The Ernest Hemingway Thread

[Connery]

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle."

"Bicycle Ernest Hemingway rode while in Italy. It was configured to carry a rifle along the top tube."

 

[Connery]

Adriana Ivancich~ "Then she came into the room, shining in her youth and tall striding beauty," Ernest Hemingway wrote of Renata, the heroine of his 1950 novel Across the River and into the Trees. "She had pale, almost olive-colored skin, a profile that could break your, or anyone else's heart, and her dark hair, of an alive texture, hung down over her shoulders." She was Adriana Ivancich, the beautiful daughter of a local aristocrat. Her relationship with the author had begun when he was a whiskey-and-war-weary 49, she just shy of her 19th birthday. To spare Adriana's reputation, Hemingway forbade the publication of Across the River in Italy for 10 years.

Perhaps Adriana's fondest memories of Papa are set in Cuba, where she and her mother visited him and Mary. During the day Hemingway would write at his desk at the bottom of a stone tower on the property, while Adriana labored over her drawings at the top. She recalls that once he scratched their wrists and dipped a pen in their blood, forming a "secret organization" he called "White Tower, Inc."

She last saw Hemingway in Venice in 1955. They sat on the Gritti terrace overlooking the Grand Canal. It was sunset in one of the world's most beautiful cities. Adriana remembers that tears rolled down the author's cheeks. "Look, daughter," he said. "Now you can tell everyone you saw Ernest Hemingway cry."

In 1983, Adriana Ivancich killed herself.

Mary & Ernest Hemingway with Adriana Ivancich

 

[HadleyH]

Another woman in the love life of Papa was the wild and beautiful Jane Mason, Ernest Hemingway and Jane Mason first met on an ocean liner in 1931. He was thirty-two and married to Pauline, his second wife. Jane was twenty-two and married to Grant Mason, a wealthy American who worked in Cuba as an executive for Pan American Airways. They lived near Havana in a large villa where Jane was an aspiring sculptor. Hemingway and Jane began an affair as Hemingway took up extended residence at what would be his base in Havana for the next several years, the Hotel Ambos Mundos.

Jane was a recognized beauty ..." medium height,slender body, exquisite features.Her hair was parted in the middle and drawn demurely away from her face to create an illusion of serene purity. There was nothing demure about her personality for she danced and drank with great verve....."


He described her as 'a damn fine girl', and used her as the model for the adulterous Margot Macomber in The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.


Jane here with Carlos Gutierrez (the first skipper of Hems boat the Pilar)

 

[HadleyH]

Sweet darling Papa got around .... don't blame him .... a mind like that it's like moths to the light! I am a moth lol

with Slim Keith

she was ok wasn't she...

 

[HadleyH]

((( Papa...)))

 

[Nathan Dodge]

Hemingway's Paris is a blog I like a lot. Its author doesn't post frequently, but he gets the essence of the time by posting anecdotes, photos, and paintings that all comprise the city Hemingway knew.

And speaking of Hemingway's World, I highly recommend...Hemingway and His World, a rather rare, coffee-table-sized book by A.E. Hotchner. I stumbled upon my copy in 1995 when the great used bookstore I frequented often recommended it to me. Each section covers various aspects of Hemingway's life and experiences through the decades. The main attraction of the book is that it's chock full o' photos, paintings, and vintage advertising.

 

[HadleyH]

Another excellent pictorial-biography that I own and I recommend is "Ernest" by Peter Buckley.

 

[Nathan Dodge]

My library was getting rid of books and I scored a hardcover copy of Ernest Hemingway: A Comprehensive Bibliography, from 1967.

Has anyone seen this site: Papa's Planet?

 

[Nathan Dodge]

An extended trailer for the HBO production of Hemingway & Gellhorn is up (it has a glimpse of nudity and we can't have that here, can we?). The trailer looks...over the top, yet the film looks to be worth watching for the three of us who post regularly in this thread. I'll have to wait for the DVD release.

 

[Nathan Dodge]

Here's an excellent Jane Mason article, "To Love and Love Not", from the July 1999 issue of Vanity Fair, courtesy of their online site.

 

[HadleyH]

In an interview in in 1958 Ernest Hemingway said that the final words of “A Farewell to Arms,” his wartime masterpiece, were rewritten 39 times before he was satisfied.

A new edition of “A Farewell to Arms,” which was originally published in 1929, will be released next week, including all the alternate endings, along with early drafts of other passages in the book.


