Hemingway's Brain

by Andrew Farah

  He had written in September 1936: “Me I like life very much. So much it will be a big disgust when have to shoot myself. Maybe pretty soon I guess although will arrange to be shot in order not have bad effect on kids.”10 Notice the choice of “when I have to shoot myself,” as if the act would be a duty, not a choice. And during this year he was writing beautifully and was financially secure, and Martha Gellhorn was still three months away from strolling into Sloppy Joe’s intent on destroying his second marriage. And his second wife was wealthy, attractive, and devoted. She catered to him, was of great assistance to his professional writing, allowed him plenty of freedom to pursue the sporting life and Jane Mason, and missed his intimacy when he was away. Perhaps it was because of his bitter break with Jane in April that he wrote about “blowing my lousy head off.” But still this happened during one of his most successful years, even according to the hated critics.

  One of the more intriguing theories of his suicide relates to his very literary style. We turn to art, as Picasso said, to wash away the dust of everyday life. But when the art itself gives no comfort and serves instead as a close-up mirror in the harshest of light, the escape hatch is closed.

  The story Soldier’s Home begins “Krebs went to war from a Methodist college in Kansas.… There is a picture which shows him on the Rhine with two German girls and another corporal. Krebs and the corporal look too big for their uniforms. The German girls are not beautiful. The Rhine does not show in the picture.”11 If one dedicates a lifetime to the art of deconstruction, of raining on every parade, it is little consolation in the end that the rain’s description was clean and pure and true. Suicide seems almost inevitable when one couples this mindset with the sensitivity displayed in “Ten Indians,” in which a boy is teased by friends about a love interest, only to be told by his father she had been “threshing around” in the woods with another boy. The story ends with the line “In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.”12

  Another valid consideration is the destructive aspect of fame. The reason Hemingway inspires so many biographies is not only that his writing is compelling to so many but that his life actually reads like a novel—a Midwestern boy selected from obscurity becomes the first American to survive a wounding in Italy during World War I, moves to Paris, and, as a press man, interviews Mussolini in Milan in 1922. When he next encountered Mussolini, at the Conference of Lausanne, he spotted the dictator reading a book, ignoring the proceedings and posing as an aloof intellectual. It was Hemingway who walked up and discovered Il Duce holding a French-English dictionary upside down. He met Clemenceau, dined with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, hiked the Alps, became a definer of the Lost Generation, socialized with the literary giants of the twentieth century, supported the antifascists in Spain (and thereby personified the historical oversimplification of the conflict), reported on and saw combat in World War II, hunted big game, claimed to hunt Nazi subs, bought an early painting by Miró, published masterpieces, and won the Nobel Prize. He seems to have been at every right place, at every right time. And as celebrity overtook him, his very presence became the right place and the right time. Even J. D. Salinger (during his pre-recluse, World War II soldier days) came to call and pay homage to Ernest at the Ritz in Paris.13

  It is common for a celebrity or one who has lived an accomplished life to become a cliché. Numerous figures achieve such status in the popular psyche. Among our writers, Kerouac will always be the beatnik, Fitzgerald the Jazz Age golden child, Whitman forever the wise old man and national poet laureate. What is astonishing about Hemingway is how many different clichés he contains. His very suicide is a cliché—that of a man who saw a painful and disabled future and wanted no part of it. His final act has even been described as “courageous” and “the right thing to do” by some of those who loved him.

  But the paradox of his fame was that, though he fostered it, he was never comfortable in the public eye. There were surprisingly few public appearances. In Paris, in 1937, he spoke to the Anglo-American Press Club and again at the meeting of The Friends of Shakespeare and Company at Sylvia Beach’s bookshop. At both, he “stuttered and stammered” and overall gave the impression that he’d “rather be somewhere else.”14 When he spoke before 3,500 people at Carnegie Hall (another thousand had to be turned away because the hall was at maximum capacity), as part of the introduction to the film The Spanish Earth, he came on stage drunk, sweating, and extremely nervous. He spoke for only seven minutes, but no matter—his very presence carried the day and the antifascist sentiment, or whatever sentiment. He was like the Beatles—people came to see them, not hear them. He exited the stage to thunderous applause and was off to Bimini.

