Ernest Hemingway Died 50 Years Ago

A few thoughts on Hemingway:


1
A.E. Hotchner, who seems to have been friends with a few of the most notable people of the 20th Century, writes about his friend's depression, paranoia and suicide in today's Times. It ends with a twist.

“But how can you say that? You have written a beautiful book about Paris, as beautiful as anyone can hope to write.”

“The best of that I wrote before. And now I can’t finish it.”

I told him to relax or even retire.

“Retire?” he said. “Unlike your baseball player and your prizefighter and your matador, how does a writer retire? No one accepts that his legs are shot or the whiplash gone from his reflexes. Everywhere he goes, he hears the same damn question: what are you working on?”

I told him he never cared about those dumb questions.

“What does a man care about? Staying healthy. Working good. Eating and drinking with his friends. Enjoying himself in bed. I haven’t any of them. You understand, goddamn it? None of them.” Then he turned on me. I was just like the others, pumping him for information and selling him out to the feds. After that day, I never saw him again.

Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds - The New York Times


2

Hemingway shows up as a crazy charmer in Woody Allen's excellent Midnight in Paris this summer. That's him on the left. Also look for really funny portrayals of Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Picasso. I highly recommend it.

3

Go pull a Hemingway book off your shelf. I have been meaning to go back and read a few of these, but Today I will peruse A Moveable Feast, which Hemingway was working on at the end of his life, and which serves as the template for any romantic person's love of Paris.