The Letters of Ernest Hemingway Vol. 4

Volume 3 was not available at a reasonable price last year, so my dad just skipped it and grabbed Volume 4, which runs from 1929 through 1931. During most of this period Hemingway is working on Death in the Afternoon, his non-fiction book about bullfighting, which is one of my favorite things he wrote (and I don't even give a shit about bullfighting). Most of his letters claim he's making good progress until he's in a car wreck in Wyoming that ends with a badly injured right upper arm that takes months to heal to where he can resume writing.

Some of the letters during that stretch are him dictating to his second wife Pauline, and I imagine that was not a lot of fun for her, given how often his letters (regardless of who's writing them) go on bizarre tangents. In general the family seems to be spending much more time in the United States, either Key West or Wyoming, as Ernest is growing increasingly dissatisfied with Europe. Or more specifically, France. He'd already basically sworn off Italy when Mussolini rose to power, and still seems to enjoy traveling to Spain for the bullfights in summer. But there are a lot of letters to people encouraging them to come out west to hunt elk, or travel by boat to the Dry Tortugas and fish with him. The big hunting trip to Africa keeps getting delayed for various reasons, some economic, others health related.

The early part of this volume also involves a lot of letters to his mother about her financial situation, where more of the strain between the two of them shows through. Ernest is clearly expected (or feels he is expected) to support not only Grace Hemingway, but also his various siblings, many of whom he feels aren't showing the industriousness he did when he was their age. There are quite a few comments about how he's sorry he can't provide a larger monthly stipend, but his family does require at least a little money to live on, and that his mother shouldn't have listened to his uncle and bought a house in Florida that isn't doing her any good whatsoever in the midst of a depression. You can also tell he hasn't forgotten comments she made expressing disapproval over his choice of career, or perhaps just his writing style and subject matter.

I know, Ernest Hemingway holding a grudge? Inconceivable.

'To Maxwell Perkins [c. late August 1929]

. . . But am going to write - I think that's Scott's trouble with his novel - among other things of course more complicated - But he thought he had to write a masterpiece to follow The Gatsby - as good as Seldes etc. said he was - and to consciously write such a thing that had to be great just constipated him -

Then too you have to use up your material - you never use Anything you save - I thought I'd used up everything in In Our Time - Should always write as though you were going to die at the end of the book - (This doesn't seem to go with what's before but it's a good idea too!) Never for gods sake use or turn over to the advt. dept. anything I say in a letter -). . .'