old-fashioned with a large international participation. necessary local preparations. train station of Stresa after a long, scenic I’d organized one local Hemingway I remember the Stresa of 2002 as a journey from Zürich. While I waited for Conference in Idaho, but it was much charming little Italian village on the shores the taxi to take me to the Hotel La Palma, smaller. Fortunately, more experienced of Lago Maggiore, with spectacular views I started to wonder if and how everyone folks were ready to provide helpful advice. 2021 | No. 73 | 13 The opening reception in the garden behind the Villa Rosmini. How many friends do you recognize?

Susan F. Beegel did so in the most tactful Workshop—an interesting sign of the were well represented at this conference way and also kept financial accounts in technological transformation of literary and have been active participants of good order. To my surprise, many others studies. Hemingway scholarship for a long time. cheerfully volunteered to moderate One session offered intimate The layout of Stresa made it easy for sessions or to help with various tasks, from readings from the correspondence of the visitors to enjoy the outdoors and to staffing the registration tables to posting Hemingway family and a film clip of an explore the town and its surroundings on signs or setting up the book exhibit. interview with Hemingway’s sister Carol. foot. I remember conference participants Now, in 2021, the names on the And another featured readings of poetry leisurely strolling to town along the conference program bring back the on Hemingway. Selected papers from the promenade from the Hotel La Palma. familiar faces. It was a large conference conference were collected in Hemingway’s It was a friendly, hospitable town that with close to 300 registered participants, Italy: New Perspectives (LSU Press, 2006). made informal socializing easy. On including over 110 speakers. There is A good conference should both hot afternoons, the plaza and patios of not room to mention everyone here, but educate and delight. One popular special coffeeshops would fill with visitors chatting I remember everyone fondly, including event that was educational but also lots over a glass of wine or while waiting in those who sadly are no more. of fun was the boat ride that re-enacted lines for cones of gelato. On the way back Members of the program selection the fictional escape route from Stresa from town, in the later afternoon, the committee deserve credit for their time to Bressago, Switzerland, in AFTA. The sound of live music could be heard drifting and fairness in choosing papers that trip included a stop at the Brissago from under the white canvas covers set added up to a solid program. There were Islands with a garden tour and cocktails, up on the spacious front lawns of elegant thirty-two sessions on a wide range of followed by dinner on the boat. Onboard hotels—a scene reminiscent of Fitzgerald’s topics, with something for everyone. There entertainment took the form of a sing- writings. were sessions on the Lost Generation, along with Sparrow and Stoney Stoneback. Throughout the conference, the Hemingway and Italy, and Hemingway in During one stop on the ride, keynote speaker Tobias Wolff and his relation to , journalism, the Larry Broer took a picture of a dozen wife, Catherine, were most gracious and arts, the , and other writers. There women who participated in the Stresa approachable. One evening, the couple were two sessions on A Farewell to Arms Conference and whose literary studies shared an especially nice Italian dinner and one on teaching the novel. were also scheduled for publication in the with a large group at one of the islands. It Audiences also learned about forthcoming book he edited with Gloria was a mild night and a romantic setting on Hemingway’s other works, from the Holland, Hemingway and Women: Female the deck of a restaurant overlooking the story collections and his Italian short Critics and the Female Voice (U of Alabama water. I seem to remember the pleasant stories to the African writings; about his Press, 2002). While the picture doesn’t background sound of waves softly lapping imagery and language, about Hemingway include all of the women scholars who the wooden posts of the deck, but maybe I biography, and about Hemingway and presented papers or moderated sessions at just imagine that. I’m quite sure, however, gender. Bill Newmiller offered an Internet Stresa, it’s a reminder that women scholars that the boat ride back to Stresa seemed

14 | Hemingway newsletter We reprinted this iconic photo of two generations of female Hemingway scholars gathered in Stresa back in 2017, but its importance can’t be overstressed: we should print it on a T-shirt and sell it, honestly! If we tried to take a photo today of all the women advancing Hemingway studies nineteen years later we’d need a wide-angle lens. (Back row, left to right): Nancy Comley, Lisa Tyler, Susan F. Beegel, Sandra Spanier, Miriam Mandel, Linda Wagner-Martin, Kim Moreland, Gail Sinclair, and (front row): Linda Patterson Miller, Rena Sanderson, Hilary K. Justice, and Rose Marie Burwell. Nancy and Rose Marie have since passed. (Thanks always to Hilary K. Justice) dream-like and almost put me to sleep. Hemingway Conference in Austria at through Italy stopped at Stresa, I didn’t get The Grand Hotel, a stately and truly Schruns, just a few miles from Feldkirch off. I wasn’t ready for more changes, but by grand old place where Hemingway stayed where I was born and raised. I was hooked. the end of the trip I felt fortunate to have in 1918, seemed the perfect place for the Subsequently, from Paris to Key West to witnessed some of the new Europe. final gala banquet. Whatever anxiety I had to Venice, each conference seemed In recent years, I’ve missed some during the conference that things might better than the last. Each one was a sort of Hemingway conferences, partly because not go smoothly, I knew at this point that home-coming. In retrospect, I only wish I dreaded the absence of “regulars,” all we’d made it. There had been no serious I’d attended all the ones I missed. those dear vibrant colleagues and friends disasters, and most folks seemed to have From today’s perspective, nineteen who always attended. However, the bright had a good time. When Scott Donaldson years after the Stresa conference, the and happy faces in photos of recent officially thanked me at the gathering and memories of our younger selves and all conferences reassure me that the current I received a good round of applause, I was the fun we had are bitter-sweet and a generation of Hemingway scholars and flustered but also ever so happy. tad melancholy. With hindsight, there students, both young and old, will carry Let’s thank Hemingway for his is the realization that much of what we on. The pandemic has left few untouched, discovery and love of magical places! innocently took for granted has changed and for a while travel and accommodations And let’s thank him for introducing us to or been lost. Individual lives, travel, may not be as easy and may cost more. the larger world or “the whole big world local politics, and culture—both abroad And yet, during these uncertain times, it’s out there,” as he called it after his return and in the U. S.—may never be the good to remember that we may count on from Italy in 1919 when he nudged his same again. The world has undergone the coming together of like-minded folks, sister Marcelline to taste the unfamiliar major demographic movements, and civilized discourse, stimulation, and fun at (At the Hemingways, 184). The locations the relocations have brought with them the heart of future conferences. of our conferences allow us to become, significant changes to local cultures and As Ken Burns’s fine documentary like Hemingway, explorers of unfamiliar politics—even prior to the Covid-19 showed, the arc of Hemingway’s life and places and people as well as their food, epidemic. In the summer of 2019, during work is rich enough to sustain inquisitive traditions, language, history, and arts. a fantastic trip from Scandinavia to the minds for many generations. ■ It’s thanks to Hemingway conferences Mediterranean, I discovered the impact on that I came to see the world and gained Europe. In Austria, I struggled to accept different perspectives. I attended my first some of the changes, and when my train 2021 | No. 73 | 15 Dangerous Men in Endangered Landscapes: Michael Katakis, Manager of the Hemingway Literary Estate, on Storytelling in Big Sky Country, Helping Burns and Novick Realize Hemingway, and What Professors Robert Jordan and Henry Walton Jones, Jr. Have in Common

