Cuban Papers Reveal Hemingway Was Pussywhipped, Too
4 November 2009, 1:19 PM. By Cindy Casares
New personal papers of Ernest Hemingways’ released to the John F. Kennedy Library And Museum in Boston from the Hemingway Collection of the Museum Ernest Hemingway of the Republic of Cuba reveal that Papa was as big a romantic as he was a pretend Spaniard. Until now, one had to travel to Cuba to research the documents, which consist of thousands of letters and some rewrites of For Whom The Bell Tolls as well as the movie script for The Old Man And The Sea, but now, through the magic of not having George Bush in the White House or Fidel castro in the Cuban White House, Cuba has amicably sent color copies of 3000 documents to Boston. (They’re not crazy, after all, the museum bares the name of the man who tried to take Fidel down.) Still it’s enough for researchers to learn that, despite his macho man persona, Ernest Hemingway was as much of a punk schoolboy in love as anybody. During his time in Cuba, he was married to his fourth and final wife, Mary, so the love letters are to her:
My Dearest Pickle,
I want to serve you well and true the way some very dull people want to serve their country and even sadder people want to serve their God.
Sarcastic passion. We like.
"My Dearest Pickle, Do you like me? Circle yes or no..."
You’re a very small god with a face that breaks my heart.
Okay, that’s just kind of stalkerish.
Mary my dearest beloved, I love you so and there is nothing much I can add.
Um, we think you can, Papa. We expect more from the man who taught us that The Sun Also Rises.
Because Hemingway lived in his estate, Finca Vigía, outside of Havana, longer than anywhere–from 1940 to 1960–the availability of these papers to American scholars marks a turning point in their ability to put the details of his personal life together. Until now, Hemingway’s legacy there has been so closely guarded by Cuba that many Cubans think he was Cuban, too. We suppose, after twenty years, he kinda was. Which would explain this:
Pickle, it is so wonderful to love someone who is not so unreasonable as a bitch giraffe from Bryn Mawr in heat.
Rawr, Ernie. Hell hath no fury like a Cuban man scorned.
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you know, when i was growing up i was under the impression was cuban. i wondered why his name wasn’t ernesto. it was only when I reached high school and was living in the us that i learned the sad, sad truth that he was in fact american. up to that point i was only acquainted with hemingway via reputation and by reading the old man and the sea. in spanish.
Are these sweet love notes to the wife he later allowed to discover his body with head blown off? Aw, so romantic. Ugh… so many things about Hemingway scream “pathetic ass”. Like owning, let alone prominently displaying, a painting of oneself. And then posing shirtless for a photo in front of that painting. Not to mention making bitterness over the first wife part of a love note to the fourth wife… laaaaaame.