Forty-eight years ago today, Ernest Hemingway woke early, loaded a shotgun, and killed himself in the kitchen of his house in Ketchum, Idaho. He was sixty-one years old, though he was a very old sixty one. (The picture above shows Hemingway in Cuba, still in his fifties.)
For years, Hemingway had been suffering from depression (which he called “black ass”) and receiving electroshock (ECT) treatments at the Mayo clinic for it. We don’t know yet if there is a suicide gene or even a depression gene, but we do know that people with relatives who suffer from depression have an increased likelihood of suffering from the disease themselves. The same is true for suicide. Hemingway’s father, sister, and brother committed suicide. His granddaughter did as well. (Only this week, three scientific teams reported their findings that schizophrenia and manic-depression are linked genetically. The abstract, dated July 1, 2009, is here.)
The argument that he killed himself because he knew he was finished as a writer is wrong on two counts. First, even if Across the River and Into the Trees (1950) was his worst novel (and a terrible novel it was too), shortly after that he wrote, The Old Man and the Sea, a novella that would vindicate his reputation. More significantly, when he died, he was working on A Moveable Feast and The Garden of Eden, both of which were edited and published posthumously and both of which are among his best works. He was also working on Islands in the Stream, which though not a masterpiece, was a good, solid novel, especially when you consider the fact that it was left in its early stages. Hemingway had intended it to be a sweeping epic-length book of which we have a small part.
Debunking Hemingway became the favorite pastime shortly after he died. Wrestling with the person, a creation of the media that he was more than willing to exploit himself, proved too easy for those proselytizing the “Sixties.” Now that the dust has settled and all the crap about his “gender” can be trashed as so much Freudian gobbledygook, we are free to look at his work and judge it on its own.
Lisa | 02-Jul-09 at 5:44 am | Permalink
I had no idea that virtually all of Hemingway’s close family committed suicide. This must have had a major impact on his life and approach to life.
Thank you for sharing this tribute to Hemingway.
Lisa
Gonzalo Barr | 02-Jul-09 at 7:22 am | Permalink
Hi Lisa! Good to hear from you. You know, I have never read any paper that addressed his father’s suicide and whether it had any effect on him. I agree with you. It must have been devastating. The suicide leaves many victims behind, from people who blame themselves for not acting to prevent it to others who blame themselves for having caused the suicide itself. A suicide is like dropping a great big rock in a small pond.
Aileen | 02-Jul-09 at 9:47 am | Permalink
Likewise, I did not know that suicide played such a large part in Hemmingway’s life. Currently I’m reading The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham. Her father committed suicide, and the book is her attempt to come to terms with it and if possible, explain the “why.” I’m only half-way through, but her insight is that suicide takes away everything you ever knew about someone or thought you knew — it is the final act. She writes, “You’re saying, ‘I’m gone, and you can’t even be sure who it is that’s gone, because you never knew me.’”
One aspect to consider with Hemmingway, as you point out that some of his best work was what he was working on at the time and was published posthumously, is that it is most likely that he did not see his work in the same light. For instance, though not depression, as we hear with women who suffer from anorexia thinking they are fat when they are skin and bones, perhaps he simply could not “see” his work for what others see. To commit suicide, you presume he saw nothing worth living for, that indeed his life was worthless, that he had nothing to contribute, the pain was too bad, that his life was crap, that he was crap. And he probably heard that voice, his voice, in his head every day every waking moment. That, together with the family history, what he essentially had been “taught” by way of example, led to his tragic blast.
Aileen | 02-Jul-09 at 10:11 am | Permalink
One additional thought — a parent who commits suicide, I think, sends the message to his child that, “you are not worth living for,” “I could not fight this for you.” At the moment that the parent kills himself or herself, a bullet sears through the heart of the child, taking with it most likely any feelings of self-worth. Because, simply put, the child was not enough. And there is no fighting it or talking about it b/c it is the final message.
And that too is what Hemmingway lived with daily, despite any successes.
Just my thoughts though.
Gonzalo Barr | 02-Jul-09 at 10:38 am | Permalink
Thanks, Aileen, for the comments. No doubt depression can skew a person’s perception of things. It isn’t a cliched metaphor to say that a depressed person may not see the colors in the world and may not notice this absence until he gets out of the depression and, suddenly, there are colors he hadn’t noticed before. So it is very likely that Hemingway may have seen his later work differently from how we view it today. I have two favorite Hemingway books and they are his first novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” and the posthumously published, “The Garden of Eden.” There are other books that I like by him, but none compares to these two. Curiously, they were written at opposite ends of his life.
As I wrote earlier, a suicide leaves many victims behind. And that final act will affect people who may not necessarily be the closest. That’s why I compared it to dropping a great big rock in a small pond.
Aileen | 02-Jul-09 at 12:29 pm | Permalink
I should have mentioned, I completely agree with your analogy. I haven’t read The Garden of Eden. I’ll have to check it out at the library.
