Since Ernest Hemingway was selected by the New York Times as the most influential writer since Shakesphere and because I have heard so many rumors over the years about his exploits, I decided it was time to learn more about him. FYI: I have made it one of my resolutions to learn more about great writers of history this year. So, here is what I discovered…
*His first big literary success was The Sun Also Rises. He wrote it while living in Paris where he reveals “we were very poor and very happy.”
*He moved to Key West in 1928 where he spent his days writing, fishing and smuggling rum from Cuba for his buddy’s bar, Sloppy Joe’s, since this was the era of Prohibition. When he left Key West a few years later, he never returned.
*He went on his first African safari in 1933. Upon his return, he wrote “that no book he ever read gave any idea of its astonishing beauty.” (Amen!) This trip inspired his work, The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
*Hemingway was married a total of four times. Within weeks of his second divorce, he remarried and moved to Cuba. He bought “The Finca,” where lived from 1939 – 1960 and is now the most visited museum in Cuba. He was still married to his fourth wife at the time of his death.
*Although he was always a heavy drinker, he NEVER drank when he was writing. He usually wrote standing up and threw the pages to the floor when he didn’t like what he had written.
*He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, after which he said that nothing he would ever write again would be better than this novel. He later won the Nobel Prize.
*He returned to Africa in 1953 and survived two horrific plane crashes. He saved his wife and pilot but suffered a fractured skull using his head to kick out the panel to escape the plane. He also suffered several other injuries including internal bleeding. Hemingway suffered from depression his whole life and it got worse after the head trauma he suffered as a result of the plane crash.
*He was forced to flee from Cuba in July 1960 because of the Cuban Revolution. He moved to Ketchum, Idaho. I always thought he went to Key West when he left Cuba but he said he wouldn’t go back again because it had become too populated and civilized.
*His depression got so bad that he checked into the Mayo Clinic and they performed electroshock therapy. After this he was not able to write well. He suffered more health problems (diabetes, high blood pressure, weight gain, etc.), which only increased his depression. After two suicide attempts, he checked back into the Mayo Clinic. They didn’t know what else to do but more electroshock therapy. This pretty much fried his brain. He was unable to write. Soon after returning home he committed suicide. He was sixty-one years old when he took his life on July 2, 1961.
*The last book he wrote was The Moveable Feast. Ernest Hemingway wrote a total of (50) short stories and (27) novels. They are still selling today (in the seven figures)!
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