  Despite the extremely thorough and generally excellent biographical scholarship, one must understand each retelling with this subtext: “this is the life of a functional alcoholic, and the last ten years of this life involved a decline into dementia caused by multiple factors, insidious at first, and rapidly in the last two years.” Thus, the abusiveness, the paranoia, the inability to write, the personality changes, and the frailty all make sense, at least from a neuropsychiatric perspective. From a psychoanalytic standpoint, one of Faulkner’s biographers summed up Hemingway’s life in just four words: Hemingway “confused person and persona.”15

  Yet the person forged ahead, seemingly without fear of anything, the sole exception being the inability to produce, that one day the creative well would run dry for good. However lonely the writing trade, it was life sustaining. When it was destroyed, so was the life. Hemingway wrote early in his career that he was so far ahead of us that he could eat regularly, but the problem with being so far ahead was that no one could really understand him, much the same problem his friends Pound and Joyce encountered. In his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky wrote:

  The life of the spirit may be fairly represented … as a large triangle … the whole triangle is moving slowly, almost invisibly forwards … what today can be understood only by the apex and to the rest of the triangle is an incomprehensible gibberish, forms tomorrow the true thought and feeling of the second segment. At the apex of the top segment stands often one man, and only one. His joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to him in sympathy do not understand him … they abuse him as charlatan or madman.16

  As time pulls us forward, we are gaining on the lonely man at the apex.

  Notes

  Introduction

  1. In Our Time, 16–19. Hemingway’s father did indeed provide free medical care to the Chippewa who lived near the family’s vacation cottage, Windemere, in Michigan. Grace had named the cottage after England’s Lake Windermere as a nod toward her British heritage.

  2. In Our Time, 61. Even as a young writer, Hemingway understood that psychosis robs one of the insight that one may indeed be ill (“When you got it you don’t know about it.”). This was an issue he would face years later when he became paranoid and unable to be reassured. Ad Francis was a composite of Ad Wolgast, “the Michigan Wildcat” (lightweight champion in 1910), and Oscar “Battling” Nelson (who was described as having an almost inhumane capacity for taking punishment). A more severe case of dementia pugilistica has perhaps never been documented as in the sad life of Ad Wolgast (Paul Smith, A Reader’s Guide, 116–17).

  3. Baker, Selected Letters, 697.

  4. Complete Short Stories, 517, 531.

  5. Lynn, Hemingway, 582.

  6. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, 9.

  7. Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 323. Much to the disappointment of Mary Hemingway, who had hoped the great existentialist would leave her with profound enlightenment, Sartre and Hemingway, both solidly in middle age, spoke mainly about the business of publishing and royalties rather than sharing philosophical insights. Sartre was also accompanied by his mistress, a young, attractive New York–based actress named Dolorés. This likely served t
o embolden and justify Hemingway’s infatuation with his Venetian muse, Adriana Ivancich.

  8. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, 285.

  Chapter 1 | Inheritance

  1. General discussion of the Battle of Vicksburg derived from American Experience—Ulysses S. Grant, Warrior President, PBS, 2002.

  2. Sanford, At the Hemingways (quotation repeated in Burwell, Hemingway).

  3. Bassoe, Nervous and Mental Diseases, 1919. Now the paradigm has come full circle: modern psychiatry is more biological and neurological (that is, neurochemical) in theory and practice than ever.

  4. Spanier and Trogdon, eds., The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 1: 119.

  5. Burwell, Hemingway, 195.

  6. Sanford, At the Hemingways, 229.

  7. Burwell, Hemingway, 195.

  8. Mellow, Hemingway, 362–63.

  9. Reynolds, Young Hemingway, 84.

  10. Mellow, Hemingway, 372–73.

  11. Lynn, Hemingway, 592.

  12. Mellow, Hemingway, 368.

  13. Bondy et al., “Genetics of Suicide,” 344–51.

  14. Reynolds, Hemingway: The 1930s through the Final Years, 232.

  15. Fitch, Sylvia Beach, 190.

  16. Lynn, Hemingway, 114.

  17. Meyers, Hemingway, 2.

  18. Baker, Hemingway: A Life Story, 1–3.

  19. Burwell, Hemingway, 190–91.

  20. Burwell, Hemingway, 191.

  21. Discussion of Mariel and Margaux Hemingway from “The Hemingways Revisited,” Town and Country, September 2011, and various Internet searches of archived news items.

