Re: hemingway
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Fri, 04 Jun 1999 16:29:38 -0400
On Fri, Jun 04, 1999 at 09:51:40AM -0600, Patti Larrabee wrote:
> Did any of you read the Hemingway short story in last week's New
> Yorker? There was also a piece by Lillian Ross concerning her
> friendship with Mr. Hemingway. She is sure he did not commit
> suicide. Any comments?
There has always been a (naive) contention in the literary world that
Hemingway was cleaning his shotgun when he blew his head off. Some
people simply could not -- and cannot -- accept the suicide angle.
On more than one occasion, Mary Hemingway found him headed to the locked
cabinet where the shotguns were stored, unloaded. One day she left the
cabinet unlocked, with the ammunition accessible (even she admitted,
once, that she may have done it subconsciously, so that Hemingway could
end his misery), and he went downstairs and opened the cabinet and put
the shotgun to his head. She was asleep; it woke her, and she said it
sounded like a drawer being slammed shut.
His final days were tragic (there is the story of his attempt to write
a one-sentence inscription in a book to be sent to President Kennedy,
and he worked on it all day, with no result) and it is easy to imagine
that his friends simply want to deny to themselves that the suicide was
a conscious action.
He may have been deeply depressed, but he was experienced enough with
guns that it seems incredibly unlikely that he would load shells into a
gun and then commence to clean it, accidentally beheading himself in the
process.
--tim o'connor