Transcripts For CSPAN2 Ernest Hemingway 20170716

Good morning and welcome to the 33rd annual Chicago Tribune printers rowlett fest. I would like to start by giving a special thank you to all of our sponsors. Todays program is broadcast live on cspan2s booktv. We have a few minutes for questions at the end of the presentation. The audience will have to line up at the microphone to the right and let you know when the time comes. Before we begin todays program silence your cell phones and turn off your camera flashes. With that i would like to introduce our moderator, Television Documentary host, producer and news anchor bill kurtis. [applause] lets get right into it. I should have a moment of explanation. Stacy keech will not be with us today. On opening night, i had a 1man show. He had a heart attack on stage. It was one of those strange things. He didnt know where he was in the play and for 50 minutes being oldschool, a hemingway kind of character, he plowed through. His good friends came in and ended the show and was diagnosed with mild stroke but he is fine now. And to restage it in 2018, we have to put that on. But Mary Dearborn is the author of the new book called Ernest Hemingway a biography, what else . She is noted for having a street in chicago named after her. [laughter] she is also particularly important today because this is the first biome in 15 years written by a woman, the first to explore [applause] guest it is the era of women. We are all such fans. Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright were two heroes. How lucky were we . There has been so much written. It is like the guy telling the old joke. Among comedians, tell me number 2 or number 3 and they all laugh. What i would like you have such detail about these heroic moments we are familiar with. And some new revelations about his Mental Illness, suicide, and to that end, can you tell us about this mild upbringing . Guest it is a great town. I gather was the first suburb or one of the first suburbs. What i found so interesting is from chicago, sort of the frontier. They would go to the river for dinner. He was on the edge of the road. Chicago meant a lot to him. Host he was not a particularly big athlete. Guest a lot of things he expected to be part of, he was terrible at team sports. He liked boxing, he played tennis but wasnt really good at it. The other thing people expect, he would be a womanizer, a big magnet. He had four wives, beyond the four lives, he had six sexual encounters total, and we think of him as being some kind of success, don juan. Guest there were a couple visits in cuba. Marlena dietrich and ava gardner. A couple books right there. Ava called him papa and he called her daughter. Guest there was a little stable he had, dietrich, and in love with him and flirted with them, but called him daughter. He declared love for them but he kept the barrier up as much as they did. Host but he married the journalist. Three journalist lives. He was in michigan hunting and fishing with his dad. There were early signs his dad had problems. Depression coursed through the family. His father had a couple bad assessments and in 1928 a photo of ed hemingway in a suit looking at ernest with the most admiring much befuddled look, swimming in a suit. He killed himself two months after that. It is something most of us cant imagine because it was a psychotic depression. The example, ernest at the end of his life was on his way to the mayo clinic in a little plane and stopped to fuel and he had to walk into the propeller, psychotic, suicidal, a psychotic disaster or news that it was really beyond very hard to get that. Host the more interesting character is his mother, grace. She was bisexual. Guest i think so. She raised a family of children, pretty good marriage. Hemingway a very strong, and in the hemingway household, and seems to have fallen in love. As you can imagine, the whole family tore them apart especially her husband. And after hemingway killed himself, married briefly, graces death in 1951. We dont have absolute truth but letters between them. Host you suggest Ernest Hemingway, ernest had some gender problems. Guest at the time they would be seen as problems. He was interested in gender boundaries, the slippage between genders. There is a book called the garden of eden, he is upset with androgyny. The husband and wife he had a haircut. It is the same length, localized, sexual roles is bad with another woman and what is relevant is the story of gregory, this surgery in his life, very sad story, died in a drug taken a womans prison, that is outside my biography. Except what is in it is ernest knew about it. And missing some of her underwear, they found it under gregs bed about four months later. We dont need to know more about this except for ernest to know that when his son was 13, and mantoman, living with his son, and host we would call that story you did not include, timely. Especially for radio and television. When did he begin to create this macho image . Guest when did he create or was it created . It all happened together. From a young age got into deep secrets and marlon was the real love sometimes and wasnt a glorified affection auto and all those things and it started happening at the same time and he did