WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.180 Welcome to The Deep Dive. Today, we're plunging 00:00:03.180 --> 00:00:05.719 into the life of, well, one of the most celebrated 00:00:05.719 --> 00:00:08.480 and maybe complex figures in modern literature, 00:00:08.820 --> 00:00:10.859 Ernest Hemingway. Absolutely. When you think 00:00:10.859 --> 00:00:12.480 Hemingway, you probably get that picture, right? 00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:15.419 Yeah. Yeah. The adventurer, the rugged sportsman, 00:00:15.480 --> 00:00:19.679 always on the move. He was an American novelist, 00:00:19.679 --> 00:00:23.079 journalist, short story writer, 1899 to 1961. 00:00:23.679 --> 00:00:28.039 And his style, that economical, understated prose. 00:00:28.990 --> 00:00:31.870 It just completely redefined how stories were 00:00:31.870 --> 00:00:33.969 told in the 20th century. It really did. But 00:00:33.969 --> 00:00:35.469 what's fascinating and what we really want to 00:00:35.469 --> 00:00:38.469 get into today is that huge gap, isn't it, between 00:00:38.469 --> 00:00:40.429 the, you know, the spareness of the writing and 00:00:40.429 --> 00:00:44.170 the absolute utter chaos of his biography. Total 00:00:44.170 --> 00:00:46.570 chaos. I mean, a life of staggering drama, war 00:00:46.570 --> 00:00:48.630 correspondent, safari hunter, deep sea fisherman. 00:00:48.770 --> 00:00:51.469 And the accolades, too. Pulitzer in 53, the Nobel 00:00:51.469 --> 00:00:54.990 Prize in literature in 54. Right. So our mission 00:00:54.990 --> 00:00:57.109 for you today really is to try and bridge that 00:00:57.109 --> 00:00:59.630 chasm. Because the sources we've looked at, they 00:00:59.630 --> 00:01:01.810 really show the man and the writer are just inseparable. 00:01:01.969 --> 00:01:04.090 We're going to unpack his biography, look at 00:01:04.090 --> 00:01:06.129 how he engineered that radical literary style, 00:01:06.290 --> 00:01:09.629 and also cover his, well, his tragic decline, 00:01:09.890 --> 00:01:12.510 both mentally and physically. All to understand 00:01:12.510 --> 00:01:15.290 that key question. How did all these overwhelming 00:01:15.290 --> 00:01:19.299 experiences, this profound trauma, How did that 00:01:19.299 --> 00:01:22.480 get distilled into work famous for being so objective, 00:01:22.659 --> 00:01:24.799 almost clinical? Exactly. It's quite a puzzle. 00:01:24.900 --> 00:01:27.180 It's an extraordinary journey we're taking together. 00:01:27.359 --> 00:01:29.920 We'll start in conservative Illinois, then jump 00:01:29.920 --> 00:01:32.299 pretty quickly to the shrapnel filled fields 00:01:32.299 --> 00:01:34.859 of Italy. Then on to Paris, the lost generation. 00:01:35.560 --> 00:01:38.079 Those smoky salons. Yeah. Then adventures in 00:01:38.079 --> 00:01:40.540 Africa, the Spanish Civil War. Yeah. Right up 00:01:40.540 --> 00:01:42.819 to those dramatic, sometimes frankly bizarre 00:01:42.819 --> 00:01:45.519 final years in Idaho. It's quite a ride. It really 00:01:45.519 --> 00:01:47.359 is. So get ready because we're starting right 00:01:47.359 --> 00:01:49.579 at the beginning. The making of the man who'd 00:01:49.579 --> 00:01:52.439 become Papa Hemingway. Okay. So Ernest Miller 00:01:52.439 --> 00:01:56.540 Hemingway, born July 21st, 1899, Oak Park, Illinois. 00:01:56.760 --> 00:01:59.739 Oak Park. And you described it as affluent, very 00:01:59.739 --> 00:02:01.379 conservative. Very. You know, if you know the 00:02:01.379 --> 00:02:03.379 area, it's all about piety restraint. Which is 00:02:03.379 --> 00:02:05.719 just peak irony considering the life he ended 00:02:05.719 --> 00:02:09.259 up leading. Completely. His parents, Clarence, 00:02:09.259 --> 00:02:12.080 who was a doctor, a respected physician, and 00:02:12.080 --> 00:02:15.000 Grace, his mother, a musician, they gave him 00:02:15.000 --> 00:02:16.819 this cultured upbringing. But like you said, 00:02:16.919 --> 00:02:19.020 it was riddled with contradictions from day one. 00:02:19.389 --> 00:02:21.830 And that duality seems crucial. Oh, absolutely. 00:02:21.990 --> 00:02:24.250 The sources really highlight that tension straight 00:02:24.250 --> 00:02:27.889 away. His mother, Grace, she was apparently quite 00:02:27.889 --> 00:02:30.409 determined to keep him and his slightly older 00:02:30.409 --> 00:02:32.969 sister, Marceline, looking like a matched pair. 00:02:33.150 --> 00:02:36.129 Like twins. Sort of, yeah. For his first three 00:02:36.129 --> 00:02:38.689 years, she kept his hair long, dressed him in 00:02:38.689 --> 00:02:42.569 these frilly... feminine clothes. Wow. OK. And 00:02:42.569 --> 00:02:45.129 this enforced femininity, which you get the sense 00:02:45.129 --> 00:02:47.849 he really chafed against. It stood in such stark 00:02:47.849 --> 00:02:50.009 contrast to the other side of his education. 00:02:50.090 --> 00:02:52.729 You know, the rougher, hyper masculine stuff 00:02:52.729 --> 00:02:55.090 from his father. Right. The outdoorsman. Exactly. 00:02:55.150 --> 00:02:57.629 And that contrast really did define him, didn't 00:02:57.629 --> 00:03:00.849 it? On one hand, you've got these reluctant cello 00:03:00.849 --> 00:03:04.050 lessons pushed by his musician mother. But here's 00:03:04.050 --> 00:03:06.550 where it gets fascinating. Hemingway himself 00:03:06.550 --> 00:03:09.719 apparently said later. Those lessons contributed 00:03:09.719 --> 00:03:12.219 to what he called the contrapuntal structure 00:03:12.219 --> 00:03:16.159 of for whom the bell tolls. Isn't that incredible, 00:03:16.479 --> 00:03:18.879 that connection? It really is. Can you unpack 00:03:18.879 --> 00:03:23.009 that a bit? Contrapuntal. Sure. So in music counterpoint 00:03:23.009 --> 00:03:26.050 or contrapuntal texture, it's about weaving together 00:03:26.050 --> 00:03:29.310 multiple independent melodic lines simultaneously. 