don't know of any duel related to this at all. that's new. i had not heard of the credo either that was brought up in the previous question. >> well, susan beegel, just even our first two questions, you begin to see that this man lived a larger than life kind of existence. how typical would he have been of a man of this generation? >> well, these questions are very much related to the hemingway reputation. he has a mythic persona. people love to invent and tell stories about him and these are both very exemplary. one having to do with what manhood means, one having to do with combativeness. a lot of that kind of thing actually began right here in key west. during the 1930s for the first time he began writing for a new magazine called esquire. he was writing monthly articles for them about deep sea fishing, about experiences in africa, big

game hunting. and writing for an audience that was growing and growing, it was a very successful magazine. by the end of the 1930s he was appearing monthly in a magazine that had a readership of about a million men. so this is a period that helped to create that persona, that masculine persona where he was writing of himself for men about his adventures and it contributes to these apocryphal stories that are out there. >> before our next call we would like to you listen to ernest hemingway's voice. this is a little clip of him talking about the many places where he's written in his career. let's listen. >> beside the fifth column, i wrote the killers, today is friday, and indians, part of the sun also rises and the first third to have and to have not in matry. it was always a good place for

working. so was paris and so were key west, florida, in the cool months. the ranch near koch city, montana, kansas city, chicago, toronto and havana, cuba. the first one i wrote was up in michigan. written in paris in 1921. the last was old man at the bridge, cabled from barcelona in april of 1938. >> that was ernest hemingway in his own voice. now, here we have a man in the 1920s and '30s and beyond really experiencing much of the world. how much does it make it into his writing? did his readers learn about the larger world when they read his work? >> it's absolutely everywhere. in sun also rises is set in paris and it's a bullfight in spain, farewell to arms is a war in italy. to have and to have not in key west and cuba.

it's remarkable. for him the bell tolls was the spanish-american war. i think it's a lesson for us today. americans tend to be a very insular, very cut off people and maybe hemingway is choosing that line from john dunn for whom the bells toll says it all. do not tend to ask for the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. wherever there was strife, wherever that was a war going on or oppression and he was interested and he thought we should be there and he thought it was the job of a writer to bear witness to that and he also took his readers along on some wonderful adventures, not just the war but big game hunting in africa, bull fighting in spain, deep sea fishing. lots of excitement in his work. >> next telephone call is from salisbury, connecticut, on to talk about ernest hemingway. >> caller: yes, i have a letter that was sent to hemingway in 1934 by the editor malcolm cowley of the new republic. and i was wondering what kind of

a relationship they had. >> they had a really interesting relationship, and that letter could be a real treasure. malcolm cowley was one of the most important critic of the lost generation. he was a person who helped to make the critical reputation of letters like hemingway, like fitzgerald. they had a long correspondence together. discussions back and forth about hemingway's work and what it meant. so they were very influential. hemingway very interested in cowley's opinion about what made writers marketable, what helped to contribute to their reputation, so you're a lucky guy. >> why don't you and i continue this discussion and the farther we get away from the street the better we are and i see a little bit of shade down here. talk to me about how he first got started writing. was there a writer in his family? >> there wasn't a writer in hemingway's family but his mother grace hall hemingway was a singer and a composer of music

and later a painter and someone who just deeply valued the arts and tried to cultivate them in all of her children. he had a fantastic high school education at oak park high school. wonderful teachers, in english who encouraged him not only constituted literature. he also studied journalism in high school and he knew when he graduated high school he wanted to write. he took a job as a cub from the "kansas city star" he didn't want to go to college and he wanted to go to interesting places that he could write about. from the time he's in world war i and he's 19 years old, wounded in his hospital bed, he's writing short stories on red cross hospital stationary. and when he gets back from the war, he's very serious about having a career as a writer. it's often the case with people who are really touched by genius and they know. and start young pursuing that. >> linda miller, i don't know if you're comfortable doing this but when you talked about the writers of the last generation,

you named some of the major figures of the time period, scott fitzgerald, gutrud stein, ezra pound, if you were to judge hemingway's influence in that larger group, where would you stack him up. >> well, quite honestly i would put him first. i think once he went over to paris and began to see the experimentation that was going on in the arts, particularly, in painting, and decided that he really wanted to write the way the painters painted, i think as susan said earlier, hemingway was radical in bringing to america and american art a modernism and a modernism that didn't just have to do with painting but it had to do with all of the arts and the way that hemingway defined literally a new style of writing for the 20th century. every writer you talk to today usually has to acknowledge that he or she has to deal with hemingway somehow because he radically revised the way a

sentence was structured and a way a piece of literary art became almost like a literary canvas. at the same time, as he had determined that the writer should not describe, that the writer should make and it was a question of how to bring that art, the immediacy to bring that moment to life, in the way he did that i think he was profoundly influential and because of that long time influence i would put him right at the top. i think you have to keep in mind, though, that at first when he went over there he was new and untutored and f. scots fitzgerald was the better known writer having published the great gatsby and there was kind of a crossover that took place after hemingway met scott fitzgerald at the dingell bar in paris and they talked together and became very close friends and influenced each other very much. hemingway became more on the ascendency and fitzgerald kind of went on the decline in terms

of the way his work was received. >> can we jump in and take a telephone call. philadelphia, you're next. philadelphia, go ahead, please. >> caller: hello? hello? >> yes. ask your question, we can hear you. caller: great. i want to ask the question -- i had read the story at one time about hemingway having actually met, i guess, what was his second wife. i think her name was martha gelhorn in a bar in key west and i just wondered if the ladies there could explain that and how that all transpired. >> thanks very much. susan beegel, how many wives were there? >> yes. martha was actually hemingway's third wife. >> three all -- >> three out of four all together. he did meet martha here at a bar in key west. she was a wonderful writer about the depression era and its problems. she was down here as an investigator reporting the story on the federal emergency relief

agency and what they were doing in the town of key west and they did meet here but they didn't start having an affair until they both went off to report on the spanish civil war in about 1938 and then they were actually living together in a hotel in madrid under shell fire while his second wife pauline and three children. >> how many children. >> three children all together. john hemingway, and then patrick and gregory with pauline. >> next phone call, welcome to c-span is new town square, pennsylvania. go ahead. caller, you're on c-span. go ahead. caller: hello? >> pennsylvania, please speak up. we can hear you. caller: yes, this message -- this is for dr. miller actually, linda miller. i happen to have a copy of her book, the letters from the lost generation and it's actually a wonderful book and chronicles, i think, beautifully the life among all the artists at that

time, particularly, i'd like to get her feel on the relationship between hemingway and fitzgerald when they were in paris. i also enjoyed a moveable feast which documented that lifetime as well. >> thanks, linda miller, as you answer, i'm going to ask you -- i know you spent a lot of time on this relationship, but not just the personal one. put it in the larger context of history and the society at the time, please. >> well, i think it was a very close relationship during the time that they knew each other in paris and it was a relationship that continued throughout fitzgerald's life. he died in 1940. and it was very important to fitzgerald's art, i think, he always felt that hemingway was a model for him and there was a little bit of competition between the two of them. so i think it probably assumed more importance for fitzgerald than it did for hemingway. >> next telephone call is from los angeles.

