Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy

Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy, Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1962, by Nicholas Reynolds William MorrowWilliam Morrow, 2017

Was he or wasn't he?  Did he or didn't he?

The letters, archives, and secret mentions of Hemingway are scattered from Boston at the JFK Library, where a room like Hemingway's Key West digs houses one collection, to the US National Archives, even the private records of a former NKVD Soviet general in the US.  It would make sense to learn that the author had engaged in more adventures beyond his time during the Spanish Civil War and his ambulance driving duty, but could this have actually included working with the Russians?

The author spent three years digging.   As historian at the CIA Museum, Nicholas Reynolds, a former CIA officer, Marine colonel and Oxford-trained historian believes that Hemingway did indeed work as a spy for both U.S. intelligence and the Soviets.  His network as a journalist and writer would have enabled Hemingway to move easy among disparate groups.  But what is even more intriguing is how he felt about his projects.

Hemingway spent a lot of time in Cuba, but until now it was unclear just exactly where he fit with Castro's revolution.  Reynolds says that until 1957 Cuba was Hemingway's safe haven, and after Castro's rise, the writer continued to believe in the need for the revolution, although he and Castro met only once. 

 Hemingway was hospitalized for shock treatments, and a coterie of friends and his wife Mary wanted to see him happier and less troubled.  Instead, he seemed to float in and out of depression; one observer said he seemed to be struck with paranoia.  Early one morning in June, 1961, his wife Mary heard two loud "bangs"; as she descended the stairs she saw a double barreled shotgun, and her husband in the vestibule of his sitting room, dead.  Reynolds speculates that his writing abilities had been if not completely lost, severely cut back; in fact he had himself notified a publisher of his inability to complete a current book project.  Could the shock treatments have killed his writing gifts?  Was his involvement in politics so finally intrusive that all Hemingway's energies were dissipated before he could channel and focus on his next project?  It is, of course, impossible to determine exactly what remained in the great writer's mind as he slipped into his vestibule, but Reynolds presents us with enough research and observations from close friends to come to believe that Hemingway, perhaps realizing how incapacitated he was becoming, could no longer live with the pain of conflicting political emotions, as well as his need to produce credible work.  

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, pemoody@aol.com, patriciaemoody@gmail.com, tricia@patriciaemoody.com,