: One of the main things I found very moving about the five stories is the connection to the land Qand to the history of land ownership in Montana. The opening story, for example, “The Fence,” is at once elegiac, gory, Michael Katakis from the Hemingway documentary and morbidly sardonic in depicting the (Courtesy: imdb.com). Michael’s story collection meaning of wire fencing to ranchers. (It Dangerous Men offers a vividly feral look into the has a hell of a final line!) Could you talk lives of Montana ranchers. a little about what inspired your literary attachment to Montana? Did you grow up there during the heyday of dude ranches Unfortunately, like a lot of places, Montana quickly. The ending, full and complete (which the story also remembers)? became an ‘it’ place and brought people came after two days work and that A: I grew up in but loved from different states and countries who informed me about the rest of the story. westerns and would go to see as many as were like me as a kid. The difference is I Hemingway was right in two regards. One, I could. My father knew the owners of had shed the romantism of Montana and write what you know (I know Chicago the Patio Theater just a few blocks from could begin to see it as it was. Increasingly, and its racial tensions) and two, stop where we lived. I would sit in the balcony some of the people I saw coming not only when you know what will happen next. It with my bag of popcorn and watch Gary held tight to their romantism but were helps enormously to begin the day with a Cooper and John Wayne and others during determined to it and then exploit known direction. The twists at the end of those formative years. Because of that I it for profit, much like an amusement my stories are important to me. O. Henry had romanticized that fictional West with park. Many of them took up hunting or always fascinated me as has Kafka. I just its ideas of black and white and good or fly-fishing because they either loved it or reread The Trial and even though I knew evil. Living in Montana was a wonderful thought it was a part to be played. I can tell what was coming it affected me just as experience. It filled me with awe but cured you that when those folks moved in, the the ending of Orwell’s 1984 still does. I me of any residual romantism. We had sale of cowboy hats and boots skyrocketed. do not care for I suppose neighbors, a ranching family who had In a strange way it was similar to Venice or I want to leave the reader unsettled or, been on the land for over 120 years. In at carnival with Fellini directing. Think of invested in the characters in a way that is the 40’s times got tough and they started, Marcello Mastroianni in a cowboy hat with uncomfortable or thought provoking. for part of the year, to accept guests. That a fly rod and you get the picture. family was the model for "The Fence" and Q: The centerpiece story, “The Final also for "The Final Tally of Walter Lesser." Q: Many of the stories, like “Home Tally of Walter Lesser,” is my favorite. It’s for Christmas,” have twist endings that a really ambitious in terms of structure, Q: One theme that connects the story make a reader go back and rediscover broken up in sections that go back and is the idea of changing traditions, of the the foreshadowed clues. Can you talk a forth in time, and it’s about a crooked loss of old ways that tied us to the land. little about how you learned short-story land grab. It has that generations theme I was really struck in “Hunter’s Moon” structure? Do you study any specific we associate with Faulkner or Cormac by a couple who’ve been together more models? Do you have endings in mind McCarthy, but it’s also a gripping revenge than thirty years going through the usually and work toward them, or do you story. I could totally see Charles Bronson rituals of bird hunting but without shells more often discover the twist along the as Walt (kind of like in Mister Majestyk). in their guns, so they can just “talk and way? It also has two great themes: municipal remember.” What Montana traditions do A: Endings usually come to me first. corruption and developers creating a faux you feel have been lost over the course of Sometimes a first line sets the stage for the Wild West in the styles of their condos and your lifetime? Do you feel the symbolic beginning. I’m not sure why but I find that subdivisions and golf courses. Can you importance of hunting is one of them? if I have a few beginning sentences and tell us a little bit about land development A: Montana, for the time I was there, an ending, I become free in structuring today in Montana? Is it as detached from seemed a place you were either born to the rest of the story. I am working on a authentic ranching as it used to be? We or could escape or hide and reinvent new collection of short stories and it’s always hear stories, for example, about yourself. That made it a place of characters quite a bit. In "A Very Chicago how or Dennis Quaid are and contradictions and mystery for me. Story" that I just finished, the ending came “ranchers.” slower but the beginning was set very 16 | Hemingway newsletter A: Thank you Professor. To be Q: The title of the collection is also share how the estate feels about the final mentioned with Cormac McCarthy and really eye-catching in its simplicity. product? Faulkner, not to mention Charles Bronson You seem to suggest what makes men A: I have been working with Ken (The Magnificent Seven was one of my dangerous isn’t their capacity for violence Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein favorite movies) makes me feel that my but their need to clear up historical lies. for nearly seven years. We would discuss job is done. I have a soft spot for Walter Do you know any real-life men like Walt things over the years and sometimes Lesser and what he suffered and what or Hal Gustafson, who’s another son of lies meet. From the beginning I told them he decides to do in the face of his own in the second half of the story? that I and the Hemingway estate would mortality. Some people have said they have A: You’ve got it absolutely right. It cooperate if they skipped the idolatry of a hard time with the story because he is is very timely now, isn’t it? What Walter Hemingway, didn’t take cheap shots and crossing lines of vengeance and justice and Lesser is doing, with the violence, is setting just proceeded and went wherever the they have found the line so blurred that the record straight. Like Walter delivering truth took them. I cleared the way for they end up cheering him on and then a reckoning we, as a nation, at least some them at the JFK and anywhere they needed feel bad about that. I understand. We all of us, are attempting to set the record to go. You, professor, were very helpful and talk a good game, but the line between straight about the poison that is a major supportive in regard to the letters and that vengeance and justice is very thin indeed. part of our history and remains a part of was much appreciated. We continued our Yes, the word ‘rancher’ has become, to us today. You can only delay reckonings exchanges and I urged them years ago to me anyway, much like the word ‘artist,’ for so long because the grievances and film and interview Patrick which they did. with the view being that if you say it, you crimes that go unaddressed don’t die. I supplied them with names of authors that are it or, if you have money from being a They simmer under the surface until they might assist with interviews and in some stock trader or whatever, you then decide explode, demanding acknowledgment and of our first exchanges requested that they to be this other thing in spite of having redress. The dangerous men and women use a good number of female scholars and no knowledge, experience or, as in most are those who have never wanted or writers because they would have a different cases, any talent. In these of allowed full and honest accounts of what is and valuable perspective that could only Salesmen, money is but one coin of the true. They know when something is wrong assist in revealing the man and his work. realm. The other is illusion and flim flam, but hide it for a myriad of reasons that I continued to request that they be wary a fiction that you are what you say you are often personal and profitable. Look at of the myth of Hemingway. Everyone who are simply because you’ve said it. At one the people tying themselves into selective participated and worked on the film did appearance where I was invited to speak, morality knots trying to spin January 6 a remarkable job and I think the work I was mistakenly introduced as a scholar. into something, anything other than what speaks for itself. The only people from I made clear to the audience that was not we all saw. the family I have spoken with have been the case. Truth matters as does self-respect. Patrick and Carol Hemingway and they I was married to a brilliant scholar and saw Q: Switching gears a bit, many of much approved of the film. the dedication, work, and study that was our members may only know you as the involved. Perhaps one of the reasons our gentleman who manages the Hemingway Q: Finally, I have to say, my favorite country is experiencing such difficulties is estate, but you’ve written several other moment in Hemingway is when you the arrogance of people saying they know books. Can you tell us your favorite one compare to something they don’t and then dis-respect besides Dangerous Men? . I mean, that those who do. Walter Lesser and his family A: The other work that means much to comparison made me see the novel in a were destroyed by developers and their me is, A Thousand Shards of Glass: There whole new way—not just because Robert corrupt allies. After they stole the ranch is Another America. It is a book of essays Jordan and Indiana Jones are professors. they could not ranch because they didn’t about the United States. It is a difficult There’s also something very “adventure have a clue how to ranch. What they did book but a truthful one. Unfortunately, movie” about For Whom (though I know was sales and illusion. So, the ranch some months ago a reviewer commenting wouldn’t call it a “B movie” like the ones becomes Wild West Estates with the family on the release of a new edition with a that inspired Raiders). I gotta ask: did cemetery as a prop. The land is then sold new introduction, declared it prescient. you have that line in your head before to people of means with other houses far It was written in 2014 after the death of cameras rolled, or was that a spontaneous away who want they had seen in my wife and it drew a harrowing picture comment? I could almost sense you movies for part of the year and never in of who we are as a people and nation. To chuckling at the comparison as you said it. winter. Such customers have little concern my great sadness, given the events that A: All of my comments and answers for the people who had lived and died have transpired since, the book reads were off the cuff. I had no idea what I was there. That story was inspired by the many rather tame now. As to prescience, it was going to be asked and was not asked about land speculators I had the misfortune to only prescient to those who had not been being filmed until the day before at the meet. One of the old hands at the ranch paying attention. meeting we were having in New York. As Walter Lesser is modeled on, told me, as to my For Whom the Bell Tolls and The the land rush was going on around us that, Q: You are a prominent voice in the Raiders of the Lost Ark comparison, you’re “We used to hang land speculators. Just Hemingway documentary that made a right, I did chuckle because I loved the a thought.” big splash in April. Can you tell us your book. Not the movie (For Whom the Bell role in its development? Did you have any Tolls) but the book. ■ input over the story arc or did you just serve as a commentator? And can you 2021 | No. 73 | 17 Q: I believe its title in English is Avant- Garde Hemingway: Paris, Modernism, and How One American Writer Made Them His Own. In what major ways do you think Hemingway is an avant-garde writer? A: As you know, Hemingway stayed in Paris in the , and his work then and later was strongly influenced by his exposure to the avant-garde Modernist there. He was especially affected by his interaction with , his mentor at the time, and some of the seminal visual artists of the decade, including Picasso, Miro, , Gerald Murphy, and many others. Hemingway structured his first collected short stories In Our Time (1925) as a Cubist painting. He also established what’s now known as the iceberg theory of writing, an approach which can be related to Picasso’s innovative ideas of space. In addition, he invented “cinematic prose” in “,” and experimented with a unique form of narration that can be compared to the movie camera in some of the stories collected in IOT. Above all, Hemingway intuitively understood the intercorporeal viewpoint of Cézanne’s, which is Modern and avant-garde compared with the artificial static representation created by following the Renaissance perspective method. With his visual, spatial, and corporeal prose resulting from the avant-garde technique of borrowing and adapting techniques from other art forms, Ai Ogasawara on the campus of Kwansei Gakuin University with her latest book, along with as well as the poetics of “moment” that he an interior glimpse of Avant-Garde Hemingway in Japanese (next page) learned from Gertrude Stein (also known as the continuous present), Hemingway can From Nishinomiya to the City of Hemingway conferences in Kansas City, Oak truly be called a most “avant-garde” writer. Park, Venice, Paris, and Ronda, Spain. She Light: Donald Daiker Interviews is a board member of The Hemingway Q: What do you see as your book’s Ai Ogasawara on Hemingway’s Society of Japan and is a faculty member at major contribution to Hemingway studies? Modernism and His Literary Kwansei Gakuin University in the Hyōgo A: Although there have been Prefecture.—Don Daiker exciting previous studies that focused Reputation in Japan on the analogy between Hemingway’s Q: How did your book begin? What was its writing and visual works, my research has emingway scholar Ai Ogasawara inception? established the original interrelationship has just published Aban Gyarudo A: It all started with Cézanne: I was between Cézanne’s paintings, findings in Hemingway—Pari Zenei no Kokuin captivated by a comment Hemingway made neurophysiology, and the “bodily” effect of H(Avant Garde Hemingway: Paris, Modernism, Hemingway’s prose. Also, I believe that my about Cézanne, that he could “make a and How One American Writer Made Them landscape like Mr. Paul Cézanne.” This was discussions about both “cinematic prose” His Own) in Japanese with Takanashi about fifteen years ago when I was working in “My Old Man” and the analogy between Shobou. She plans to translate it into English on my Ph.D. dissertation. I decided to focus Hemingway’s short stories and Edward for future publication. Until then, she on the influence of Cézanne’s visual secrets Hopper’s paintings are new additions to the generously agreed to answer questions about on Hemingway’s prose by drawing on field of Hemingway studies. I’ve sought to her work. several different fields including art history, get a picture of some Hemingway works Ai wrote her Master’s thesis on The Sun literary criticism, and some areas of brain through the idea of “visuality,” which may Also Rises and her doctoral dissertation science. It was the beginning of my project be interesting to some colleagues. on Hemingway, Cézanne, and Paris in the investigating the inter-artistic relationship 1920s. She has published extensively in between Hemingway’s prose and the visual, Japanese journals, and she has presented at which ultimately led to my writing Avant- Garde Hemingway. 18 | Hemingway newsletter Q: Has your work been influenced lecturer at the annual Conference of the was a sixteen-year-old Japanese student and perhaps helped by the work of other Hemingway Society of Japan in 2011. and knew nothing about Cuba, growing Hemingway scholars? If so, please explain. I always learn a great deal from old, nor did I have any idea of life as a A: My research has been greatly my fellow Hemingway aficionados on . Later as a freshman at university, helped by the work of other Hemingway every panel at Hemingway international I learned how to read and “interpret” a scholars who have focused on analogical conferences: John Beall, Mike Kim Roos, literary work in a certain context, this time comparisons between Hemingway’s prose and Elizabeth Lloyd-Kimbrel. Elizabeth’s by reading A Farewell to Arms under Prof. and the visual arts, as exemplified by Emily vast academic knowledge is awesome and Tateo Imamura: one of the founders of Watts’ Ernest Hemingway and the Arts. I am has often been of great help to me. John and Hemingway scholarship in Japan. I may greatly indebted to Colette C. Hemingway’s Mike’s approaches—especially inter-artistic have to call that the real beginning of my in his time: Ernest Hemingway’s Collection approaches, John looking at Hemingway Hemingway reading. of Paintings and the Artists He Knew. I’ve and painting, and Mike at music and also drawn heavily on the research of Meyly painting, have been inspirational. Last but Q: Can/do your students connect C. Hagemann and Kenneth G. Johnston in not least, I owe a lot to you, Don Daiker— with Hemingway? Is he popular among identifying the paintings that Hemingway for having introduced me to these three your students? How big of a “draw” is must have seen during his years in Paris. aficionados! Hemingway studies in Japan? As for my approach to the A: In Japan, literary education used interrelationship between writing and the Q: You called this your first book. Do to be a major area at university. Around visual, my role model has been Ben Stoltzfus you have another book planned? the last decade of the twentieth century, who wrote Hemingway and French Writers A: Yes. The English version of my first however, a kind of backlash against the and Magritte and Literature. Helping me book! liberal arts occurred; since then, the number to follow this path, John W. Berry kindly of literature departments has diminished, sought to connect me with art historian Q: How did you come to the work of as has the number of learners. Now, most Barbara Maria Stafford, whom I was reading Ernest Hemingway? What did you read college students don’t know anything about a lot then, as well as helped me research in first and in what context? Hemingway, or know of him just as a name Oak Park Public Library. A: To be honest, my first experience on that publisher’s list. The shelves for As for seeing Hemingway as a of reading Hemingway was disastrous! I Western literature in bookstores have been Modernist writer, one of my first exposures read when I was narrowing year by year. to the more detailed academic discussions a high school student. In Japan, a famous Compared to the current condition in this area was a lecture given by Linda publisher makes a list of “100 great books and decreasing number of students who Wagner-Martin in Japan about twenty years for students” every year, and OMATS has are majoring in literature, we have a rather ago. I also had the privilege of translating been included in it for about forty years. rich group of “middle-aged” Hemingway Debra Moddelmog’s Reading Desire into I was told at school to choose one book scholars making up the membership of Japanese and gained many exciting gender- from the list for summer reading. I chose the Hemingway Society of Japan. There related insights in the process, through OMATS since it looked short. I’m sorry to are many female scholars as well, which is dozens of exchanges with Debra while say that I didn’t enjoy reading it at all—I noteworthy as a group in a country that translating, and having her as a guest ranks 120th in gender equality. Many have attended biannual international conferences in recent years, and the size of our group is growing as you may have noticed. Although literary education has diminished in our country, due to the outbreak of Covid-19, people came to be more reflective; and some may need literature to help them engage critically with the world and with thinking about life. We, Hemingway scholars in Japan, are quite ready to provide help to those who are in need. ■

