Posted on 07/03/2011 8:22:29 PM PDT by Palter
EARLY one morning, 50 years ago today, while his wife, Mary, slept upstairs, Ernest Hemingway went into the vestibule of his Ketchum, Idaho, house, selected his favorite shotgun from the rack, inserted shells into its chambers and ended his life.
There were many differing explanations at the time: that he had terminal cancer or money problems, that it was an accident, that hed quarreled with Mary. None were true. As his friends knew, hed been suffering from depression and paranoia for the last year of his life.
Ernest and I were friends for 14 years. I dramatized many of his stories and novels for television specials and film, and we shared adventures in France, Italy, Cuba and Spain, where, as a pretend matador with Ernest as my manager, I participated in a Ciudad Real bullfight. Ernests zest for life was infectious.
In 1959 Ernest had a contract with Life magazine to write about Spains reigning matadors, the brothers-in-law Antonio Ordóñez and Luis Miguel Dominguín. He cabled me, urging me to join him for the tour. It was a glorious summer, and we celebrated Ernests 60th birthday with a party that lasted two days.
But I remember it now as the last of the good times.
In May 1960, Ernest phoned me from Cuba. He was uncharacteristically perturbed that the unfinished Life article had reached 92,453 words. The contract was for 40,000; he was having nightmares.
A month later he called again. He had cut only 530 words, he was exhausted and would it be an imposition to ask me to come to Cuba to help him?
I did, and over the next nine days I submitted list upon list of suggested cuts.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Hemingway was an opportunist wherever he went. He was a piss poor journalist during WW II. He boozed it up with lefties everywhere he went during the war.
I didn't say the FBI's actions were justified. My posting was not to have a defense of Hemingway or the FBI.
Though, if he was a traitor working for Cuba, it would have been a major victory in the FBI proved it. Though, I didn't see it in the FBI files, perhaps the Cuban are more reliable.
Some of Hemingway's actions[Commie journal] in the past, contributed to much US Gov't embarrassment and FBI investigation.
Hemingway was an agent of the USSR, not Cuba. His suicide came only a short time after the commies came to power in Cuba, anyway, and he was already very sick when they did.
I meant USSR, the archives are in Cuba.
Not everything can be blamed on Hoover. Even the biggest conspiracy theorists must admit Hemingway spent most of his life shooting off his mouth.
Papa Was a Communist Sympathizer
Released: 7/14/1999 12:00 AM EDT
Source: University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1999
CONTACTS: Keneth Kinnamon, professor of English literature
UA English Office: (501)575-4301
Allison Hogge, science and research communications officer (501)575-6731, alhogge@comp.uark.edu
PAPA’S POLITICS: UA PROFESSOR’S RESEARCH EXAMINES HEMINGWAY’S COMMUNIST TIES
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — As the 100th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s birthday approaches on July 21, literary fans across the world will be paying homage to a writer acclaimed as the leading voice of the Lost Generation. But a University of Arkansas professor claims these fans have mis-characterized the famous author.
A new study of Hemingway, conducted by Dr. Keneth Kinnamon, indicates that the author’s social activism and leftist politics leave him far from “lost” and even dissociate him from the generation of post-war writers he supposedly founded.
In fact as Hemingway aged, said Kinnamon, his political involvement grew more radical, culminating in donations to finance the rise of the Communist Party in Cuba.
Over the past 5 years, Kinnamon has conducted an extensive study of Hemingway’s personal letters and correspondence — examining the author’s own arguments and self-descriptions to gain a complete understanding of Hemingway’s social views and personal politics.
As part of his research, Kinnamon had portions of Hemingway’s FBI file declassified. The file documents nearly a decade of continuous surveillance that began in the 1950s as a result of the author’s political activities.
Kinnamon will present his findings later this month at a conference in Oak Park, Ill., where Hemingway was born. In addition, he has published an essay entitled, “The Early Development of Hemingway’s Political Consciousness,” in a publication of the Center for Culture in Valencia, Spain, called Hemingway in Our Time.
“Hemingway was very protective of his political views. More than many of the writers of his time, he shied away from didacticism in his work and made his political points subtly,” said Kinnamon.