00:03:29.909 --> 00:03:32.349 Okay. Hemingway sort of translates this idea 00:03:32.349 --> 00:03:35.509 into narrative. It seems the cello training gave 00:03:35.509 --> 00:03:37.870 him an ear, maybe subconsciously, for how you 00:03:37.870 --> 00:03:41.250 could run these simultaneous independent threads. 00:03:42.409 --> 00:03:45.870 voices narratives themes within one big structure 00:03:45.870 --> 00:03:48.689 like in belt holes exactly like belt holes you've 00:03:48.689 --> 00:03:50.349 got robert jordan's internal thoughts you've 00:03:50.349 --> 00:03:52.289 got the dialogue happening around him you've 00:03:52.289 --> 00:03:54.650 got the constant looming reality of the war yeah 00:03:54.650 --> 00:03:56.650 all playing out at the same time like different 00:03:56.650 --> 00:03:58.789 melodies working together that makes sense and 00:03:58.789 --> 00:04:00.610 meanwhile his father's doing the complete opposite 00:04:00.610 --> 00:04:03.340 right Instilling this lifelong passion for the 00:04:03.340 --> 00:04:06.360 outdoors, teaching young Ernest Woodcraft, hunting, 00:04:06.500 --> 00:04:08.819 fishing, camping up in northern Michigan. And 00:04:08.819 --> 00:04:12.319 that passion, that connection to wild places, 00:04:12.340 --> 00:04:16.240 self -sufficiency, it becomes the backdrop for 00:04:16.240 --> 00:04:18.680 so much of his best work, doesn't it? Almost 00:04:18.680 --> 00:04:21.639 all of it, yeah. And this fusion, the sensitive 00:04:21.639 --> 00:04:24.040 artist, the disciplined athlete, it really starts 00:04:24.040 --> 00:04:25.939 to come together in high school. He did everything, 00:04:26.160 --> 00:04:29.939 boxing, track, football. But also editing the 00:04:29.939 --> 00:04:32.939 school paper. The trapeze. And not just editing. 00:04:33.079 --> 00:04:36.100 He was actively imitating the popular sports 00:04:36.100 --> 00:04:38.480 writers of the day, guys like Ring Lardner. So 00:04:38.480 --> 00:04:41.800 he's already honing that voice. Practicing. And 00:04:41.800 --> 00:04:44.379 that practice, that imitation, it prepared him 00:04:44.379 --> 00:04:46.620 for what you could argue were the most important 00:04:46.620 --> 00:04:48.740 six months of his early career. Which was that 00:04:48.740 --> 00:04:51.839 stint at the Kansas City Star right after high 00:04:51.839 --> 00:04:53.639 school. Yeah, just six months as a cub reporter. 00:04:53.959 --> 00:04:56.279 Yeah. But that experience, as you said earlier, 00:04:56.560 --> 00:04:59.420 it became the absolute bedrock of the entire 00:04:59.420 --> 00:05:01.800 Hemingway style. It's revolutionary, really, 00:05:01.920 --> 00:05:04.079 when you think about how different American prose 00:05:04.079 --> 00:05:06.579 sounded before him. It wasn't just a job. It 00:05:06.579 --> 00:05:08.720 was like a stylistic boot camp. The star's style 00:05:08.720 --> 00:05:11.439 guide gave him these non -negotiable rules. What 00:05:11.439 --> 00:05:14.920 were they again? Simple. Declarative. Almost 00:05:14.920 --> 00:05:17.600 brutal in their clarity. Use short sentences. 00:05:17.879 --> 00:05:20.480 Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. 00:05:20.660 --> 00:05:23.560 Be positive, not negative. Wow. No messing around. 00:05:23.759 --> 00:05:26.259 None. It forced constraint. It stripped away 00:05:26.259 --> 00:05:28.759 all that flowery, adjective -heavy prose you 00:05:28.759 --> 00:05:31.319 got in the 19th century. It was creating a whole 00:05:31.319 --> 00:05:34.100 new way to build a story. Anti -purple prose 00:05:34.100 --> 00:05:36.800 training, basically. And that style gets tested 00:05:36.800 --> 00:05:39.480 almost immediately in the crucible of World War 00:05:39.480 --> 00:05:41.720 I. Yeah. He couldn't join the U .S. without any 00:05:41.720 --> 00:05:45.329 poor eyesight. Right. So he volunteers, ambulance 00:05:45.329 --> 00:05:47.350 driver for the American Red Cross Motor Corps 00:05:47.350 --> 00:05:50.370 in Italy. This is 1917. And the shift from that 00:05:50.370 --> 00:05:53.569 clean, conservative Kansas City newsroom to the 00:05:53.569 --> 00:05:56.410 chaos of war, it's immediate, isn't it? Brutally 00:05:56.410 --> 00:05:58.529 immediate. On his very first day in Milan, he 00:05:58.529 --> 00:06:00.790 witnesses the aftermath of a munitions factory 00:06:00.790 --> 00:06:03.750 explosion. Sheer carnage. Oh, God. He was sent 00:06:03.750 --> 00:06:06.110 to retrieve the dead. He later described it as 00:06:06.110 --> 00:06:08.269 collecting the shrouded remains of female workers. 00:06:08.720 --> 00:06:11.240 A truly visceral introduction to modern industrial 00:06:11.240 --> 00:06:13.720 death. And then, just days later, the big one. 00:06:13.819 --> 00:06:16.439 The instant that changes everything. July 8, 00:06:16.699 --> 00:06:20.819 1918. Fosalta di Piave. He's delivering comfort 00:06:20.819 --> 00:06:22.620 cigarettes, chocolate to the frontline troops. 00:06:22.839 --> 00:06:27.199 And he gets hit. Badly. Mortar shrapnel. He was 00:06:27.199 --> 00:06:30.259 only 18. Just 18. The shrapnel wounds were severe. 