Hemingway started writing in high school and went on to work as a reporter for TheKansas City Star instead of going to college. He wasn’t able to enlist as a soldier in the military for World War I because of “a defective eye,” per Britannica, but he drove ambulances for the American Red Cross during the war instead. He was hurt in 1918 before his 19th birthday, and was “decorated for heroism” while hospitalized in Italy.
He went back to working as a journalist in America post-WWI, but fellow American writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein encouraged him to write more creatively. That’s when he wrote “his first important book” in 1925: In Our Time.
On July 2, 1961, just a couple of weeks shy of his 62nd birthday, Hemingway died. He left behind quite a collection of poems, short stories and books, with a lot of wisdom and perspective we can use in our own lives. Today’s quote is a reflection of his thoughts on outrunning your problems and how traveling and partying won’t help you escape yourself.
Quote of the Day by Ernest Hemingway
CanvaPro/Parade
“You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”
This quote is from his book, The Sun Also Rises, which came out in 1926 and is known as the “quintessential novel of the Lost Generation,” per the book’s description. Even though Gertrude Stein coined the term “Lost Generation” for those who reached adulthood in the decade before or during World War I, per Britannica, Hemingway used it (and popularized it) in this book, writing, “You are all a lost generation.”
The novel is about the “disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation,” and is considered one of Hemingway’s masterpieces, according to its description. The 1920s were called the “Roaring ‘20s” for a reason, and the book features characters partying it up at night and taking wild adventures and risks during the day. But the novel looks at what this lifestyle actually means for these characters, which might not be much. It also explores themes of love and death, masculinity, the power of nature and more.
Deeper Meaning of Ernest Hemingway’s Quote—Embracing Self-Confrontation
This quote is spoken by Jake Barnes, who is the protagonist and narrator of The Sun Also Rises. He is an American WWI veteran who is now a journalist working abroad in Paris (with a lot of events and people in this book inspired by Hemingway’s own life). Jake says this line to Robert Cohn, who is another American, but rather a wealthy one living in Paris. Cohn was not involved in the war and still has a romantic view of the world, whereas Jake is more jaded and has a bit of a void in the morality department created by the war.
Essentially, Cohn is not happy with his lush lifestyle in Paris and wants to move and settle elsewhere. Something is missing, and he wants to fill it with travel and adventure. However, Jake tells him that “moving from one place to another” isn’t going to cure that feeling or fill that void, because it’s just going to end up feeling the same. That void Cohn’s feeling isn’t something that new scenery will fix.
As Hemingway wrote in this book, you cannot run away from yourself and your mind. Moving zip codes, even if it’s across an ocean, might help in some ways and fix some problems. But if your issue is yourself—your brain, your emotions, your trauma, etc.—then moving around is just a bandaid on your foundational issues.
Instead, it’s important to embrace self-confrontation and the effort of inner work. By really looking in the mirror and deciding to work on yourself, you’ll likely experience a new appreciation for your struggles and resilience, instead of looking for the next way to avoid facing any personal challenges.
More Quotes from Ernest Hemingway
“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
EXCLUSIVE: It’s been a few years since we heard about writer-director Michael Winterbottom’s A Farewell to Arms adaptation, but it now has fresh impetus with producer-financier Tribune Pictures and UK sales firm Embankment Films, which is bringing it to the Cannes market.
Fremantle is among the original partners who are no longer aboard the film, which will see Hunger Games and Billy The Kid star Tom Blyth follow in the footsteps of Gary Cooper, Rock Hudson and George Hamilton in the lead role.
First published in 1929, A Farewell to Arms is widely regarded as one of the defining war novels of the twentieth century. Drawing on Ernest Hemingway’s own experiences as a volunteer ambulance driver with the Italian Army on the Isonzo Front during the First World War, the novel became an international sensation and cemented Hemingway’s status as one of America’s most influential literary voices.
The story follows Frederic Henry, a young American ambulance driver serving in Italy who is wounded during the war and falls in love with the British nurse Catherine Barkley. The team is aiming for a January 2027 start.
The film will be produced by Tribune Pictures’ Robert Maclean and Michael Paletta alongside Revolution Films’ Melissa Parmenter, with the support of the Hemingway Estate.
Robert Maclean and Tribune Pictures’ recent films include the Hemingway adaptation Across the River and into the Trees, The Wizard of the Kremlin (Olivier Assayas), Dead Man’s Wire (Gus van Sant), and In the Hand of Dante (Julian Schnabel).
Welcome To Sarajevo and The Trip director Winterbottom, who won a Berlin Golden Bear for In This World, said today: “Hemingway believed in paring a story down to the bare bones. He argued that a novel could be like an iceberg: the reader only sees the tip above the water but feels the bulk and weight of what lies below the surface. I want our film to be true to Hemingway’s approach — immediate, raw and natural — and I think in Tom Blyth we have found the perfect person to be Frederic Henry.”
Tom Blyth, for whom the project has long been a passion, commented: “As a lover of Hemingway and a big admirer of Michael Winterbottom’s filmmaking, it’s an honour to be trusted with this adaptation. Michael has adapted the script in a way that totally pays homage to Hemingway’s style, while lifting the story from book to screen in a fresh and exhilarating way. With the world once again facing conflicts not seen in generations, this story couldn’t be more pertinent and necessary. And yet at it’s heart, despite its tragedy, it’s a story of hope and love surviving against all odds. I can’t wait to bring one of my favourite books and characters to life on the big screen”
How Ernest Hemingway’s Love of Boxing Changed the Salad Dressing Industry Forever
Certainly the 26-year-old Ernest Hemingway could not have foreseen the chain of events that would result from including “The Battler” in his debut collection of short stories.
In 1925, Ernest Hemingway published In Our Time, his first collection of short stories. Then only 26, he had been a struggling young writer in Paris mingling with the likes of Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and others of that “Lost Generation.”
The stories in his first collection were not about the socialites of the Parisian set, however. They set the tone for much of his life’s work: stylistically sparse and populated with characters experiencing grief, violence, and denial. These first stories also introduced Hemingway’s semi-autobiographical character, Nick Adams, who appeared in more than half of the stories. Hemingway would eventually write two dozen Nick Adams stories in all.
