******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
Sounds more like a typical redneck than anything else. Never been a fan of trophy hunting. On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 8:49 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > BOOKFORUM JUNE/JULY/AUG 2017 > > Appetite for Destruction > Ernest Hemingway’s death trip > > by JOY WILLIAMS > > The unusually striking photograph on the cover of Mary V. Dearborn’s new > biography Ernest Hemingway shows the writer in his prime in 1933 sitting on > the cushioned stern of a boat, possibly his thirty-eight-foot cabin cruiser > the Pilar, and aiming a pistol at the camera. He always carried guns on > board to shoot sharks or, when bored or annoyed, seabirds and turtles. He > was thirty-four when this photo was taken and he had recently discovered > Key West and the fabulous Gulf Stream with its gigantic marlin, sailfish, > and tarpon. He fished and fished and fished, insatiable. There were the > heroic fighting fish, the trophy fish—some of which he used as punching > bags after they were strung up on the dock—but all provided pleasure. When > a colorful school of dorado appeared on the surface around the Pilar, > Hemingway and his party landed eighteen of them in five minutes. They’d be > used as fertilizer for his wife’s flower beds. He referred to this time, > the decade of the ’30s, as his “belle epoque,” for there was not only the > happy scouring of the Gulf Stream, but also the hunting in Wyoming for elk > and antelope (for lighter fare he shot prairie dogs from a moving car) and > the safari in Africa, where lions, leopards, cheetahs, and oryx could be > collected, though it rankled him when others killed bigger animals than he > did, or those with darker manes, bigger racks, or, in the case of rhinos, > larger horns. > > “I like to shoot a rifle and I like to kill and Africa is where you do > that,” he said. > > But killing could be fun anywhere. In Sun Valley, Idaho, he and two of his > young sons, Gregory and Patrick, visiting from school, shot four hundred > jackrabbits during one adventure. Years later, another son, Jack, would > reminisce that “one of the most memorable moments of my lifelong > relationship with my father” took place in Cuba on the roof of the Finca > Vigía, Hemingway’s home there, where they drank pitchers of martinis and > shot “great quantities of buzzards.” The highlight for Patrick, “the last > really great, good time we all had together,” was “dropping hand grenades > on turtles” from the deck of the Pilar during the bizarre sub-hunting days > of the ’40s, the acts “justified by the need to learn how long it was > between when you pulled out the pin and when it went off.” > > It is said that Hemingway never killed an elephant—he admired their > fidelities and social structures apparently—but his youngest son, Gregory, > the “troubled” child, the son who after several wives and eight children > underwent sex-reassignment surgery and died in a Florida jail as “Gloria” > Hemingway, shot eighteen elephants in a month. It’s possible he shot them > to annoy his father, whom he considered a “gin-soaked abusive monster,” but > he also claimed it was just damn relaxing to kill elephants. The activity > made him less anxious about things. > > Gregory wrote a book about “Papa.” So did his half-brother Jack. So did > Hemingway’s brother Leicester, and Hemingway’s fourth wife, Mary. In his > younger years he was quite charismatic and people who knew him then > remembered that and wrote about it. The bulls, the booze, the fresh air, > the slopes, the streams and war stories. And many other books have been > written about Hemingway—there is Carlos Baker’s chummy hagiography; Michael > Reynolds’s deep life; Jeffrey Meyers’s woundy thesis, the one that bothered > Raymond Carver so; Paul Hendrickson’s spirited, speculative boating party; > James Mellow’s scholarly and overblown production (“He had been at the > center of a cultural revolution unequalled in its wide-reaching effects on > Western culture except by the Italian Renaissance . . .”); Kenneth Lynn’s > psycho-hugie; Peter Griffin’s focus on the early, enchanted, good-looking > days. Even so, it’s been fifteen years since we’ve had a major new study of > the man. But now, with Dearborn’s grimly astonished book, we do. > > One approaches the life of Hemingway not with excitement but with an > anxious defensive duty. After all there are a great many writers who > learned a great deal from his work—the early work always—the cleanness of > the line, the freshness, the solemnity of the sentence, the discoveries > that restraint and omission allow. Gertrude Stein said that he looked like > a modern but smelled like a museum. I don’t smell museum. The word that > springs to my mind is fetor. The stench of death. Hemingway stared death in > the face again and again and was proud of it, but it was almost always an > animal’s death, an animal’s face, a creature’s face, the face of a nature > he repeatedly diminished, the light and life of which he would extinguish > over and over. > > He killed far more in life than he did in fiction, obsessively, > methodically, in the sanctified slaughter referred to as sport. > > (Behind a paywall. Contact me if you want the full review.) > > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/opt > ions/marxism/gregmc59%40gmail.com _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