  22. John Hemingway, Strange Tribe, 208.

  23. John Hemingway, Strange Tribe, 136.

  24. Lynn, Hemingway, 225. Stein’s assessment that “Up in Michigan” is “inaccrochable” is derived from the French word “accrocher” or “to hang.” If a painting is distasteful, it is unhangable.

  25. Letter of Dr. Hemingway to Ernest Hemingway, October 22, 1926, JFK Library.

  26. Letter of Grace Hall Hemingway to Ernest Hemingway, January 2, 1927, JFK Library. Robert Bridges, the editor at Scribner’s, would excise eight particularly unpleasant profanities and one blasphemy from A Farewell to Arms (four were reinserted by Maxwell Perkins).

  27. Letter of Grace Hall Hemingway to Ernest Hemingway, July 24, 1920 (hand delivered), Humanities Research Center, Texas University (also reproduced in Reynolds, Young Hemingway, 136).

  28. Baker, Hemingway: A Life Story, 72.

  29. Reynolds, Young Hemingway, 136.

  30. Lynn, Hemingway, 29.

  31. Baker, Selected Letters, 670.

  32. Meyers, Hemingway, 148.

  33. Mellow, Hemingway, 372.

  34. Burwell, Hemingway, 25. Rumors of Grace Hemingway’s lesbianism have not been substantiated.

  Chapter 2 | Trauma Artist

  1. Baker, Selected Letters, 751. Another biographer whose work tormented Hemingway during the same period was Charles Fenton, who jumped to his death from a hotel window in Durham, North Carolina, a year before Hemingway’s suicide. Hemingway was aware of Fenton’s death, even referencing it in a letter to Carlos Baker while he was hospitalized: “Hope that won’t set a bad example to my other biographers.” Hemingway wrote to Fenton several times, at one point asking him to “cease and desist” when it came to talking to family and invading his privacy. But at the conclusion of one letter, Hemingway added, “And I hope you will work on someone else, scholarly and decent as your approach is.”

  2. Lynn, Hemingway, 78.

  3. Lynn, Hemingway, 59. Some of the professional boxers Hemingway claimed to spar with included Harry Greb (American Light Heavyweight Champion from 1922 to 1923 and World Middleweight Champ from 1923 to 1926), Tommy Gibbons (who won 96 of his 106 fights and lost by decision to Jack Dempsey after fifteen rounds), Jack Blackburn (who later trained Joe Louis), and Sam Langford (a Canadian who won the World Colored Heavyweight Championship five times).

  4. Edward Michael McKey of the ARC Rolling Canteen Service was also a victim of an Austrian shell, which killed him on June 18, 1918, near Fossalta.

  5. Meyers, Hemingway, 30. (Meyers references Report of the Department of Military Affairs: January to July 1918 [Rome: Department of Information, American Red Cross, 1919], p. 14.)

  6. Meyers, Hemingway, 31. (Ted Brumback reported that Hemingway did not carry another wounded man.)

  7. Meyers, Hemingway, 32.

  8. Baker, Hemingway: A Life Story, 45.

  9. Meyers, Hemingway, 33–34. Again, we must remember that we are discussing one of the greatest storytellers, a master of incorporating the experiences of others into his own.

  10. Meyers, Hemingway, 203.

  11. Baker, Selected Letters, 274. The photos depicting the famous scar were by Helen Breaker, a bridesmaid at Hemingway’s first wedding. She was hoping to make a name for herself as a photographer when she took these highly competent shots. Scribner’s had asked for some new photos for publicity purposes, and Breaker’s fit the bill. Despite her success and the establishment of her own studio in Paris, she committed suicide after her eyesight began to deteriorate. Many years later, Hemingway claimed (to Hotchner) one of the most unusual connections in his life, involving Dr. Carl Weiss, the doctor who stitched his wound that night at the Neuilly hospital. In 1935, this very doctor confronted and punched Senator Huey Long, and, though the events of those moments are still controversial, he is believed to have then shot and thus assassinated Long (though one theory holds that Long was shot by his bodyguards in the confusion). Weiss was the son-in-law of Judge Pavy, who was a political opponent of Long’s, and that day Pavy was being ousted from power by Long’s gerrymandering. Yet though this has been repeated in many Hemingway studies as fact, it is yet another seductive Hemingway fabrication: Dr. Weiss did practice at the American hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine, but he did not arrive in Paris until June 1929, sixteen months after Hemingway pulled the skylight onto his forehead.