In Our Time also features Hemingway’s first published boxing story, “The Battler.” Hemingway loved boxing, which is to say he loved being associated with boxing. It might also be said that he loved the masculine gravitas such an association lent him as a writer. He would go on to revisit the sweet science in his prose, both fiction and nonfiction. He also boxed recreationally, often challenging his literary friends to go a round or two with him. Although there is no actual boxing in “The Battler,” it is notable for its depiction of the effects of brain trauma on a fighter, which Hemingway may have mirrored the trauma he saw while serving in World War I.
“The Battler” is a Nick Adams story. It opens with Adams thrown from a train by a quarrelsome brakeman. Though not a boxer, Adams accounts for himself admirably in the story’s opening line: “Nick stood up.”
Knocked down but not out, Adams walks the rails until he comes upon a campfire. There he meets two men. One is an ex-fighter named Ad Francis who suffers from the brain trauma then called “dementia pugilistica” (now Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE). The other is an African-American man named Bugs, who looks out for Francis. Sitting around the fire, they share food with Adams and are having a friendly chat when, without provocation, Francis’s disposition towards Adams shifts abruptly from friendly to aggressive and accusatory. Bugs slips behind his friend and clips the ex-fighter with a whalebone blackjack. Adams is taken aback by the apparent assault, until Bugs explains gently that this is the simplest, safest way to prevent Ad Francis from hurting himself or others when his mood darkens.
While the fighter is unconscious, Bugs sketches the circumstances of Francis’s life. “He took too many beatings, for one thing,” he explains to Adams. “But that just made him sort of simple.” He goes on to describe Francis’s manager, a woman. The press was told she was his sister, when in reality the two were a couple. Their eventual marriage “made a lot of unpleasantness.”
“I remember about it,” Nick says.
Eventually, the wife left, and Francis’s life went downhill. He and Bugs met in jail. “He was busting people all the time after she went away and they put him in jail. I was in for cuttin’ a man.”
Now the two travel around together, he explains, looking after one another and living on a small stipend sent by Francis’s ex-wife. His story concluded, Bugs apologizes for appearing inhospitable but asks Adams to move along, lest his presence further agitate Francis when he wakes up. The story ends with Nick heading in the direction of the train tracks.
In Our Time was well-received in 1925, but it was Hemingway’s 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises, that landed him on the map. The ensuing decades of work – novels, journalism, and nonfiction – established Hemingway as America’s undisputed literary heavyweight, culminating in his winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for his novella The Old Man and the Sea.
Not long after that international acclaim, on a cool Tuesday evening in October of 1955 three decades after the publication of “The Battler,” an adaptation of Hemingway’s boxing story aired on NBC. It was produced as a live teleplay for Playwrights ’56, a dramatic anthology series that aired bi-weekly original productions. Live drama anthologies were a staple of early television, and programs like Playwrights ’56 gave rise to a score of young American talent, including Paddy Chayefsky, Gore Vidal, and Rod Serling.
Playwrights ’56: The Battler (Uploaded to YouTube by Free The Kinescopes!)
Sponsored by Pontiac, Playwrights ’56 was placed in a risky time slot, airing opposite the popular game show The $64,000 Question. Producer Fred Coe knew they needed something big to attract viewers, and he sought out a story from the recent Pulitzer Prize winning Hemingway to adapt. A representative for the author suggested the relatively under-valued short story “The Battler.” Alongside the Hemingway name, they cast rising star James Dean to play the ex-fighter Ad Francis. Tragedy struck the flagship production, however: Barely two weeks before the live broadcast, Dean was killed in a car accident.
In panic mode, producer Coe plucked a relatively unknown actor from the cast. He was young, good-looking, and importantly, already familiar with the script. That unknown’s name was Paul Newman.
Newman recognized what an opportunity this was, and he threw himself into the role. His performance as the cauliflowered Ad Francis, complete with heavy prosthetics and a slurred affect, earned nearly universal praise and Brando comparisons. The cameras had barely stopped rolling on the soundstage of “The Battler” when Newman’s phone began ringing. Within weeks, he was the frontrunner to play real-life boxer Rocky Graziano in the upcoming film Somebody Up There Likes Me. Newman got the part, and a Hollywood star was born.
Ernest Hemingway had not been directly involved in the Playwrights ’56 production of “The Battler.” Instead, his short story was adapted by A. E. Hotchner and Sidney Carroll. Hotchner was the Hemingway associate who’d originally suggested the story. This connection was no mere coincidence. Hotchner and Hemingway had met in the summer of 1948. Hotchner detailed the unusual circumstances of their meeting in a series of articles for The Saturday Evening Post.
After serving in the Air Force during World War II, Hotchner worked as a freelance assignment agent for Cosmopolitan, functioning as a go-between for potential authors and the magazine. He was sent to Cuba to solicit an essay from Hemingway on “The Future of Literature.” Like many, he’d been in awe of the author as a teenager.
“In my schoolboy fantasies I had identified with Nick Adams,” Hotchner wrote, “as he made his way through a murky world of punch-drunk fighters, killers, suicidal Indians, dope addicts, and whores.”
Hotchner felt the article request was inane, and was too embarrassed to appear in person or even to call. He sent Hemingway a note instead, conceding the ridiculousness of the magazine’s request, and asking only for a written refusal, to allow Hotchner to save face with his bosses and keep his comfortable job.
Hemingway was so impressed by the brash and clear-eyed pragmatism of Hotchner’s note that he invited him out for drinks and deep-sea fishing. The two hit it off immediately, and their personal friendship turned into a business partnership as well. Television was growing rapidly, and Hemingway was receiving offers to have his stories adapted for the small screen. Wishing to avoid this headache, he asked Hotchner to be his mediary to the television executives. Hotchner agreed, and even went a step further, providing his services as script writer for many of the adaptations, exactly as he did with “The Battler” for Playwrights ’56.
The original short story had to be fleshed out and expanded to fill the one hour run time. Gone was the brevity of an opening like “Nick stood up.” For the teleplay, we meet Nick Adams hitchhiking, and we spend several exposition-setting minutes with him conversing with a truck driver. After being dropped off at an all-nite diner, Nick realizes the driver has stolen his wallet. Now penniless, Adams is ejected from the diner. He makes the desperate choice to hop a train, from which he is tossed by the brakeman. At that point both the teleplay and the original short story line up quite squarely for a time.