July 4, 2012 New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/b...ith-hemingways-alternate-endings.html?_r=1&hp

 

[Connery]

^^^

This is certainly a refreshing point of view, Hemingway has become more of a mythical icon than a prolific writer of late. I viewed "Midnight in Paris" and am familiar with "The Paris Wife" both were entertaining, but, missing a great deal of substantive material. I am looking forward to the "new" edition of "A Farewell to Arms".

"A new edition of “A Farewell to Arms,” which was originally published in 1929, will be released next week, including all the alternate endings, along with early drafts of other passages in the book. It is also an attempt to redirect some of the attention paid in recent years to Hemingway’s swashbuckling, hard-drinking image — through fictional depictions in the best-selling novel “The Paris Wife” and the Woody Allen film “Midnight in Paris,” for instance — back to his sizable body of work."

 

[HadleyH]

^^^

I agree, its interesting to see that great authors also had their problems when writing.... it not always came easy!

 

[alsendk]

I always have had a problem with Aaron Hotchners book/biography papa Hemingway, for being too close and intimate, and have always thought that a lot of things in this book was more fiction than faction.

But reading his newest book, called: Dear Papa, dear Hotch, - about the correspondence of Ernest Hemingway and A.E. Hotchner, I have come to terms that they actually had a true friendship.

But when reading about Hemingways personal life, I still prefer to read Carlos Bakers Biography " Earnest Hemingway" which has the right distance to the author in my mind.

Do the gentlemen and ladies disagree with me about this, I am myself in a very mixed feeling whenever thinking about all these many Biographies I have read through the years by now.

[/IMG]

 

[Connery]

I always have had a problem with Aaron Hotchners book/biography papa Hemingway, for being too close and intimate, and have always thought that a lot of things in this book was more fiction than faction.

But reading his newest book, called: Dear Papa, dear Hotch, - about the correspondence of Ernest Hemingway and A.E. Hotchner, I have come to terms that they actually had a true friendship.

But when reading about Hemingways personal life, I still prefer to read Carlos Bakers Biography " Earnest Hemingway" which has the right distance to the author in my mind.

Do the gentlemen and ladies disagree with me about this, I am myself in a very mixed feeling whenever thinking about all these many Biographies I have read through the years by now.
.

I think it really depends on what the reader is looking for. To examine Hemingway in a purely literal sense Baker's work is the Rosetta Stone of EH biographies. Baker was the "official" biographer of Hemingway, although his third wife Martha Gelhorn appeared to be uncooperative. Hotchner appeared to be overly attentive and obsequious; his bias clear.

However, Hemingway is "papa" culture and more of a commercial product than anything else, expect to those who truly enjoy his talents. As noted by Baker when he was the editor of ''Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917-1961'' (1981) that Hemingway relaxed by writing letters, allowing himself to spout off, ramble on and even present invented yarns as fact in his correspondence. The edited collection includes nearly 600 of the thousands of letters that Hemingway wrote."

If i wanted to know more of who Hemingway was I would read his personal papers copies of which have been shared by Cuba and given to the JFK library .

 

[alsendk]

Connery, Thanks for your first class information, about a writer that I really care about, and respect in so many ways...exept for his habit about shooting animals...strange that I have not the same feeling when it comes to fishing :O¤

 

[HadleyH]

alsendk , I have all of Hemingway bios. and you'd want to look into this one too..."Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences" by James R. Mellow

 

[alsendk]

Sorry Hadley for slow reacting.
This looks interesting, and are one of many biographies that I have already read that have slipped somehow. I will look it up...and thanks for the tip Hadley. Hope still to be able to find it somewhere in the book shelves of Copenhagen. aoh I am too slow for this place....just realize that this is a new realease biography...bear with me[huh]

 

[HadleyH]

alsendk, this biography was first released in the early 1990s, so I think it would not be too complicated for you to get a copy.

 

[alsendk]

OK I see, I need to look at the book shelves after all, or it might be ordered from Schusters via Amazon UK perhaps.
After reading over 20 bios, I wonder how this one was missing.
Can`t wait to get it.
There are places in the book Island in the stream, where Hemingway are together with his sons, that I always come back to.
he describes so well the happy days with them, swimming, playing, having dinner in the evening......and later the loneliness that he feels when the sons have flown away from the Island.
This is where I believe I have found him best, describing his sadness of the departure of the kids, but fortunally there are many other openings in all his books, where I think it is possible to see his very mixed personality....which makes him so interesting as a human being.
Do you have any passages from his many books, that is specifically important to you Hadley....any favourite places, and quotes