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.
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.
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.
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?
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