Gonzalo Barr | 02-Jul-09 at 12:52 pm | Permalink
Here’s the first paragraph:
“They were living at le Grau du Roi then and the hotel was on a canal that ran from the walled city of Aigues Mortes straight down to the sea. They could see the towers of Aigues Mortes across the low plain of the Camargue and they rode there on their bicycles at some time of nearly every day along the white road that bordered the canal. In the evenings and the mornings when there was a rising tide sea bass would come into it and they would see the mullet jumping wildly to escape from the bass and watch the swelling bulge of the water as the bass attacked.”
kevin monroe | 06-Jul-09 at 5:19 am | Permalink
I knew about the father and granddaughter commiting suicide; I didnt know about the siblings. I don’t consider Wikipedia to be the Gospel, but they do list Hemingway as a famous dipsomaniac. Also that he smuggled copies of Joyce’s ULYSSES into the US from Canada.
kevin monroe | 06-Jul-09 at 5:22 am | Permalink
Certain anonymous people with extreme medical conditions are entitled to self-deliverance. But Hem being famous and being a role model needs to be criticized if not condemned for his suicide.
kevin monroe | 06-Jul-09 at 5:27 am | Permalink
Even more tragic than Hemingway was the suicide of John Kennedy Toole, very young, very gifted. Wiki says his mother destrouyed the suicide note. One rumor has it that he committed suicide because he couldnt get published. I should hope he had a better reason than that.
Gonzalo Barr | 06-Jul-09 at 6:17 pm | Permalink
Hi Kevin — good to hear from you! I hope you had a nice Fourth. Hemingway drank, but he was no Fitzgerald. He had the discipline to wake early, write his 500 words a day (an amount that his ex-wife, Martha Gellhorn, dismissed as being very little) till noon, then enjoy the rest of the day. The word “enjoy” is a broad one. It included strong liquor. But it was never enough that he wasn’t up the next morning ready to write his quota. Keep in mind his output over the years. As to having a reason to commit suicide, I agree with you that Toole’s not being published seems petty to us at a distance, but depression is a disease. It is not a “reasoned” event. Who knows what went through his mind. A person commits suicide because…well, you complete the sentence… There is no one, single because. Thanks for the comment and please visit again soon!
kevin monroe | 11-Jul-09 at 9:50 pm | Permalink
yeah, I was surprised to see Hem on that dipso list and not F. Scott Fitzgerald; I thought Fitzgerald and dipsomaniac were synonyms
Gonzalo Barr | 13-Jul-09 at 1:40 pm | Permalink
You know what Fitzgerald said: First you take a drink. Then the drink takes a drink. Then the drink takes you.
kevin | 14-Jul-09 at 3:50 am | Permalink
The following is blasphemous (sp?) With all due respect to Fitzgerald, there’s a fictional biography of Fitz that’s better than anything Fitz ever wrote. In fact I consider it one of our great American novels. THE DISENCHANTED by Budd Schulberg. The reason I read it—Anthony Burgess, one of my favorite readers—claimed to have read it 17 times.
Gonzalo Barr | 14-Jul-09 at 4:14 am | Permalink
You know, I wonder what will happen to Burgess’s reputation. I got to know him through “Clockwork Orange,” which I read many, many years ago. But they say that “Earthly Powers” was his great work. Just a few minutes ago (I’m flying in less than four hours and flying always stresses me to the point that I’m up at two in the morning) I finished Mario Vargas Llosa’s very good book-length essay on Juan Carlos Onetti, “El viaje a la ficción.” Vargas Llosa called Onetti one of the greats of the twentieth century, along with Proust, Joyce, Thomas Mann, Borges, and Faulkner. Yet his work is largely unknown in the US. (I wrote a long post in this blog earlier this month on account of July 1 being the centennial of Onetti’s birth.) Unfortunately, much of Onetti’s work was never translated to English. In fact, I’m willing to wager that Vargas Llosa’s essay will the translated before any more of Onetti’s books.
kevin | 17-Jul-09 at 6:24 am | Permalink
I have read Onetti’s JACOB AND THE OTHER, not recently, but in that fantastic anthology called THE EYE OF THE HEART.
I will reread and check out his other sparse stuff in English translation.
I hope you have a safe trip.
I hate airports. I used to love airports. I used to enjoy flying.
kevin monroe | 19-Jul-09 at 4:27 am | Permalink
Well, I didnt remember it, but it’s one fantistic story.
The climactic moment, in its power and brevity, is something Chekhov would admire. The story made me so claustrophobic I had to go out for a five mile walk.
I have ordered from my library A BRIEF LIFE trans by Hortense Carpentier.
kevin monroe | 19-Jul-09 at 4:33 am | Permalink
THE EYE OF THE HEART also contains Borges’ ”The Other Death”
and this is the story I recommend first to those who have never read Borges.
Gonzalo Barr | 19-Jul-09 at 4:33 am | Permalink
As always, thanks for your comments, Kevin. I’m at Sewanee for a few more days. Once I return, I’ll get back to blogging properly.
kevin | 20-Jul-09 at 6:27 am | Permalink
When you return you must overcome your repugnance of the New York Times to read Hotchner’s op-ed of July 19, about a ”revised” version of A MOVEABLE FEAST.
Dr. Nick Conrad | 03-Aug-09 at 8:42 pm | Permalink
Hey gang,
I was introduced to Pappa while leading a
group of SEC engineering students in a class
in Pamplona, summer 2009. We will return
next year and beyond to study Spanish, history & engineering related to Spain.
My task is to read most of Papp’s work before
returning in summer 2010.
Been to Papp’s house in Key West and hope to
make it to Cuba some day.
( El Rey )