An American in Havana

A Hemingway Story

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I’m not a historian. But for a month this summer I did my best imitation of one. Esquire wanted to tell the story about the incredible story of how they asked Ernest Hemingway to contribute to the first issue of magazine. This was 90 years ago, in 1933. Hemingway, in return, asked for a large advance that he used to the buy the Pilar, his beloved fishing boat. (You can read the piece here.)

This would involve actual research, which is not really my preferred way of working. I gravitate toward what might be called casual field study—say, fishing in Montana or visiting Japan. But this research turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable. I read biographies, letters, primary material, even secondary material. I discovered a world of historical connections. I was a new man! I went down to Havana to see Hemingway’s house and saw the Pilar, which appeared different after everything I’d learned.

But the facts, or what’s left of them, turned out to be the easy part. Hemingway is such a complicated figure and his image is so strong (something he encouraged) that it’s hard to see him clearly. I’d visited the Finca Vigía before (you can read about that in The Believer), but this time I went inside the house. Seeing his old business cards (it’s hard to think of a time when he wasn’t recognized and needed one), his white bucks (rarely used), his typewriter, set on the shelf where he would stand and type, his incredible library, the original old issues of Esquire (with his own handwriting in the margins, photographed above), naturally gives a better sense of the man.

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What was harder was trying to articulate what to make of his legacy. Of course, this changes over time, as our attitudes evolve. It can be easy to swallow the Hemingway myth whole—trout fishing in Michigan, literary Paris, the Havana daiquiris, checking into the Gritti Palace for a month. You miss the old days, days you never knew. It’s more complicated and more tragic than that. Ask the ex-wives, ask the ambivalent children, ask the eviscerated friends. But you can’t ask them, they’re not here anymore or have stopped talking about him. We can still read the letters, which capture Hemingway’s range: he was warm, competitive, playful, incisive, vain, profane.

Hemingway saw enough reputations rise and fall that he knew renown was fleeting. The culture changes, sometimes it evolves in good ways, to be sure. But it’s hard not to miss a time when writers had a greater part in our society (you would expect me to say that!), and literature simply mattered more. Books and magazines were profitable enough that a writer could get a boat, for goodness sake!

Those days are gone. So we return to the work itself and see what’s wonderful and what feels trapped in the past. That balancing act never ends. It takes time to come to terms with something important because we have to ask ourselves what we believe.

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