hello, los angeles, what's your question for us? los angeles, are you there? let's move from los angeles. we've been hearing two people who have spent their life studying hemingway's work and not surprisingly have lots to say about him that's complementary. you don't always find that and i want to let you listen to pj o'rourke a contemporary american writer talking about his view about hemingway's writing. let's listen to what he has to say. >> the books go from bad, man catches fish, catches fish, catches fish, fish gets out, deep truth to things like the -- to have and have not, which starts out rather promising little portrait of 1930 savannah and winds up just about as stinky as you possibly could have imagined a novel winding

up. hemingway had no sense of humor, whatsoever. and i mean that in the classic sense of humor. he had no distance on things. he could not stand back and look at things. he was always telling you that something was important. that it was true. that it was fine. that it was this or that and the other thing. well, ernie, show we don't tell. we show. his writing on bull fighting is particularly offensive in this respect. as women characters are hopeless. they really don't exist at all. and the sun also rises, my least favorite hemingway book is really my least favorite -- well, it's a tough -- it's a tough call but i would say it's my least favorite because you think this book is about a generation destroyed by world war i, about cynicism, about the breakdown in western culture, but if you read it more carefully, you realize what it's

about is drinking too much. they drink too much. of course, drink is impotent. he didn't get hit in the war. you cannot drink that much and be anything other than impotent. >> i am sure you both want to have at him with that. why don't you start with susan beegel. >> you know, it's really difficult for me to think of two people's whose politics are different than pj o'rourke who's kind of right wing republican and hemingway who was really a leftist so i can -- i can see the -- maybe the lack of sympathy for to have and have not. it's not true that hemingway had no humor. the sun also rises is a deeply funny book. some of the journalism is very funny in a very ranchy body sort of fashion like 1930s south park version. hemingway always poking fun at political correctness, at the wealthy, at the kind of actually class that we often see pj

o'rock representing, you know, the business-suited ones. so i certainly wouldn't go along with that evaluation. it's easy to belittle, man catches fish, gets to be truthful. that's the plot of moby dick as well. you just have to be a little bit more sympathetic to the author's projects. >> linda miller? >> well, there's several things i could respond to that but i'll pick out just a couple pithy points. the first, i think, we have to remember hemingway was an experter and people tend to box him into a hemingway style. well, what is that hemingway style? he tried to do a lot of different things throughout his career and people didn't always warm to what he did because they were expecting something else. but the second thing, i think, the point about hemingway's female characters, that's kind of a stereotype and i really question and i might question o'rourke how much he's really read of hemingway. people tend to read the stereotype of hemingway as this machismo womanizer.

but actually his female characters in many of his works, and particularly his early short stories are marvelous characters, they're complicated -- >> let me interrupt you trying to learn more about society at the time. were his depiction of females in his book compared to the way women were living in america at the time? >> i think if you look at the sun also rises is a good example. even though brett ashley is over there in paris and spain in the '20s, she really embodies what we might call the modern woman. after all, you remember by 1920 women had earned the right to vote and there was a supposed loosening up of a world for a more liberated world for women. but you see a woman like brett ashley who really is very much trapped by her female identity, the men dance around her as an image to dance around. she's not really allowed to be herself and doesn't know how to be herself and doesn't know how to find that self within a world that still is not giving her many options.

so a character like that still shows the limitations of the women of the 20th century and it's too easy to say they were now liberated women. >> new york, ohio, welcome. caller: thank you, i would like to compliment your guest on the remark from mr. o'rourke and what was his response his mother had on him. >> we'll be hearing a little bit more about this in upcoming scholarship, but as i mentioned before, grace was a composer, a very fine musician. studied as an opera singer. she trained all her children in music and particularly trained ernest to play the cello. got him interested in classical music. and i think she was one of really his first great mentors. a lot of hemingway's style which as we know involves brilliant use of repetition and very musical use of repetition. probably is as much connected to his mother's early training in music as it is to working with

people, for instance, for ezra pound in paris. she also told her kids about the arts that if you don't -- don't tell me you love to write. don't tell me you love to play the cello. work is love. and if you love it, you will do it. and she herself was a very disciplined artist. put her art before her family, which was sometimes difficult in the home, but she taught him to do that, too. to be a professional. ..elephone call is from berckley, california on ernest hemmingway. please go ahead. >> caller: hi, there. i've just started reading hemmingway at my community college and i have been enjoying some of his works. we are working with snows of kilimanjaro right now and i am writing a short analytical essay about that story. it's going pretty well but i do have one question for you. that's: what is hemmingway trying to say about death at the end of that story? has the character harry grown or changed anyway by his experience

of a slow and timely death? >> linda miller, will you take that? >> in that story, you have the portrait of an artist who is >> in that story you have a portrait of an artist looking back on his own life and betrayed his art. he hasn't been able to write about all the things that mattered in his life and all the things he wanted to write about. in that story you have what one hemingway scholars said is a writer who is packing in all kinds of things that could have been a wonderful story. by the end of the story he does die and you get this kind of transcendent scene at the end where clearly he is dead and rising above mount kilimanjaro. it seems in this end is a rather transcendent story. it is a story about not the nature of dying but what it

means to be an artist where the most important thing is to right and if you can't write you might as well not live. >> kentucky, what is on your mind? >> caller: i want to ask about the lost generation. ira was reading something -- i am not sure -- she said that she picked that up from the mechanic who took care of -- i was wondering if anyone might comment on that. wasn't original with her. >> linda miller? >> that was the incident i was referring to be for where henry -- hemingway records gertrude stein telling him that he is part of this lost generation. whether or not that really happened, whether or not this mechanic gertrude stein based

her story on had this incident or not, whether or not that was true is dependent on the way hemingway recorded in this memoir he wrote for the end of his life. >> i will take my leave of you because we're standing on the portico but have not seen the inside of the house. we will take our viewers inside and be right back. let me go in the screen door here. waiting for us inside is john dentinger. you are on the staff of the hemingway house and this is our first look at the inside. what is important to know about hemingway? >> this is the living room of the hemingway home. you can see here some of his pieces. ernest was not exactly a furniture guy but he certainly did enjoy the finer things in life. pauline hemingway collect a lot of things and had them send to key west. one of the things you see here

is indicative of the life that they lead. >> you can identify with ernest hemingway. he came from a cold northern climate and found a home here. where are you from? >> new york. >> what can you tell people about the key west atmosphere that would attract you and someone like ernest hemingway? >> the climate can't be beat. it is perfect all the time. and earnest in joined the fact that in key west he was an anonymous person. for the folks in key west, to read any of his books they like tim for the kind of person he was. gregarious among the locals. there's a story that ernest told senator max perkins that sums up his sense of humor and why he liked key west. he said the population of 26,000 was now about 10 and something written on the men's room wall in the train station. somebody had written a derogatory phrase about key west and under that someone else had

written if you don't like our fair city, get out and stay out. underneath someone else had written everybody has. he welcomes solitude in key west and fishing. >> what would have been the culture he absorbed? how spanish was it with the proximity of cuba? the income level? give me a sense what it was like. >> key west was a broker town. broke. the federal government had to take over the city administration. >> he had money because his writing was successful. >> and he married wisely. his wife was a quite wealthy woman. his wife's on coal purchased this home for the hemingways in 1920, and 1931. >> how many years did you live here? >> nine years. >> understand the man and the time he lived. >> favorite hemingway story. i love the fact that ernest was

a professional writer. he spent an awful lot of time at his typewriter and practice his craft wisely. but he complained to his editor about his royal decorator. will decorator misspelled more words than any other man. ernest was a pro. he had a great sense of humor. i love that. >> we love living with spell check these days. we will catch up with you later and our camera will be in and out of the house. thanks for your time. as we go outside let's listen to richmond, virginia. >> caller: question for professor beegel and dr. miller. i had the opportunity to hear a gentleman, dr. scott donaldson who formerly taught at the college of william and mary. he had written a book on f. scott fitzgerald and hemingway

and the question was his book, which i have not read yet, seem to be planned in such a way that hemingway was probably projected as taking a little bit more from fitzgerald as far as his writing ability and so forth than was the case and the question i have is i am just beginning to get interested in hemingway. i don't know. i personally feel he is such a wonderful writer and so excellent at his craft, i wondered if either of you professors have any knowledge of this book or have read his book by dr. scott donaldson, with his hemingway purses fitzgerald and what your opinionversus fitzger what your opinion would be on it? >> take the two men.