Clever scenes are added later in the teleplay. In the original, the backstory of Ad Francis is simply narrated by Bugs, but for Playwrights ’56, that backstory gets expanded into full-scale flashbacks acted out on screen. Not only does this pad the run time, it enhances the drama by moving the audience beyond the campfire setting. The audience is taken inside the jail cell where Bugs first meets Francis, and later, inside an empty boxing ring where the relationship between Francis and his wife/manager comes to a poignant and emotional end.
These scenes make the most of the live television medium. When we first meet Ad Francis, he is a broken-down man whose mind is scrambled and face disfigured with scar tissue and cauliflowering. But for the flashbacks, they removed the makeup, revealing the young and handsome face of Paul Newman. It’s a good trick, and it works. The small scale of a live television production suddenly has the wide scope of a feature film.
Hotchner and Newman bonded during that hectic 1955 production, and they remained good friends throughout their lives. When Hotchner compiled some of the Nick Adams stories into a full-length feature film – 1962’s Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man – Newman reprised his role as Ad Francis. As with Hemingway, Hotchner’s friendship with Newman blended the personal and the professional in unanticipated ways. The two began selling homemade salad dressing in 1982, and soon each chipped in $20,000 of seed money to found Newman’s Own. Hotchner admits they started the business “as a lark, as a dumb kind of joke,” but they agreed to donate 100 percent of the profits to charity, funding summer camps for children battling cancer.
More than 40 years later, their friendly “joke” has expanded well beyond their private kitchens. The organization is still donating 100 percent of their profits, which now total hundreds of millions of dollars. The pair has encouraged other businesses to adopt this philanthropic model. They even wrote a book on the subject, humorously titled Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good.
Certainly the 26-year-old Ernest Hemingway could not have foreseen the chain of events that would result from including “The Battler” in his debut collection In Our Time. His love of boxing led him to create Ad Francis, and to have his stand-in Nick Adams meet the ex-fighter in a hobo jungle just beyond the railroad tracks. Adapted for the stage and screen by his good friend A. E. Hotchner, “The Battler” launched the career of Paul Newman, who skyrocketed to fame with movies such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. His celebrity, combined with their philanthropically-minded business model, has resulted in what is no doubt the most unusual origin story in the history of the salad dressing industry.
On a summer afternoon in Biarritz the temperature hovers at 97 degrees, but beneath the shade of tamarisk trees and a breeze off the Atlantic Ocean, it’s manageable. Pleasant even. A local artist named Juliette has arranged a palette, tubes of acrylic paint, and brushes on a park bench that faces the same coastline Pablo Picasso painted in 1918 while honeymooning with Olga Khokhlova. Scanning the horizon line, I spot the 19th-century lighthouse he put to canvas in The Bathers. Juliette instructs me to close my eyes and focus on each sense individually—and to maintain that heightened state once my eyes are open. “That’s what painting should feel like,” she says. A bit esoteric, but nevertheless an effective prompt. My subsequent brushstrokes of Biarritz are predictably subpar (Picasso, I am not), but who cares? I am in France and my senses are heightened!
I’ve come to Europe in search of The Lost Generation. Or rather, to trace their steps. This year marks the centennial of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the 1926 novel that evinced the disillusionment of the expatriate era following The Great War; a period that was also marked by stratospheric creativity. Seeing as I foster similar feelings of disillusionment, and always a deep yearning for nostalgia, when I learned Black Tomato had crafted a travel itinerary around the places and personalities that defined this era, I was on a transatlantic flight faster than you could say une generation perdue.
In the days that followed my arrival, I would be transported to the historic cafés of Montparnasse, to San Sebastián’s cobblestone alleys for pintxos and Basque cider, and to the world’s oldest restaurant in Madrid, where Hemingway’s favorite booth remains in the back corner like a bacchanalian shrine. I would sleep in Grand Dame hotels—each one frequented by the Lost Generation crowd—and I’d round it out with exploration of bookshops, cycling paths, museums, and watering holes. (Lots of watering holes).
Biarritz
Photo: Gregory Dava
Photo: Gregory Dava
Advertisement
My time in Biarritz is brief but brilliant. After packing up the paintbrushes and bidding au revoir to Juliette, I check into Hôtel du Palais Biarritz. It was originally constructed in 1854 as a summer villa for Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie, but later converted into a hotel. But oh my, does it still resemble an imperial palace. From the regal wrought iron entrance to the marble columned lobby decorated with antique clocks and chandeliers, it’s sumptuous through and through.
The hotel sits at the Atlantic’s edge, and my room overlooks the lighthouse that I (and Picasso) painted. I imagine what it must have been like when Coco Chanel—a regular guest—stayed here while opening her first couture house up the road at the Villa de Larrald in 1915. Little did she know over a century later Matthieu Blazy would hold a runway show at the town’s Casino Municipal.
After a casual dinner in the Les Halles neighborhood, I kick off my sandals and take a sunset stroll along the Grande Plage. The day might be winding down but everyone is still in the water. Dogs, children, lovers. The air is thick and warm and salty and I let my imagination float to the 1920s, picturing striped changing tents on the sand and ladies with spinning parasols. La Côte Basque has intoxicated my senses, as it has all others before me.
Paris
Photo: Hôtel de Crillon, a Rosewood Hotel
As Gertrude Stein once declared, “Paris was where the 20th century was.” In the aftermath of World War I, writers and painters flocked here in pursuit of artistic liberation, bucking Victorian traditions and shaping culture for every generation that followed. My sojourn in Paris begins at Hôtel de Crillon, A Rosewood Hotel (the grandest of grand dames). Stepping past its neoclassical façade, the summer heat and hum of traffic encircling Place de la Concorde soften as cherubed frescoes offer an opulent greeting.
During the 1920s, the Crillon’s reputation was equally prestigious. “At five o’clock I was in the Hotel Crillon waiting for Brett,” Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises. “She was not there, so I sat down and wrote some letters. They were not very good letters but I hoped their being on Crillon stationery would help them.” I follow his cue and take a few sheets of stationery for my journey.
That afternoon I take advantage of my proximity to Bar Hemingway over at the Ritz Paris. As the story goes, in 1944 the writer showed up at the Place Vendôme in a Jeep mounted with a machine gun to “liberate” the hotel and its bar from the German occupation. The Nazis had already cleared out by that point, but Hemingway still managed to run up a tab for 51 martinis. (Despite the shenanigans, The Ritz named the bar after him in 1994.) I order a martini in his honor, which arrives with a white rose on the rim, as is customary for cocktails delivered to women at Bar Hemingway. Next, I head across the Pont Royal en route to one of my favorite restaurants, Brasserie Lipp, an old haunt for Lost Generation figures that first opened in 1880. Seated beneath the Art Nouveau murals by Léon Fargues, I order the house beer (grande), escargots, herring filets with pommes à l’huile, and knife-cut sausage from Maison Brosse. As “Papa” Hemingway would likely have said, it was all damned good.
