A Conversation with Ernest Hememingway

Writing About Literature

Creative Letter Writing Assignment

Professor T. Kraft

Fall term 2013

PSU

A conversation (of sorts) with Ernest, (Hemingway of course.)

By Don DuPay

Say, Ernest old chap, I've been wanting to talk to you about a few things I've noticed in your writing. First, I thought about how best to address this letter to you. “Dear Ernest” doesn't seem appropriate since we don't know each other, so I sincerely hope you don't mind being addressed as your compatriots addressed you, as “Old Chap.”

Having settled that, let me first say I read “A Moveable Feast,” as my introduction to your prose. I thought the title was well-- a little awkward, having not much to do with feasting, but more with drinking, writing, drinking, handicapping the horse races and drinking.

Ernest Hemingway, drinking White Horse Scotch...

I know of course that “A Moveable Feast,” is merely a metaphor, and is not really a story about a catering company. I must confess old fellow, that at the end of the first chapter I felt drunk just from the fumes emanating from the pages.

And I must say Ernest, that I find myself jealous that you were able to rub elbows with such fine writers and painters. I am fascinated by your appraisal of F. Scott's writing and will read his work “The Great Gatsby” because of your mention of it but I am put off by Gertrude Stein. I haven't looked at her work so far. She seems so “uppity” and her relationship with “pussy” is well..you know...is revolting too a strong a word? I only ask because you know her better than I do. 

Gertrude Stein, in photo below...

You seem to be intrigued by Miss Stein her describing her in kindly terms as reminding you of “...a northern Italian peasant woman with her clothes, her mobile face and her lovely, thick, alive immigrant hair...” You also say “She talked all the time...” “Uppity” doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of your picture of her. And Ernest, you must know by now that all women “talk all the time.”

It seems to be in the female genes to babble. It appears she is critical of your story “Up in Michigan” referring to the sexual content as “inaccrochable” ie unpublishable, and she did call you and your gang “drunks.” It was probably her “one true sentence” about you. It is reported by historians that when your relationship with Miss Stein soured you called her “a bitch.” Did you really, Ernest? Well, it is probably a more accurate description of the woman. As I said I don't want to read her work because of you. Thanks for saving me the trouble.

To me one of your genius traits is the great detail you provide in your writing. I was able to sit at the Cafe tables with you and your gang of friends, because you painted so interesting a word picture. I felt you were at your descriptive best when writing about the fiesta going on about you in Spain, from your side trip fishing on the way to Pampalona, the gutting of the trout and throwing their entrails back into the stream, to the goring of the horses in the bull ring.

        A bullfighter, getting his karma...

Your descriptions of “blood and guts,” is real and true and I could smell the fishy smell of freshly gutted trout and see the shiny scales. I could also feel the agony of the dying horses and tortured bulls sacrificed on the altar of mans ego and grossly called “entertainment.”

In The Sun Also Rises, you describe “...the feeling of elation that comes after a good bull-fight.” I do not understand how you could feel elation, IE excitement at such torture and death. It is to your shame that you saw fit to glorify it. Animal cruelty must not be glorified in any way and you should not have penned “The Sun Also rises” with that in mind.

Are you immune to the agony and fear of a poor animal merely trying to survive? I must say old chap, one can see this aspect of your persona as a serious personality defect. This defect is further seen in your African hunting trips where you reportedly killed at least thirty big wild animals including three lions. Three lions Ernest? Did you really kill three magnificent “kings of the jungle?”

Did the feeling of “elation,” return when the magnificent animal at the end of your rifle sights slumped lifeless to the ground? Was it a thrill—to kill Ernest? Did it make you feel more masculine? Was the rifle an extension of your manhood? Or are you simply an “adrenaline junkie,” a term we now use to describe one who seeks danger for it own sake, a thrill to be enjoyed and laughed at later in the story telling of it.

                                         Ernest Hemingway at the site of one of his three Lion kills...