we spent a lot of time talking about f scott fitzgerald. the kind of subjects they wrote about, compare what readers learned about america from this time frame from reading either of them. >> fitzgerald wrote more directly of the american scene in terms of social commentary. the classic american novels some would argue is fitzgerald's the great gatsby and the idea of the lost american dream and attempt to retain that dream. hemingway's work focused on an american terrain in michigan, many of those early stories. the later works also pick up on american germain as well but in terms of the relationship it was a real numerate of relationship and they learn from each other. early on fitzgerald was very

influential on hemingway's style. the great gatsby, a narrative viewpoint of hemingway -- into the voice of j. collins. >> are you familiar with the book the caller asked about? >> yes. scott donaldson's book is a very fine book. everybody likes to talk about the relationship between these two very colorful characters. it is a book that stands up on work that mathew tripoli had done earlier in terms of publishing the documents behind his relationship with the correspondence back and forth between hemingway and fitzgerald. these books are very good books to read and help us understand the relationships and the times in which these riders lived. >> let me just go through a quick catalog of the backdrop of ernest hemingway born in 1899,

died in -- >> 1961. >> he was the kansas city star reporter leon. in his lifetime how many works? >> two world wars. >> spanish civil war was dressing for world war ii. no one talks about being -- the japanese war when that broke out. he wrote back the united states had better get ready. it was silly to be massing our ships at pearl harbor and when world war ii was over the communists would be in charge of china. greco turkish war was a little aftermath of world war i at the italian campaign in ethiopia, astonishing. >> and the rise of the cold war. >> he's of a rise of the cold war. he did not write about that directly. i think he wrote about it in directly in the old man and the sea. a wonderful lyrical exploration

of nature that hemingway's rating -- the fallout drifting down on washington d.c. from -- people are building bomb shelters. in his own way it is a plea for a more primitive and simple life. >> brings us to contemporary times when people are thinking about shelters and catastrophe from afar. the poster for old man in the sea in 1951 and nobel prize in 1954. fifteen of his novels are the greatest novel of the century made into movies. 21 books altogether though we were trying to count them up before. it gets a little dicey because as many as ten were published after his death. let's take the next telephone call from north carolina talking about ernest hemingway. >> caller: i was wondering if you could elaborate on the importance if any of his relationship with sarah and gerald murphy. >> sarah and gerald murphy?

>> that is a linda question. she has written a great deal about this. >> please take that question. >> very fascinating and complicated relationship. they were the american couple who went over to france in 1921 and probably in epitomized what the americans who went over to europe were reacting against, the business world. the religion of business in america. murphy's father owned the company in new york, gerald murphy took over the business and he rejected completely what he called the mercantile world of new york business and he said the trumans would go to europe and live life their own way. they had money which made it easy for them to establish a villa on the riviera and it was

at that villa that hemingway came to know them after 1925 and particularly during the year of 1926. very important relationship that gets worked into a movable peace in that he came to blame but murphys 4 his breakup with heavy richardson. gerald murphy wrote hemingway a very damning letter at a point that hemingway was not sure whether he should separate from hadley and gerald murphy told him to cut shark and hemingway never forgave gerald murphy that letter. >> and martha gail holland and his wife who became his widow in 1946-1961. i want to get to your book which is based on the letters of the murphys. i will hold that up if people want to learn more. let's take our telephone call from pennsylvania. you are on c-span.

>> this is for dr. miller. i want to ask had she ever heard of a thing called the fifth column. i was in barnes and noble yesterday and picked it up and it looked like the play written by hemingway and i had never been aware he had written any plays and i wonder if she knew anything about it and if it had ever been staged a. >> yes. it was a play that hemingway wrote during the era of the war period in his career. he was committed to the idea of that play and his writing a play says something about the times in that many of these riders began in a world -- the university world for fitzgerald, the musicals. they really wanted to be dramatists, wasted a good year of his early creative life trying to write a play and staging a play called the

vegetable. pretty much bombed. fitzgerald never recovered from that cell hemingway too felt that he wanted to be a dramatist and was very proud of that play and it was staged at various times but never really successfully. unfortunately. >> san jose, calif.. >> caller: my question is i view hemingway as a visionary caught in contemporary times. i don't want to be disrespectful or invasion of his estate but can you give me any insight as to why there were events leading up to his suicide because of his obviously fame and contributions to the literary world? >> you say he is a visionary for contemporary times. why do you make that claim? >> i make the claim because he

saw the events of pearl harbor and other things you mentioned. that he was a visionary in those aspects but was taught -- in contemporary times, basically the time period that he was writing. that is my perspective. >> thanks very much for that. we need to get to 61 at some point and his death. he died at his own hand. >> ernest hemingway committed suicide in 1961 and it is a complex question. lots of different reasons for it. let me start by saying hemingway did suffer from what we believe is a bipolar depressive mood disorder and it wasn't -- was an inherited one. hemingway's father committed suicide in 1929 as hemingway was returning to key west and of six hemingway children ernest was one of six children three of

which committed suicide and sadly this traveled into a third generation. he suffered from depression and. swings all his life. he dealt with it very heroically. contributing to his suicide he was very physically ill. really struggling with the very high blood pressure, liver disease. he believed he might be developing liver cancer so he was physically very ill. the date of his first suicide attempt he was being treated for mental illness at the time but he was hoping to recover and was very optimistic about his treatment. the date the united states invaded cuba and the bay of pigs invasion took place. he knew when that happened that he had lost his home in cuba which had been his home for 20 years. his books were there, his paintings were there, his boat

was there. you can imagine how hard it would be for your home to burn down and lost its entire content. with the u.s. attempts to invade cuba he lost his home and the community and way of life because he couldn't return to cuba. his servants and pets, really a tragic event and when that happened he stopped wanting to live. >> after he died i read that jfk intervene so that his widow mary could get papers out of cuba. >> that is true. the kennedy administration did intervene and made connections with the castro regime. filled up with his most important papers to bring them home. the cuban government, and i think it is neat today that hemingway's home in cuba is the

single most visited cultural site in cuba. it has a staff of 6200 people taken care of by the cuban ministry of culture. the cubans are extremely proud of their connection with hemingway. >> in a minute we will let you hear from the current generation of hemingway, mary hemingway's granddaughter but let's get a call from arlington. >> caller: one of the most important literary figures in paris at the time of hemingway was ezra pound and he was a very cantankerous, bigoted man who continued anti-american statements. he was anti-semitic. what was the precise nature of the influence and relationship of as wrap around and mr. hemingway? >> that is a linda miller question. >> that is a tricky question.

pound ended up being institutionalized for mental illness over a political issue and hemingway was part of a group of writers who tried to defend pound and get him out of the hospital. i think hemingway saw him as a literary mentor and all that groups of the innovative things pound had done in his poetry and that was the real connection more to art than a deep personal relationship. >> list -- let's listen to mario hemingway. it will air on friday night. she is talking about the suicide of ernest hemingway and the family as a whole. >> my grandfather killed himself because he couldn't write anymore. for him the pain of that was too great. he couldn't handle not being

clear with clarity. i don't believe suicide is an answer for anything and i feel sad for those in families such as mine to have had to deal with that because it is not an option in my mind. i think any time parent commits suicide there is a sense of abandonment. i don't care how old you are. there is a sense of why did you leave? what did i do wrong? even if you are an adult, i can't think that because i am adult now, but my father and most likely his brothers probably had a feeling of abandonment, and why would he do that? why would he leave us? why didn't he tell us? or something. not that you are that close but

you can help as a family member to not feel a sense of responsibility. >> we are going to walk again but let's go to 1961. give me a sense in the united states how the news of his death was received by the country. how big a deal was he? >> it was a hugely big deal. his nationally known. he was a national celebrity. any american then as now would instantly recognize his face. how many covers of life magazine? i absolutely lost count. it was a tragedy, period of national mourning and people were stunned that a man who had written so beautifully about courage had taken his own life. people weren't sure what it meant. it seemed -- i compare it to marilyn monroe's suicide which changed the way people thought about a certain iconic femininity. hemingway's suicide was similar.