Bar Hemingway in Paris.Photo: Jerome Galland
Black Tomato arranges a private tour of Montparnasse with a local guide named Maude. We begin the following day at La Coupole with un café et un croissant, studying the brasserie’s painted columns that date to its opening in 1927. Downstairs there is an Art Deco dance hall that was once the site of extravagant artist parties (Josephine Baker was a regular).
Next, we walk to Café du Dôme. Photographs of patrons from the restaurant’s bohemian past line the red velvet banquettes, from Modigliani to Man Ray. Next, Le Select, with its bistro tiled floors and zinc bar. Upon exiting, I spot an elderly man sitting alone with a sketchpad. The whole scene is awfully romantic. Our final brasserie is La Closerie des Lilas, where Hemingway clocked countless hours writing, and where small plaques are screwed onto tabletops once preferred by famous patrons. Maude points to one of these. I look closer: “F.Scott Fitzgerald.”
Spend enough time milling about Montparnasse and you’ll bump into plenty more history: Modigliani’s house that he shared with wife Jeanne Hébuterne before dying of tuberculosis, Sylvia Beach’s home at 12 Rue de l’Odéon (also the site of the original Shakespeare & Company), and Gertrude Stein’s legendary residence and salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus.
Before wrapping up the day, we pivot to Place Vendôme for a spritz of Chanel. (Did you know the Vendôme’s geometric layout inspired the shape of the N°5 perfume bottle?) Five minutes up the road is Angelina, the Belle Epoque pâtisserie and tea salon where Chanel and Jean Cocteau would often come to enjoy a Mont Blanc dessert. On my return to the Crillon, we pass 31 Rue Cambon, the mothership, where Chanel’s personal residence, boutique, and couture atelier lie.
I eke out as much romance as I can from my dwindling Parisian hours: a steam and swim at the Crillon’s glamorous subterranean spa, a whisky cocktail at Bar Les Ambassadeurs, oysters and dry-cured ham at Nonos & Comestibles, and a balmy late-night stroll along the Seine. “Paris was always worth it,” Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast, “and you received return for whatever you brought to it.” Regardless of the circumstance—a historic heatwave in my case—Paris has never failed to ignite an appreciation of simply being alive.
San Sebastián
Photo: Gregory Dava
I’m welcomed to San Sebastián by a galerna, a sudden and violent storm typical to Spain’s Basque Coast. It offers a theatrical excuse to hole up in the Hotel Maria Cristina with a bottle of txakoli and a plate of gildas (a popular pintxo, or bar snack, consisting of a green olive, guindilla pepper, and anchovy on a toothpick). The coastal enclave is just an hour from Pamplona, where the running of the bulls in The Sun Also Rises takes place. It is also where the protagonist, Jake, recovers after the festival with ocean swims and quiet meals. Black Tomato determines the best way to channel the Lost Generation in San Sebastián is by eating and drinking with locals, and I gleefully oblige.
The next morning, my guide Jani walks me through a food market in the old city. “We are very loyal to our vendors,” she says, passing a stand stocked with guindilla peppers. We are gathering provisions to cook a meal in one of San Sebastián’s gastronomic societies—private, members-only social clubs that originated in the mid-19th century. The loophole to gaining entry? Having a member invite you in. Our gracious member, Cristina, arrives at the market as we continue to shop for Hake fish, txistorra, anchovies, and smoked cheese.
There are around 100 clubs in town, and many are themed after a hobby. Cristina’s—founded in the 1950s—is hipica (equestrian). We descend down a flight of stairs and arrive at a small room with wood paneling and an impressive kitchen. What comes next is a fever dream of Basque flavors: anchovies prepared three different ways, shrimps in whisky sauce, hake with potatoes covered in garlic, olive, and parsley—and plenty of cider and txakoli to wash it down.
“Gutxi eta maiz,” Cristina says to me as she pours the wine high above the glass, creating a light fizz. It translates to “little and often”—the way Basques enjoy their drink. This is echoed in The Sun Also Rises. “…he held the wine-bottle at full arms’ length and raised it high up,” Hemingway wrote, “squeezing the leather bag with his hand so the stream of wine hissed into his mouth.” After a few tries, I nearly get the hang of it.
Photo: Gregory Dava
Photo: Gregory Dava
I set out for a pintxos tour the following day with Vero, another local guide. Pintxos didn’t exist when Hemingway attended his first San Fermín festival in Pamplona. What did, Vero explains, was the same convivial spirit that led to his fascination with Basque culture. We sample a scallop with caramelized leeks emulsified in an ajo blanco soup (wow), foie gras with white chocolate and salted corn (double wow), toss back a few oxtail croquettes, and finish with torrija, a thick block of brioche that’s been soaked in a milk bath.
Vero drops me off at my hotel, but I can’t resist the urge to crawl back out for one last bite at La Cepa, a place she mentioned Hemingway used to go. The traditional tavern features a long row of Spanish ham hanging above a bar with diagonal wood planking. In high-school proficiency Spanish, I ask the man behind the counter for a fino sherry and cheese. With a smile, he softly shakes his head as if to say, let me choose for you. So I do. He deposits a Keler beer and a small piece of bread topped with oily shrimps in front of me, and I am reminded that a little spontaneity goes a long way.
Madrid
Photo: Gregory Dava
My final leg is Madrid, and only The Palace will do. The Luxury Collection hotel originally opened in 1912 by King Alfonso XIII, and also appears at the end of The Sun Also Rises. The hotel is located in the Golden Triangle of Art and is a quick walk from the Prado and Reina Sofia museums. I’m privately escorted throughout both, stopping at highlights like The Garden of Earthly Delights (a precursor for Dalí’s signature surrealism), Goya’s haunting Black Paintings (do not look up Saturn Devouring His Son), and Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece, Guernica. My guide María also takes me to the couture atelier of Santiago Bandrés, where the designer—who trained at Cátedra Balenciaga—pulls out intricately embroidered shawls and silk gowns from his archives. María (who is also a seasoned flamenco dancer) does a finger snap and spins around the room in one of them.