participate in it at first but then it sort of dropped around him and did tremendous damage to him. Host just to show you the amount of detail, the old man and the sea, the film and movie, he was consulted, they went to catch a arlen. They couldnt get one. It is never there. They had to go down to chile to catch the marlon. Host ernest said no movie with a rubber fish ever made money. Host the other detail is you go directly to the florida detail and allegedly, hemingway the classic daiquiri, he had two of rum, no sugar. Guest grapefruit juice. The lack of sugar meant you could consume more of them. Host he was trying to find the limit. World war ii, the ritz hotel, and the machine gun being a fan. It was terrific. It was 35 for the other one. At that time, years ago. Was this true . A lot of stories about world war ii are not true. He claims he liberated paris. He liberated the ritz bar, but war stories, what can i say . More sprung up around him as you can imagine. And there are rumors about how he tortured germans that are completely out of thin air. That started happening, sometimes he had come to believe it or believe the legends and it is another example of the legend itself rearing up and biting him. Host i will jump into a number of subjects. Africa. He went there a lot it seems. And during the famous accident, the crash, he was going to take was it mary . This is a gift, to fly into uganda. When the plane went a third time on the border. Why it crashed. Guest that almost finished. He injured every organ of his body but the worst thing is he woke up and there was cerebral fluid looking leaking from his ear. He was in a bad state. This was on top of a lot of head injuries and he never really came back from that. They thought he was dead. The fantasy, you have he came back but was very diminished man. Host it seems that was the beginning of the end. Teddy roosevelt went through the same struggle and attributed an early death but here was hemingway, that was his fifth it must have contributed to alcoholism. He had serious concussions and every time he got up, he was in london during world war ii in a centrally located hotel, his room was Party Central and everybody brought in bottles, he drank right on top of these and he had to get out of bed so there were serious, i think today we dont know much about traumatic brain injuries, they are always different. I am forgetting the initials but the football players, cumulative effect really dire. Alcoholic use, brain injuries, he was on a lot of prescribed medications, in different combinations than usual things, some physical problems like Blood Pressure and so forth on top of alcohol. Not in the last year of his life, and biceps were said to be 18 inches around and when he was an old man that was gone. Host before we get to the suicide, i will give you an insight i did not know. He also was would you say a genius . He changed the way we write in america. So elegant and simple. Guest absolutely. Probably the greatest american prose writer. I think he was absolutely a genius. He wasnt consistent. Some of the things that were wrong with him caught up with him. After world war ii, in the last year he put together a movable piece that you read or a memoir about paris, if you know anyone going to paris, a charming book, beautifully written in the last year of his life but he lost faith in his ability to keep writing. Host that is the key and so sad, he lost confidence, didnt he . Guest it is very sad. With kilimanjaro, so autobiographical. So much to write about. It was his duty, all these things, that is one of the tragedies, imagine if he kept on writing, living, and vietnam, journalism, it is really sad. Host without all his problems. Guest i dont know. I am not sure he could have been helped. Host bullfighting. I am sorry he was genuinely friends and enamored with the matador. Guest absolutely. He loved bullfights. He loved staying, he reported on the spanish civil war. He was heartbroken that he couldnt live there in spain. I think he said the closest you could come to war without being endangered, going to war, he thought he was fascinated by death. Death is a big part of the bullfight. Im not and affection auto, but he was directed by gertrude stein. Guest host a big influence. Guest had a lot, the strength of the mother, the same bill, and the same charisma. That hemingway and his mother shared. They suck the air, if people said that about each one, they suck the air out of the room. This is really commanding people. Host what was his problem with women . It is a red herring. He wasnt very good i dont think there was animosity toward women. Somebody who understood humanity that well. It is impossible what you might have read in school, hills like white elephants, a guy and his girlfriend, talking about having an abortion and it is incredibly sensitive, sensitive to her, to him, the issue. It is not easy. He is not into creating great women characters. It is a red herring. Host talking sensitively and then he would explode, one thing jumped out at be. Patrick was very ill, left outside his roof. Host guest patrick had a concussion and he was 18 and went crazy. Hemingway and the servants, had to hold him down. Ernest couldnt keep them in an institution, so violent