almost the same period of time. the 1960s began revising the way we think about men and women and their role in culture and the price we pay play in those roles. >> he fought a celebrity. >> no question about that. that was one of the things that turned on him. i like to stress he had a treatable depressive mood disorder. suicides' happen. people ask that question why, is it my fault? most people don't commit suicide no matter how difficult their lives become. i don't want to overlook the medical component of it but there was a sense in which his celebrity turned on him. to be always on camera with it was hard. >> before we take our next caller we are at the ernest hemingway home in key west. it is right in the old section of town. you as route one is outside the property here. it is open for tours every day and it is not funded by the

government. it is privately funded by the group here. they are delighted to have visitors who learn about ernest hemingway. we are surrounded by the sea 90 miles from cuba and this was a favorite spot of president harry truman whose house is five or six blocks from here. did their times coincide? >> they did not coincide. truman was here when he was president after the conclusion of world war ii but when hemingway was here it was an important community for american writers. people who are in and out, e. elizabeth bishop, robert frost, archibald mcleash, stephen wilder. he was here more for the artistic community than the white house. >> as we listen to the next call everyone who visits this place talk about hemingway -- there are two over our shoulders. we will talk about why they are here but let's listen to alexandria, virginia.

>> hello. i had the pleasure of living in key west in the 50s and my next-door neighbor whose name was mr. sullivan, ernest hemingway called him sully. they were great buddies and we heard many stories. i wish i could quote them now but it was so nice to hear about it. if you go downtown you would see earnest on the street or in the restaurant or down on the pier. a real thrill to hear you talk about it. went through the house and my husband lives at the naval air station and we stayed there for two years and really enjoyed it. >> you must have enjoyed seeing it on camera. the man who traveled as widely as he did and seemingly as gregarious many people must have ernest hemingway stories. >> you hear a lot of stories and you already heard a couple in the call ins we had today and

the difficulty is separating stories that are accurate or have become almost impossible. that is difficult to do and relates to the whole idea of hemingway himself who did become an icon in american history. that was part of his depression. he could never escape the image of himself created for him by others and stories that became larger than life. from his real sense of self as a writer who was committed to writing. >> welcome to our discussion about hemingway. >> caller: i was wondering if his house will ever be open to the public and about the film of the short happy life of francis mccumber i enjoy teaching that to my high school students and i was wondering if society is doing anything to find that film.

>> what h.r. your students? >> caller: tenth and eleventh in high school. >> what is their reaction to ernest hemingway? does he seem like an anachronism or is he someone that feels contemporary to them? >> the story telling. he is incredibly easy to teach. the kids enjoyed it. easy to read for them. they like to read the old man and the sea and the short happy life of francis mccumber is there and my favorite. >> thank you very much. do you know about that film? >> i would be very surprised. the film version stars gregory peck and i think a vote gardner and i am surprised he could find it on video. it is a classic film. somebody out there must have it on video. he lived very briefly, 1969 until his suicide in 61 --

[talking over each other] >> he enjoyed idaho and actually from the 40s towards the end of his life he liked to go to the american high west to go hunting and fishing so he bought a little hole that was supposed to be an escape for himself and mary when they went hundred and enjoy in the winter ski season. when they lost their home in cuba because of the bay of pigs that became his final home. the reason the house is open to the public is after hemingway after death mary hemingway kept the phone -- home and left to the nature conservancy in idaho. they own it with a great deal of beautiful land. one of the things we haven't talked a lot about is hemingway's deep appreciation for nature. very common -- early years of the 20th century when teddy roosevelt was creating our

national forests, national parks, first conservation laws it was the biggest environmental movement in history even bigger than the one today. he was deeply influenced by it and you see it in his writings about michigan and about the sea. i think it is wonderfully appropriate that the home in the land has gone to the nature conservancy. >> his biographer suggested he was trying to emulate teddy roosevelt in the safari. >> absolutely. teddy represented many things that were exciting to a young boy growing up and when i think of hemingway as a child hearing about roosevelt's exploits not only in africa but in the american west, he was a boy who didn't just want to read stories. he wanted to do these things and write about them himself. >> the tour behind us is going to hemingway's study which is over our shoulder. there is the main house here and a separate house above it. how did he work?

>> he loved tropical climates. there is no air conditioning -- in key west -- the comfort index here is something like 94 degrees in the summer. imagine an era without air-conditioning. he liked to get up early in the morning when it was cool. he had seen every sunrise of his life and over the carriage house here, the 0 original carriage house and he desperately needed quiet places to write. when he was living here colleen was here with two is -- children and five servants and a writer of some celebrity at that point after a farewell to arms came out and was made into a movie. he liked these early-morning hours. in the afternoons, devoted to fishing. >> what about drinking? >> drinking came in at lunch time. >> did he drink every day? >> he was definitely an alcoholic. i don't think there's any way to get around that.

he was a disciplined drinker. he said he never drank before he wrote and never wrote drug and i believe that having looked at his manuscript. he began his day sober and rose through the morning and afternoon and were for drinking and recreation and being out on the boat. >> i need you to come in this direction. we are going to make our way into the set where linda miller has been sitting under the palm fronds as we have been melted. our chance to join her. how about if we listen to san diego, welcome to our discussion on hemingway. >> caller: i want to follow up on a comment made by gerald murphy in that letter to hemingway about hadley and ask why they think hemingway and hadley were so compatible, why hemingway was in love with her and why he might have regretted leaving her especially later? >> want to take the had the question?

>> they were very compatible to the degree that they both were coming over to france to gather shortly after their marriage and were discovering a whole new world of art and music. she played the piano and so they did share a love for art that united the marriage but there was a kind of intimacy in that relationship at least the way hemingway presents it in retrospect to a movable feast which is one of the loveliest love stories i have ever read and a tribute to hadley. as to why they separated, there was the second woman, colleen pfeiffer. and hemingway had regrets about that. the writer had two women and he loved them both and he really had difficulty dealing with that and hadley was very generous in

specifying a separate for a few months to make sure they really wanted her to divorce hemingway and in retrospect hemingway was very generous and regretted that he had betrayed her and himself as well as an artist. >> we are halfway through our two our conversation on ernest hemingway. if you are following the series with as we are making a 15 week journey through american history in the 20th century by looking at lives and works of selected american writers looking specifically at the 1920s and 30s. next call is from boca raton, florida. >> i am a professor of english in boca raton and i am teaching a course on 20th-century american writers. two questions come to mind and i wonder if either of the professors can answer this. as we go into the twenty-first century, do you feel that hemingway will remain a popular

figure especially among college students because many of them are looking for writers to relate to at this point in time. deuce ac hemingway continuing to be popular as a classic writer as mark twain? second question would be when hemingway was a live, how did the adaptation of his books in 2 films, what was his reaction? was he favorable with how hollywood treated his novels? do you think he might still have been happy with them or not today? >> on the mark twain question, we were just talking about this culture of celebrity. biographer suggested in the 20th century he was as famous as mark twain had been a century prior. do you agree with that? his persona and as well known as he was? >> absolutely.