00:06:30.319 --> 00:06:34.579 Both legs. But the psychological impact. Maybe 00:06:34.579 --> 00:06:36.819 even more profound. That's when he talked about 00:06:36.819 --> 00:06:39.120 losing the illusion of immortality. Exactly. 00:06:39.259 --> 00:06:41.180 He said something like, other people get killed, 00:06:41.220 --> 00:06:43.620 not you. Then when you are badly wounded the 00:06:43.620 --> 00:06:45.540 first time, you lose that illusion and you know 00:06:45.540 --> 00:06:47.660 it can happen to you. That moment of realization, 00:06:48.079 --> 00:06:50.860 that death is right there, random. It's the foundation 00:06:50.860 --> 00:06:53.699 of his whole tragic worldview, really. But even 00:06:53.699 --> 00:06:56.339 badly wounded, the sources say he was incredibly 00:06:56.339 --> 00:06:59.279 brave. Oh yeah. He helped Italian soldiers get 00:06:59.279 --> 00:07:01.079 to safety before dealing with his own injuries, 00:07:01.300 --> 00:07:03.720 which earned him decorations the Italian War 00:07:03.720 --> 00:07:06.420 Merit Cross, the silver medal of military valor. 00:07:06.699 --> 00:07:09.000 So physical courage. But the wounds weren't just 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:10.819 physical, were they? There was an emotional one 00:07:10.819 --> 00:07:13.319 during his recovery, too. Right. Six months recuperating 00:07:13.319 --> 00:07:16.000 in Milan, he falls hard for Agnes von Karosky. 00:07:16.100 --> 00:07:18.800 The Red Cross nurse. Yeah. Seven years older 00:07:18.800 --> 00:07:20.600 than him, he was convinced they were getting 00:07:20.600 --> 00:07:23.220 married, poured all that youthful hope into it. 00:07:23.319 --> 00:07:26.199 But she rejected him. Months later, yeah. Via 00:07:26.199 --> 00:07:28.310 letter. Said she'd gotten engaged to an Italian 00:07:28.310 --> 00:07:31.730 officer. Ouch. Biographers really focus on that 00:07:31.730 --> 00:07:34.189 moment, don't they? Calling it devastating, scarring. 00:07:34.329 --> 00:07:36.970 Why is it so critical? Well, because it seems 00:07:36.970 --> 00:07:39.769 to have immediately set up this toxic pattern 00:07:39.769 --> 00:07:42.329 in his future relationships, his marriages. Oh, 00:07:42.350 --> 00:07:45.449 so. The shock of being abandoned like that. Yeah. 00:07:45.529 --> 00:07:49.410 So unexpectedly by Agnes. It looks like it created 00:07:49.410 --> 00:07:52.529 a kind of defense mechanism. In his later marriages. 00:07:52.959 --> 00:07:55.439 Hemingway consistently leaves the wife before 00:07:55.439 --> 00:07:57.699 she has a chance to leave him. Ah, preemptive 00:07:57.699 --> 00:08:00.600 abandonment. Exactly. A cycle of emotional preemption. 00:08:00.779 --> 00:08:03.000 Yeah. And it seems rooted in that double shock 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:06.139 of WWI, the physical loss of control over life 00:08:06.139 --> 00:08:08.480 and the emotional loss of control over love. 00:08:08.660 --> 00:08:11.579 So where did he find solace? Well, as we see 00:08:11.579 --> 00:08:13.519 in that famous Nick Adams story, Big Two -Hearted 00:08:13.519 --> 00:08:15.560 River, the only reliable comfort seemed to be 00:08:15.560 --> 00:08:17.970 nature. Going back to northern Michigan, seeking 00:08:17.970 --> 00:08:20.089 solitude, trying to find some kind of peace, 00:08:20.230 --> 00:08:22.790 some psychological recalibration after the war. 00:08:23.029 --> 00:08:25.730 OK, so he goes back to the States. He marries 00:08:25.730 --> 00:08:28.689 Hadley Richardson in 1921. She's eight years 00:08:28.689 --> 00:08:31.269 older, right? Seemed to provide a bit of stability. 00:08:31.589 --> 00:08:34.169 Yeah, a nurturing presence, perhaps. And then 00:08:34.169 --> 00:08:38.370 they make the big move, Paris. On Sherwood Anderson's 00:08:38.370 --> 00:08:40.799 advice? Right. Anderson gave them letters of 00:08:40.799 --> 00:08:42.980 introduction, told them to join the expatriate 00:08:42.980 --> 00:08:45.259 scene over there. And Paris. I mean, that's where 00:08:45.259 --> 00:08:47.600 the Hemingway persona really gets forged, doesn't 00:08:47.600 --> 00:08:49.720 it? Absolutely. That's the forge. Initially, 00:08:49.919 --> 00:08:52.019 he's working as a foreign correspondent for the 00:08:52.019 --> 00:08:54.539 Toronto Star. Still keeping that journalistic 00:08:54.539 --> 00:08:57.559 muscle flexed. Covering everything from, you 00:08:57.559 --> 00:09:01.059 know, post -war political crises to fishing reports. 00:09:02.220 --> 00:09:05.100 Maintaining that vigorous discipline. But at 00:09:05.100 --> 00:09:07.299 the same time... He gets adopted by the giants 00:09:07.299 --> 00:09:09.179 of modernism. This is where the famous names 00:09:09.179 --> 00:09:11.980 come in. Gertrude Stein. Right. The Doyenne of 00:09:11.980 --> 00:09:15.000 Montparnasse. She becomes his mentor, godmother 00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:17.940 to his son Jack Bumby. And she introduces him 00:09:17.940 --> 00:09:19.940 to that whole circle. The artists, the writers. 00:09:20.159 --> 00:09:22.299 The painters, sculptors, and crucially the other 00:09:22.299 --> 00:09:24.080 American writers who are all trying to figure 00:09:24.080 --> 00:09:27.539 out this post -war world. And Stein gives them 00:09:27.539 --> 00:09:30.000 that name, right? She does. The Lost Generation. 