ED. NOTE: While we wait for an English translation of Avant-Garde Hemingway, check out Don’s most recent article, “Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: The Centrality of Jake’s Paris,” in the spring 2021 issue of The Hemingway Review.

2021 | No. 73 | 19 ExpatriateWhen Troy Parallels University Senior Thai and Nhuan Politics: Huynh Discovered David Crowe’s Study Hemingway and Ho Chi Minh in Paris: The Art of Resistance, the English Major from Had to Know How the Historian at Augustana College Imagined the Modernist Capital Shaping These Unlikeliest of Fellow Travelers

: What inspired you to go 1920s, so immediately I realized that there deeper in thorough research on would be connections between the two Hemingway and Ho Chi Minh’s men’s experiences that might transcend Thai Nhuan Huynh graduated from Troy Qyears of recognition in Paris? What coincidences, and I was off and running on University in May 2021 with a dual major in English and graphic design with a minor sparked you to come up with this unusual this book. in computer science. He currently works as a duo of authors, this topic for your book? As I composed the book, I realized that communications intern at the Montgomery A: For reasons I don’t truly understand, the most important reason for bringing (Al.) Museum of Fine Arts. Born in Ho Chi I have always been fascinated by the Lost Hemingway and Ho Chi Minh together in Minh City, he enjoys comics, opera, and travel. Generation in Paris and by the Vietnam a serious study is that they both despised War. I have also been lucky to be part of empires, the Great War politicians and Hemingway biographies and the four a generation of college faculty who, for profiteers forced for selfish reasons, and or five extant Ho Chi Minh biographies, the past thirty years or so, could travel the colonial project generally. During their especially those of William Duiker and to almost any attractive destination on Paris years and after, both Hemingway Pierre Brocheux. I also read anything I funds provided by study-abroad students. and Ho sided with the dispossessed could find about the Vietnamese resident As a result, I know Paris and Saigon (or people, those whom the powers-that- in Paris, many serving on the front lines Ho Chi Minh City, if you prefer) better be considered expendable in wartime during the Great War and in Parisian than I know cities in my own state. My trenches or colonial farms and factories. kitchens and portrait studios after. Of courses have taken me to Paris four Hemingway and Ho hated profiteers and course I also read what I could about times and to Vietnam three times (not to worked to liberate the laboring classes the Indochinese colonial project, and I mention Oslo, Stockholm, and Berlin). from obvious oppressions. took the opportunity to read every word These courses have opened up avenues of the letters and journalism and other for research—if it’s right to call avid Q: What research methods have been nonfiction Hemingway and Ho wrote and joyful reading about the places I’ve the most fruitful for you in obtaining even while living in Paris. visited “research.” I go through periods sensitive and secretive information of both of addictive reading in novels, histories, Hemingway and Uncle Ho? Were there Q: According to your research, and even cookbooks involving favorite any obstacles during your research for Hemingway was influenced by Pound’s international places. So that is how I those pieces of information? concrete images, Stein’s subtle repetition, came to see that Ho and Hemingway I spent some time in the Hemingway and the Cézanne-esque style. Perhaps, shared Paris as a kind of university for Collection in the JFK Library in Boston, how do you see these forces as impacts on the liberating arts. Specifically, the idea where I did find information about shaping Hemingway’s individuality as a for the book came to me one day on a Tonton, a friend of Hemingway’s who human since Paris? dodgy tour bus in Hanoi when the guide had fought for France in Vietnam. But I Most people who know Hemingway’s noted that Ho had lived in Paris during had little need for such archival materials. career realize that Pound and Stein were the early 1920s. My dissertation explored Most of my research materials were on crucial personal literary tutors. As I argue Hemingway’s first four books, which were my own shelves or came to my house in the book, Hemingway found it useful of course written mainly in Paris in the via interlibrary loan. There were a dozen