the public followed his adventures avidly because he had been a journalist himself and knew how to make a good story. he came back from world war i as a young man, 19 years old newly wounded in the war. he had a story when he got off, he wore his battalion tailored uniform and a cape and walked with a limp and knew how to build his reputation. >> do you have any more for their caller? >> i am pleased the caller is teaching hemingway and we heard from others that hemingway is very much tied to school and i think hemingway is getting more and more popular again. there was a period when he was not popular to teach in schools. more and more he is being recognized for his very teachable -- successful with students and they respond to very strongly. >> let's take a moment out since

i have seen another one of these sea lions wandered among the pier. what is the story about hemingway's catch and why are there so many? >> the cats. i don't think he had that many when he lived here to be frank. the cats come in -- there are a lot of sterile cats on the site in cuba. so these cats are a recreations of what was in cuba. >> pushing ernest hemingway's voice into this discussion. we heard a critic of his earlier, p.j. o'rourke but he had critics in his own time. this is ernest hemingway responding to some of his critics. let's listen to what he has to say. >> we have a criticism today in the morning mail by a character

who calls himself walter h. mckay who writes the following which i will convince. your book lies upon my table. i have finished reading it and i i it dubiously. you got a nice i. the pages are cut rather an evenly. nice work. you are in there. the cover and binding our normal. i think. who are you kidding? the signature on the cover is stamped in gold or what looks like gold. there is nothing printed on the backside of the jacket. your own backside. the blurb said the story is tender and moving. is this a technique of the great lie? i already know there is no meaning of the printed page of the book. now i am quite certain it is not in the binding and papers or the jacket. no nothing. i accordingly feel you can remain confident in the security

of your fame. no critic can budge your impregnable position now. very truly yours, walter h. mackay. i am returning a letter to the aforesaid mckay with the following notation. right white. wipe your royal irish ass on it. you are stupid. signed ernest hemingway. >> what can we learn about ernest hemingway from his response to one critic? >> i think he was very sensitive to criticism. >> overly sensitive? >> all artists are sensitive to criticism. we like our work to be praised lavishly. in key west that was the period for him of supersensitivity to criticism because critics were

beginning to harp on when they saw as failures in his work. after death in the afternoon in 1932, of lot of people looked at that and said this is ernest hemingway? what is he writing here? and hemingway really felt sensitive to that and talked about in a letter to his friends and colleagues and that is partially why he loved going out once he purchased that home in key west he was able to get away from the land, the calm of the water and intimacy of the boat and forget what other people were saying about his writing so that it didn't undo the influence him being able to write what he knew was really true. >> omaha, nebraska as we discuss a ernest hemingway. >> i was wondering if it was true that hemingway did resent his mother later because she

gave him the down that his father used to tell himself and it was the same gun that he used later to kill himself? >> that is an apocryphal story started by john d. cassel. hemingway shot himself with a pistol that belonged to his own father and after is death hemingway asked his mother please send him the pistol. he wanted to have it. to own that relic of his father. downhill in key west when it arrived, inside was a painting of her, a birthday cake which had been very long time and had none and destroys the canvas. and a pistol his father used to commit suicide with. that was -- horrified by this whole thing and wrote a story about it and hemingway never bothered to say it was a much better story the other way around that he actually asked

his mother for that gun. he did not use that gun to commit suicide. he used a shotgun which his own sun wisely cut up and buried and destroyed. if you want to read something that is very poignant that relates to that, a scene in "for whom the bell tolls," his father committed suicide and jordan goes up mountains in montana and drops that gun into a lake. upon the pass in the mountains. that probably is why hemingway wanted the pistol. for some kind of farewell of his own. >> next call from reagan and, florida. >> caller: this is for susan or win the. i read years ago that there was a police or briefcase of hemingway's writings that was misplaced or lost in europe.

i wonder if you can elaborate on that at all. >> thanks very much. >> an important incident. hadley had been carrying on a train to meet up with hemingway -- she brought all of the manuscripts that hemingway had left behind in the apartment in paris and while she was on the train she got off at a stop briefly and came back on and the valise was gone. imagine what that would be like for a writer to lose all of his writing. hemingway went back to paris that night believing they couldn't all be gone. she couldn't have taken all the manuscript. maybe they were copies but everything was gone. she couldn't even record what he did that night in the apartment.

in this end was probably an important loss for hemingway because it forced him to go back to all of that material and do it fresh. probably the loss of those manuscripts' undermined many of his early literature. the important concept of his riding that would you leave out is more important than what you put in but be aware of what he leaves out. >> a couple calls we are waiting for but let's go to the lost generation. what was the time frame of the writers at the height of it? >> we refer to the 1920s. lots of them came over by what hemingway did in 1921 and were there throughout that decade and parallels america that the boom years and the crash -- >> where they anti-american or pro-american? >> that is a loaded label. [talking over each other]

>> were they expatriates' left behind with a reason? >> they were left behind in order to find it. many of them -- this would be true for hemingway -- america and was getting too prohibitive to -- too rule oriented. wasn't open to the new way of seeing the world through art. they were looking for an artistic freedom but i think they loved america and they wrote about america. hemingway went to france and about michigan. he wrote about his son past that he wanted to recover in his art. definitely a love affair. >> when they were in paris in the 1920s there was a great political upheavals in the continent of europe as well seeing the rise of marxism. how did that affect the backdrop in which they were living? >> hemingway was there as a

reporter. unlike the other literary types in paris, he was working for a living, writing for the toronto star and weekly features. he interviewed missile the. he went --mussolini. he went to the greco turkish war. he had a sense of turmoil and things falling apart, the rise of fascism and also linda put it well, rejecting the america of big business and suburban home and that type of morality of prohibition and rejecting and america that turned its back, rest of the world. it was unconscious of what was happening in europe and what it might mean for all of us. >> san francisco, welcome to our discussion. >> a question related to the last comment made.

what did hemingway ever say or write about cuban american relations. particularly concerned with things like castro and batista? >> he did not write a great deal at all about cuban-american relations for a good reason. he made his home in cuba. he wanted to keep his home in cuba and he was very much afraid of putting his foot in the wrong camp. when he made public statements they were carefully considered to say absolutely as little as possible. he ran into trouble with batista. their men came on his property with weapons, shotguns. he may have had clandestine meetings with castro. he was supportive of the revolution and felt it was something that needed to happen but very careful not to say anything that could affect his u.s. citizenship. >> you are looking at archival footage during the period we are

talking about. the 50s and 60s. as a scholar it must be frustrating to you. a reporter, first person observer in the midst of the people of cuba and nothing written of it. you are shaking your head yes. >> i would add that in directly hemingway wrote about it. he didn't officially write about it but he kept fishing logs from the time--just before he got the appeal are -- a long fishing rod through 1934 to 1935 that he was very proud to keep in his own ship as it were. in those logs what you get is the contrast between this kind of intimate life on board the ship with hemingway and his crew and the gulf stream off the coast of cuba and hemingway

rights in that lot about cannon's going off in cuba and all of this political turmoil brewing and he is clearly upset by that. and talking about mark twain earlier, you get the feel reading this lot of this contest between life on the water where you are drifting and life on shore that is very politically oriented and very harsh. >> we're in the garden of the ernest hemingway home in key west, florida. ernest hemingway who won the pulitzer and nobel prize, 15 novels made into film believe in this house from 1928 to 1939. over one of my shoulders is the home. a separate house where he did his work and in the next telephone call we will look at some of the scenes on the first floor of this ernest hemingway home. our call from albuquerque, new mexico. go-ahead.

>> you are close. i have two questions. there are apparently two versions of the snows of kilimanjaro, the great short story by hemingway. one took on directly scott fitzgerald and it was later removed. i can here's something about the story as to why the indictment of scott fitzgerald in that story was removed. and secondly maybe it would be interesting to find out why hemingway in two of his letters stated that his favorite short story of all of his short stories was a clean well lighted place which is an amazingly short short story for hemingway but a very eccentric one in many ways, very existential in its

name. maybe i can find out more. appreciate your show very much. >> thank you for watching. the first one is on criticism and the snows of kilimanjaro. >> like many hemingway short stories it made its first appearance in magazine form and was later collected in its original magazine appearance. hemingway referred to scott fitzgerald and made a famous crack about his fascination with the rich. fitzgerald saying the very rich are different from you and me and hemingway responding yes, they have more money. when hemingway's editor was concerned with the cruelty of that hemingway did pick on fitzgerald the great deal and wanted that out before it went into book form. also the issue of libel. it was a hurtful remarks so it was taken out. >> fitzgerald died when?