00:09:30.889 --> 00:09:34.330 That term she coined referred to that whole post 00:09:34.330 --> 00:09:38.330 -WWI cohort, feeling spiritually adrift, displaced, 00:09:38.850 --> 00:09:41.490 disillusioned by the collapse of old values after 00:09:41.490 --> 00:09:43.830 the, frankly, pointless slaughter of the war. 00:09:44.110 --> 00:09:47.289 Beyond Stein, who else was key? Ezra Pound. Big 00:09:47.289 --> 00:09:49.870 time. Pound had just finished basically shaping 00:09:49.870 --> 00:09:53.250 T .S. Eliot's The Wasteland. Wow. They met, sort 00:09:53.250 --> 00:09:56.460 of by chance, in 1922. Pound immediately saw 00:09:56.460 --> 00:09:58.759 the raw talent in Hemingway and helped him hone 00:09:58.759 --> 00:10:01.799 his prose, cut the fat. And James Joyce. Didn't 00:10:01.799 --> 00:10:03.500 he hang out with Joyce? Apparently went on alcoholic 00:10:03.500 --> 00:10:06.340 sprees with him frequently. I mean, can you imagine 00:10:06.340 --> 00:10:08.360 a more intense, more challenging intellectual 00:10:08.360 --> 00:10:11.159 environment for a young writer? No kidding. Demanding, 00:10:11.159 --> 00:10:13.580 anti -establishment, obsessed with style. Totally 00:10:13.580 --> 00:10:16.320 focused on stylistic innovation. But this period, 00:10:16.519 --> 00:10:18.720 this intense creative growth, it gets hit by 00:10:18.720 --> 00:10:22.139 a catastrophe. The lost manuscripts. Ugh. Yeah, 00:10:22.220 --> 00:10:24.440 this story still makes writers physically uncomfortable. 00:10:25.059 --> 00:10:27.860 December 1922. Hadley's traveling to meet him 00:10:27.860 --> 00:10:30.139 in Geneva, takes a suitcase full of his work 00:10:30.139 --> 00:10:31.820 onto the train to the Gare de Lyon in Paris. 00:10:32.019 --> 00:10:34.720 And loses it. Loses it. Almost everything he'd 00:10:34.720 --> 00:10:37.200 written up to that point. Early fiction, short 00:10:37.200 --> 00:10:41.580 stories, drafts. Gone. He must have been. Devastated 00:10:41.580 --> 00:10:43.340 and furious. Yeah. According to the sources. 00:10:43.919 --> 00:10:45.879 Understandably. Yeah. But, you know, you could 00:10:45.879 --> 00:10:47.860 almost argue it was a weird kind of creative 00:10:47.860 --> 00:10:50.360 purification. What do you mean? Well, he was 00:10:50.360 --> 00:10:53.799 forced to focus only on the few scraps, the handful 00:10:53.799 --> 00:10:56.320 of stories that survives or that he rewrote from 00:10:56.320 --> 00:10:59.460 memory. It reinforced that journalistic need 00:10:59.460 --> 00:11:01.860 for precision, for constraint. He couldn't get 00:11:01.860 --> 00:11:04.179 lost in old drafts. He had to strip down, build 00:11:04.179 --> 00:11:06.500 again. And that forced focus paid off pretty 00:11:06.500 --> 00:11:08.899 quickly. It did. His first book, Three Stories 00:11:08.899 --> 00:11:12.620 and Ten Poems, comes out in 1923, then the collection 00:11:12.620 --> 00:11:16.000 In Our Time in 24, and the expanded In Our Time 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:19.139 in 25, which had Indian camp. And critics noticed 00:11:19.139 --> 00:11:21.659 immediately. Oh, yeah. Especially back in the 00:11:21.659 --> 00:11:24.879 U .S., they were struck by that crisp, declarative 00:11:24.879 --> 00:11:27.059 style, recognized it as something new, something 00:11:27.059 --> 00:11:29.600 powerful, especially in the short story form. 00:11:29.720 --> 00:11:32.039 And that success coincides with meeting F. Scott 00:11:32.039 --> 00:11:36.219 Fitzgerald, 1925. Right. Their friendship. famously 00:11:36.219 --> 00:11:39.360 volatile. Yeah. A real mix of admiration and 00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:41.559 hostility. Yeah, I've read about that. Fitzgerald 00:11:41.559 --> 00:11:43.759 was already a big name, right? And he encouraged 00:11:43.759 --> 00:11:46.000 Hemingway, pushed him towards a novel. Apparently, 00:11:46.039 --> 00:11:47.679 reading The Great Gatsby was the thing that really 00:11:47.679 --> 00:11:50.419 convinced Hemingway his next big project had 00:11:50.419 --> 00:11:52.440 to be a novel. And that novel comes out of Spain, 00:11:52.539 --> 00:11:54.720 doesn't it? The bullfighting. Exactly. He becomes 00:11:54.720 --> 00:11:56.740 fascinated by bullfighting after visiting the 00:11:56.740 --> 00:11:59.820 Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona. After his 00:11:59.820 --> 00:12:02.399 third trip there, he sits down and starts drafting. 00:12:03.240 --> 00:12:08.419 The sun also rises. On his birthday, July 21st, 00:12:08.419 --> 00:12:11.940 1925. And finishes it how quickly? A breakneck 00:12:11.940 --> 00:12:15.240 eight weeks later. Incredible. The Sun Also Rises 00:12:15.240 --> 00:12:18.379 comes out in 1926. Becomes the book for that 00:12:18.379 --> 00:12:21.559 post -war expatriate crowd. Cements Stein's lost 00:12:21.559 --> 00:12:24.460 generation label. But Hemingway himself complicated 00:12:24.460 --> 00:12:27.139 that label later, didn't he? He did. He told 00:12:27.139 --> 00:12:28.899 his editor, Max Perkins, that the real point 00:12:28.899 --> 00:12:30.940 of the book wasn't that they were lost, but that 00:12:30.940 --> 00:12:33.840 the earth abideth forever. implying the characters 00:12:33.840 --> 00:12:35.759 were maybe battered, wounded by the war, sure, 00:12:35.899 --> 00:12:38.399 but that being lost was a temporary human thing, 00:12:38.460 --> 00:12:41.179 not some permanent spiritual damnation. The earth 00:12:41.179 --> 00:12:44.299 endures. They endure, in a way. That's a really 00:12:44.299 --> 00:12:47.659 interesting nuance. But okay, while his literary 00:12:47.659 --> 00:12:50.100 star is definitely rising, his personal life, 00:12:50.240 --> 00:12:53.879 not so smooth. No. The