Masscult and Midcult_ Essays Against the American Grain - Dwight MacDonald [64]
I think your fundamental error is your assumption that Hemingway’s writing, public personality and private thoughts were all of a piece. The man at home, at work, or with close friends bears little resemblance to the public personality of the columns and the magazines, sources prone to emphasizing the more picturesque aspects of his character. I was always amazed how shy he was. I think much of the boy-scout, Indian-talk character, the “code” made so much of in the Lillian Ross article, was put on, not only because he had fun with it but also as a protective device. You say that Hemingway was too “objective” about the Ross article and that perhaps he even “gloried” in the portrait she drew of him. The letter you quote is kinder than he felt—after all, he’s trying to put her mind at ease about her critics, not about the accuracy of her portrait.
As for your conjecture that it was a “lack of private interests” which caused Hemingway to kill himself when his professional career had lost its meaning, I don’t think anyone who knew Hemingway, even from the news columns, could read that line and think you had the same man in mind. What stunned his friends about his death more than anything was that he had so many interests in life it seemed inconceivable he could end it.
[1] “And what if she should die? She won’t die. People don’t die in childbirth nowadays. That was what all husbands thought. Yes, but what if she should die? She won’t die. She’s just having a bad time. The initial labor is usually protracted. She’s only having a bad time. Afterwards we’d say what a bad time, and Catherine would say it wasn’t really so bad. But what if she should die? She can’t die. Yes, but what if she should die? She can’t, I tell you. Don’t be a fool. It’s just a bad time. It’s just nature giving her hell. It’s only the first labor, which is almost always protracted. Yes, but what if she should die? She can’t die. Why should she die? What reason is the for her to die?...But what if she should die? She won’t. She’s all right. But what if she should die? She can’t die. But what if she should die? Hey, what about that? What if she should die?”—A Farewell to Arms.
[2] I remember waking in the morning. Catherine was asleep and the sun was coming in through the window. The rain had stopped and I stepped out of bed and across the floor to the window....
“How are you, darling?” she said. “Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“How do you feel?”
“I feel very well. We had a lovely night.”
“Do you want breakfast?”
She wanted breakfast. So did I and we had it in bed, the November sunlight coming in through the window, and the breakfast tray across my lap.
“Don’t you want the paper? You always wanted the paper in the hospital.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want the paper now.”—A Farewell to Arms.
[3] Mr. Plimpton has the floor and I shan’t heckle him with footnotes. But this is rather too much. The June, 1958, issue of a magazine entitled (actually) Wisdom happens to be to hand and in it a Mr. John Atkins has an article on Hemingway in which he quotes him on critics as follows: “They are like those people who go to ball games and can’t tell the players without a score card. I am not worried about what anybody I do not like might do. If they can do you harm, let them do it....At present we have two good writers who cannot write because they have lost confidence through reading critics....The critics have made them impotent....Some critics are well-intentioned, most of them I believe. But some are not. When you ask understanding, they bring envy and jealousy. Sometimes they give off an odor you only smell in the armpits of the shirts of traitors after they have