that they thought the extenders would hit him. Hemingway six weeks and the traumatic brain injuries, he had some shock treatments, and never came back. Hemingway, he was heroic. When he stepped in. Host toward the end, living in idaho, i was taken with modern sounding psychotropic drugs, it was pretty intense. That was pretty fast. This happened a lot with mentally ill people, they thought everybody else was taking care of it, he was taking competing drugs, the equivalent of stories, that it is really hard host rescuing guest yes. It was heavyduty. There were all kinds of other not all kinds, not like today but if you other antidepressants they never tried on him and they believed he went home from the mayo clinic. They sent him back and the shock treatment, they do make you lose shortterm memory so he became convinced he would never be able to write. Host that is a downer. What was the Biggest Surprise in your vast research . Guest there were subsidiary surprises. I came to like one of his wives, pauline. A novel by paul mclean is about hadley hemingway, definitely his most romantic marriage and it is commonly thought that pauline love the money and stole him away but that wasnt the case. In fact, ernests responsibility hadley finally brought it up and said i know you are having trouble and said if you hadnt brought that up, we would be fine. We could just continue. So pauline was a wonderful person. The poet Elizabeth Bishop said he was there is a story, can i tell a short story about pauline . Ernest eventually divorced her for watching number 3 and they had two sons together, patrick and gregory. It was time for a hand off of the children so pauline wrote him a letter detailing how this was going to happen and she tore it up into little pieces and put it send it so if he wanted to know how to get the kids host that is creative. Did he ever put it together . Guest he would have to. Host cuba is a subject of a recent in not a documentary but entertainment. It was up and down. It is explosive but began to begin another picture of Ernest Hemingway. Everybody has that different view of Ernest Hemingway. Guest he was supposed it was he lives on a hilltop, a beautiful place, tropical flowers, he wasnt hugely lovely he road welfare but he was really isolated. He lived far from the center of civilization. He never lived in new york. He didnt stay long in chicago. He lived in key west which is way down there. Cuba. He didnt like being around other writers. He loved the spanish language. He felt comfortable in cuba. The gulfstream was right there. It was good and bad but i think the isolation did him more harm than good. He needed he needed people to tell him when his writing wasnt going well or this was a bad direction and his editor, max perkins, he died and ernest published a book, across the river, i am sure he would not have let him publish. He needed outside voices and he isolated himself there. Host he took perkinss death hard. Guest pauline, he said i think he lost the guidance he needed. With all these writers, nobody touched a word except his spelling and grammar. He did that host he did blow and say guest dont go in this direction. Hemingway was a terrible poet and at one point he wanted scribners to bring out a volume of his poetry and it was only very difficult that no, i dont think so. Host one of the things i did not know is he actually wanted the nobel prize. He would get up in the morning on the day of, waiting for his name to be called. He had a couple fokker got it, he got mad at falconer for making some crack about his writing. Host is the new standard. Well open it up for questions in a moment but i wanted to tell mary that i thought she was a wonderful. [inaudible] it was one of the rivers that ernest wrote about, its incessant implacable force only in fault small eddies where it cursed individuals like Ernest Hemingway, greg, and later in some in the next generation and reportedly in those after that. It continues to take the form of cycles of mania and psychotic depression and alcoholism and other addictions and suicide. Many believe that three of ed and grace is six children, half of them, killed themselves. Born along with the river, where many other qualities not the least good looks, charisma, air and grace was compelling and had some people with an appealing brood. More important, the river carried as it rushed along artistic talents, even genius, as well as extraordinary personal charms. These qualities were apparent in graces musical guests and equally in the incredible charisma she shared with her son. Hemingway descendents have written, painted, acted and started artistry and one of the grandchildren wrote a book was nominated for a pulitzer in a National Book award. These strains were in the dna that the river carried along just as surely as were Mental Illness and suicide. On a memorial to hemingways memory, is an inscription that reads best of all, he loved the fall, the leaf yellow on the cottonwoods, leaves floating on the streams and above the hills, the high blue windless skies. Now, he will be a part of them forever. Ernest wrote these about another sun valley but as the last two years he wrote again about the fall, this time, in paris in the 1920s. Another good time and