first marriage starts 00:12:53.879 --> 00:12:56.399 to fall apart. He begins an affair with Pauline 00:12:56.399 --> 00:13:00.850 Pfeiffer in early 1926. Hadley finds out. Eventually, 00:13:00.909 --> 00:13:04.789 yes. He divorces Hadley in January 1927, marries 00:13:04.789 --> 00:13:08.049 Pauline just a few months later in May. He even 00:13:08.049 --> 00:13:10.230 converted to Catholicism before marrying her. 00:13:10.389 --> 00:13:13.929 And this whole intense Paris chapter, it ends 00:13:13.929 --> 00:13:16.230 with another weird injury. It does. It perfectly 00:13:16.230 --> 00:13:19.509 illustrates that blend of drama and sheer absurdity 00:13:19.509 --> 00:13:22.029 in his life. He publishes Men Without Women in 00:13:22.029 --> 00:13:24.570 27, which includes the great boxing story 50 00:13:24.570 --> 00:13:27.240 Grand. Yeah. But just before he and Pauline leave 00:13:27.240 --> 00:13:30.399 Paris for Key West in 1928, he's in a bathroom, 00:13:30.500 --> 00:13:32.419 reaches up to pull what he thinks is the toilet 00:13:32.419 --> 00:13:34.059 chain. But it's not the toilet chain. It's the 00:13:34.059 --> 00:13:36.200 rope for the skylight. Pulls the whole thing 00:13:36.200 --> 00:13:38.899 down right on his head. Oh my God, serious. Seriously. 00:13:38.899 --> 00:13:41.480 Gives himself this massive gash, leaves a prominent 00:13:41.480 --> 00:13:43.220 forehead scar for the rest of his life. That's 00:13:43.220 --> 00:13:45.580 almost slapstick for this icon of masculinity. 00:13:46.100 --> 00:13:48.460 It's bizarre. But it kind of underscores that 00:13:48.460 --> 00:13:51.279 point the sources make. After leaving Paris in 00:13:51.279 --> 00:13:54.340 March 1928, Hemingway never again lived in a 00:13:54.340 --> 00:13:57.120 big city. He was seeking those wilder, more isolated 00:13:57.120 --> 00:13:59.620 places from then on. Hashtag, hashtag, hashtag 00:13:59.620 --> 00:14:02.639 three. Adventure, war, and for whom the bell 00:14:02.639 --> 00:14:06.000 tolls. 1928, 1940. Okay, so they leave Paris, 00:14:06.200 --> 00:14:08.059 head back to the States, settling in Key West 00:14:08.059 --> 00:14:11.379 eventually. But 1928 is a good year. Professionally 00:14:11.379 --> 00:14:14.399 good, personally devastating. Yeah, another one 00:14:14.399 --> 00:14:17.200 of those intense juxtapositions. His son Patrick 00:14:17.200 --> 00:14:19.039 is born that year. They're establishing this 00:14:19.039 --> 00:14:22.039 new life in Key West. But then, just six months 00:14:22.039 --> 00:14:25.830 later. December 1928. News comes about his father. 00:14:26.289 --> 00:14:28.409 Clarence. Yeah. Clarence had died by suicide, 00:14:28.649 --> 00:14:31.129 used his own father's Civil War pistol. Oh, wow. 00:14:31.289 --> 00:14:33.049 That must have hit Hemingway incredibly hard. 00:14:33.610 --> 00:14:35.889 Profoundly. The sources say he felt deeply responsible, 00:14:36.070 --> 00:14:37.970 worried about his father's mental state. And 00:14:37.970 --> 00:14:39.509 he made that chilling remark, didn't he? I'll 00:14:39.509 --> 00:14:41.779 probably go the same way. Prophetic, tragically. 00:14:41.820 --> 00:14:44.720 That knowledge, that shadow of hereditary mental 00:14:44.720 --> 00:14:47.419 instability, you feel it adds another layer of 00:14:47.419 --> 00:14:49.659 darkness to his work after that, don't you? You 00:14:49.659 --> 00:14:51.419 absolutely do. That specific kind of tragedy. 00:14:51.779 --> 00:14:54.919 But despite that immense personal blow, his career 00:14:54.919 --> 00:14:58.220 just hits a new high. He finishes A Farewell 00:14:58.220 --> 00:15:01.500 to Arms. Published in 1929. And this book really 00:15:01.500 --> 00:15:04.220 cements his reputation, right? Major American 00:15:04.220 --> 00:15:06.860 writer status. Undeniably. But think about the 00:15:06.860 --> 00:15:09.919 craft involved. He famously rewrote the ending. 00:15:10.399 --> 00:15:13.659 What was it? 17 times. 17 times. Why? What was 00:15:13.659 --> 00:15:16.299 he trying to get right? It speaks volumes about 00:15:16.299 --> 00:15:18.860 his obsession with realism, with emotional truth. 00:15:19.120 --> 00:15:21.279 He wasn't just fiddling with plot points. He 00:15:21.279 --> 00:15:24.360 was wrestling with fate, with tragedy itself. 00:15:24.659 --> 00:15:27.259 Okay. He needed that ending where Catherine Barkley 00:15:27.259 --> 00:15:29.440 and the baby die to feel absolutely inevitable, 00:15:29.659 --> 00:15:32.700 not just tacked on or melodramatic. Each rewrite 00:15:32.700 --> 00:15:35.720 was this attempt to find the perfect, cold, objective 00:15:35.720 --> 00:15:38.799 correlative for that specific kind of loss. The 00:15:38.799 --> 00:15:40.740 journalistic mind applying surgical precision 00:15:40.740 --> 00:15:42.679 to tragedy. That's a great way to put it, yeah. 00:15:42.779 --> 00:15:44.440 And that obsession with life and death, it carries 00:15:44.440 --> 00:15:46.500 right into his Key West research phase in the 00:15:46.500 --> 00:15:50.320 early 30s. Death in the Afternoon, 1932. This 00:15:50.320 --> 00:15:53.120 incredibly detailed, almost anthropological study 00:15:53.120 --> 00:15:55.559 of bullfighting. Which he saw as more than just 00:15:55.559 --> 00:15:58.000 a sport. Oh, much more. He called it of great 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:00.659 tragic interest being literally of life and death. 00:16:01.179 --> 00:16:03.100 For him, it was this ritualized confrontation 00:16:03.100 --> 00:16:06.039 with mortality. Grace under pressure, all that. 00:16:06.120 --> 00:16:08.870 And then he gets the boat, the pillar. 