>> 1940. >> there were 21 years after his death that ernest hemingway was the live. and his competitiveness continued. >> very much continued because both of them but hemingway in particular immensely competitive writer always thinking of himself. being in the ring with these people wondering whose reputation would survive. >> the other question was on a clean well lighted place. >> it is a very existential story and it is one of hemingway's most talked stories, of an old man who is thinking about killing himself and about dying. bill doesn't have much to live for and is in a cafe and the dignity in that story presented the old man who is still clinging to his own sense of self and the contrast to the old man who is very alone and the ladies in the cafe talking about this poor old man who has no

wife to go home to. it is a lovely story and perhaps the reason hemingway said it was his favorite story is it related to his own sense of despair at times. >> a fact about ernest hemingway from his centennial in 1999. he is the second most translated offered in english after agatha christie. 8 five volume biography is it what did your appetite to the written by michael reynolds. here is some of what michael reynolds said about ernest hemingway. his finger was always on the american pulse in the first half of the century. if you are interested in who we are as are people you can find a lot in earnest hemingway and he is a historical artifact that tells us a lot about what we have been in this country. next call as we discussed ernest hemingway in the 30s from michigan. >> caller: tell me more about the michigan connection with

hemingway. >> want to take that? >> hemingway spent his summers as a boy in michigan. it was an important part of his life in the natural world he grew up in. the fishing, his family had a cottage in michigan, and increasingly hemingway would go there with his mother, his father, was doing his -- it was a very intimate kind of family life if you accept the portrait painted in the memoir that one of hemingway's sisters wrote. almost done idyllic world, pre 20th century away. >> hemingway's michigan stories are among his most beautiful. it is important to remember the

sense of a childhood even, there was something else going on that we tend to forget which is michigan during those years was the subject of what i can only call a holocaust in american forestry between 80% and 90% of the state was clear-cut. the forestry practices then were not what they are now. and terrific fires followed this. you have a sense even in his most beautiful story like big two hearted river or trout fishing in this environment of something that is profoundly endangered and something that is disappearing. the sense of modernism begins before world war i of an industrial world deploying thing that are beautiful land needed to maintain the sole. >> new york, you are on c-span. >> thank you. i am loving this. my name is tom deegan and i'm a big hemingway fan but as much as i like to read hemingway's work

i am just as impressed with biographies on hemingway. i find him as interesting if not more than anything he ever wrote about. my question is carlos baker, the mammoth carlos baker biography in the early 60s is the yardstick by which all other hemingway biographies are measured. i was also impressed with relatively little known biography by jeffrey meyers about 20 years ago. my question is how does that biography measure against the others and are there any hemingway biographies in works? i can't read enough about the man. >> you are always entering difficult territory when you ask scholars to comment on the work of other scholars. >> i am very much on the spot. i hear your admiration for carlos's biography.

it is a definitive work. it is a little dated now because he couldn't write about the things later biographers have begun to write about. if you really want the best of all read michael reynolds and five volume biography. it sounds daunting but each volume is a jewel. the 1930s, the final years, early years in michigan, wonderful biography written and researched -- since i am on the spot i do have to say the buyers biography is not one of my favorites. i don't think it is very sympathetic to hemingway. i don't think the research is as strong as it ought to be and it has an agenda. i like the reynolds biography because i think it is very objective about hemingway. he did have a dark side and some deplorable behavior. >> while we are talking about resources i promised i would show linda miller's book.

this is it. "letters from the lost generation". this came out when? >> 1991. it is coming out in a new expanded edition in another month. >> how did you become interested in earnest hemingway? >> i became interested in hemingway in directly. i went to the fitzgerald papers and discovered a folder of letters to fitzgerald that intrigued me. as i began to try to figure out -- i discovered this network of interconnection of friends. hemingway was part of that group and i came to know hemingway and sometimes he tends to take over and is a strong presence and i became in enamored with his work. as the caller said his biography, his life is absolutely fascinating and

complicated. >> your home base is where? >> penn state. >> you teach a hemingway course? >> i teach a lot of hemingway. and literature of the lost generation because you can't separate artists from each other. a mutually influential period of time. they collaborated and shared the creativity in the air in the 20s and learned a lot from each other. >> you cannot escape hemingway's presence in key west. his picture is all over buildings and town. we have a camera across the street at the historic lighthouse with a camera on top. you can see the perspective from the lighthouse and as you look from there we will give you a sense -- finish up by showing you a local hangout from the time of hemingway's still popular today called sloppy joe's bar. let's listen to a call from pioneer town california on

ernest hemingway. please go ahead. >> caller: i have been waiting for this to come on. my uncle is a while though here. i am not sure if he is -- he was a great power of hemingway's and became my uncle because my mother's sister married waldo and my mother became pals with hemingway and waldo. >> tell the audience who waldo pierce was? >> he painted a lot of -- painted several paintings. the most famous one is hanging in -- frankly i don't remember where is hanging. .. west. and at any rate, then my father became involved with my mother and married her and was a short-story writer and hemingway

was introduced to my father and got my father to max perkins who published him, scribners published him and max perkin was the ed tire. thin it was one of the only two forydid you recollect shunsad and his name was jerome bar.e did 15 years now. bee >> rudd, thank you for adding ys all those personal connections to the larger context. did anyway, -- >> very few. it's i have never counted them. and the light pole, one of my favorite portraits of ernest hemingway, including one that wa was in time magazine. "me" his red and white striped shirt. another called best in the gulf stream. one of the first people thatwa hemingway invited here.h >> we were talking, and this is understanding american culture f

about the creation of this largn contemporary society, we are so familiar with these big personalities that people create. but he was one of the early examples in this country where he used the media, he was on covers of magazines, that sort of thing. >> in the end, you said it helped to do him in. can we talk a little bit more about that? >> well first of all, i want to say hemmingway is probably not the first american write tore deal with this culture of celebrity. think of somebody like walt whitman who wrote his own book reviews in the 19th century or someone like mark twain who very much understood the consult of the america personality. all authors knew how to play that. >> the media is an important component. >> the media is an poarn component in american li literae right fro from the very dining. we have no aristocracy the way the british did so writers did need to play to the general public and the media and an

important part of that. i think hemingway did get trapped in the role that he created for himself here in key west writing for "esquire" magazine, the man's man, the hunter and fischerman. that wasn't necessarily about who he was at all. if you look at his art, "the sun also rises," the protagonist, for instance, has had a wound, renders him impotent. his books were a lot about the traps of masculinity. it makes it very difficult to age gracefully. >> how did he get the nickname "papa"? >> his first son, when he was a little boy in paris, called him that. and it just stuck. with all of his friends. he was a great teacher. a wonderful mean menotor. he liked to take care of people. >> yet, trouble with his own family. we have mariel hemingway.