20 | Hemingway newsletter I believe that Hemingway’s Freudian theories, which I analyze closely in the book, came mainly from acquaintances steeped in psychoanalytical theory, including his Surrealist friends. But everyone in Paris and Greenwich Village and Berlin was talking about Freud in the 1920s because, according to their interpretation, Freud urged greater sexual freedom. I’m not sure that any Modernist writer, from William Faulkner to Langston Hughes to Anais Nin, can be understood properly without reference to Freud’s ideas. You ask whether Hemingway might have met Freud. No, Hemingway never met Freud, to my knowledge, but all of Hemingway’s narrators seem driven by an unconscious energy or dread. Their conscious wish to work and love is David Crowe and the cover of his intriguing study of Hemingway and Ho Chi Minh in conditioned, interrupted, or sometimes 1920s’ Paris destroyed by inner urges not under their full control, including a general death wish and more specific memories and to learn a prose style from Pound and complexity and progressive politics, a dreams that seem to stem from wartime Stein while at the same time rejecting shedding of repressions and openness to trauma. I’m glad you asked about this their reactionary politics. Stein treated her bliss and realization that the unconscious because a Freudian understanding of Vietnamese manservants very poorly and gives shape to daily endeavors—these depth psychology is another element in Pound was nearly executed for his support never left him. Nor did a willingness to Hemingway’s, if not Ho’s, education as a for Mussolini. I try in the book to show shock readers with a naked, unsavory modern artist in Paris, as I try to show in that Hemingway learned a great deal about or unwelcome truth. Hemingway’s work my discussion of Surrealist artistic and resistance and liberation from others in the often shocks us, as it shocked his parents sexual freedom. Paris community, especially from Dadaists and other conventional readers during and Surrealists such as the painters Miro the 1920s. appears to have informed Q: How do you think about the and Masson. Fans of Hemingway need both Hemingway and Ho in the art of relationship between Hemingway and to realize that he was capable of broad shocking an audience for humanitarian Scott Fitzgerald besides the incident learning from many and varied sources, and political ends. with Scott’s car? Were there more to their not all of them literary. Literary scholars relationship, and what more can we like me need to explore other arts and Q: I want to quote a part of your book. learn about whether Scott might affect sciences because Hemingway was a deeply On page 235, you wrote that Hemingway's Hemingway’s style like Pound and Stein? curious man. talent “for writing vignettes and prose A: Scott Donaldson and Matthew poems was perfect for modernist Bruccoli have both written excellent Q: How did Hemingway come to effects and for revealing moral and books about the tricky friendship and realize Dadaism was no longer suitable psychological states of mind through rivalry between Scott Fitzgerald and for his interest? Was there a specific selective hints and cues.” By that and Ernest Hemingway, so I felt I did not cause for Hemingway’s transition from with occasional mentioning of Freudian need to devote much energy to that topic. Dadaism to besides his sense perspective, is there a direct impact of I merely noted the strange character of of the movement itself? Freud’s theory on Hemingway’s style and the relationship and moved on. (I had to I don’t carry my analysis in this book psychology? If so, besides surrealism, in keep a lid on the Hemingway biography past about 1929, so I should not have a your view, how were the two men related, to keep it from overwhelming the scantier strong opinion about the Dadaist elements or was there a time when they made information we have on Ho.) Yes, Scott of Hemingway’s later work. However, I contact with each other? Fitzgerald had a profound effect on think the Dadaist cocktail of psychological Hemingway’s work, especially drafts of

2021 | No. 73 | 21 The Sun Also Rises. Fitzgerald may very Q: In your opinion, what painting had complex expression of revolutionary well have saved Hemingway some serious the most impact on Hemingway’s career, politics with humanitarian, rather than embarrassment by urging him to cut the The Farm by Miró or the Cézanne-esque totalitarian, aims. Both were hopeful about dreadful first 25 pages of that novel in draft series of paintings? Why? the Soviet project—until it became clear manuscript. I discuss that situation in the A: Hemingway loved lots of artists, how murderously totalitarian that project book, but not at length. from Goya to Picasso to Klee to Miro had become under Stalin. and Masson. Yet he tells us in A Movable Q: I would like to know more about Feast that Cézanne was the most Q: In the end, do you want your the benefits that Pauline provides to important. I think Hemingway loved the research to reach out to more people, Hemingway, especially in his career as an experimentation and abstraction and especially the Hemingway community and author. How did she express herself about expressive power of Miro’s The Farm, and the Vietnamese in Viet Nam, or do you Hemingway’s (quoted) “commitments he owned lots of other boldly abstract prefer to let people come to it gradually to progressive or revolutionary politics modernist paintings, but for his own and immerse themselves in new and and art”? And what happened to the writing, Cézanne provided the model of maybe controversial information to their relationship between Hadley and a quieter, more sophisticated modernism. beliefs in both authors? Hemingway afterward besides the Hemingway loved Cézanne’s ability to Q: I wrote this book for a general agreement for their son Bumby (Jack apply large, flat swaths of paint to a canvas readership of curious people, not for Hemingway)? in the modernist style, yet to achieve a literary scholars. (Though I did research A: Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline, result that makes the eye see the world in and cite sources literary scholars will whom he met and wed in Paris, mainly light and shadow, in its actual, glorious respect). I apparently had the same boosted his confidence and career beauty. Hemingway achieves the same hope that animated Ken Burns and opportunities. Her money underwrote effect in “Big Two-Hearted River,” the Lynn Novick’s recent film, which is that Hemingway’s career in the latter half of opening paragraphs of A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway’s life is so interesting to the the 1920s, and arguably, her Catholicism and elsewhere. general public that they will embrace a triggered a renewal of his Catholic detailed retelling and interpretation of it. I faith. My contention is that his first wife Q: You also state that, on page 325, certainly do hope that Vietnamese readers Hadley had the more profound effect “Hemingway seems to have become a kind will find and appreciate the book. It is on Hemingway’s literary aims. She was of an agent for the Soviets, in a distinctly written for them too. a deeply compassionate person with underhand way,” and ended without any I have had many readers tell me that a love of the arts. Her family money further note. Would you like to explain the Ho Chi Minh material is a revelation to also underwrote Hemingway’s early more about Hemingway’s time with them. They had no knowledge of the man career, but more importantly, she helped the Soviets? In your opinion, if you did and his life and aims other than the image Hemingway to see that his life’s calling was another book on the details of that topic, framed by propaganda, to write in sympathy for the suffering and what would the Hemingway community which poses Ho as a frail little communist dispossessed, and her love of Surrealist react to such work? On the same matter, monster obsessed with killing American artists such as Miro and Masson, a passion do you have any plan to conduct further boys. I try to show that Hemingway and she shared with Hemingway, helped him research and investigation on Hemingway Ho both came to Paris as wounded young to see that his own writing could have and Quoc after this book? veterans of of empire. They found surreal qualities that resisted the selfish, A: Actually, I do cite Nicholas in Paris a community of artists, writers, reactionary goals of the colonial profiteers Reynolds’s 2017 book, Writer, Sailor, emigres, and revolutionaries who helped and oppressors. Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway’s Secret them to learn the art of resistance, to turn As for your question about Bumby, he Adventures, 1935-1961, for that passage. their hurt into artistic and political action. grew up living with Hadley and her second On pages 75-76 of that book, Reynolds For both of them, that art involved careful, husband, first in Paris and then Chicago. reports that there are KGB documents realistic, shocking writing that revealed to Hemingway had Bumby for summers in describing Hemingway’s recruitment readers the endemic violence underlying Key West and Cuba during that period by Soviet agents, who wanted nothing the pious self-congratulation of nominally prior to the Second World War, when Jack more from him (it seems) than favorable Christian empire. I think it is a story with (Bumby’s adult name) became a US Army speeches and essays. I don’t want to push serious contemporary relevance. ■ officer, served in the OSS supporting the the argument too hard, but I am suggesting French Resistance, and endured capture that Hemingway’s Paris education may and imprisonment by the Germans have been similar to Ho’s in that each of occupying France. them developed a sympathy for some

22 | Hemingway newsletter 2020 in Facts and Figures Membership: an average of ...... 626 (up from 572 in 2019) Society funds:...... Checking—$29,776 Money Market...... $20,617 Total ...... $50,593 Number of monthly membership inquiries: ...... 15 (most of which can be resolved by logging into the website at www.hemingwaysociety.org) Foundation funds: Main account...... $666,857 How Did We Checking...... $13,416 Total...... $680,273 Total Society and Foundation accounts...... $730,866 Total earned in permissions in 2020...... $1,550 Do in 2020? Number of monthly permissions requests: ...... 8 Total earned in royalties in 2020: ...... $3,787 Number of 2020 submissions to The Hemingway Review: ...... 35 Number of 2020 acceptances: ...... 10 hen the pandemic first closed the Cost per member to print and mail world down in March 2020 Your The Hemingway Review: ...... $16.30 per year or $8.15 per issue (up from $7.50 due to color photos in Fall 2020 issue and increased paper costs) Correspondent was convinced we Online Review sales of content through ProjectMuse:...... $140 Wwould have to write off fundraising for the year. We Total Review royalties: ...... $31,791 (combined from ProjectMuse, EBSCO, Cengage, and ProQuest; $28,000 from were very pleasantly surprised in January then when ProjectMuse) Cecil Ponder delivered our numbers to learn that Total Review Permissions: ...... $450 Total Non-member subscriptions:...... $1,348 (libraries and subscription services) contributions to our main funds were up in many Advertising Revenue: ...... $200 Total Review income:...... $33,929 cases. For example, gifts to the Founders’ Fellowship Cost per member to print and mail The Hemingway Newsletter: ...... $10 topped 2019 contributions by more than $300. That Website hosting and maintenance charges for the website: ...... $25 mo./$300 yr Additional website expenses for (postponed) conference: ...... $3,567 may not seem like a lot, but it took the fund’s annual Email blast services: ...... $535 earnings up to $1,235—a respectable figure. PEN/ Zoom costs for 2020: ...... $803 One True Podcast production costs for 2020: ...... $144 Hemingway donations were up nearly $200, and gifts Number of One True Podcast episodes since 2019: ...... 42 to the independent scholars fund up $140. Overall, Total number of downloads/streams/listens: ...... 32,400 (!) Number of unique monthly visitors to the website: ...... 3,000 we were only down in donations to the Hinkle Fund Number of Twitter followers at @theehsociety: ...... 838, up 277 from 2019 by $95 and in specified contributions by less than Number of Tweets from @theehsociety so far: ...... 911, up from 600 in 2019 Number of Facebook “Likes” on the Hemingway Society Page: ...... 4,500 up from 4,323 $200. Total contributions in 2020 were $6,426 up Number of Facebook Followers: ...... 4, 478 up from 4,311 in 2019 from $6,015 in 2019. Not bad at all considering the Number of Kennedy Library Grants in 2019-20: ...... 7 Number of Kennedy Library Grants awarded in 2019-20: ...... 5 economic strain of the pandemic. As always, we (Wayne Catan, Katelyn Croll, Verna Kale, Eamonn O’Neill, Iñaki Sagarna) Please note: the Kennedy Library suspended grants for 2020-21 due to the pandemic thank our members for their generosity! Number of 2020 applicants for the Lewis-Smith-Reynolds Founders’ Fellowships:...... 17 Number of Founders Fellowships awarded in 2020: ...... 4 (See recipients’ descriptions of their projects on pages X) 2020 donations to the Hinkle Fund: ...... $1,440 (down from $1,535 in 2019) 2020 donations to the Lewis-Smith-Reynolds Founders’ Fellowship Fund from members: ...... $1235 (up from $905 in 2019) 2020 donations to the PEN/Hemingway Award fund from members: ...... $1,831 (up from $1,650 in 2019) 2020 donations to the Independent Scholar Fund: ...... $500 (up from $360 in 2019) 2020 unspecified donations to the Society: ...... $1,456 (down from $1,565 in 2019) Number of items to be published in Letters, Volume 6 (2022): ...... 364 Number of items to be published in the Volume 6 Appendix (letters newly available for publication that would have otherwise appeared in chronological sequence in previous volumes): ...... 33

