Posted on 06/02/2018 4:58:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
Damn
I had to have my class read hemingway and fitzgerald. I chose ‘old man...’ and an excerpt fron gatsby (that was enough)
The ninth grade boys said old man was boring and weird. I said ya, agree. Pointless.
Just saying.
KGB having been formed in 1954, this wasn’t possible. Perhaps the MGB or SMERSH.
More likely the NKVD.
Wasn’t a “reforming”, just a badge change, all same, same.
Say Chekist in USSR at any period even up to current day and everyone knows what you mean.
So many of the “important writers” are accorded that distinction simply because they were/are Leftists.
Oldest son had to read “Catcher in the Rye” during high school and failed to see the point of it, other than Holden Caulfield was a self-absorbed basket case. I was struck by his insight but, then again, I raised him.
Personally, I can’t abide anything by Arthur Miller.
Hemmingway was a Leftie going back at least to the Spanish Civil War. Anybody who could support the Republican-side after much publicized murders of priests & nuns is certainly a candidate for NKVD recruitment. The fact that he was a falling-down drunk by the ‘50’s prevented any critical look at the actions of a literary legend.
Thank you. As I was reading I saw apparent inconsistencies.
Knowing about some parts of the Hemmingway life not in the public realm, via a friend of his daughters, I have a small glimpse into the real man but it may only be a view of but one aspect.
Hemmingway was apolitical and indifferent. He loved Cuba, only a few hours boat ride from his other home in Key West. The revolution there apparently was not surprising to him and he wished to be left alone. He knew when interviewed, interrogated, questioned or snooped on by Batista or Castro supporters, that to maintain his peace he felt he had to tell them what they wanted to hear but in a manner of an old man who was just a hermit of sorts.
Hemmingway had been in war before, knew it to be pointless in ways, delivering needless death, filled with irrational attitudes. He wanted no part of it. He wanted to be left alone.
There are many accounts of Hemmingway written contemporaneously in Key West. He would walk down its streets in his fish blood stained ragged shorts to the bars and at the bar complain about his wives that took all his money. He was a regular Joe who just happened to be a fabled author who came into money which his wives and girlfriends helped themselves to. He was known to avoid talks of politics and preferred to talk about cigars, fishing, seasons, women. He was not a radical, a revolutionary, closet or otherwise, at least to the people that saw him several times a week.
He changed literature, but I don’t think artistic greatness is an excuse for moral turpitude, as some do.
Besides, not all agree on his greatness. Easy to copy, so he started a movement, minimalism, but one literary friend of mine described him as a monosyllabic moron.
Hemingway had fantasies of being a spy in WW2 Havana. His efforts centered around he and some friends taking his boat out with a few weapons and searching for U Boats. The American Embassy gave him minimal support until it became clear that these excursions were really an excuse to get drunk and his reports were pure fiction. I wonder if his efforts for the Russians were equally reliable.
Hemingway’s stuff was flat stupid I decided when I discovered Robert Ruark.
This article does not give the full picture:
Hemingway was in periodic contact with the Soviet foreign intelligence service—the NKVD (the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs)—while at the same time in contact with and informally assisting both the US Navy Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and, following the invasion of France in June 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The question that Reynolds poses throughout the book is, “Who was in charge of this relationship?” By the time the reader finishes the book, the only reasonable answer is, “Ernest Hemingway was in charge.”
He was an entrepreneurial adventurer that used his contacts IRL to get stories for his writing.
11 page article:
It is impossible to know; there is just not enough information, and that situation is unlikely to change unless his entire NKVD file becomes accessible or previously unknown Hemingway letters come to light. We are left with the irony that four organizations that could not agree on much—the NKVD, OSS, FBI, and Department of State—all arrived separately at the same conclusion: Ernest Hemingway may have wanted to be a spy, but he never lived up to his potential.
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol.-56-no.-2/pdfs/Reynolds-Hemingway%20A%20Dubious%20Spy.pdf
Dang, I didn’t know Hemingway was a communist. That has been suppressed rather well.
He wrote some good stuff - other than that, who really cares about what else he was now that he’s been moldering in the ground?
Thanks for posting this link!:
The NY Slimes never viewed any communist mass killer as a bad guy. The link below covers their love and following of Fidel Castro for decades.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/26/world/americas/fidel-castro-timeline.html
Sandra Spanier. Wife of former President of PSU Graham Spanier:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Spanier
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