Lunch is served at Sobrino de Botín, the oldest restaurant in the world. It’s famous for roast suckling pig, which has been the signature dish since opening in 1725. Hemingway first dined here during his summer in Madrid in 1923, later immortalizing the landmark (and the pig) in his novel, and continuing to visit for decades to come. Owner José “Pepe” González tells me that despite the literary connection, they never hang photos of famous customers; it’s just not their bag. “We host people how we would want to be hosted,” González says. (If you ask nicely, though, the staff might show you Hemingway’s favorite corner table upstairs.) González shares it’s his last day before retirement, and I ask what that means for the future of Botín. He isn’t worried. “People don’t come here because I’m here—they come because of the continuity, the service, and the atmosphere.” A sentiment that seems to thread through all of my stops on this journey thus far.
Photo: Courtesy of the writer
My remaining time is limited, but there are a few excursions that must be squeezed in. First, a glass of sherry at La Venecia, an old Hemingway watering hole during the Spanish Civil War frozen in time with its dusty bottles and barrels (made all the more authentic thanks to the no-photos rule). Next, a browse through a rare bookstore in the Literary Quarter that María recommended, followed by The Palace’s bar. It’s breathtaking—with a chandelier of 1,875 crystals and a stained glass ceiling that lets so much light in, the space was used as an operating room during the Civil War. “It’s funny what a wonderful gentility you get in the bar of a big hotel,” Brett says in reference to The Palace in TheSun Also Rises. She and Jake sip a martini, so I follow suit. Midway through, the bartender empties my martini into a fresh, frozen glass. Gentility, no question about it.
The trip concludes with a dinner and performance at Tablao Flamenco Corral de la Morería, where photos and videos are forbidden. Dancers Florencia Oz and Jesús Fernández take the stage, rhythmically stomping their feet and clapping their palms together. Two singers, a guitarist, and a cellist join in. Her crimson ruffled dress, his impassioned shouts, the disregard for anything other than that moment in time—the intensity earnestly brings me to tears. I came in search of The Lost Generation, to find traces of a life fueled by the pursuit of artistic enlightenment. What I found proved much better. A simple need to be in the world, to be among strangers, to be human.
There is something deeply ironic about a book being set on fire. The people who light the match believe they are erasing ideas.
History, again and again, proves them spectacularly wrong. The books that faced the most ferocious attempts at destruction often became the most studied, the most beloved, and the most influential works in all of literature.
Some of the most controversial books in history are now regarded as classics, and the Bible along with works by Shakespeare are among those that have been banned over the past two thousand years. That should tell you everything.
If you’re looking for proof that censorship is a self-defeating act, look no further than this list. Let’s dive in.
1. Ulysses – James Joyce (1922)
1. Ulysses – James Joyce (1922) (Image Credits: Wikimedia)
James Joyce’s radical, stream-of-consciousness story of Leopold Bloom’s daylong journey across Dublin stoked a fiery reaction literally on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean after its 1922 publication. Government authorities in the United States and England not only banned what is now considered a modernist masterpiece, they also confiscated and burned more than 1,000 copies.
That’s not a typo. Over a thousand copies.
Gone. After the release of a controversial episode, the United States Post Office determined the material was obscene and confiscated three issues of The Little Review, burning 500 copies of them.
Ulysses was first published in 1922 in Paris and instantly became an object of smuggling pride and a valuable collector’s item when successfully transported past British and American customs agents. S.
Customs Court officially listed Ulysses among obscene books to be kept from the hands and eyes of American readers. At issue was whether James Joyce’s 1922 novel was obscene.
In deciding it was not, District Court Judge John Munro Woolsey opened the door to importation and publication of serious works of literature that used coarse language or involved sexual subjects. James Joyce’s Ulysses is now central to the literary canon and features on university literature courses around the world.
The flames, it turned out, only made it more famous.
2. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (1939)
2. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (1939) (Image Credits: Wikimedia)
Residents of Kern County, California, were less than thrilled with the unflattering depiction of their local area in John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and banned it for being libelous. Less predictable was the reaction of the library board in East St.
” Honestly, the sheer drama of it all is staggering. ” The book’s offense, apparently, was telling the truth about poverty.
On February 21, 1973, eleven Turkish book publishers went on trial before an Istanbul martial law tribunal on charges of publishing, possessing and selling books, facing possible sentences of between one and six months’ imprisonment for spreading propaganda unfavorable to the state.
3. Animal Farm – George Orwell (1945)
3. Animal Farm – George Orwell (1945) (Image Credits: Unsplash)
Here’s the thing: this book was nearly suppressed before it even reached readers. George Orwell wrote Animal Farm during World War II.
Initially, British publishers worried that publishing the book during the war would offend the Soviet Union, who were allies with them. Even after the war, publishers worried that the book would create too much controversy.
So they simply refused to print it. Not because it was bad, but because it was too honest.
Animal Farm has often fallen victim to overzealous school boards and the high bar of strict religious or politically oppressive governments. The book has been banned around the world for a variety of reasons, ranging from its anti-communist attitudes in the USSR to its depiction of pigs in the UAE.
To this day the book is still banned in Cuba and North Korea for its satiric depiction of communism. Frederic Warburg published the book and sold out with 4,500 copies in just a few days, despite his wife threatening to leave him if he did publish it.
Nine million copies were sold by 1973. His wife stayed.
The book became legendary.
4. 1984 – George Orwell (1949)
4. 1984 – George Orwell (1949) (Ivan Radic, Flickr,
The year 1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell’s prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is still the great modern classic of “negative utopia,” a startlingly original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words.
No one can deny the novel’s hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions – a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time. 1984, known for its depiction of Big Brother and allusions to dictatorships, has been repeatedly banned for two major reasons: obscenity and supposedly pro-communist passages.
For anyone who knows anything about the author or has even read the novel, these two reasons are striking and absurd. Orwell was a self-proclaimed democratic socialist.
I think the absurdity of banning a book specifically about the dangers of banning things is almost poetic. Both Animal Farm and 1984 have been on lists of banned books from their date of publication, and Orwell is the only author with two books consistently on these lists.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (1960)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (1960) (Image Credits: Unsplash)
Harper Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has been repeatedly challenged and banned in schools amid complaints of profanity, racial epithets and a description of a rape. While a beloved novel for many, it is one of the most commonly banned books.