2021 | No. 73 | 23 Do Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: A Hemingway Letters Project Update, At-Home Edition by Verna Kale

t the Hemingway Letters Project, we have been fortunate to be able to continue our work over the Apast year from our various remote offices. Whether we are working from basement desks or kitchen tables, a dedicated study or a spare bedroom, work on the Letters is ongoing. We look forward to being back on campus and back in libraries and archives soon, but one of the silver linings of working from home has been getting to Ogden Trogden spend more time with our pets (and one Brownie Brooks beloved teddy bear). If you have a furry (or scaly, or feathered) office mate, please share your photos on Twitter, tagging @theehsociety and using the hashtag #ehsocietypets.

Freya Brooks Tucker Quesenberry-Mills

Noche Eggert

Ernest Spanier

Nella Warczak

Gimli and Sméagol Kale Bacchus Brooks 24 | Hemingway newsletter Zap Gluckman

Chocky Alexander

Zelda Kale

The Witch King of Angmar and Frodo Kale Impulse Warczak

Circe Brooks

Ernie Miller

Gabby Tangedal

Porchie Warczak

2021 | No. 73 | 25 and members’ borrowing practices, can than aiming to argue that Hemingway is 2021 Lewis-Smith- help us better understand the cultural a Christian writer, or that The Sun Also milieu that contributed to Hemingway Rises is a religious novel, my monograph Reynolds Founders’ and his fellow ’ interwar artistic will explore how the novel points to the production. This project will be published difficulty and mystery of the theological Fellowship Recipients as part of a research cluster organized question: What does it mean to be by the Princeton-based Shakespeare and religious? My reading will reveal not a Company Project. novel that is inarguably Christian, but one Nissa is a lecturer in the Program in that is indispensable to the Christian faith. Writing and Rhetoric at . Connie is currently a graduate student Her research focuses on the literary, print, at Harvard Divinity School. and material culture of transatlantic interwar expatriation.

