E
Edward Dolan
Guest
[email protected] (Peter Krynicki) wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> [email protected] (Edward Dolan) wrote in message
> news:<[email protected]>...
[...]
> > I visited his house that he had in Key West many years ago and it was very interesting to say
> > the least. There were dozens of cats all over the place. That was fine with me as I like cats
> > too. But I could see that he was always striving for a certain ambiance to his life, and it
> > always struck me as being a bit phony. After all, he was just a kid from Michigan.
>
> From the very get-go, people had similar opinions to ours; they liked him very much or didn't see
> what all the fuss was about. I don't single-mindedly defend him, but he has to be one of the most
> mis-understood people ever. He was pretty much of a stinker to all of his wives and many of his
> friends. But throughout much of his life he was about as a non-phony as you could he. He simply
> didn't care what people thought of him, so he didn't do things so as to elicit a public response.
> He *did* care what people thought of his writing, at least to the extent that they took the time
> to understand it. All five of the biographers make the point that, in spite of the amount of
> notoriety he achieved, he was a very private individual whose greatest pleasure was reading. BTW,
> one of the surviving Hemingway cousins says there were no cats in the Key West house when he
> lived there.
I go along with everything you say about Hemingway above, but I would like to point out that
Hemingway could never live any place that did not have lots of ambiance (Romance) attached to it. He
liked Paris, Africa, Key West, Havana, Ketchum. He did not like his Michigan home once he left it
and he did not like southern Minnesota or any other place that was not Romantic. He pursued the
Romantic and exotic all his life. That is what I wanted too when I was kid, but like most everyone
else in the world I outgrew it. Hemingway never did. That is what I meant by phony.
I think all those cats in his house in Key West must have been due to one of his wives. They were
really big and fat cats!
> > His last years were very sad. He came to the Mayo Clinic here in Rochester, Minnesota to be
> > treated for his paranoia, and they completely dropped the ball on him. He ended up living in
> > Ketchum (near Sun Valley), Idaho. He never liked the Midwest from what I could gather once he
> > left it as a young man. He thought southern Minnesota (where the Mayo Clinic is located) was a
> > horrible place. There is a very nice memorial to him outside of Ketchum which can really bring a
> > tear to the eye for anyone who has ever read Ernest Hemingway.
> Don't get me started
When he died one of his matador friends, before he began a bullfight,
> asked for a moment of silence. 200,000 were still for a few minutes in the arena. The owner of the
> Botin café in Madrid set a place for one for the next week - for Don Ernesto. The Cubans declared
> a national day of morning and people were seen to be crying in the streets when the news got out.
> A fan wrote years later that he heard the news while living in Paris. He decided to visit one of
> the cafés made famous by Hemingway and have a drink. Then he went to another then another, then he
> noticed that he was seeing the same people at each place. Dozens of people had decided that the
> best way to commemorate his death, his life, really, was to go to Le Dome to Les Deux Magots to Le
> Select to Lipps to Harry's Bar, etc. and have a drink.
Thanks Peter for the very nice remembrance of Hemingway. My brother went to Paris on a vacation a
few years back and visited those Hemingway haunts and they are still places of pilgrimage to this
very day. Amazing! He had a few drinks there in commemoration of Hemingway too.
I don't think Hemingway ever made it into an old age. I am now older than he ever got as I think he
died in his early 60's. I think a lot of his problem toward the end is that he simply couldn't face
the prospect of growing old. Women were always very important to him and when that aspect of his
life was gone he didn't really want to live anymore. Like I said, a very sad end. [...]
> > Writers like Hemingway will have their ups and downs in the English classrooms of academe. But
> > he surely was a great influence, and mostly for the good. However, what has really happened in
> > the past generation or two is that no one reads novels anymore. It is becoming a dead and lost
> > art. I myself haven't read a novel in over 40 years. Gore Vidal says the novel is as dead as a
> > door nail. I think he might be right about this. Novels of course are mainly read by the young
> > who can identify with the protagonists, but do young people read novels anymore?
> >
>
> I read one a week and the NY Times fiction best seller list seems to be filled with them. Try
> "Easter Day, 1941."
According to Gore Vidal, you are the last of a dying generation. You can't judge the country by what
is happening in New York though. That is the mecca of literary culture in this country. I think the
Jews have a lot to do with that as they love to read books and go to concerts, etc. In fact, it is
the Jews that make New York the cosmopolitan city that it is. That is what they used to say about
Vienna a hundred years ago too, and it was probably true.