The story’s moral courage was precisely what made it a target. It was challenged at the Santa Cruz, California schools in 1995 because of its racial themes, and removed from the Southwood High School Library in Caddo Parish, Louisiana in 1995 because the book’s language and content were objectionable.
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, considered an American classic, was challenged and banned because of violence and its use of the N-word. The terrible irony is that the book is fundamentally about the ugliness of racism – yet it was repeatedly challenged using racial concerns as the very excuse.
6. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway (1929)
6. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway (1929) (Image Credits: Pixabay)
” A war novel burned for telling the truth about war. The logic of censorship at its most telling.
Even before it was officially published, Boston police barred the sale of issues of Scribner’s magazine that serialized the “salacious” novel. The book was considered morally dangerous by governments across Europe and America almost simultaneously, which says more about those governments than about Hemingway.
Today it is taught in high schools as a masterwork of American literature.
7. The Call of the Wild – Jack London (1903)
7. The Call of the Wild – Jack London (1903) (Image Credits: Unsplash)
Jack London’s classic adventure story about a dog named Buck might not be the first book you’d expect to find on a list of burned books. Yet here we are.
It was the leftist political views of the author – who was twice the Socialist Party candidate for mayor of Oakland, California – rather than the book’s content that ran The Call of the Wild afoul of fascist authorities in Italy during the 1920s and early 1930s and resulted in the Nazi Party burning several of London’s socialist-leaning writings in 1933. The reasons cited were the author’s pro-Socialist views, and the books were burned in Nazi bonfires.
The dog was dragged away to be a sledge dog in the harsh and freezing cold Yukon, Buck must fight for his survival, and the Nazis still saw a political threat in it. The fact that a story about canine survival was deemed too politically dangerous for readers is genuinely bewildering.
Yet it reflects the paranoia of authoritarian regimes when faced with any hint of progressive thought.
8. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway (1926)
8. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway (1926) (Image Credits: Heritage Auctions. Cropped by uploader.,
Public domain)” />
The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation, The Sun Also Rises is one of Ernest Hemingway’s masterpieces, and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, it introduces two of Hemingway’s most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley.
First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. ” The Nazis, it seems, had a particular problem with moral ambiguity and literary sophistication.
Nazi Germany’s incineration of 25,000 “un-German” works on May 10, 1933, is perhaps the most infamous book burning event because photos and videos of the event can still be seen today. The largest and most significant book burning ceremony took place in the center of Berlin on May 10, where some 40,000 persons gathered at the Opernplatz and participants burned about 20,000 volumes.
Hemingway’s work was among them.
9. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou (1969)
9. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou (1969) (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou was removed from the required reading list for Wake County, North Carolina, high school students because of a scene in which the author, at the age of seven and a half, is raped. Let that sink in.
A book describing the trauma of childhood sexual abuse was punished – not the act, but the testimony. That says something chilling about who censorship really protects.
The book has been one of the most frequently challenged works in American schools for decades. Censors objected to its frank treatment of racism, trauma, and sexuality.
Yet Angelou’s memoir remains one of the most powerful accounts of a Black woman’s experience in 20th-century America. ” The attempts to silence it only reinforced why every single one of its words needed to be said.
10. Beloved – Toni Morrison (1987)
10. Beloved – Toni Morrison (1987) (The Huntington Theatre, Flickr,
CC BY 2.0)” />
The novel, published in 1987, explores the destructive legacy of slavery in 19th-century America. S.
public libraries. Decades of relentless challenges, and still the book endures.
Beloved by Toni Morrison faced challenges over violence, language, and what critics called “inappropriate topics” of racism and sex. Even in 2021, Virginia school board members suggested certain books should be not only banned but thrown “in a fire,” with Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved among those that some conservatives wanted removed from curriculums.
Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. The book is now considered one of the great American novels of the 20th century.
No bonfire has ever changed that, and no bonfire ever will.
Conclusion: Flames Can’t Kill an Idea
Conclusion: Flames Can’t Kill an Idea (Image Credits: Unsplash)
Of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels published since 1900 in the English language, 9 of the top 10 have been banned at some point. That is a staggering number.
It suggests, if anything, that controversy and censorship may actually be a strange badge of literary honor – a signal that a book touched something real and true that someone in power desperately wanted to suppress. Every single title on this list survived its burning.
Every single one is now read, studied, and celebrated. For as long as there have been writers, there have been texts that have been challenged, censored, burned, and banned.
The stories of banned literature do not just belong in the history books; even today, some of the most influential texts in our bookstores and libraries are currently being challenged or have been challenged at some point before. The match never wins against the manuscript.
It never has. Which of these banned classics surprises you the most?
Literary travelers follow the footsteps of famous authors
The Standard Times
By JENNIFER ALLEN Contributing Writer
2 Apr 2026
Readers are increasingly packing their bags with a favorite book in mind. From historic homes to literary festivals and themed hotel suites, destinations linked to famous authors are drawing travelers who want to see the real settings behind the stories they love.
Literary tourism now extends beyond museums and archives into full travel experiences tied to writers and the landscapes that inspired them. Travel data from Skyscanner shows 32% of travelers are interested in visiting destinations mentioned in books, while 18% say they would stay in book-themed accommodations, showing how literature influences travel decisions.
Baltimore honors Edgar Allan Poe’s legacy
Baltimore offers one of the most atmospheric literary experiences in the United States through its deep connection to Edgar Allan Poe. Visitors can tour the modest brick rowhouse where Poe lived and began his writing career at the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum, a site that traces the early years of the writer whose work helped define American Gothic literature.
Nearby at Westminster Hall, Poe’s gravesite has become a pilgrimage stop for fans of his work. The city celebrates that legacy each October during the International Edgar Allan Poe Festival & Awards, which includes dramatic readings, cemetery tours and theatrical performances.
Louisville’s Seelbach Hotel channels ‘The Great Gatsby’
Louisville offers literary travelers a chance to experience a setting tied to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” Fitzgerald spent time in the city while stationed nearby in 1918 and frequented the historic Seelbach Hotel, whose grand interiors are widely believed to have helped inspire scenes in the novel.
Visitors can stay in the hotel’s Gatsby Suite, designed with Jazz Age details and references to Fitzgerald’s characters. Historic tours feature areas linked to the author’s visits, making the hotel a stop for travelers interested in the novel’s real-world connections.