Nissa Ren Cannon “Lending on the Left and Right Banks: The Lost Generation at the American Library in Paris and Shakespeare & Company” Sylvia Beach’s lending library, Lay Sion Ng Shakespeare and Company, plays an oft- “Hemingway and Cultural Ecology: cited part in the story of Hemingway’s A Posthumanist Reading of Hemingway’s Paris Years. Less frequently discussed is Work” the writer’s relationship to interwar Paris’ My current project is to construct other prominent Anglophone lending Connie Chen a book that uncovers the non- library: the American Library in Paris “The Poetry of Prejudice— anthropocentric perspective embedded (ALP). Although it has escaped much in The Sun Also Rises” in Hemingway’s major work from the attention, there is documentation of the My project completes the final two posthumanist approach. Chapter 1 writer’s connection to the American chapters of my monograph, which studies the parallelism between the Library: in the 1920s Hemingway wrote examines the presence and complexity restoration of health and that of the of his friendship with its director, W. of religion in The Sun Also Rises. The environment through Jake Barnes’ Dawson Johnston, in a letter to Bill Smith; chapter acknowledges that Hemingway narration in The Sun Also Rises. Chapter contributed book reviews to the Library’s contributed to the anti-Semitism 2 explores the representations of the Paris Tribune column; and appeared more discourse of his times through SAR but “rotten” food, bodies, landscapes, and than once on the pages of Ex Libris, the asks: what did Hemingway create out of rain in A Farewell to Arms in light of ALP’s Little Magazine, as an author and anti-Semitism? I show that Hemingway eco-gothic, proposing that these matters the subject of Gertrude Stein’s 1923 poem generates a unique tension between serve as counternarrative against “He and They, Hemingway.” Christianity and its Jewish origins— humancentric warfare. Chapter 3 makes This project compares the borrowing, where every violence directed towards a case for ecofeminist androgyny as acquisitions, and holding records of the Jew equally wounds the Christian. an archetype in For Whom the Bell Shakespeare and Company and the ALP, The chapter, “Hemingway’s Theology of Tolls. Chapter 4 expands the theme of in order to expand the conversation Disability,” discusses Jacob’s war wound interdependence in The Old Man and about how these two libraries developed from a disability studies perspective in The Sea in light of the ecology of color. and sustained the reading habits of light of his biblical identity. I challenge Chapter 5 deconstructs the patriarchal Hemingway and other Anglophone artists the normalcy critics have been enforcing anthropocentric masculinity represented in Paris in the 1920s and . Better on Jacob and ask how Hemingway’s by the adult elephant hunters in The understanding interwar Paris’ preeminent exploration of this impairment contributes Garden of Eden through the lens of animal Anglophone lending libraries’ holdings, to disability studies and theology. Rather sentience and the environmental history 26 | Hemingway newsletter of during the Maji-Maji war. win in the end, calling human superiority Saviors offers its reader the unforgettable Finally, while tracing back to the previous into question. Even so, these transspecies experience of discovering wonder on case studies, I re-examine Hemingway’s relationships are tinged with elements the page, both in its careful attention ecological ambivalence and offer a fresh that reinforce existing hierarchies, to detail, and also in the way that detail perspective of viewing Hemingway’s including Hemingway accessing animal recasts our own reality. literary work as a form of cultural ecology. connections via racial Otherness and The virtual celebration also honored Ng Lay Sion is an assistant professor disability. These multilayered transspecies Tomar, who won the 2020 award for at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. struggles highlight not only the eugenic her debut novel, A Prayer for Travelers. Her doctoral dissertation concentrates fascination with human dominance, Because of the pandemic, last year’s on re-reading Hemingway’s work in light but also the animacy hierarchy’s ceremony had to be delayed, but the of ecocritical posthumanism. Her latest fragility, as Hemingway simultaneously 2020 judges—authors R. O. Kwon, David publications include “The Elephant’s supports and questions it. Given this L. Ulin, and Terese Marie Mailhot—called Eye and the Maji-Maji War: A Non- complexity, Hemingway’s work is Prayer a remarkable piece of writing, astute Anthropocentric Reading of David’s African crucial to understanding modernists’ in style and structure and also in the story Story in The Garden of Eden” (2020) in The engagement with animality, disability, that it tells. Tomar is an exquisite writer, Hemingway Review and “Transhumanism race, and eugenics as his work offers a and A Prayer for Travelers is marked by a and the Biological Body in Don DeLillo’s fresh perspective on the dangers and deft and deeply rendered sense of place. Zero K: A Material Feminist Perspective” complications of transspecies connections. Even more, the novel pushes back against (2020) in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Katie Warczak is a Ph.D. candidate our preconceptions, shifting fluidly in time Literature and Environment. She has a blog at Pennsylvania State University. She has to evoke a sense of the floating nature of named “Issues Under Tissues.” been published in The Hemingway Review, existence, especially for characters such as Humanimalia, and Disability Studies these, who find themselves, in nearly every Quarterly. way that matters, having to reckon with what it means to live on the periphery. 2021 PEN/Hemingway Award ED. NOTE: Our regular PEN/ Please Help Support the Friends of the Hemingway correspondent Steve Paul is Ernest Hemingway Collection currently on leave from the Newsletter, The Friends of the Ernest Hemingway completing a biography of Evan S. Connell Collection was founded in 1990 by Patrick that’s coming this fall. We did want to offer Hemingway and Jacqueline Kennedy a report on the award ceremony, however, Onassis to provide financial support and courtesy of the JFK: resources to preserve and make accessible Debut authors Kawai Strong the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the Washburn and Ruchika Tomar won John F. Kennedy Presidential Library the 2021 and 2020 PEN/Hemingway and Museum. Without the private and Awards, honoring a distinguished first generous support of friends and admirers book of fiction, for their novels Sharks of Ernest Hemingway, the John F. Kennedy in the Time of Saviors: A Presidential Library would be unable to Novel (Macmillan) and A Prayer for pay for the critical preservation work Katie Warczak Travelers (Riverhead). Seán Hemingway, that is needed to protect and safeguard “Hemingway: Animals, Violence, and the grandson of Ernest Hemingway, this historical and cultural treasure. Your Transspecies Relationships” honored Washburn and Tomar on Sunday, donation and membership will help Ernest Hemingway’s works often April 11, in a virtual celebration hosted by preserve this priceless collection and feature animals, but the scholarship on the the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library support public programming on significance of this animality, and how it and Museum. The winners will receive Hemingway’s life, works, times, and legacy. intersects with other identities and concepts a cash prize underwritten by the Ernest All members receive 1) free admission in Hemingway’s writing, is still in its early Hemingway family and the Ernest to the John F. Kennedy Presidential stages. This chapter of my dissertation Hemingway Foundation. Library and Museum; 2) a 10% discount seeks to expand on these fledgling ideas by Washburn will receive $10,000 and a in the Museum Store, and on mail highlighting Hemingway’s contributions to month-long Residency Fellowship at and website orders; 3) complimentary conversations about animality, disability, the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, subscription to the Hemingway Collection race, and eugenics, specifically in relation a retreat for artists and writers, valued and JFK Library Foundation e-Newsletters; to transspecies relationships fraught with at $10,000. This year’s judges— and 4) advance notice of all Hemingway violence. authors Ramona Ausubel, Jack Livings, events at the JFK Library Violence is a key mediator of and Stuart Nadler—praised the book as a Membership levels begin at $25 for transspecies relationships in Hemingway’s precisely observed, deeply humane novel students, $45 for individuals, and $75 for work, particularly that marries mythology, social and filial families, all the way up to $2,500 to join (1935), (2005), and The folklore, and the visceral realities of a the Laureate’s Circle. To contribute, please Old Man and the Sea (1952). However, single Hawaiian family teetering between visit www.jfklibrary.org/, click the Donate it is not straightforward violence, as poverty and comfort, disconnection and button, and look for the Hemingway sometimes the African “prey” or sharks profound kinship. Sharks in the Time of Friends link on the left-hand menu.■ 2021 | No. 73 | 27 LindaBook Wagner-Martin Review: Spent Her Memorial Day Escaping into Sebastian Junger’s Freedom. Even on Vacation She Couldn’t Help but Hear the Voice of a Certain Someone.… by Linda Wagner-Martin published story “Summer People”: “They to dry and then spread over the deep tubs were the best people in the world.” His where the men who came to grind their ublished in May 2021, Junger’s readers already knew this: “The End of wagon loads of apples left the mill’s share. Freedom speaks of the homesickness Something” shows Hemingway’s young Below the dam of the cider mill there was a for his youth Hemingway was man letting Marjorie row home, at least deep pool where the eddy from the falling Pexperiencing when he returned from his partly because he would rather hang out water turned out back in under the dam. involvement in the Hurtgen Forest battle with Bill. That Bill asks him, “Did she go You could always catch trout if you fished near the close of World War II. Cherishing all right?” shows the complicity between there patiently and whenever I caught one his friendship with Buck Lanham, living the boys. The tranquility of the two I would kill him and lay him in the big alone in Cuba, he wrote and wrote about friends in “The Three-Day Blow,” like the wicker creel that was in the shade and put what friendships in Michigan were like, camaraderie of the two skiers in “Cross- a layer of fern leaves over him and then go before he married Hadley in 1921. And Country Snow,” reifies how crucial male into the cider mill and take the tin cup off then married Pauline, and then married friendship is. Nick’s learning from George the nail on the wall over the tubs and pull Martha, and then.… in “The Killers” gave the younger character up the heavy sacking from one of the tubs Junger’s account of the four-hundred the tutelage of an older man: the naïve and dip out a cup of cider and drink it.” mile walk he and three friends (a conflict comments by Mrs. Bell show women’s utter In the first of the three sections of photographer and two Afghan War vets) lack of understanding. Freedom, Junger spends much time undertook along the railroad lines of the Hemingway’s strangely childlike prayer discussing the way the human body can East Coast, avoiding suspicious cops, in “Summer People,” placed immediately learn to walk, drawing on the experiences drinking from streams, and sleeping as after he has had sex with Kate, shows of long-distance runners with their a unit is a strangely anachronistic retreat how young he is, hanging on to those phenomenal virtuosity. He writes with this from civilization: guy friendships as if they are a kind of same scrupulous detail that Hemingway “My dog lay on my ankles, and the religious totem: “comfortable, happy, uses at his most exacting: three other men shifted and muttered next fishing tomorrow, he prayed as he always “Adjust the belt, adjust the straps, to me in their sleep. There may be better prayed when he remembered it, for the adjust the stride until you’ve found that things than that, but not many.. . .” family, himself, to be a great writer, Kate, familiar all-day rhythm that is more of a As Junger notes in a later passage, the men, Odgar, for good fishing, poor old forward-rolling motion than a walk and “Most nights we were the only people in Odgar, poor old Odgar, sleeping up there at feels at least bearable if not, occasionally, the world who knew where we were. There the cottage, maybe not fishing.…” In some unstoppable.” are many definitions of freedom but surely places, he transposes his love of his friends As he often does, Junger stretches his that is one of them.” to his love of Michigan, remembering descriptive passages into larger and more Among the unpublished segments of “getting up at daylight to row across the Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream, the lake and hike over the hills after a rain to work he began writing almost frenetically fish at Horton’s Creek.” “He loved the long during 1945, are passages about his summer. It used to be that he felt sick when Michigan buddies that repeat scenes from the first of August came and he realized his stories in In Our Time and Men Without that there were only four more weeks Women: before the trout season closed.” And as late “When he married he lost Bill Smith, as , “It was the smell of Odgar, the Ghee, all the old gang. He lost Michigan when I was a boy and I wished I them because he admitted by marrying could have had a sweet-grass basket to keep that something was more important than it in when we traveled and to have under fishing. They were all married to fishing. the mosquito net in the bed at night. The He’dbeen married to it before he married cider tasted like Michigan too and I always Helen, really married to it. It wasn’t any remembered the cider mill and the door joke. So he lost them all. Helen thought it which was never locked but only fitted with was because they didn’t like her.” a hasp and wooden pin and the smell of the As Hemingway wrote in the late- sacks used in the pressing and later spread