1934. 00:16:09.090 --> 00:16:12.110 Right. Buys the pillar, dives deep into deep 00:16:12.110 --> 00:16:14.649 sea fishing in the Caribbean. More solitude, 00:16:14.690 --> 00:16:17.990 more physical rigor. That constant need for authentic 00:16:17.990 --> 00:16:21.269 action seems like a necessary counterweight to 00:16:21.269 --> 00:16:23.190 the intense mental work of writing. And then 00:16:23.190 --> 00:16:27.649 comes Africa. The big safari. 1933. He and Pauline 00:16:27.649 --> 00:16:30.950 go on this 10 -week trip. Kenya. Tanganyika territory. 00:16:31.659 --> 00:16:34.159 And that one trip fuels a huge amount of writing. 00:16:34.320 --> 00:16:36.700 Tremendous output. The nonfiction Green Hills 00:16:36.700 --> 00:16:39.960 of Africa in 35. And two of his absolute classic 00:16:39.960 --> 00:16:43.120 short stories, The Woes of Kilimanjaro and The 00:16:43.120 --> 00:16:45.440 Short Happy Life of Francis McComber. A prolific 00:16:45.440 --> 00:16:47.980 time, but also dangerous, wasn't it? Always dangerous 00:16:47.980 --> 00:16:49.879 with Hemingway, it seems. During that safari, 00:16:49.899 --> 00:16:52.679 he gets amoebic dysentery. Really bad case. Leads 00:16:52.679 --> 00:16:54.960 to a prolapsed intestine. Had to be dramatically 00:16:54.960 --> 00:16:58.620 evacuated by plane. It's just another example 00:16:58.620 --> 00:17:00.919 of how his life was lived right on the edge. 00:17:01.389 --> 00:17:03.809 constantly gathering material through these brushes 00:17:03.809 --> 00:17:06.509 with serious illness or death. That restless 00:17:06.509 --> 00:17:08.549 energy doesn't keep him stateside for long, though. 00:17:08.769 --> 00:17:11.250 Soon he's back in a war zone. The Spanish Civil 00:17:11.250 --> 00:17:15.130 War. Starts covering it in 1937 for the North 00:17:15.130 --> 00:17:18.369 American Newspaper Alliance. And he sees its 00:17:18.369 --> 00:17:20.869 significance immediately, calls it an international 00:17:20.869 --> 00:17:23.289 testing ground for what's coming in Europe. And 00:17:23.289 --> 00:17:25.869 he's not alone there, is he? No. He's accompanied 00:17:25.869 --> 00:17:28.430 by Martha Gellhorn, the journalist. Who he'd 00:17:28.430 --> 00:17:31.539 met in Key West. Right. And Gellhorn was... Different. 00:17:32.019 --> 00:17:34.500 Sources suggest she never catered to him the 00:17:34.500 --> 00:17:36.640 way other women did, a real peer professionally. 00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:39.099 And that partnership turns romantic. Quickly. 00:17:39.519 --> 00:17:41.599 Leads to the end of his marriage with Pauline. 00:17:42.180 --> 00:17:45.019 Divorce is finalized, and he marries Martha in 00:17:45.019 --> 00:17:48.920 Wyoming in November 1940, his third wife. But 00:17:48.920 --> 00:17:51.400 Spain also caused a major rift with another writer 00:17:51.400 --> 00:17:53.759 friend, didn't it? John Dos Passos. Yeah, a really 00:17:53.759 --> 00:17:56.200 painful break. Hemingway was brought in to work 00:17:56.200 --> 00:17:58.140 on the screenplay for the propaganda film The 00:17:58.140 --> 00:18:00.500 Spanish Earth, essentially replacing Dos Passos. 00:18:00.859 --> 00:18:03.680 Why did Dos Passos leave? His friend and translator, 00:18:03.880 --> 00:18:06.460 Jose Robles, had been arrested and executed by 00:18:06.460 --> 00:18:09.420 Republican forces. Dos Passos felt Hemingway 00:18:09.420 --> 00:18:11.619 didn't do enough, didn't use his influence to 00:18:11.619 --> 00:18:14.039 help Robles. It created this huge ideological 00:18:14.039 --> 00:18:16.920 and personal split, permanent. While all this 00:18:16.920 --> 00:18:19.380 is happening, Madrid is under siege. Relentless 00:18:19.380 --> 00:18:21.779 bombardment. And in the midst of that, Hemingway 00:18:21.779 --> 00:18:24.829 writes his only play, The Fifth Column. But the 00:18:24.829 --> 00:18:27.450 real literary culmination of this period comes 00:18:27.450 --> 00:18:29.509 shortly after. He's dividing his time between 00:18:29.509 --> 00:18:32.329 his new home in Cuba, Finca Vigia, and Sun Valley, 00:18:32.509 --> 00:18:34.490 Idaho. And he writes For Whom the Bell Tolls. 00:18:34.630 --> 00:18:37.970 For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940. And it's a massive 00:18:37.970 --> 00:18:41.130 success. Huge. Immediate bestseller. Half a million 00:18:41.130 --> 00:18:43.529 copies sold in months. Biographers are clear. 00:18:43.910 --> 00:18:46.950 It triumphantly reestablished Hemingway's literary 00:18:46.950 --> 00:18:49.609 reputation. Showed that his lean style could 00:18:49.609 --> 00:18:52.230 absolutely handle epic themes, large -scale political 00:18:52.230 --> 00:18:55.269 drama. romance, profound questions about life 00:18:55.269 --> 00:18:57.089 and death. It pulls together all those threads, 00:18:57.210 --> 00:18:59.890 doesn't it? The WWI trauma, the power of nature, 00:19:00.029 --> 00:19:02.990 that idea of facing death with dignity. Exactly. 00:19:03.150 --> 00:19:05.650 A real synthesis of everything he'd experienced 00:19:05.650 --> 00:19:07.970 and learned up to that point. Hashtag, hashtag 00:19:07.970 --> 00:19:11.269 five, trauma, triumphs, and the final decades. 