let's list ton a call from albany, new york. go ahead, please. >> caller: hello. thank you very much for taking my call. i have two questions for both and one is: why did hemingway have such a great dislike for james jones? was it professional jealousy, mostly? and the other question is i once read a quote that hemmingway was being interviewed and he was asked what he attributed the success of his quote "write as if you were speaking to a child." i have never been able to find that quote. >> you want to take the james

jones question? >> james jones, he wrote a book called "from here to etrn tea." it made an enormous splash. hemingway got drunk and wrote an absolutely seething criticism of james jones and the success of "from here to eternity." nothing personal about it, i think hemingway realized that despite his having been a key, absolutely key event in world war ii, he was at the normandy invasion, that was not his war. and that a new, younger generation of writers was going to capture that war and be for that war what he had been for world war i. and i think i it was kind of a "from here to eternity" was kind of a crisis for him to see what this new literature of war was like. that's my take on that. >> we have a camera inside the house, this time upstairs. over the next call, we will

listen or, listen to the caller and look at inside beginning, he think, with another of those famous cats here. the next call is from san diego. >> caller: hello. my name is sharon and i grew up in oak park, illinois. i went to oak park high school and i wrote on the school paper that he wrote on and i had four years of english, i have seen his home, but i know very little about his oak park connection. could you talk about that? >> thanks very much. would you take the oak park connection? >> welsh his oak park connection iwas very crucial. he spent his growing years in oak park. and it was a suburb of chicago. i can speak well of that because i also grew up in a suburb of chicago, park ridge, which was very near oak park. it was a suburb that in those days was fairly well off. it represented that really solid, middle-class life that

very much lived by the rules of the time and i think that hemingway rejected some of that, what he saw as the restrictive life when he left home and went to europe to write. >> we didn't answer that last caller's question about the quote, "write as if you are talking to a child." have you heard that before? >> i have not, i would have to say. obviously hemingway was a writer who believed in great simplicity and directness. so -- >> we are talking about specific hemingway quotes, let me give you an opportunity to talk about the hemingway review which is the publication that you are an editor of. what's it all about? >> the hemingway review is a publication of the hemingway society an the university of idaho press. linda and i are both on the board. it's a wonderful organization of college professors, secondary school teachers and hemingway enthusiasts around the world.

we have members around 27 countries. if any viewers are interested in joining, we would welcome them on board. it comes out twice a year and usually contains about six articles about hemingway and a series of notes, bibliography. >> how do you find it on the internet? >> www.hemingwaysociety.org. it costs $30 for regular membership and we have disdown s for students and retired folks. >> next call is from savannah, georgia. >> caller: hi, i'm really enjoying the show. i have a question about his fourth wife, mary. she hasn't always got the greatest press, it seems from my reading, with his kids and some friends. how do you think she kind of held up as the ambassador to hemingway after he died? >> thanks. you are seeing some film footage

of mary on screen right now. >> mary has a difficult role to play in hemingway's life. she was the wife who wound up being his widow. she did not have children with hemingway and so, there's the natural kind of bitterness that comes when someone's responsible for administering and dividing an estate. i think she did a wonderful job with his legacy in that she collected and gathered his manuscripts from all over the world from trunk in the ritz to the back room of sloppy joe's bar and brought all the papers together. they are now at the kennedy library in our national archives. >> how did they get to the kennedy library? >> again, i think it was because of the kennedy administration's assistance to mary in getting those papers out of cuba that they made it to the library. but they made it there in part because of jackie kennedy really, really, was proud of her husband's administration and their role in promoting the arts in america. we haven't seen a presidential

administration since that took pride in promoting the arts in america. and she really wanted the hemingway papers to be at her husband's library. >> i read that he was invited to the kennedy inauguration. did he attend? >> he wasn't able to attend because he was ill. he was suffering, being treated for mental illness and for his liver disease. but he did write a beautiful tribute to kennedy. >> here is the granddaughter of ernest talking about hemingway as a parent. as if as a father. let's listen. we have lost the tape. i hope we can get that for you. tuscon is next. >> caller: good afternoon. my name is tate brown. i am from tuscon. i had a comment about a young friend of hemingway. a very good friend by the name of bill smith. they used to trout fish together in upper michigan. and they later fished together in, off of key west. he was -- there wasn't much n

notariety then. he turned out to be a speech writer later and he was quite a bit younger than ernest was. but anyway, he said that his friend, ernest, had what he called really a tape-recorded mind. it could pick up conversations quite lengthy conversations, and he would remember them for some time and he could use them oh, maybe 10 years later, 15 years later, an example of that he said it was in "the sun also rises," when they are fishing up in the pyrinnes, there is a funny kind of dialogue between the two of them which began "which came first, william jennings bryant or the egg" and it continues, but he said he had that conversation with hemingway years earlier and it was almost

word for word as he recalled it from what they, what he and hemingway said. and i just wondered if you have any points about that, what was alleged as an incredible memory and his being able -- >> thank you, sir. i understand the question. i appreciate it. the essential ability to record conversations from memory. >> absolutely. hemingway had a memory like a sponge. not only a great aural memory, he could capture the rhythms of people's speech, but also a visual one. was keenly o observant. it's remarkable. >> what about in his later year was all the health problems and the bipolar issues? did his memory continue? >> i was going to say that that was probably a contributory

factor. he was treated with electro shock and that destroys memory both short and long term. devastating to think about a man like hemingway to whom memory was important, having e.c.t. >> here's that tape now. >> i don't think my grandfather was the greatest parent in the world. i think that his creativity was so big and his desire to be a great writer was just overwelmingly -- it supposed h him. and not -- i mean he loved his children, but he wasn't a hands-on kind of dad. he was a man who, you know, teach your sons to hunt and send them thought whore house for love-making experience. odd, but that's how, you know, but on the other hand, that also

wasn't him in the sense, i don't think he knew how to parent well, because i don't think he was parented well. in a loving, nurturing, i mean it was a different jernation. he changed the way writers write, but i think to battle the way, you know, us as a generation raising our children are way different than our parents were and their parents were with them. it was a much more macho, you know, you tell your sons to go out and they don't cry and they do all this. but when he would write, he was very sensitive. very sensitive to women. i mean i think the whole idea that women are sort of, you know, secondary citizens is so not true. i think he had such a female sense sibilitsensibility about i think what was no tore yows is the life tile o lifestyle of thd hunting and that kind of thing. but parenting i don't think was his strong suit. >> i am going to pick up on a comment linda had about his role

with women and move along from there to talk about "the sun also rises". we talked earlier about the role of the women character, brett ashley and that. but one of the other major characters is jewish. and his jewishness is commented upon regularly throughout the book. will you talk about that as a society issue. was hemingway antisemetic? >> i think it's a question that is hard to ask from the viewpoint of our present time. when you are looking back at an earlier age that didn't have the same language for these things that we have today. it was, they didn't have the consciousness-raising language that certain words and references you wouldn't use. i personally don't think he was anti-semetic. i think that he saw all people for who they were and he recognized, you know, all people's complexities and that's what makes his characters so real. but this is an issue that is

raised often. >> sue? >> yeah, i would like to comment on that, too. one of the things that was very, very important to hemingway in his writing was using honest language. the language that actual people would use. so if he was writing about a rm runner, that person would use ethnic slurs. he had very close jewish friends and mentors. gertrude stein and bernard barrenson. i think interesting in terms of the type, there was a letter, hemingway was asked after world war ii, if a lertd of his could be published in which he used the word "kike" and a couple of other expressions and he wrote back to the person who wanted to publish the letter saying you can publish it, but you have to take this language u out because we can never speak this way again. so, he saw that the world had changed with the holocaust and that certain types of language about race and ethnicity had

taken on a much deeper, more sinister meanin than they had before. >> mark farcus is our producer for this particular program and we have some thank yous over the next 15 minutes including the folks here at the hemingway home who have opened up their doors over the past three or four days to us. we greatly appreciate using their facilitys to help tell the story of hemingway in the 1920's. mill creek, washington. welcome to c-span. >> caller: thank you. stemming from the time that he spent in africa, -- >> caller, let me stop you, caller, because you need to turn your t.v. volume down. i am getting a terrible feedback. > > caller: coming from the sometime he spent in africa on safaris and his writings about africa, can we have comment from either the professors about his views on segregation? and how he might have been involved or not involved in the