Regards,
Ed Dolan - Minnesota
> [email protected] (Edward Dolan) wrote in message
> news:<[email protected]>...
[...]
> > I visited his house that he had in Key West many years ago and it was very interesting to say
> > the least. There were dozens of cats all over the place. That was fine with me as I like cats
> > too. But I could see that he was always striving for a certain ambiance to his life, and it
> > always struck me as being a bit phony. After all, he was just a kid from Michigan.
>
> From the very get-go, people had similar opinions to ours; they liked him very much or didn't see
> what all the fuss was about. I don't single-mindedly defend him, but he has to be one of the most
> mis-understood people ever. He was pretty much of a stinker to all of his wives and many of his
> friends. But throughout much of his life he was about as a non-phony as you could he. He simply
> didn't care what people thought of him, so he didn't do things so as to elicit a public response.
> He *did* care what people thought of his writing, at least to the extent that they took the time
> to understand it. All five of the biographers make the point that, in spite of the amount of
> notoriety he achieved, he was a very private individual whose greatest pleasure was reading. BTW,
> one of the surviving Hemingway cousins says there were no cats in the Key West house when he
> lived there.
I go along with everything you say about Hemingway above, but I would like to point out that
Hemingway could never live any place that did not have lots of ambiance (Romance) attached to it. He
liked Paris, Africa, Key West, Havana, Ketchum. He did not like his Michigan home once he left it
and he did not like southern Minnesota or any other place that was not Romantic. He pursued the
Romantic and exotic all his life. That is what I wanted too when I was kid, but like most everyone
else in the world I outgrew it. Hemingway never did. That is what I meant by phony.
I think all those cats in his house in Key West must have been due to one of his wives. They were
really big and fat cats!
> > His last years were very sad. He came to the Mayo Clinic here in Rochester, Minnesota to be
> > treated for his paranoia, and they completely dropped the ball on him. He ended up living in
> > Ketchum (near Sun Valley), Idaho. He never liked the Midwest from what I could gather once he
> > left it as a young man. He thought southern Minnesota (where the Mayo Clinic is located) was a
> > horrible place. There is a very nice memorial to him outside of Ketchum which can really bring a
> > tear to the eye for anyone who has ever read Ernest Hemingway.
> Don't get me started
When he died one of his matador friends, before he began a bullfight,> asked for a moment of silence. 200,000 were still for a few minutes in the arena. The owner of the
> Botin café in Madrid set a place for one for the next week - for Don Ernesto. The Cubans declared
> a national day of morning and people were seen to be crying in the streets when the news got out.
> A fan wrote years later that he heard the news while living in Paris. He decided to visit one of
> the cafés made famous by Hemingway and have a drink. Then he went to another then another, then he
> noticed that he was seeing the same people at each place. Dozens of people had decided that the
> best way to commemorate his death, his life, really, was to go to Le Dome to Les Deux Magots to Le
> Select to Lipps to Harry's Bar, etc. and have a drink.
Thanks Peter for the very nice remembrance of Hemingway. My brother went to Paris on a vacation a
few years back and visited those Hemingway haunts and they are still places of pilgrimage to this
very day. Amazing! He had a few drinks there in commemoration of Hemingway too.
I don't think Hemingway ever made it into an old age. I am now older than he ever got as I think he
died in his early 60's. I think a lot of his problem toward the end is that he simply couldn't face
the prospect of growing old. Women were always very important to him and when that aspect of his
life was gone he didn't really want to live anymore. Like I said, a very sad end. [...]
> > Writers like Hemingway will have their ups and downs in the English classrooms of academe. But
> > he surely was a great influence, and mostly for the good. However, what has really happened in
> > the past generation or two is that no one reads novels anymore. It is becoming a dead and lost
> > art. I myself haven't read a novel in over 40 years. Gore Vidal says the novel is as dead as a
> > door nail. I think he might be right about this. Novels of course are mainly read by the young
> > who can identify with the protagonists, but do young people read novels anymore?
> >
>
> I read one a week and the NY Times fiction best seller list seems to be filled with them. Try
> "Easter Day, 1941."
According to Gore Vidal, you are the last of a dying generation. You can't judge the country by what
is happening in New York though. That is the mecca of literary culture in this country. I think the
Jews have a lot to do with that as they love to read books and go to concerts, etc. In fact, it is
the Jews that make New York the cosmopolitan city that it is. That is what they used to say about
Vienna a hundred years ago too, and it was probably true.
Regards,
Ed Dolan - Minnesota