Having read both A Moveable Feast and later, The Sun also Rises, I was surprised that you took about 136 pages before getting around to the bull fights, in the later novel. In a story famous mainly for glorifying bull fights you took a long time getting around to the core subject. But Ernest, old boy, the first 136 pages of The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast are essentially the same book. Today we call it “copy and paste.” You must have saved the carbons and good for you if you did. It saved you a lot of original work.  

Somehow you got yourself involved in two wars. Not satisfied with being an ambulance driver in the war, you needed to be “up front” to see first hand the danger and excitement, and the carnage.

 An “adrenaline junkie” for sure. (Pardon the aside here old chap, but I am confused by the fact that the Army rejected you as a soldier because of your poor eyesight, yet let you drive an ambulance?) Oh well, suffice it to say your quest for excitement nearly cost you your leg, getting hit by shrapnel and putting you in the hospital. You are lucky Ernest that you were still able to go skiing on the wounded leg later, after you healed.  

The one true thing a writer must do is write about what they know. And Ernest, you certainly did that! You must admit your life was more exciting than most, what with exciting travel, rubbing elbows with so many sophisticated people, and exciting events like bull fighting and wars and airplane crashes and smuggling Rum from Cuba to Key West, headed to your favorite hangout for the time, Sloppy Joe's. You certainly lived on the edge of both legality and morality and survived to write about it. You wrote about that which you knew best, your own exciting life!

Now Ernest, old boy, I must take you to task about your drinking. Like it or not, knowing about it or not, your drinking and your lifestyle became and still is legend. “If I do as Hemingway did, perhaps I can be as good a writer and as masculine as he,” think many aspiring writers of today, myself included for a time.

But I often could not read or make sense of what I had written after too many whiskeys or a bottle of red wine. And I think you must now know that it was the alcohol that really killed you, poisoning your liver as well as your brain, (wet brain) long before you swallowed the barrel of a shot gun, leaving a gory spectacle for your loved ones to remember. Knowingly or not it was a terrible legacy, the legacy of “drinking well,” of spending your life “tight,” to leave for others to mimic at their own risk.

If you want to know who a man is, I say read what he writes old chap and just as important what he doesn't write. You don't write about sex as some of your contemporaries did, notably D.H. Lawrence. Are you afraid to reveal that intimate part of yourself Ernest?

Your descriptions of your wife Hadley are brief non-descriptions really. Were you afraid to speak about her kisses, the smell of her neck, the curve of her breasts, the feel of her buttocks and the rise of her thighs? Too bad old chap, writing about sex would have given you a more rounded and even more masculine mystique. And just between you and I, is it possible that Hadley whom by your own admission, took a back seat to your writing, in Paris got even with you by “losing” your manuscripts on her surprise visit to you, carbons and all? A woman neglected might do all manner of spiteful things, don't you think?

Your genius Ernest, as I see it, is your ability to take plain cloth and weave your detailed descriptions into the fabric of it, creating a cocoon of intimacy that brings the characters to life.

Your faults, (although there is no doubt they make you an interesting character old chap) must also be noted. You cheated on your wives, usually with the woman who would be your next wife, but marriage Ernest, is a contract and what is to be thought of a man that does not honor his contracts?

You were investigated by the Army for impersonating an officer after removing your war correspondents insignia and telling others you were a Colonel. Do you know how sad that made you look, how insecure? You were Ernest, old boy, a con man.

Perhaps it was prohibition in America that drove you to smuggle Rum to Sloppy Joe's in Key West from Cuba, but that does make you a smuggler now doesn't it old boy? If I have one true sentence you my man, I would call you a rogue, a lovable rogue as seen by some, but a rogue nevertheless, one who created a caricature of himself and didn't live to tell the entire truth about it.

Works Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. (1964). A Movable Feast. Published by Scribners USA 

SrLusofono, (October, 26th, 2013). Great Writers 2/6 - Ernest Hemingway: [Video File]. 

Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR3MLygg0pk

ABSOLUTELY NO PORTION OF THIS PAPER MAY BE REPRODUCED OR DISSEMINATED WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR, DONALD LEE DUPAY, UNDER PENALTY OF COPYRIGHT LAWS!!