“By examining his letters, I’m finding a more candid statement about his personal beliefs — one that is more frank and open and gives us a better understanding of the man than if we viewed him exclusively through his fiction.”
What Kinnamon has uncovered are the written records of a man who not only held strong convictions about political and social issues, but who actively took part in them — often playing a dual role of journalist and soldier.
More...
http://www.newswise.com/articles/papa-was-a-communist-sympathizer
As a young man, Hemingway sympathized with the Socialist Part in America. His first and only vote was cast for Eugene V. Debs — a socialist leader who ran for presidency five times in the early part of the century. According to Kinnamon, the writer’s political opinions only leaned further left as he grew older.
In 1935, Hemingway went abroad as a news correspondent to cover the Spanish Civil War. But his sympathy for the people’s rebellion soon compromised his objectivity. By the close of the revolution, Hemingway had become involved with many of the socialist and communist volunteers in the resistance.
During World War II, the author took an even more active political role. He had his 38-foot fishing vessel, The Pilar, designated as an official Q-boat and equipped it with a crew to patrol the Caribbean for Nazi submarines. Later, he would accompany U.S. troops during the Battle of the Bulge and even lead his own guerilla force in the liberation of Paris.
But the political stand that would have the greatest impact in Hemingway’s life came after the war, when he had settled in Cuba.
Though his American citizenship made outright political activity impossible, the author continued to support his political interests covertly. Kinnamon’s research reveals that Hemingway channeled money through a Cuban friend to support the Communist Party in its rise to power.
Despite the threat of McCarthyism and the controversy of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Hemingway remained a staunch supporter of Fidel Castro. When the author’s political loyalties came to light in the late 1950s, the FBI opened a file and began a program of surveillance that documented Hemingway’s activities up to his death in 1961.
“At times, Hemingway would be sitting in a restaurant and would say to his companion, ‘The man at the next table is an FBI agent.’ His friends considered it paranoia, but more often than not, Hemingway was right,” said Kinnamon.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/papa-was-a-communist-sympathizer
OK, I’m officially confused. Why are Soviet KGB archives in Cuba, and why did Cuban officials give researchers access to them?
When producer David O. Selznick crowed that his wife, Jennifer Jones, was starring in “A Farewell to Arms” and he’d pay Hemingway a $50,000 bonus from any profits, the novelist wrote back: “If by some miracle, your movie, which stars 41-year-old Mrs. Selznick portraying 24-year-old Catherine Barkley, does earn $50,000, you should have all $50,000 changed into nickels at your local bank and shove them up your [bleep] until they came out of your ears.”
Darryl F. Zanuck, the boss of 20th Century Fox, was trashed when he asked Hemingway to shorten the title of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” which starred Gregory Peck. Hotchner quotes Hemingway, “I said, you want something short and exciting that will catch the eye of both sexes, right?” He then reeled off the first letters of Hollywood studio names that together spelled out the F-word. “That should fit all the marquees and you can’t beat it as a sex symbol.” Zanuck titled the film “The Macomber Affair.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2007571/posts
Hemingway was one of the 5 most over rated American writers of all time.
It killed him anyway. The pressure destroyed him physically and he died at 44.
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Hmmm.... something must have been in the water. Hemingway grew MORE leftist as he aged? Did he not notice what Cuba was becoming? Did he learn nothing from WWII? Steinbeck had the same problem, but I don’t know if he went full commie.
Too bad Obammy hasn’t an ounce of Papa’s testosterone,
There’s a fascinating story about what was done with the shotgun that Hemingway used to commit suicide. IIRC, to avoid its becoming a ghoulish souvenir, the executors had the gun’s metal parts chopped up and the wood parts burned then scattered and buried; the burial site of some of the parts has been rediscovered.
Recently another shotgun owned by Hemingway was auctioned for nearly $700,000.00.
Papa liked his guns. Wonder if he would have accorded the right to bear arms to the rest of us. Given his affinity for communism, I tend to doubt it.
From what I understood, Hemingway was a National socialist and socialism or the ideology of Marxism which is global socialism, was considered subserive to the constitutional Republic.
That was back when we had a constitution that meant something among the elite. Now Hemingway’s fellow travelers control the US, Europe and the global enterprise leaders.
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