Sonoma Valley tells the story of Jack London
In Glen Ellen, California, Jack London State Historic Park offers a closer look at the life and work
of the American writer. Docent-led tours connect London’s writing to the Sonoma Valley landscape, where he spent much of his later life.
Visitors can explore the Wolf House ruins, tour the cottage where London and his wife, Charmian, lived and visit the author’s gravesite. Private guided tours are also available for groups seeking a more in-depth experience.
Nearby accommodations allow travelers to turn the visit into a longer getaway. Gaige House offers a quiet, design-focused retreat near the park, while Beltane Ranch provides vineyard views and historic ranch cottages. Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa features mineral pools and spa programs, and Kenwood Inn & Spa offers a boutique stay with a European feel.
The region also hosts the Sonoma Valley Authors Festival, which brings contemporary writers and readers together each year.
Prince Edward Island blends classic stories with modern fiction
You can’t discuss literary travel without talking about Prince Edward Island. This Canadian island province has long drawn literary travelers through its ties to L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables,” where visitors can explore Green Gables Heritage Place, Montgomery’s birthplace and other locations connected to the author’s life.
The island celebrates its literary roots through theater productions such as “Anne of Green Gables – The Musical” and “Anne & Gilbert,” along with the
Cavendish Literary Festival, which hosts readings and workshops focused on storytelling.
More recently, the island has attracted readers of contemporary fiction as well. Carley Fortune’s novel “This Summer Will Be Different” features several Prince Edward Island locations, including oyster bars, coastal drives and beaches in PEI National Park.
Travelers inspired by the book can visit sites such as Malpeque Oyster Barn, Basin Head Provincial Park and Charlottetown’s waterfront restaurants. Literary-themed accommodations include Dalvay by the Sea, Montgomery Inn at Ingleside and the Inn at Bay Fortune.
Spokane connects literature and historic hotels
In Spokane, Wash., literary history intersects with one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks. The historic Davenport Hotel hosted American poet Vachel Lindsay, who lived and wrote in Room 1129 from 1924 to 1929. The room remains available for visitors today.
The hotel also appears in Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel “The Maltese Falcon,” linking the property to literary fiction as well.
Spokane continues to support literary culture through the annual Get Lit! Festival, which brings au
thors, poets and readers together for discussions, readings and workshops. Local author Jess Walter, known for “Beautiful Ruins” and “The Cold Millions,” often features Spokane landmarks in his work.
The city also has ties to writer Sherman Alexie, who wrote early novels while living there. More recently, Spokane served as a filming location for the movie “Train Dreams,” based on a Denis Johnson story.
Lake Atitlán inspired the imagination behind ‘ The Little Prince’
In Guatemala, the dramatic landscape around Lake Atitlán has long inspired writers and artists. French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry spent time there recovering from injuries sustained in a plane crash, and the scenery helped influence elements of his book “The Little Prince.” One landmark tied to the story is Cerro de Oro, a hill near the lake that resembles the famous illustration of a snake after swallowing an elephant.
Travelers interested in the literary connection can stay at Casa Palopó, a boutique hotel overlooking the lake with views of the surrounding volcanoes. The property includes a lending library and screen-free spaces designed for reading and reflection.
of the American West also influenced Ernest Hemingway’s writing life. While visiting Cody, Wyo., near the Bighorn Mountains and Yellowstone National Park, Hemingway stayed at the Chamberlin Inn while finishing his manuscript for “Death in the Afternoon.”
Visitors can still see his signature in the inn’s guest register. The property now offers a Hemingway Suite and serves a Death in the Afternoon cocktail in its lounge. Travelers interested in the writer’s time in the region can explore the Hemingway Highways audio tour, which includes locations connected to his travels in northwestern Wyoming.
Hem’s Grave actually Ketchum Idaho
When books lead travelers to the real settings behind the stories
For many travelers, visiting places tied to writers adds another dimension to a trip beyond traditional sightseeing. A hotel room where a novelist once stayed, a preserved writing cottage or
a landscape described in a story can give readers a new perspective on books they already know.
As destinations continue to build experiences around literary connections, these journeys allow travelers to move beyond the page and into the settings that shaped the stories. From Poe’s Baltimore to Fitzgerald’s Louisville and Hemingway’s Wyoming, the places behind famous books continue to draw readers off the page and onto the road.
Jennifer Allen is a retired chef turned traveler, cookbook author and nationally syndicated journalist; she’s also a co-founder of Food Drink Life, where she shares expert travel tips, cruise insights and luxury destination guides. A recognized cruise expert with a deep passion for high-end experiences and off-the-beatenpath destinations, Jennifer explores the world with curiosity, depth and a storyteller’s perspective.
Classic literature is made up of stories that have stood the test of time and continue to resonate with people generations later. But what if those stories hadn’t turned out the way we know them? Many of the novels we consider to be classics could have had very different endings.
Once we learn that the authors of our favorite novels had alternate ideas for their stories, we start to wonder if the different versions would have been as timeless as the published ones. Would the messages and themes still feel timeless? These are the classic novels with alternate endings that could have changed everything.
Jane Austen’s novel ‘Persuasion’ | Culture Club/GettyImages
Jane Austen did not live to see her novelPersuasionpublished in December of 1817, though she had finished her manuscript a year earlier. She knew that something wasn’t quite right with her story, and so she chose not to give it to her publisher until she had perfected it.
Austen eventually rewrote the final two chapters of Persuasion, but her brother Henry and sister Cassandra found the first draft among her things after she died. These draft chapters are called the “cancelled chapters,” and Austen was probably right to cancel them. Her original ending had Anne regressing in her character development, which would have left readers feeling the story was pointless.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Illustration for ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens. Creator: Brock | Heritage Images/GettyImages
In a 1860 letter to his friend John Forsyth, Charles Dickens stated that he wanted his next novel to be a comedy. His expectations were dashed, becauseGreat Expectations is far from comedic. But the original ending could have left readers even more hollow.
Dickens actually had three different endings of Great Expectations, though the second and third versions differ only by one line. His original ending had Estella and Pip coincidentally meet on the streets of London, as little more than strangers after so many years apart.