another good place. You expected to be said in the fall that part of you dies each year when the lease fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold wintry light. Yet, fall during that period of his life was beautiful for what would inevitably follow. You knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river, with flow again after it was frozen. [applause] let me see how much time we have left. Okay, we have a few minutes left. For questions. Anyone . Its unclear why heavenly hemingway left cuba. Some say was forced out by the government. Would you care to comment on that. The government wanted him to leave, they were saying it was not safe but it wasnt given to the cuban people and there was no way he went there. Four years it was a problem with the cuban people that it was difficult for them to get out and they had so forth and as to the Kennedy Administration stepped in to help them thats the hemingway archive and theres a connection there but he wanted to say that it was impossible. They would direct these. [inaudible] [inaudible] did you come across anything and its probably Frank Lloyd Wright kid to come across anything . You have the question repeated for the home audience was marked if you have audience, line appear to stage right. Frank lloyd wright and are missed anyway. [inaudible] it was a very custom. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] he was at the top of his form on the. [inaudible] he wrote a Nonfiction Book called it a memoir now that that is African Safari anyway, his wife called him a miserable old man and the green hills of africa and its very funny about himself. Even about hes not doing so well hunting and the friend is doing better and hes even okay about that. Its a different side of him. When you say its nothing, you say hes a hunter and he was killing too many trophies animals and so, kenya, came in and said we are going to make you a game warden. [laughter] the only thing you cant kill because you have to protect them now. He did say, i can kill hyenas. Yes, there are jackals. If you go to africa and in the National Park you have Mount Kilimanjaro there and there is the hemingway camp. I dont know if its still there but maybe he wrote this note there but it certainly got the ideas. I love the camp life that theyd have a big lunch and a lot of drinking and then the cocktail hour and there seem to be a structure that was a kansas bathtub. I think it was fascinating that they eat at a table and it was a way of life and he found that when he went on safari he was much more interested in watching the game. Especially the birds, he wanted to shoot them. Thats when they made him the game warden. But you had to pay for it. A couple more questions. Yes. Yes, you wrote a biography of naylor and now youve written one of hemingway. Could you compare their personalities and their style of writing . Yeah, i wrote one i seem to have a trilogy going. I wrote about henry muller two. Talk about a red herring. Mailer had huge respect for hemingway but he said something that was interesting about hemingways legacy. He had a farewell to arms and for whom the bell tolls would be if the writer was five for and i guess the point is pointing out something very real. Didnt you say that he said all he needed to know about the revolution he learned from the farewell to arms. And did you really . From gorilla fighting. Thank you you are talking about oak park and i was remembered about the salinas california and the people of salinas not really appreciating John Steinbeck when he was alive. I went to his museum many years ago and it was just a small house, now 50 years after his death, huge museum. What sense do you get of the citizens of oak park and their relationship with hemingway and do you feel he gets enough recognition and honor from his town . I dont think they have much. Many people didnt even know he was there. Then, they put a museum on his house. Even now, all those who go to the museum, its not a level of museum of Natural History or that kind of thing. Once in a while you can find someone citing a feature of hemingway and perhaps an essay is quick. Right, in high school, teachers smack hemingway says that theres a Wonderful Museum there but its an amateur museum and i think theyre getting some money their writing a hemingway oak park writing scholarship and is a step in the right direction. We now have an American Writers Museum in chicago and you might go down there and they are to be featuring hemingway. Could you describe the falling out hemingway and santos pesos . That they compensated issue. He was very radical and he had his translator was a good friend and he disappeared and he was probably killed by the good guys, that was happening, santos was obsessed with it. Hemingway was sort of like calm down. It was embarrassing. Hemingway decided he was on the left and the soviets for the movers and shakers. Ernest didnt want to talk about people whod been murdered. This is what youre talking about, rate work they had a huge following out and never spoke again and santos became rightwing. It was bad. Santos had been a very good friend he was not competitive with ernest which was the only way he could be his friend. Thank you, for coming. Ernest hemingway by mary