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: : : : : I've always wanted to make the pont that up until the time he wrote this : : : : : I don't belive that Hemingway ever "hunted a man," : : : : : either in anger or in war. He goes on the say in the article that : : : : : once you hunt something big, e.g., an elephant, hunting something : : : : : smaller is not as satisfying. And that for himself, once he started : : : : : fishing for marlin in the Gulf Stream, no other type of fishing : : : : : was quite as good. : : : : : Thanks : : : : : Pjk : : : : I wonder about Hemingway. In a way, he's a minimalist, i.e., in the way he writes "simply" without all the characters and events that complicate a story. Pjk mentions Malraux, farther down in this message board. Malraux complicated things, but Hemingway does not. Yet, here we have Pjk pointing out that Hemingway was easily disatisfied, once he had hunted an elephant or fished for a marlin. It seems he was always going for the big symbol, the thing that would represent it all, whether in a brief, beautiful short story, or in the big animal that he hunted or fished. I guess, where I have my reservations is in Hemingway's "monumentalism", i.e., he seems to have worshipped the "big", the big elephant, the big marlin. The Big Experience. I wonder if he really ever knew the quiet at the center of his being. Zak : : : : : : Obviously Hem liked to live life large, always looking for the big elephant, the elusive kudu, the largest marlin, the perfect bullfight. But as Jane points out in reference to A Clean Well-Lighted Place, Hem was very well aware of the little moments, the quiet moments; possibly it is the little moments within the big moments that define one's character. Grace under pressure. The quiet at the center of being. The focus of the fishing trip in the Bimini section of Islands in the Stream is not the action of the catch (despite its excitement) but David: how he handles catching the fish, his maturation from boy to man, as evidenced by the concern of those on board. : : : Did Hem ever know the quiet at the center of his being? Probably more than he cared to. Was he ever comfortable with it? Obviously not. He was an insomniac, horribly depressed and empty after finishing a book, terribly insecure with his women to the point of threatening suicide, and of course, blew his head off when he realized that he could not remember what he needed to and wouldn't be able to write it if he did. The quiet at the center of his being. : : : Matt M. : : -- You could be right, but I always thought EH committed suicide because he had incurable cancer, knew he would die a very painful, degrading death in which he would lose all that grace under pressure that he so touted, you know, part of the c ode of the Hem hero, etc. etc. : : Can anyone fill in the blanks? : : Sue : Incurable cancer is news to me. What I do know is that Hem's mental and physical health was rapidly deteriorating. There has been and is a history of suicide in his family: his father, uncle, brother, sister, grandaughter, so a suicidal death may have been an inevitable tradition. : He had poor eyesight which kept him out as a soldier of the war in which he was n up and made him acutley aware of his own mortality. It also increased his insomnia and suicidal tendencies. He was in several car crashes; one broke his arm which resulted in temporary paralysis and seriously threatened his career. The two African plane crashes did horrible harm to his internal organs. Not to mention the 10 or so concussions that he tried to cure with copious amounts of gin and scotch. Chronic bronchitis. Hepatitis. Manic depression. Hypertension treated with medication whose side effect was depression. Diabetes. Paranoia: he thought the cleaning crew at his bank in Ketchum was the FBI looking for information; he went so far as to write a letter to be found posthumously absolving Mary from any of his wrongdoings. He took enough drugs (seconal, etc.) to give Elvis a run for his money. And of course the alocholism. Have you ever met a happy-go-lucky alcoholic? : He received several shock therapy treatments at the Mayo clinic. At an airport flying to one treatment, Hem searched a hangar for a gun. When he didn't find one, he marched toward a spinning propeller only to be stopped when the pilot saw him coming and cut the engine. Hem had problems remembering the good stories he wanted to write. He worked as hard and frantically as he could to finish as much as he could of Garden of Eden and Moveable Feast, but there wasn't much at all left. : I would like to think that if he had cancer, he would have toughed it out to the end. It seems that grace under pressure only applies when events happen to people (in Hem's life, in his characters). But when they bring the trouble on themselves, as he did in his life, it was never his fault nor his responsibility. Maybe in that respect, in an absurd morbid way, Hem was able to live up to the code he created. : Matt M.

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