28 | Hemingway newsletter complex suggestions. Here he comments on the states of mind that truly gifted athletes understand: “One of the adaptations that makes such endurance feats possible, psychologically, is the ability to experience time and effort in a variety of ways. Exertion causes the brain to release endorphins that mask pain and are mildly narcotic, and the repetitive nature of running or walking can lull the mind into a kind of hypnosis.… An athlete who is deeply locked into a long-distance cadence can cover 10 or 20 miles without seeming to expend much effort . . . “ Exploring the ramifications of various sites of knowledge reminds any reader Scott finally able to deliver his keynote in 2014 in Venice; behind him, co-program of Hemingway how frequently a passage director Mark Cirino looking relieved. (Photo by Steve Paul) becomes a passage about the process of writing, the process of doing one’s work well. Junger, too, has this digressive ability. He also is a fine historian, and the In Memoriam: various segments about “industrial carnage,” train wrecks, the Dust Bowl, the Scott Donaldson (1928-2020) of a potential idea. One of Scott’s great Trail of Tears, and various other related When Scott Donaldson passed away strengths was he knew the print value of topics keep his reader from feeling hungry on December 1, the Hemingway Society a project: he was a master at making sure for more personal details. We never know lost not only one of its most visible, his articles and books remained current anything about the men who are his prolific, and accomplished leaders, but and relevant through a constant cycle of companions. When Junger tells us anything one of its great advocates for emerging updating and re-anthologizing. at all, we savor those details. For example, scholars. Scott and his wife, Vivie, were Scott’s contributions to Hemingway “We’d all been in a certain amount of long-terms supporters of both the Hinkle studies were immense. The career overview combat and there was something about our fund that supports graduate-student travel he contributed to the Spring 2021 issue of endeavor—the simplicity, the hardship, the to conferences and the Smith-Reynolds- The Hemingway Review—the last writing proximity of death—that reminded us of Lewis Founders Fellowship that provides he completed before he succumbed to those days.… The things that had to happen financial assistance for research for cancer—tells the story of how he came out there were so clear and simple—eat, Hemingway scholars early in their career. to organize his first full-length book walk, hide, sleep—that just getting through More importantly, if you happened to see on the writer, By Force of Will: The Life the day felt like scripture: a true and honest Scott at one of our biennial meetings, it and Art of Ernest Hemingway (1977), accounting of everything that underlies the was likely during a panel session where he thematically rather than chronologically frantic performance of life.” was quietly taking notes on a presentation under the advice of no less an editor One of the passages that Junger gives by a new entrant to the profession. Once than Malcolm Cowley. The value of that us, as a kind of comic relief, would also the session ended, it was not uncommon approach is confirmed by his subsequent have appealed to Hemingway, a man who for him to approach this new face and offer biography of fellow Minnesotan F. Scott valued whatever appetites he could indulge: gentle words of encouragement. Fitzgerald, Fool for Love (1983). His twin “We’d moved forty miles in forty hours Such was my experience in Stresa, dedication to Hemingway and Fitzgerald and felt like wolves. We ordered coffees where Scott offered both compliments and eventuated two of the most balanced and and a plateful of whatever pastries they critiques on a reading of Hemingway’s thorough assessments of that literary had and bagels and cream cheese toasted “Che Ti Dice la Patria?” (1927) and F. rivalry: Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and wrapped in wax paper and when we Scott Fitzgerald’s little-known “The High and Fall of a Literary Friendship (1999), couldn’t eat any more we stood ourselves Cost of Macaroni,” which at that point had which surprised both its author and its back up on leg muscles that had already only appeared posthumously in 1954 in as publisher by selling more than 20,000 set like concrete and hoisted our packs and obscure a literary journal as imaginable. I copies, and Fitzgerald and Hemingway: moved on.” left the conversation with the feeling that Works and Days (2010). The very And of course, the modus operandi alteration of Hemingway and Fitzgerald’s of the book Freedom itself would, as Scott put more effort into his response names suggests the balance he sought in well, have appealed to Hemingway: than I had into my admittedly preliminary depicting that relationship: both men, he “Throughout history, good people and bad analysis of the texts. His encouragement understood, claimed bragging rights that have maintained their freedom by simply was a major catalyst to revising that effort exposed their vulnerabilities. Works and staying out of reach of those who would and eventually seeing it into print in Rena Days is especially valuable for gathering deprive them of it." ■ Sanderson’s Hemingway and Italy: New Perspectives (2006). I know I was never Scott’s essential articles on Hemingway, alone in receiving that sort of championing including “Hemingway’s Morality of 2021 | No. 73 | 29 required reading for anyone contemplating taking on a biography. Plus, there is no greater overview of Ernest biographies than his chapter “Trying to Capture Hemingway.” As for his second major project of the 2010s, The Paris Husband: How It Really Was Between Ernest & Hadley Hemingway appeared in 2018 just as we were heading to the City of Light for that marvelous celebration (which post- pandemic seems like a lifetime ago). The Paris Husband is a study in miniature and demonstrates one of Scott’s best critical strengths: he knew how to dissect various treatments of a specific incident—in this case, the fabled theft of Hemingway’s early attempts at fiction in the Gare de Lyon in December 1922—to diagnose how fleeting facts are embroidered into substantial fictions. There is something almost clinical in the way that Scott begins paragraphs of the book with “Fact:” or “Fiction:” that demonstrates that much like his subject he had a well-calibrated B. S. detector. In the end, as much as the work that remains on one’s shelves, it’s the personal memories that remain. Reading Jerry Kennedy’s wonderful testimonial that follows Scott’s in the Review, I was struck by his reference to an obituary that noted Scott ranked fourth in the nation among elite bridge players. I was reminded of the last time Scott had visited Montgomery, Alabama, where I live, for a Fitzgerald conference in 2013. He arrived a day early and asked me to drive him to a seemingly A glimpse from Scott and Vivie’s wedding album. Note that Mike Reynolds served as shady address that, as it happened, sat photographer. Many thanks to Vivie for sharing this wonderful picture. right next to the offices of a (now defunct) indie publisher I occasionally worked Compensation,” “Frederic’s Escape and stories. with. This warehouse, which looked like the Pose of Passivity,” and “Hemingway Scott could have easily coasted into the setting for a B-movie shootout, was a and Fame.” What is remarkable about the his final decade resting on his scholarly gathering site for local bridge players that Hemingway half of the collection is the laurels. Yet his eighties found him he had found online. He was curious what variety of critical approaches Scott took publishing two of his absolute best efforts. kind of competition the South had to offer. to textual analysis. Although we knew The Impossible Craft: Literary Biography We arrived at the scheduled him best as a biographer, his scholarship (2015) is either a textbook disguised commencement of the games about twenty sublimates a number of approaches we as a memoir or a memoir disguised minutes early and spent the time in the would more likely think of as belonging to as a textbook, depending on how one parking lot with Scott instructing me on a critic: composition history, narratology, approaches it. Recounting his adventures the finer points of strategy. For the life of what today we would recognize as (and a few major misadventures) in the me, I can’t recall a single detail I learned trauma studies. They’re all evident in practice of telling life stories, he offered a about bridge that day, but I remember his dissections of “A Very Short Story,” humorous but rightfully proud testament everything I learned about Scott. “Canary for One,” “The Killers,” and other to the challenges of the genre. It should be 30 | Hemingway newsletter Mark Cirino on Working with Scott

“Scott Donaldson called me on the phone twice in his life. The second time, it was a pleasure. We talked Hemingway, literature, writing. It was fantastic, and I felt lucky every second of the call. The first time was more disconcerting. No conference director wants to wake up to a voicemail from the keynote speaker on the day the conference begins. But Scott’s name was the first thing I saw on my phone when I woke up in Venice on June 22, 2014. I still have it on my phone. When I heard the sad news of Scott’s passing, I listened to it again. It’s sixty-two seconds of Benjamin “Dink” Bruce, who aided many a Hemingway scholar researching in the Keys, gracious apology, genuine concern passed away on September 20, 2020. (Courtesy: keysnews.com) for the welfare of the conference, mixed with some communal Dink Bruce (1943-2020) Ernest Hemingway is their eternal friend frustration at the airline industry. I An Old Car and a Friendship: A and neighbor. hope he wouldn’t mind me sharing it Reflection by Michael Bonamy* The classy Model A convertible became with you: a celebrity in its own right to the islanders. Hey, Mark. Uh… Scott Donaldson here is a story that old Conchs At that time, Key West had not yet fully calling. We’re still – heh heh – in Los like to tell. It’s about how Ernest come into the auto-age. That Model A was Angeles, we got bumped off a plane. Hemingway first came to Key West. some snazzy automobile, as a Ferrari or There’s just nothing we could do about TAs a young teenager, I heard it in the Two Maserati might be to us today. Hemingway and Pauline left Key West it. It’s miserable. It makes me damned Friends Barber Shop on Fleming Street. for the birth of their first child together. upset. Sorry about it and I hope I This tale seemed to circulate whenever a A few years later they were drawn back. didn’t screw up the whole damned Hemingway conversation arose … often They purchased a house and spent nearly program. Anyway I probably won’t sparked by an article in Argosy or Field and a decade on the island. The house needed see you ‘til we get in late Monday Stream. Interestingly, people remote from the Hemingway generation would tell the renovation and the couple invited Toby afternoon, so anyway, probably won’t Bruce to Key West to assist them. Toby see you ‘til Tuesday morning. In any story as if it were their own. I have come to believe that the story is mostly true became their personal handy-man, driver, case, I’m adaptable with whatever with a bit of apocrypha … a foundational secretary, confidante, marriage counselor, schedule change you want to make. building block for marvelous Key West and friend. The Bruces, it is worthy to Later on I can do something. It’s legends. note, were also the custodians of all things not going to be easy. I know you As the story goes, Ernest and Pauline Hemingway that were eventually left have a very full program. Anyway, I Hemingway arrived in Key West in behind in Key West. look forward to seeing you over the the late 1920s. They had learned of the In the 1950s it was Toby Bruce rest of the conference. Sorry about island’s charm from a friend in Paris and who introduced my family to Ernest everything. Bye! thought they should see the place for Hemingway. We knew Toby primarily as a Of course, Scott gave the themselves. In anticipation of the trip, friend but also as the owner of the Home triumphant closing talk about the they had arranged to have a brand-new Appliance Company. My parents believed Ernest-Hadley relationship, and Ford Model A Roadster Convertible in buying local and purchased everything it was a fitting crescendo to the waiting for them when they arrived on the they could from him for our family conference. There’s a great picture island. Fortunately, for Key Westers and business. of him concentrating as he delivers the Hemingways, the car was delivered Toby and Betty Bruce had two the talk and me in the background, several weeks late. Thus began a love affair. children, Dink (Benjamin) and Linda. looking much more jetlagged and The famous celebrity couple basked in They were contemporaries to my brothers weary than Scott." the charm and flavor of Key West, and its and me. Dink and my older brother, Bob, people, while awaiting their new car. Key were about the same age. They first met Westers have ever since returned the love. at Cotillion in the mid-1950s. Cotillion was Key West’s version of charm school 2021 | No. 73 | 31 exciting birth of rock ‘n’ roll. The two of them tolerated the formalities of Cotillion and Big Band ballroom dancing. They lightheartedly professed that Cotillion was a great place to meet girls. As an aside, when I became of Cotillion age, I found the whole thing to be insufferable. My interest was not in meeting girls. A 1928 Model A Coupe roadster convertible What good were they? They couldn’t like the one Dink and Bob attempted to play baseball, didn’t know how to fish, restore. and knew nothing about racecars. There wasn’t a one who had a B.B. gun. As the They studied J. C. Whitney and Honest pater familias of daughters and precious Charlie catalogs. Dink and Bob pooled granddaughters, I now have a different money and bought an old Model A that opinion. But back then it took Mrs. Bob had found on a weeded lot in the Otto to personally fill out my upper Keys. The intention was to salvage card and supervise its exact and prompt or “pirate” rare parts. They bruised their execution (all to the music of the Paul knuckles more than once. They labored Whiting Orchestra). I was a reluctant and with great love until each turned sixteen, recalcitrant participant who could never got their real driver’s licenses, bought real hide from Mrs. Otto or from my parent’s cars that already ran, and then entered the piercing reflective pride and possibly wonderful world of teenage diversions at amusement at my disinclination with the thirty cents a gallon. whole thing. For years, thereafter, I would The Model A project was never purposely not enter the public library completed by them. All was not for for fear that Mrs. Otto might offer a few naught. A friendship had been forged. suggestions on grooming, posture, and It is nice to imagine that what comportment. started with a friendship between Ernest Dink and Bob seemingly didn’t Hemingway and Toby Bruce found itself experience those misgivings. They were in another friendship nearly thirty years willing participants at Cotillion and grew later. It has been quite some time now in the friendship that started there. At since Dink and Bob were together. Time fifteen they were now aspiring drivers. and opportunities can separate people, Both had already discovered girls, now but not warm regards and friendships. they were about to begin discovering the When Bob learned that Dink had recently independence of cars. passed away, he asked God to keep him Dink’s home was next to his father’s close and reminisced with me. He told me business on Simonton Street. There was about the weekly, Monday night dances a carriage house behind that home. In at the Elks Club (no homework turned in Dink (top) and the author’s brother, Bob that garage a dusty Model A roadster on Tuesday), double dating, the hangouts Bonamy, as teenagers growing up in Key convertible slumbered and seemed at Pizzio’s Drive-In, a beer now and then, West. (Courtesy: Mike Bonamy) forgotten. It hadn’t run in years. The old water skiing excursions, hurricane parties, car was desperately in need of repairs. Was and of course, the old Model A Coupe. for young teen girls and boys. It was there, that Hemingway’s Model A of Key West We talked about Dink’s summer on the under the tutelage of Mrs. Anne Otto, the lore? No one knows. Toby Bruce did drive HMS Bounty that was then moored in St. city’s librarian, that thirteen- and fourteen- for the Hemingways. Possibly, it was the Petersburg, his mate’s-work cruising to year-olds learned the fineries of social Hemingway car. The Bruces were also the Bimini on a tourist for-hire sailing yacht, life and etiquette. Niceties and proper de-facto custodians of the Hemingway his desire to join the Coast Guard, and conversation were taught. Boys learned Key West collection. Maybe that old car most of all, we talked about that old car. to tie a necktie and clean their fingernails. was Hemingway’s. Maybe not! It didn’t We both wondered, “Whatever happened Girls learned about make-up and other girl matter to the boys. They merely saw a car to it? Could it have been Hemingway’s? things. I recall that we were instructed to and the potential for a customized Deuce Was it ever restored?” dress properly because “modesty was the Coupe Hot Rod. However, Mr. Bruce had Dink was an adventurer. Dink had shield of virtue”. We were also taught that other ideas. The boys could have the car that same spirit that brought Ernest “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” “Course but with one caveat. They had to restore it. Hemingway to prominence and Toby language is the wit of a foul intellect,” and The old car could not be turned into a hot Bruce to Key West. Bob told me that Dink “Always be polite, kind and considerate.” rod. Dink and Bob agreed. In 1960, in the was a “quite likeable person.” He said, “I When there was a formal dance, of parlance of fifteen-year-olds, “This was so never knew Dink to exhibit anger or have a course, dance cards were required. For cool.” [The quote is Bob’s recollection] harsh word. He was extraordinarily polite. Dink and Bob that time was during the The two spent months toiling over that He didn’t speak much, but when he spoke, car. They searched for parts at junkyards.

