LESSON THREE: A Proud Papa

2/26/2018

HAVE A FEAST: The Sun Also Rises can be a controversial work. For more of 1920s Paris without the uproar, try A Move- able Feast (1964). Legend has it that in the 1950s Hemingway was sitting at the Ritz Bar in Paris when the manager informed him they had some trunks in storage with his name on them. They contained notebooks he presumed lost from his days living with Hadley and running with the other authors of the Lost Generation. He was revising these notes until his death and they were published posthumously. You don’t have to go to Paris to enjoy the book, but it wouldn’t hurt either.

HAVE ONE, AND ANOTHER: Philp Greene is a cocktail historian. Not sure how I missed out on that career track, but I’ll go on holding a grudge against my high school guidance counselor. Greene’s To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion (2012) is part bartender’s guide, part literary history, and a worthy accompaniment to a Mojito or Papa Doble. Papa had a complicated relationship with alcohol, featuring it like a character in most of his books, but suffering from liver problems and diabetes later in life. For Ernest, the answer was never at the bottom of the glass. But who cared if you couldn’t remember the question?

STAY UP LATE: Rent Midnight in Paris (2011). Owen Wilson stars in the screenplay originally titled “The Lost Generation” about a writer seeking inspiration in Paris and only finding it by traveling back in time. It is an adaptation of a Woody Allen standup skit from the 1960s where he recalls anecdotes from 1920s Paris and ends each with the punchline “...and Hemingway punched me in the mouth.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, T.S. Eliot, and Cole Porter make appearances. But no one gets pummeled by Papa.

GET IN THE RING: It turns out that Hemingway wasn’t the only American aficionado of the bull ring. Sportswriter Bruce Schoenfeld’s The Last Serious Thing: A Season at the Bullfights (1992) introduces us to a crew of expats that not even the great author could make up, including an American matador who Papa once sponsored in his quest for acceptance, if not greatness.

The Last Serious Thing

Bullfighting is the vivid focus of this absorbing portrait of Spain--a nation poised ambivalently on the cusp between past and future. The Last Serious Thing is about the spectacle of bullfighting: its technique, its present heroes, its resplendent history, its place in the world.

WRITE ERNESTLY: Utilize the Hemingway Editor app to high- light and then rid yourself of adverbs, the passive voice, and dull, complicated words: www.hemingwayapp.com/desktop.html. Surely the Nobel Prize in Literature (the Swedish Prize as Ernest called it when he won in 1954) will follow.

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JOIN THE CIRCUS: Michael Palin began his career with Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the English comedian is still flying everywhere. As a travel writer and documentary film- maker he’s crisscrossed the world from pole to pole, Himalayan Mountains to Sahara Desert. His 1999 documentary Michael Palin’s Hemingway Adventure globetrots to the late author’s haunts in Spain, Chicago, Paris, Italy, Africa, Key West, Cuba, and Idaho. Clips from the show are available on YouTube at the BBC Worldwide Channel. For a travel timeline, book recommendations, and an occasional recipe, check out the show’s website.

Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure

Join Michael Palin to experience Hemingway's world by virtually revisiting the places and passions that meant the most to one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.