00:19:11.630 --> 00:19:15.740 1941, 1961. So Pearl Harbor happens December 00:19:15.740 --> 00:19:18.220 41. The U .S. is in World War II. Hemingway's 00:19:18.220 --> 00:19:20.799 living in Cuba at Fincavigia. And he can't just 00:19:20.799 --> 00:19:22.880 sit it out, obviously. No way. He jumps right 00:19:22.880 --> 00:19:26.339 in. But in his own, well, eccentric Hemingway 00:19:26.339 --> 00:19:29.240 fashion, he refits his beloved fishing boat, 00:19:29.359 --> 00:19:31.559 the Pilar. Into a what? A cue boat? What's that? 00:19:31.799 --> 00:19:33.740 A cue boat historically was like a decoy ship. 00:19:34.140 --> 00:19:36.480 a heavily armed vessel disguised as an ordinary 00:19:36.480 --> 00:19:39.019 merchant ship designed to lure enemy submarines, 00:19:39.359 --> 00:19:42.000 U -boats in this case, into close range and then 00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:44.359 attack them. So he turned his fishing boat into 00:19:44.359 --> 00:19:47.380 a submarine hunter. Pretty much. Patrolling the 00:19:47.380 --> 00:19:49.259 Caribbean looking for German U -boats. And on 00:19:49.259 --> 00:19:51.640 top of that, he sets up his own amateur counterintelligence 00:19:51.640 --> 00:19:53.880 unit, ran it out of his guest house, trying to 00:19:53.880 --> 00:19:56.539 surveil Nazi sympathizers in Havana. Okay, Hemingway 00:19:56.539 --> 00:19:58.920 the Q -boat captain and spymaster. It sounds 00:19:58.920 --> 00:20:00.420 like something straight out of his own fiction. 00:20:00.700 --> 00:20:02.660 Doesn't it? Yeah. And all this cloak and dagger 00:20:02.660 --> 00:20:06.140 stuff, interestingly, led to the FBI compiling 00:20:06.140 --> 00:20:10.259 this massive file on him. 124 pages. They monitored 00:20:10.259 --> 00:20:12.720 him pretty closely for years after that. Wow. 00:20:13.200 --> 00:20:14.960 Meanwhile, what's happened with Martha Gellhorn? 00:20:15.640 --> 00:20:17.960 The marriage. It's failing. Under the strain 00:20:17.960 --> 00:20:19.460 of their competing careers, there are different 00:20:19.460 --> 00:20:21.680 approaches to the war. She wanted him back in 00:20:21.680 --> 00:20:24.079 Europe as a correspondent. He was more into his 00:20:24.079 --> 00:20:27.480 war games in Cuba. Tensions rising. Big time. 00:20:28.099 --> 00:20:30.700 Sources say they fought frequently and bitterly. 00:20:30.799 --> 00:20:33.160 She finally had enough, left for Europe on her 00:20:33.160 --> 00:20:37.279 own in 43, demanded a divorce. So Hemingway eventually 00:20:37.279 --> 00:20:40.150 follows her to Europe. As a correspondent. Yeah, 00:20:40.210 --> 00:20:43.750 for Collier's Magazine in 1944. And it's in London, 00:20:43.809 --> 00:20:45.990 covering the war buildup, that he meets Mary 00:20:45.990 --> 00:20:48.769 Welsh. Time correspondent. Right. Starts an affair 00:20:48.769 --> 00:20:50.990 almost immediately. And sticking to that pattern 00:20:50.990 --> 00:20:52.849 we talked about. The preemptive strike. Asks 00:20:52.849 --> 00:20:54.450 her to marry him on their third meeting. Third 00:20:54.450 --> 00:20:56.589 meeting. Yep. His divorce from Martha becomes 00:20:56.589 --> 00:21:01.029 final, quite acrimoniously, in 1945. He marries 00:21:01.029 --> 00:21:04.490 Mary, his fourth and final wife, in 1946. But 00:21:04.490 --> 00:21:06.690 the war itself keeps taking a toll physically, 00:21:06.910 --> 00:21:10.390 doesn't it? Another head injury. A bad one. Just 00:21:10.390 --> 00:21:13.309 before D -Day, he's in a car accident in Blackout, 00:21:13.309 --> 00:21:16.710 London. Severe concussion needed 57 stitches 00:21:16.710 --> 00:21:19.130 in his head. And he still goes to cover the landings. 00:21:19.289 --> 00:21:21.789 Try Sue. He went with the troops heading for 00:21:21.789 --> 00:21:24.430 Normandy, bandage on his head, clearly suffering 00:21:24.430 --> 00:21:27.089 concussion symptoms. But the military brass, 00:21:27.329 --> 00:21:30.289 probably quite rightly, prevented him from actually 00:21:30.289 --> 00:21:32.839 going ashore. Too much of a liability. But he 00:21:32.839 --> 00:21:34.859 finds other ways to get close to the action. 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:37.700 Oh, yes. Later in the campaign in France, he 00:21:37.700 --> 00:21:40.299 kind of bends the rules, attaches himself to 00:21:40.299 --> 00:21:43.119 Colonel Charles Buck, Lanham's 22nd Infantry 00:21:43.119 --> 00:21:45.900 Regiment. And near Rambouillet, outside Paris, 00:21:46.119 --> 00:21:48.880 he becomes the sort of de facto leader of a small 00:21:48.880 --> 00:21:51.420 band of French resistance fighters, a village 00:21:51.420 --> 00:21:53.559 militia. Which is completely against the rules 00:21:53.559 --> 00:21:55.400 for a correspondent, right? Geneva Convention. 00:21:55.880 --> 00:21:58.319 Absolutely. Non -combatants aren't supposed to 00:21:58.319 --> 00:22:01.500 lead troops or engage in combat. He later beat 00:22:01.500 --> 00:22:04.099 the rap, as they say, by claiming he only offered 00:22:04.099 --> 00:22:07.059 advice. A pretty fine line. But his proximity 00:22:07.059 --> 00:22:09.740 to combat was real. He was definitely under fire. 00:22:09.920 --> 00:22:12.359 He was there for the liberation of Paris, even 00:22:12.359 --> 00:22:14.539 had a reconciliation with Gertrude Stein shortly 00:22:14.539 --> 00:22:17.579 before she died. And eventually, he was awarded 00:22:17.579 --> 00:22:21.140 a Bronze Star for bravery in 1947 for his service 00:22:21.140 --> 00:22:24.079 under fire in combat areas. So the war ends. 00:22:24.200 --> 00:22:27.000 What happens in the post -war period, creatively? 