32 | Hemingway newsletter he knew what he was talking about. Dink was very smart. He stayed calm, patient, and analytical when everyone else, me, was frustrated and ill tempered. He was in no way pretentious. What you saw is what you got. Dink had a kind heart. He was considerate. He sincerely wanted to help. He was loyal too. Dink was a friend.” *As told to him by his brother, Bob.

Brewster Chamerblin (1939-2020)

hen Brewster passed away on November 20, it was the second straight loss of Wan important Key West connection for Hemingway scholars, following the death of Dink Bruce two months earlier. Since he and his wife, Lynn-Marie, relocated to the island in 2001, Brewster had taken on Brewster Chamberlin, who like Dink Bruce helped any Hemingway scholar who managed the Herculean task of sorting out various to land in Key West, passed away on November 12, 2020. His The Hemingway Log is an indispensable resource. (Photo by Carol Tedesco) contradictions in the authorial chronology, not just concerning Hemingway’s productive decade on the tropical island Opinions and a Companion to the City of special emphasis on the Custom House—a but from cradle to grave. The fruit of Light for the Literate Traveler (2002, revised site which, as anyone who has wandered that hard, often underappreciated work edition 2004), Mediterranean Sketches: Front Street knows, offers tourists the was The Hemingway Log: A Chronology Fictions, Memories and Metafictions richest and most detailed introduction to of His Life and Times, published in 2015 (2005), Love’s Poison: Poems (2005), the island’s colorful but complex history. by the University of Kansas Press. The Situation Reports on the Emotional Before he and Lynn moved into their Hemingway Society was delighted to offer Equipoise: Collected Poems 1959-2006 charming former cigar-roller’s home near his 2020 compendium of corrections and (2007), the thriller Radovic’s Dilemma the Key West Cemetery twenty years new discoveries to readers for free on our (2008), The Time in Tavel: An Informal ago, Brewster directed the creation of the website; it’s still available there at https:// Memoir of a Sojourn in Provence (2010, 1944-1949 archives of the U. S. Military www.hemingwaysociety.org/updating- revised edition 2017), Shorts of All Sorts: Government in Germany (OMGUS). hemingway-log-new-conversation- Selected Prose and Poems (2013), A Paris The success of that project led to an brewster-chamberlin, along with our last Chapbook (2013), Travels in and offer to serve as founding director of interview with him. The Log has proved France and the Durrell School of Corfu the Archives and Library of the U. S. an invaluable source for scholars; over (2013), Almost to the End, The Shorter Holocaust Memorial Museum, and then as the course of his collecting the data, Poems: New and Old (2015), and Scripts director of that organization’s International Brewster became a key consultant on the of All Sorts For Stage, Radio and Screen Programs division. During that time, he Hemingway Letters Project. (2020). worked with archives of several different An undertaking like The Log can Additionally, Brewster sat on the countries to preserve records and artifacts overtake one’s entire writing life, but board of the Key West Art and Historical documenting the Holocaust, including Brewster also found time to produce Society and contributed frequently to its Yad Vashem in Israel. a similar effort on Lawrence Durrell, programming. For his dedication to the Shortly after news of Brewster’s death A Chronology of the Life and Times of Society, KWAHS named him the recipient broke, a friend and professional peer Lawrence Durrell (2007, revised edition of its 2018 Scotti Merrill Preservation from Jerusalem’s Holocaust remembrance 2019). He also published an extensive Award, which honors local citizens who center, Yaacov Lozowick, wrote on his blog variety of fiction, memoir, and travelogues, dedicate themselves to preserving the about how he and his American colleague including Paris Now and Then: Memoirs, cultural heritage of the Florida Keys, with stayed in touch in retirement:

2021 | No. 73 | 33 “From time to time [Brewster] would send me a brown envelope with cuttings from the NY Times, or the New Yorker, or wherever, on Jewish matters, or German- Jewish issues, or interesting book reviews. ‘Abba,’ my daughter used to say, ‘who is this friend of yours who reads real newspapers and sends you clippings?’ The last envelope he sent was on September 17th this year, and it’s still on my desk even tho I’ve already responded to it. Recently I must have written something about Van Gogh and southern France, and in response he sent me [a link to the immersive Van Gogh experience Alive, which opened at the Atelier des Lumières in Paris in 2019]. I wrote back that Van Gogh would have loved it, had he lived to be 150.” I, too, was a recipient of Brewster’s “brown envelopes.” Before the pandemic I made annual research trips to Key James Sanford, the last surviving child of Hemingway’s older sister, Marcelline, passed away West for several years to delve deep into on May 19, 2021. At right, Mr. Sanford with his younger brother, John (far left), older sister, Hemingway research, and inevitably Carol (far right), and his grandmother, . (Both photos courtesy of the Brewster and Lynn invited me to dinner, Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park Facebook Page) where we spent hours talking culture, food, wine, and history. In 2015 the only time in my schedule I could get to the James Sterling Sanford island was over Thanksgiving week, which (1929-2021) meant I’d be spending a lonely holiday e were saddened to learn holed up in a hotel room. Brewster and at press time of the May Lynn would not hear of such a thing and 19 passing of Ernest invited me to their annual gathering of WHemingway’s nephew, James Sanford. The friends at Fort Zachary Taylor Historic middle child of Marcelline Hemingway State Park, not far from where the former and Sterling Sanford, Mr. Sanford was WWI submarine basin where Hemingway an active member of the Michigan moored the in the mid-1930s. I Hemingway Society. As the Ernest was relieved to discover I wasn’t the only Foundation of Oak Park noted on its orphan who had washed up on the beach Facebook page, he also donated family that day; friends with other friends who memorabilia to that institution, along had nowhere else to go had been invited to with his siblings, Carol Sanford Coolidge join the festivities. (who passed away in 2013) and John Of course, one can only get away Sanford (who passed in 2016 and served once with skipping one’s own family on the Hemingway Society board). We will Thanksgiving for work, but each year publish a full remembrance in next year’s afterward as Brewster and I worked at newsletter. Until then, we encourage you typesetting his additions to The Log, he to visit the Oak Park foundation’s YouTube would ask whether I’d be coming down page and enjoy the conversation about his in November. When I chuckled and tried grandmother that Mr. Sanford filmed with to explain I was expected home over that his granddaughter, Caroline Sanford, in break, he invariably would say, “But Lynn 2017. and I thought for sure you were making this your home.”

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