When
I posted a short introduction to myself and the idea of The Hemingway Project online
in December of 2009, I had no idea what a gift was in store for me. I had recently reread Hemingway’s early books
before visiting Paris and Northern Spain for the first time. I was working in a
library at that time and wanted to somehow write about the fascinating
experiences I had at the front desk of our public library, listening to people
talk about how books and writers literally shaped the choices they made in
their lives; from career choice to travel, I thrilled at the thought that
writers really do have a profound impact on their readers. Within a few short
months, readers of the blog responded to my idea of collecting stories of the
way Hemingway has influenced them. More importantly, readers responded to my
questions, telling me about their lives.
The
goal of The Hemingway Project is
to collect stories about Hemingway’s enduring influence. I feature interviews with readers and
Hemingway fans of all kinds. The
centerpiece of the blog has been The Hadley Tapes, which are the conversations
between Hadley Richardson, Hemingway’s first wife, and Alice Sokoloff, Hadley’s
first biographer. I see The Hemingway Project as a bridge
between the academic world and aficionados, an exploration of the fascinating
Hemingway subculture that has existed for decades, and a study of one writer
and his readership.
There have been some great moments in my
first year and a half with the blog.
Some that come to mind are talking with Mike Curry about life in Key West in the Great Depression, learning about
the symbolism of bullfighting from the Spanish perspective of Paco Pereda from the University of Basque Country, getting a glimpse of
Hemingway’s early family life from John Sanford, Marcelline’s son, and talking with several people about the
ever intriguing topic of the lost manuscripts. Bob Orlin and Brain Gordon Sinclair were both very entertaining subject to interview because
they’ve turned their interest in Hemingway into careers as artist and actor
respectively. I was especially honored
to interview John Hemingway about his book, Strange
Tribe and Paula McLain about her book The Paris
Wife.
I am always amazed at the variety of
subjects and personal stories that come up when we are talking about Hemingway;
stories about absent fathers and Romanian gypsies, fortunetellers and boy
scouts, and Charles Bukowski, to name a few. When I interviewed Kiril
Sokoloff, about his mother Alice (who conducted the Hadley interviews),
we talked a bit about the Dali Llama.
Someone emailed me after that interview to say that all things must
surely lead to Hemingway, even his holiness! I always feel that each new
interview is my favorite and I have some great new interviews lined up for the
future.
It
is encouraging that books like The Paris
Wife and movies like Midnight in
Paris are driving people to read The
Moveable Feast for the first time and do their own research on lost
generation figures like Pablo Picasso and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. In this
way, the lives of these writers and artists will be carried forward in new and
innovative ways, they will inspire new generations to live their lives to the
fullest, like Ernest.
Last
summer I lived in Spain collecting material for forthcoming writing about
Ernest and Hadley’s unbearably poignant five-year marriage, I saw my first bullfight
and holding my breath, I watched the running of the bulls in Pamplona. In October, I gave a talk in Ketchum at the
Hemingway Symposium, called West of Paris,
about Hadley and the blog. I am looking forward to meeting more Hemingway
people in Petoskey at the Hemingway Society Conference where I will give a
short presentation about The Hemingway
Project called, “The Outer Suburbs of Hemingworld”. I will discuss the interviews I have
conducted for the blog, which have produced
remarkable insights and capture the poignant, bizarre and often hilarious ways
in which people interact with Hemingway. Technology and the information age
have given even people from the “outer edges of Hemingway” a way to participate
in the discussion of Ernest Hemingway and provide us with a glimpse into the
ways books and writers deeply impact the lives of their readers.
For me,
Hemingway was someone who saw the potential of his own life and didn’t waste
it. Creating The Hemingway Project has
given me incredible new friendships and opportunities that I could not have
imagined in the beginning. Reading about him, learning about him, traveling and
asking questions has made my life larger and more interesting than it would be
without having read Hemingway, which is about the best thing you could ever say
about a book or a writer.