  12. Letter (via telegram) of Ezra Pound to Ernest Hemingway, March 11, 1928, JFK Library: full text (stationery heading, left to right): “Ezra Pound res publica, the public conventence Rapallo/Via Marsala, 12 Int. 5/11 Marzo -28/My Dear Mr Hemingway :/ I am deeply distressed ,/sympathetic or compassionate as the case may be. And/relieved to hear that you are resuming yr. usual/or un-ditto life ,/BUY Haow the hellsufferin tomcats/did you git drunk enough to fall upwards thru/the blithering skylight !!!!!!!!”

  This is one of numerous unusual letters he would send to Hemingway and scores of others. Since his college days, Pound was in the habit of creating his own phonetic spellings of words, making them quite idiosyncratic but still decipherable. Over time, his letters would become more difficult to decode because of his use of multiple languages, neologisms, and idiosyncratic abbreviations. As his psychotic illness evolved, the line between eccentricity of language and frank psychosis would become ever blurrier.

  13. Reynolds, Hemingway: The 1930s through the Final Years, 194.

  14. Baker, Hemingway: A Life Story, 390–91.

  15. Capa, Slightly Out of Focus, 129–31. Though Hemingway and Capa were friends, there was great tension between them at times. When Capa was visiting in Idaho after the Spanish Civil war and doing a photo shoot on Hemingway for Life, Ernest became angry at Capa’s repeatedly shooting him with a glass to his lips. He even caught a hot flash bulb as it ejected from Capa’s camera and threw it back at him, hitting Capa between the eyes. He demanded that he not be portrayed as just a “rummy” and asked Capa if he was his friend or just a “son of a bitching target” to him. Capa flew into a rage, but the situation cooled, and he eventually took the film out of his Leica and handed it to Hemingway. Capa’s famous photo “Falling Soldier” is the main photographic symbol of the Spanish Civil War, yet recent research indicates that in all likelihood it was staged. The mountains in the background are not the site where Capa claimed the photo was taken (the landscape indicates it was photographed near Espejo, thirty-five miles southeast of Cerro
Muriano, the site Capa reported). Also, the individual Capa identified in his photo as Federico Borrell Garcia actually died while taking shelter behind a tree at Cerro Muriano. Further, Capa’s negatives indicate this was one in a series of photos that were staged, and, though Capa reported that the Loyalist’s death was from machine-gun fire, not a sniper’s bullet, there is no evidence of any fighting at the location where the photo was taken. Though “falling,” the portion of the soldier’s body visible has no discernible trauma, and if he was indeed in hostile territory, he was very obviously and unwisely exposed to his enemies. Curiously, the “staging” of the photo has led some to conclude that Capa was responsible for the man’s death; they speculate that he was shot by a sniper while posing for a staged photo, but, again, no evidence supports that there was such action in this area.

  16. Baker, Selected Letters, 723. During his World War II “correspondent” experiences, Hemingway was documented as using his celebrity and stature to coax military men into defying their duty and the normal chain of command, placing himself and others in dangerous situations.

  17. Reynolds, Hemingway: Final Years, 103 (quotations and narrative also confirmed in Capa, Slightly Out of Focus).

  18. Baker, Selected Letters, 723.

  19. Lynn, Hemingway, 527–28.

  20. Baker, Hemingway: A Life Story, 485.

  21. Meyers, Hemingway, 504.

  22. Reynolds, Hemingway: Final Years, 273.

  23. Baker, Hemingway: A Life Story, 520.

  24. Reynolds, Hemingway: Final Years, 273.

  25. Baker, Hemingway: A Life Story, 521.

  26. Meyers, Hemingway, 504. Some biographies list further injuries from the second crash, such as ruptures of his liver, right kidney, and spleen, but these could be fatal, and such conditions, even if so minor as to be survivable, were undiagnosable in the bush.

  27. Baker, Hemingway: A Life Story, 229.

  28. Baker, Selected Letters, 361.

  29. Baker, Selected Letters, 828.

  30. Mellow, Hemingway, 122.