Happy Birthday, Ernest Hemingway

Today is the 112^th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s birth. July 2^nd was the 50^th anniversary of his death. He was a manly man and a brave man and an honorable man who wrote declarative sentences with lots of conjunctions about manly men and brave men and honorable men. He traveled the world searching for inspiring intrepidness and found such in Cuba and in Spain and in Italy and in France and in other men’s trousers and in the hills of Africa.

Hemingway’s adventurous lifestyle led him to the front lines of battlefields in Italy during the First World War and Spain during the Spanish Civil War and France during the Second World War. Covering the first World War he was injured in his robust right leg by a rogue piece of shrapnel and faced his injuries steely eyed and stone faced and honorably and quietly and was laid up in a European hospital for six months where his resolve was unwavering and undefeated.

Hemingway’s adventurous lifestyle led him to the front lines of battlefields…

He met many women and loved many women and even married four of them. One of the women he loved was a nurse he met in the hospital during his convalescence and she was beautiful and loved him too but soon left his bedside and ran into the open arms of an Italian soldier. Only 19 years-old at the time young Ernest was completely devastated and sexually confused and vowed to write only of men and mannish women and fish and bulls and fishermen and matadors and abortions.

Moving back to the States in 1919 Ernest continued to write about wars and fish and homoeroticism and the unwavering fortitude of muscular male protagonists during wartime and fishing. With boredom and a longing for ‘taking a steam’ with exotic dudes in foreign locales Hemingway and his first wife Hadley Richardson packed up and sailed to Paris to live amongst a group of other enlightened expatriates and writers and musicians and painters and Gertrude Stein. Ms. Stein immediately recognized his machismo and cognizant of the paucity of machismo in America prose at that time she decided that early 20′s Hemingway should be her protege and dauphin and fellow chauvinist. They got on like gang busters and drank coffee in cafes and imbibed wine in bars and talked about books and music and sports and Ernest’s closeted homosexuality and Americans in Paris.

They got on like gang busters and drank coffee in cafes…

At around this time Hemingway’s friend and contemporary F. Scott Fitzgerald published his novel The Great Gatsby and though it wasn’t a great big hit he realized that his friend could write circles around him and was not very macho at all and was being totally emasculated by his domineering and crazy wife who also wasn’t manly…or a man for that matter which was strictly verboten in Hemingway lore and with that he had made his decision courageously and dutifully. Unacceptable company was this Zelda said Ernest and justified the time spent with Gertrude with a confident and manly point to her crooked cock (Author’s note: Gertrude Stein was by all accounts an anti-feminist and near-misogynistic lesbian. Go figure) and vowed to impugn the character of F. Scott at every turn from that moment forward. Poor F. Scott went on to drunken isolation as Ernest achieved international fame for his prosaicness and formidable chest pelt and taciturnity and fishing expeditions.

Once again moving back to the U.S in the late twenties Ernest continued to write about his fascination with sweaty fisherman and sweaty matadors and fish and bulls and beauty mixed with brutality. Splitting time between the shores of the Floridian Key West and the shores of Cuban tiki bars meant Hemingway’s larger than life legacy would only continue to grow along with the sales of his books and short stories. At this point he was on his second marriage having left his first wife behind at a train station and she was crushed and confused but he was undefeated. He had packed an extra suitcase in preparation for the deed and sneaked onto the train leaving his ringer suitcase behind next to Hadley on the platform. The ringer suitcase looked on ruefully as the train carrying his owner departed but also felt. . .and ultimately remained. . .undefeated.

With his newly crowned third wife in tow Hemingway went on hunting expeditions in Africa and attended bull fights in Spain in the mid-to-late 1930′s where he would eventually cover the Spanish Civil War. Not satisfied with the level of bravery on display Ernest took a ferry to the continent and walked on bare feet to the shores of Normandy and covered the famous battle and met many brave men worth his admiration for their dignity and resolution and heroism and impeccable pectoral muscles.

By the late 1940′s Hemingway was a washed- up relic who had sustained multiple injuries and burns from a car crash and two plane crashes and another failed marriage and poor notices and unreciprocated advances from his cabana boy and alcoholism. But he had one more masterpiece in him and wrote Old Man and the Sea in ten or fifteen minutes and all throughout those minutes his burnt limbs and agonized organs persevered strongly and stoically and stubbornly. He won the Nobel Prize in 1954 as a result and dismissed the whole matter with a manly three degree turn of the head to the left and a right hand placed on the groin of the male interviewer and a steady held gaze at the child of the aforementioned interviewer and pretty soon everybody went back to their homes and only the smell of the salmon dinner remained as it hung in the air like a gutted and hollowed out form of dignity.

The 1950′s were a time of reflection and inventory.

The 1950′s were a time of reflection and inventory. The first half of the decade was dedicated to the drafting of his memoir Immovable Feast and drinking and trimming his beard and descending into madness. For unknown reasons Hemingway decided to permanently leave his former American residence of Key West and move to Idaho in the latter half of the decade and work on finishing his memoirs and fishing and growing his beard back out and nursing his numerous ailments. Never again would Hemingway see the Cuban beaches nor the cafes of Paris nor the rings of Spain.

This decision and consequent realization of Idaho and all its offerings not being up to snuff with the mojitos and nude beaches of Key West worked hard and fast in eroding the spirit of the great adventurer. Surrounded by prairie land and boredom and old age and countless afflictions the great man took the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger and he was left motionless and unknowing. With the shotgun barrel smoking by his lifeless side his fingers and limbs and brain matter and khaki pants and boat shoes and newly sanguine beard stood strong in their master’s disappearing act and they were beaten but not defeated. . .