Dickens’s friend and fellow writer, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, advised Dickens to rewrite the ending to add a bit more hope for a romantic future, leading to Estella and Pip reuniting in the ruins of Satis House.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Poster depicting Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. | Photo 12/GettyImages
Historians and critics argue whether Fanny Stevenson threw her husband’s story into the fireplace due to its content being too provocative or because she felt Stevenson’s work was far below his potential. Whatever the reason, Robert Louis Stevenson had to spend three days rewriting his novella from scratch and send it off to the publisher before his wife could destroy the manuscript again.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The death of Dorian Gray | DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/GettyImages
Oscar Wilde published his first version of The Picture of Dorian Gray in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890, but when the manuscript was sent to Wilde’s editor in novel form, some changes had to be made. The 1890 version is shorter and has fewer morals, leading it to be dubbed the “uncensored” version.
Wilde’s editor cut out much of the more explicit content, including anything to do with gay relationships. Wilde himself would add six chapters for the final novel, including the moral that vanity and corruption destroy the soul. The 1891 novel version was still seen as vulgar by its contemporary audience, but Wilde would have still preferred the original, uncensored version.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Gary Cooper Reading “A Farewell To Arms” on Set | Bettmann/GettyImages
Ernest Hemingway was apparently quite indecisive when it came to the ending of his second novel, A Farewell to Arms. In 1958, he told the Paris Review that he had written 39 different versions. When going through drafts for a new edition, Hemingway’s grandson Sean discovered the total was actually 47.
When asked which alternate ending he liked the most, Sean Hemingway said, “The ending in which you consider that the baby lives.” So, Hemingway’s devastating finale could have seen Frederic becoming a new father while still reeling from Catherine’s death. But that would not hold the same message as the emptiness and loss that war brings.
The artwork, covering 200 square metres, draws inspiration from American writer Ernest Hemingway, whose themes of self-discovery and exploration shaped the mural’s concept.
Africanews
New Hemingway-inspired mural unveiled in Latvian port city
Current Time 0:03
/
Duration 1:00
0
It is the 35th mural in Liepaja and now forms part of the city’s Street Art Route, which continues to draw attention from visitors around the world.
Kroyal will return to France for a short break in August, before continuing his work in the autumn with new projects planned in both France and Benin.
While James Gray has already completed shooting his next film, “Paper Tiger,” which may premiere at Cannes this year, he is now preparing his subsequent project.
Here’s TheInSneider reporting that Gray is set to adapt Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises,” with Oscar-nominated actress Vanessa Kirby attached to star.
“The Sun Also Rises” depicts a group of American and British expatriates struggling with loss and disillusionment in Europe following World War I. The story moves from Paris to Pamplona, Spain, centering on Jake Barnes, a journalist whose war injury has left him impotent, and his complicated romantic relationship with Lady Brett Ashley (Kirby).
Although “The Sun Also Rises” was adapted into a film in 1957, it is rarely revisited, largely because its emotional weight comes from quiet, internal conflicts rather than overt drama. Hemingway’s minimalist style has long been difficult to translate to the screen. It will be interesting to see how Gray handles Jake Barnes’s impotence, a central element of the novel that is challenging to portray without heavy exposition.
That said, Gray has earned trust as a filmmaker. Casting Kirby, who received an Oscar nomination for “Pieces of a Woman,” is an encouraging start, though she will hardly be the only major player. The story is very much an ensemble piece, and Gray is likely in the midst of assembling the rest of the cast.
Gray, 56, has cultivated a devoted following and is admired for his classically influenced style, which evokes cinema’s golden eras. While he has never been a consistent mainstream favorite, he has earned steady critical acclaim—particularly in France—allowing him to sustain a career defined by artistic ambition and emotional depth.
A Queens native, Gray can be hit or miss, but when he’s at his best, films like “Two Lovers”—arguably his finest work—and “The Lost City of Z” reveal a rare, haunting beauty in every frame. Up next is “Paper Tiger,” starring Scarlett Johansson, Miles Teller, and Adam Driver, and rumored for a summer release.
In the summer of 1948, at his Finca Vigia mansion in Francisco de Paula, Cuba, Ernest Hemingway set about writing a preface for the next reprint of his novel A Farewell to Arms, first published almost 20 years earlier, in 1929. The preface, to be honest, seems like a hastily written text, perhaps to fulfill a publisher’s request. But in fact, it has its “tail behind it.
With Buck Lanahan
The writer lists the places where he wrote the first draft of the novel, then the second draft, then the final draft, in Paris nearby, saying that the novel could not have been completed anywhere else. He writes about work unrelated to the novel. He remembers friends who died in 1929. He recounts a meeting with Miss Bergman, who he seems to have cut short by claiming that he could not go into detail because he had “a very limited knowledge of the English language and a defective pronunciation”, this is Ernest Hemingway!
Finally, he hits where he has the greatest concern, where he hurts, what seems to be not simply related to the novel, nor to be a matter of literature. Despite this, he firmly asserts that a writer must deal with “that constant, arrogant, criminal, dirty crime that is war”. The writer who has been a participant in two wars makes a surprising statement this time: “wars are fought by the most beautiful people in the world”. And, the reader cannot help but underline such a statement and cannot help but be reminded of the martyrs of the wars he has known or read about. But, even if the most beautiful people are not those who fight the wars, Hemingway explains, let’s say that, the closer you get to the place where the fighting is taking place, the more beautiful the people you encounter. While wars are actually made, provoked and initiated by meticulous economic rivalries and by pigs who aim to profit from them, the writer accuses, adding: “I am convinced that all the people who aim to profit from wars and help provoke them will have to be shot the very day they start acting as accredited representatives of the loyal citizens who will fight those wars.”
It is precisely for this mission that the writer volunteered, promising that, if legally delegated by those fighting, he would carry out the task himself with complete correctness and humanity, taking care that all the corpses were buried in a dignified manner: “We could even bury them in cellophane or in one of the most modern plastic materials.” In the end, if there was any evidence that he himself had provoked the new war in some way or had not properly carried out the assigned task, the writer offered – even with joy! – to be shot by the same firing squad and buried with or without cellophane, if only they would leave his naked corpse on top of a hill. And he signed it: June 30, 1948.
Early love in WWI Agnes Von Kurowsky
This is how rereadings of beloved authors, in different times and situations, transform into new readings.
As Hemingway wrote in this book, you cannot run away from yourself and your mind. Moving zip codes, even if it’s across an ocean, might help in some ways and fix some problems. But if your issue is yourself—your brain, your emotions, your trauma, etc.—then moving around is just a bandaid on your foundational issues.
.jpg)
