Hemingway

“He has the most 

profound bravery 

that it has ever been 

my privilege to see. 

He has had about 

8 times the normal 

allotment of responsibilities. 

It takes Courage.

He referred to the quality as "Guts." 

He weighs about 200 pounds, and 

he is even better than 

those photographs. 

The effect upon women is such that 

they want to go 

right out and get him and 

bring him Home, stuffed." 

— Dorothy Parker.

Narrator : 

By the time "A Farewell to Arms" 

topped the best-seller lists in 1929, 

colourful stories had already begun 

to circulate about 

Ernest Hemingway, 

many of them told 

by the writer himself. 

He'd once planned to be 

a professional boxer, he claimed. 

He'd fought in the Italian Army 

during The Great War, 

been wounded 7 separate times, and 

been awarded a chest-full of medals 

about which he said he was too modest to speak. 

And he'd nearly starved 

to death in Paris 

while learning to write. 

None of these stories was True. 

Edna O'Brien : 

He mythologised himself. 

Why do people mythologise? 

To woo other people and also 

to keep them at a distance. 

To feel inadequate, but to 

boast about being 

over-adequate. 

Katakis: 

Hemingway constructed 

His Myth to a large degree 

and he made the mistake 

that all myth-makers do -- 

He thought that he 

could control it. 

And there comes a time 

that you can't anymore. 

It's taken on a Life of its own. 

It became very exhausting 

to be Hemingway. 

The Hemingway that 

The Public thought. 

And let's face it, when he 

was in the public eye, 

he was always 

in the public eye and 

The People expected 

Hemingway to 

be Hemingway. 

[johnny gandelsman's "The garden of eden mix 3" playing] 

Narrator: 

His Art and the gaudy myths 

that grew up around him 

were already becoming confused 

in the public mind. 

At first, he himself was embarrassed 

by some of the tall tales when 

he saw them in print. 

But as his fame grew over the coming years, it became harder and harder to tell the real hemingway from the one he had created. 

Wolff: 

There's a Chinese proverb 

by the sage Zhuangzi 

and he has it this way -- 

He says, Good Fortune 

is as light as a feather 

and few are strong 

enough to carry it. 

When you think of the weight that his fame must have laid on him, even when he was young, and 

the anxiety that would produce 

of How can I live up to this? 

How can the next book be better? 

What is in me to make this real? 

It's very hard, I think, to be 

a public person like that. 

And so, I think 

every public person 

creates some kind 

of avatar, if you will, 

of themselves, some holograph 

of themselves to 

present publicly to save 

whatever is private in them. 

The Problem is that eventually 

Your Avatar will consume you. 

[fats waller's "Ain't misbehavin™ playing] 

Hemingway: 

We have a fine house here 

and the kids are all well. 

Also 4 raccoons, a possum, 

18 goldfish, 3 peacocks, 

and a yard with fig tree 

and a lime tree. 

Very fine the way 

Pauline has fixed it. 

We have been, and are, 

damned happy. 

I could stay here damned-near 

all the time and have a fine time 

watching the things grow and 

be happier than I understand.“