She walked to the books and magazines for sale, I walked to the new arrivals. Several titles caught my eye, all thick and small-fonted; I needed something I could finish enjoying before Tuesday. At the end of the section is the non-fiction, where I found Volume One of the Cambridge collection of the letters of Ernest Hemingway, which contained correspondence dated from 1907 (when he was eight years old) to 1922 (well, you can do math). Normally I'm leery of these kinds of texts; I'm hardly a scholar. But the book drew me. I checked it out and took it home.
The next day, in breaks between pages and job postings, I began a marathon journey of deep skim of the book. Reading academic texts like this are roughly on par with carving a turkey or visiting an art exhibit for me--there will be meat left on the bone, which I will either discard or place in a stew pot for a second pass, or there will be paintings and sculptures that I will miss entirely because their color or placement in the crowd was disadvantageous. This is the way I enjoy art, food, and literature. The book opens with what feels like sixteen different introductions and forwards and introductions to this volume and forwards of just this volume, blah, blah, and even more blah, with an introduction to why some typos were left in and others weren't, symbols for what kind of correspondence it is...OH, you say, ENOUGH ALREADY. Hence, the deep skim. Parts of the opening numbers were entertaining--Hem had the same problem that I do where he spells words with phonetics borrowed from different languages or different versions of the same language. He also liberated his mind all the time, coming up with new spellings of words and winking at the reader, playing with the sounds of words, playing with defects of his typewriters. These days we curse the Apple "auto-correct"; Hemingway had sticking keys, worn ribbons, and one typewriter that locked all of his letters into capitals. "THIS MILL IS DIRTY AND ONLY FUNCTIONS IN THE UPPER REGISTER," he explained, "SO IF I NEED THE EMPHASIS USUALLY GIVEN BY CAPITAL LETTERS I WILL INSERT SOME PROFANE PHRASE OR VULGAR EJACULATION LIKE SAY HORSESHIT FOR EXAMPLE."
My auto-correct, by the way, tried to clean up his expletive.
All this was gleaned from the vast collection of smarts at the beginning of the book. More treats were to follow.
*****
The downside to visiting family for vast amounts of time is that you don't get to exercise your art much--the upside is that the same family members don't give a flying fig of Hemingway's political correctness or his backstory. You don't get to work on your own novel, but you do get to read things without thinking about whether you "should" or not. I am probably the last woman who should be saying this, but screw Hemingway's masochism for, say, the time it takes to read 650 pages sometime and read him as a person. Don't get me wrong--every time I read "A Moveable Feast" I sincerely wish he didn't make Hadley look like his attending nine-year-old niece, but, as my brother so succinctly puts it, "People in hell want ice water." You can't have it all. I don't try to analyze Hem's issues with women. At least, not this time around.
I have found that it is so much easier to read Hem than Naipaul, and they have been accused of the same things as writers. Problem is (and it's highly likely I'll get shot by proponents of the ERA for saying this), Hem is a good writer and Naipaul sucks AND is a masochist, so he's 0 for 2 on the reason for me to read him. Hem has to be read with my open heart and my naive mind. I'm the date I want to take along for this ride, because I know that I won't say to myself that I should know better. Other people have soap operas, following the Kardashians on Twitter, and watching movies with gratuitous vomiting and bodily function jokes. I have Ernest.
The next six intellectuals who read this piece will shake their heads, giving up on my soul for the 986th time since meeting me. You enjoy your high road, while I take the horse path.
*****
Things I Relate to Hem About:
- He was a fan of baseball as a rule, particularly of the Chicago Cubs and the New York Giants. Guess who the New York Giants turned into;
- He knows Michigan geography. I vacationed in Michigan as a kid, so when he says "bigger than Traverse Bay," I grin conspiratorially;
- He loves playing with language. I walk around whispering "que milagro" when I'm alone because I like how it rolls;
- He loved cats, particularly weird physical specimens;
- He exaggerated.
Things I Can Understand About Hem But Am Trying to Overcome Myself:
- His misunderstanding of and getting hurt by the opposite sex;
- His "I am indignant to violence, not afraid of it" philosophy;
- His over-simplification of the world;
- His anger;
- His exit.
*****
These letters...I skipped most of the childhood ones. I hungrily consumed the Red Cross ones, gave a passing glance to his post-war years, and am now soaking in his Paris years, like a warm bath brimming with bubbles. His letters courting Hadley, by the way, were sweet and broken; the guy could be vulnerable and all humility, but too much of that would have made him, oh, I don't know, Fitzgerald? Here's the secret that, as cummings would say, only the "mind could hide": I LOVE HEMINGWAY'S EGO. There, I said it. I hate the resident expert in blogs but I love Hem, and these letters are teaching me why. Someday, I'll be able to articulate why.
*****
I rarely write letters anymore, for who has time to read them? My letters take the form of blog posts, which are too long to be read by anyone but me either, or journal pages, which I read even less than my blogs. Some famous author (Anderson? Fitzgerald? Faulkner? Who remembers...) remarked to Hem once that (I'm paraphrasing, hang on to your knickers) we write letters for posterity. Hem thought this reason was ridiculous, as though we would keep the shell casing after firing a gun. For Hem, the casing and the posterity would take care of itself, but the letter is designed for the here, the now. Hem lived by the hour and LOVED LIFE SO THOROUGHLY you can nearly wring it out of his letters like pond water. I am learning that he loved the Oak Park Library enough to have read, but how much did he read, how much influence did he soak up from the world around him, and how much was "F you and I will write my way"? I'm reading that section now. WWI shaped him. His first heartbreak shaped him. His time in Paris shaped him. He let all of these things shape him but he didn't let the world make him a trendy writer--it gave him reason to be end up as THE Writer. I don't know how to stop that censorship in myself--I have to read everyone recommended to me, accept, copy...and I want Hem's independence instead.
I'm learning that. I have an imperfect but strong teacher. He may have a bum typewriter, but he's telling me about Paris...and it's late and I need to get back to him. Good night, San Francisco Giants. Buona sera, self-consciousness.
Dear Ernest,
Onward.
(Photo courtesy of the publication, which obtained it from Ermini Studios, Milan, Italy.)
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