civil rights movement here, although he probably was gone at the time that it really began to take hold in the country. thank you. >> thanks very much. susan beegle? >> hemingway was interested in race, but he didn't really write about it a great deal. i think what's really interested about his african experience is his sympathy for the indigenous cultures there. if you look at "true at first light" which takes place in the 1950's, he was actually interested in becoming a part of the tribe and entering into that and understanding more about african indigenous culture. he wasn't really part of the civil rights movement that began here in the 1950's. he wasn't really that involved in american culture. he was living in cuba at the time. i think his early interest is expressed in his stories about boxing where black fighters were pushing the race envelope and took a great interest in the joe

louis fight where we had a black american fighter up against a blond aryan nazi from jer jer moon knee. the superior race was joe louis. >> yet in 1926 when "the sun also rises" came out, it contains the "n" word. how do students react? >> they react negatively. it bothers them. it's very difficult. it's the same issue of the "n" word coming up in huck finn and when we talk about it in class, which we do, i tell them that you have to see that in the context of the whole work. and much of what susan was saying before, in terms of how hemingway, as we have heard over and over again today, was a listener and he picked up on real speech, that he heard, and he didn't try to fluff it up or

destroy it. he wanted, as we said over and over again, he wanted to write truly. and it had to be true and so, he didn't play political games, either. but it is a difficult issue. >> many of the photographs and the original film that you have seen today have come to us from the j.f.k. library. wea talked earlier about how his collection came there and also the library of congress. we thank them for letting you see and hear hemingway. john denninger is with us, with the staff of the hemingway home. where are you right now? >> i am standing on the second second-floor balcony just after the master bedroom. >> every time i told people i was coming here, anyone who has been here actually tells me the story of the swimming pool. so for those who haven't been here, tell us the swimming pool story. >> well behind me, you can see the carriage house of the hemingway home. originally, this is where the hors and buggies were located. he turned the second floor into his writing studio which he

always referred to as his trophy room. it overlooks the famous swimming pool. a little difficult to see. >> we can see with the other camera. >> oh, that's great. well, he was a great swimmer. he used to swim at the docks before the pool was built where his boat, pilar, was docked. and he had wanted a swimming pool since hi as early as 1936 n he showed a reporter from the ke"key west citizen" where he ws planning to have the pool installed. but it was his wife, pauline, who actually installed the pool. and he found it under way when he returned from spain as a journalist in 1938. and of course the story goes that he was very upset that pauline had spent so much money on the pool and, in fact, said to her that you have spent all the money, you might as well take our last cent and actually gave her a penny which we have actually preserved to this day in the patio right out in front of the writing studio. >> you know, another landmark

here, we talked about the cats with our guest, but right over my shoulder here, i think, is a favorite drinking fountain of the cats. can you tell me about that? >> sure. we know that ernest got the big olive jar in cuba and had it sent over here so that she could use it as a lawn decoration. but the true center piece is the old urinal from sloppy joe's underneath. that is certainly an interesting feature for all of the guests when they come here to see the cats drinking out of the urinal from sloppy joe's bar. >> how did he get it? >> it's a little difficult to say exactly. we know that joe russell is a great friend of ernest and he was apparently remodelling the bar and ernest simply got one of the discarded urinals and had it sent back here to whitehead street for his cats. >> silver spring, maryland, you are on for our three guests as we talk about hemingway. >> hi, this is a great show and a great series. thanks for having it. i have two quick questions.

one is, what was his relationship with john steinbeck, and how does my favorite book "for whom the bell tolls" tac "stack up with his or books, and did he know or have a relationship with george orwell? >> three big questions. john steinbeck will be our next week's profile. what was his relationship? >> they only met once in new york city and i and it was a bia disaster. words were exchanged and a little too much was drunk and hemingway's -- ohara had a beautiful irish stick that hemingway broke over his head and john ste nirks beck thought hemingway was quite a boor. but they greatly admired each other as writers. in fact, i think steinbeck's grapes of wrath" was a great influence on "for whom the bell tolled" and that hemingway's style of writing was a very

important influence on steinbeck. >> the question of "for whom the bell tolls request ," the caller wants to know how it stacks up against his other works? >> well, it's not my favorite work of his works. i think that each work he did was very, very different. it's a more traditional novel than his earlier novels "the sun also rises," the "farewell to arms." as a traditional novel, it's a wonderful novel. it is not an historical novel, either, those who study the spanish civil war say that he doesn't really get the accurate details of the war itself, but it's a work of emotion. and it's a very solid, wonderful book. but i am prone to the early stuff which i think i was left. hopefully we can get that to you. boston, massachusetts, go ahead, please. >> caller: hi. i was listening earlier when james jones was mentioned and hemingway's letter to i think max perkins it was, or maybe a

public critique. but one of the biggest point wases that james jones was a deserter. deserted the war, went back and was discharged. i think because of it, di discharged. my question, your comments on hemingway's sexuality, there's a big controversy over that. whether he was homosexual or whatever, but i think moreso, the evidence sort of lies in his work, a lot of the role reversal between men and women, especially in bed or, you know, the bedroom dialogue talk, and also the lasting effects of his mother dressing him and his sister up as twins. hemingway in dresses and everything were really abnormal, i mean it was normal at the time, but for a norp al length

of time might have had a lasting effect on this and it's usual lit women, short hair sh cut short like a boy's and -- >> ok, caller, thanks. let me interrupt because we understand the point and have only a couple of minutes left. susan beegle? >> first of all, the baby clothes business sort of came up in a biography. all little boys of that era wore dresses until they were breached at about age 2. the zipper hadn't been invented yet. you can imagine trying to toilet train a little boy with a button fly. hemingway was very interested in sexuality. paris in the 1920's, a period of great sexual experimentation and freedom. exactly, again, very analgous to the 1960's. no evidence whatsoever that he was a practicing homosexual. just was not. i fervently believe that. but he was very interested in

role reversal. we see male characters projecting themselves into the position of women sexually and otherwise. and pretty remarkable for an author who is often criticized for not being sympathetic enough to women, but really, in works like "the garden of eden," someone who is actively trying to understand what women feel. >> our affiliate in this town of about 33,000 full-time residents is at&t broad band and we thank them for giving us the help inputting this together. here's hemingway talking about writing about the spanish civil war. >> "the fifth column" was written in the fall and early winter of 1937 while we were expecting an offensive. there were three major offensives. one of them was brunepe. hait had been fought and started brilliantly and ended in a very bloody and undecisive battle.

and we were waiting for the first of the other two. they never came, but while we waited, i wrote the play. each day we were shelled by the guns behind the foods of garabitas hill and while i was writing the play, the hotel florita where we lived and worked was struck by more than 30 high-explosive shells. when you went to the front, at its closest, it was 1500 yards from the hotel, the play was always slipped inside the inner fold of a rolled-up mattress. when you came back and found the room and the play intact, you were always pleased. it was finished and coppied -- >> that was some more of hemingway in his own words talking about writing during the spanish civil war. our sometime running out. the two hours goes by so very

quickly. john sh let me return to you. you see a lot of tourists in this place. you probably have lots of time to think about hemingway. why do you think he is significant? why should people come here other than it's a beautiful spot? >> it is a beautiful spot and we thank everybody for coming. i think hemingway was perhaps the best author of the first half of the 20th century. his works will live forever and gosh, he shows up everywhere, even today. and i am just happy that people remember him for the writer that he was. >> when can peopl he was. are >> when can people come to his son? >> we are open every day of thei year from nine to five. >> thomas as a costa comment? >> $9 for adults and $5 forchil. children.ce >> how is it funded? >> basically just read missionsm if. >> thank you very much for letting us see some of it, and t we invite you to see more than. >> moral to seek. let me turn to