An Interview with Hemingway: In Celebration of Papa's Birthday

     Today is Ernest Hemingway's Birthday.  He was born on July 21, 1899 - 113 years ago.  I came across an interview with Hemingway by George Plimpton that was published in the Spring 1958 issue of The Paris Review.  It was one of a series of interviews titled The Art of Fiction.  In addition to the interview, Plimpton describes Hemingway's writing room.  It's a vivid picture of the writer at work.  You can read the entire interview here, but here's an excerpt:

The room is divided into two alcoves by a pair of chest-high bookcases that stand out into the room at right angles from opposite walls. A large and low double bed dominates one section, oversized slippers and loafers neatly arranged at the foot, the two bedside tables at the head piled seven-high with books. In the other alcove stands a massive flat-top desk with a chair at either side, its surface an ordered clutter of papers and mementos. Beyond it, at the far end of the room, is an armoire with a leopard skin draped across the top. The other walls are lined with white-painted bookcases from which books overflow to the floor, and are piled on top among old newspapers, bullfight journals, and stacks of letters bound together by rubber bands.

It is on the top of one of these cluttered bookcases—the one against the wall by the east window and three feet or so from his bed—that Hemingway has his “work desk”—a square foot of cramped area hemmed in by books on one side and on the other by a newspaper-covered heap of papers, manuscripts, and pamphlets. There is just enough space left on top of the bookcase for a typewriter, surmounted by a wooden reading board, five or six pencils, and a chunk of copper ore to weight down papers when the wind blows in from the east window.

A working habit he has had from the beginning, Hemingway stands when he writes. He stands in a pair of his oversized loafers on the worn skin of a lesser kudu—the typewriter and the reading board chest-high opposite him.

When Hemingway starts on a project he always begins with a pencil, using the reading board to write on onionskin typewriter paper. He keeps a sheaf of the blank paper on a clipboard to the left of the typewriter, extracting the paper a sheet at a time from under a metal clip that reads “These Must Be Paid.” He places the paper slantwise on the reading board, leans against the board with his left arm, steadying the paper with his hand, and fills the paper with handwriting which through the years has become larger, more boyish, with a paucity of punctuation, very few capitals, and often the period marked with an X. The page completed, he clips it facedown on another clipboard that he places off to the right of the typewriter.

Hemingway shifts to the typewriter, lifting off the reading board, only when the writing is going fast and well, or when the writing is, for him at least, simple: dialogue, for instance.

He keeps track of his daily progress—“so as not to kid myself”—on a large chart made out of the side of a cardboard packing case and set up against the wall under the nose of a mounted gazelle head. The numbers on the chart showing the daily output of words differ from 450, 575, 462, 1250, back to 512, the higher figures on days Hemingway puts in extra work so he won’t feel guilty spending the following day fishing on the Gulf Stream.

A Farewell to Arms: A Hemingway "Choose Your Own Adventure"

     Ernest Hemingway struggled with the ending of his 1929 novel, A Farewell to Arms.  He wrote 47 endings of the World War I story of an ambulance driver who falls in love with a nurse before he settled on the one that was published.  Now Scribners is releasing a new edition that includes all of the alternate endings.
     According to an article in The New York Times, "Hemingway also left behind a list of alternate titles, which are reprinted in the new edition. They include “Love in War,” “World Enough and Time,” “Every Night and All” and “Of Wounds and Other Causes.” One title, “The Enchantment,” was crossed out by Hemingway."
     The alternate endings have been preserved over the years  in Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.  Hemingway's struggle with the novel is preserved in handwritten pages like this sample of the first page of the novel.

      The alternate endings are interesting in that they show a legendary novelist at work but there is also the question of whether or not one should mess around with a classic.  What do you think?

Hemingway's Boat - Paul Hendrickson

     Those who follow this blog know that I'm a Hemingway fan.  Countless biographies of "Papa" have been written over the years but the most recent one looks at Hemingway's life from a new angle.  Paul Hendrickson's Hemingway's Boat:  Everything He Loved In Life And Lost, 1934-1961 covers the final 27 years of the writer's life and focuses on his beloved boat, Pilar, the one constant during this period.
     Pilar, purchased after the publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, became the writer's sanctuary.  It was a place to escape from literary criticism, the pain of failed marriages, and the stings of failed friendships.  Aboard the Pilar he entertained celebrities, relaxed with his children, caught prize fish, and, of course, drank heavily.  In following Hemingway through the years spent on Pilar, Hendrickson's biography also includes the other lives that weave in and out as well which serves to make "Papa" more human.  The portrait that emerges is much more sympathetic that many of the past biographies.

"In my opinion, too many previous Hemingway biographers and scholars have gleefully wished to point out so many of the toxic things that Hemingway did," Hendrickson said. "But one of the points I try to make is that, yes, without question he could be appalling to other people but ... there was this other side of him, this decent side that could come out instantly."

I found it thoroughly engaging and hard to put down.  If you're a Hemingway fan, you must read it; if you're not, this read might change your mind.


     On a related topic, a Hemingway Look-Alike Contest is held every year at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West.  This year, the request of a three-time competitor has captured the attention of The Guardian.  Read about it here.

Library Loot #4

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Marg and Claire that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
I'm continuing my journey through all of Hemingway's works.  This is his first collection of short stories.


True at First Light by Ernest Hemingway
A fictional memoir published posthumously and edited by his son, Patrick.  It was written when he returned from Kenya in 1953 and chronicles his last African safari.


The Dangerous Summer by Ernest Hemingway
In 1959, Hemingway returned to Spain both the revisit "the country he loved more than any other than his own" and to see a series of bullfights that promised spectacular performances by two famous rivals.  He was commissioned by Life magazine to write a short article about his trip but he became so absorbed that he wrote a book-length manuscript.  It was the last major literary undertaking of his life.



Time Was Soft There: a Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer
Jeremy Mercer, a crime reporter, fled Canada in 1999 and ended up broke in Paris.  He stumbles upon Shakespeare & Co., the current incarnation of Sylvia Beach's famous bookstore of the 1920's owned by George Whitman.  The book "winds in and around the streets of Paris, the staff fall in and out of love, straighten bookshelves, host tea parties, drink in the more down-at-the-heels cafes, sell a few books, and help George find a way to keep his endangered bookstore open."

The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett
 A thriller set during WWII which involves a code that is embedded in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca!

Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
This was Capote's first novel.  From the jacket:  "...a novel of almost supernatural intensity and inventiveness, an audacious foray into the mind of a sensitive boy as he seeks out the grown-up enigmas of love and death in the ghostly landscape of the deep South."

From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus
Set in Cagliari, Sardinia, the novel relates a story which spans three generations, focusing on women from two families who are joined through marriage. An unnamed contemporary speaker feels particularly connected to her paternal grandmother, and as the speaker pieces together this woman's life from what she herself recalls about her and from the family lore which has survived through the memories of the rest of the family.  She creates a woman who not only searches earnestly for love but is absolutely determined to experience it in all its splendor, believing that it is "the principal thing in life."