00:22:27.039 --> 00:22:30.400 It's a slump. A big one. He himself described 00:22:30.400 --> 00:22:32.839 it as being out of business as a writer from 00:22:32.839 --> 00:22:35.940 about 42 to 45. Right. He wrestled with these 00:22:35.940 --> 00:22:39.440 huge, ambitious projects that just stalled. The 00:22:39.440 --> 00:22:42.079 Garden of Eden, the Seabook. And this creative 00:22:42.079 --> 00:22:45.119 drought lines up with a physical decline. Exactly. 00:22:45.119 --> 00:22:47.039 His body was starting to really feel the effects 00:22:47.039 --> 00:22:49.990 of, well, everything. The sources list it all. 00:22:50.069 --> 00:22:52.490 The chronic heavy drinking making the impact 00:22:52.490 --> 00:22:54.490 of his previous head injuries worse. How many 00:22:54.490 --> 00:22:56.529 head injuries did he have by then? At least nine 00:22:56.529 --> 00:22:59.150 documented serious concussions or head traumas 00:22:59.150 --> 00:23:01.130 by this point led to severe headaches, high blood 00:23:01.130 --> 00:23:03.710 pressure, weight gain, eventually diabetes. He 00:23:03.710 --> 00:23:05.710 was paying the cumulative price for that hard 00:23:05.710 --> 00:23:07.630 -lived life. So getting back into writing was 00:23:07.630 --> 00:23:10.569 tough? Very tough. His next published novel, 00:23:10.750 --> 00:23:14.490 Across the River and Into the Trees, 1950. It 00:23:14.490 --> 00:23:16.809 was inspired by this placonic affair he had with 00:23:16.809 --> 00:23:19.829 a much younger woman, Adriana Ivancic, in Venice. 00:23:20.089 --> 00:23:22.970 And the critics hated it. Mostly, yeah. Pretty 00:23:22.970 --> 00:23:25.630 negative reviews, which absolutely infuriated 00:23:25.630 --> 00:23:28.289 him. And it seems, almost in direct response 00:23:28.289 --> 00:23:31.289 to that backlash, he channeled that energy and 00:23:31.289 --> 00:23:33.410 wrote the draft of The Old Man and the Sea. In 00:23:33.410 --> 00:23:35.690 just eight weeks. Just eight weeks. Published 00:23:35.690 --> 00:23:38.910 in 1952, he called it... The best I can write 00:23:38.910 --> 00:23:41.569 ever for all of my life. And this time, the reception 00:23:41.569 --> 00:23:43.990 was different. Totally different. The story of 00:23:43.990 --> 00:23:46.789 Santiago, the old Cuban fisherman, is an international 00:23:46.789 --> 00:23:49.609 sensation, a huge comeback, proved his mastery 00:23:49.609 --> 00:23:52.250 was still there, won him the Pulitzer Prize for 00:23:52.250 --> 00:23:55.529 fiction in 1953. But just when things seem back 00:23:55.529 --> 00:23:58.569 on track, Africa happens again, and it's almost 00:23:58.569 --> 00:24:00.569 unbelievable. It really is stranger than fiction. 00:24:00.710 --> 00:24:03.569 January 1954, he's on a sightseeing trip in Africa 00:24:03.569 --> 00:24:33.410 with Mary. What happened? Oh. Oh my God. Staggering. 00:24:33.769 --> 00:24:36.390 Hemingway, trapped inside this burning wreckage, 00:24:36.470 --> 00:24:39.490 has to physically smash his way out by battering 00:24:39.490 --> 00:24:41.630 the flimsy door open with his head. With his 00:24:41.630 --> 00:24:44.130 head? After already having multiple concussions? 00:24:44.450 --> 00:24:46.930 With his head. The injuries from this second 00:24:46.930 --> 00:24:49.730 crash were catastrophic. Fractured skull, two 00:24:49.730 --> 00:24:52.230 cracked spinal discs, ruptured kidney and liver, 00:24:52.369 --> 00:24:55.190 dislocated shoulder, and then later, adding insult 00:24:55.190 --> 00:24:57.490 to injury, he gets second -degree burns fighting 00:24:57.490 --> 00:24:59.630 a nearby bushfire. It's amazing he survived. 00:25:00.240 --> 00:25:02.319 Press thought he hadn't, right? Yeah. Obituaries 00:25:02.319 --> 00:25:04.180 were published worldwide. Everyone assumed he 00:25:04.180 --> 00:25:06.299 was dead after two plane crashes in two days. 00:25:06.420 --> 00:25:08.319 And while he's recovering from that. While he's 00:25:08.319 --> 00:25:11.460 still recuperating, October 1954, the news comes. 00:25:11.680 --> 00:25:14.220 He's won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Wow. 00:25:14.500 --> 00:25:17.079 Talk about timing. Receiving the highest literary 00:25:17.079 --> 00:25:20.140 honor just months after reading your own obituaries. 00:25:20.380 --> 00:25:23.190 It's incredibly poignant, isn't it? He was too 00:25:23.190 --> 00:25:26.430 ill, too injured to travel to Stockholm to accept 00:25:26.430 --> 00:25:28.789 it. But his acceptance speech, the one read for 00:25:28.789 --> 00:25:31.650 him, it's quite famous. It is. He reflects on 00:25:31.650 --> 00:25:34.970 the cost of being a writer, that isolation. He 00:25:34.970 --> 00:25:39.069 says, writing at its best is a lonely life. He 00:25:39.069 --> 00:25:41.309 grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness 00:25:41.309 --> 00:25:44.710 and often his work deteriorates for he does his 00:25:44.710 --> 00:25:48.039 work alone. perfectly captures that paradox doesn't 00:25:48.039 --> 00:25:50.160 it the world famous celebrity who believed fame 00:25:50.160 --> 00:25:52.740 was detrimental to the work itself the celebrated 00:25:52.740 --> 00:25:57.279 recluse exactly hashtag tv style themes and the 00:25:57.279 --> 00:25:59.660 tragic end okay so when we talk about hemingway's 00:25:59.660 --> 00:26:03.029 legacy The thing that lasts. We have to come 00:26:03.029 --> 00:26:05.349 back to his style, right? And that central idea. 00:26:05.529 --> 00:26:08.109 The iceberg theory, or as he sometimes called 00:26:08.109 --> 00:26:10.809 it, the theory of omission. It's absolutely foundational. 00:26:10.829 --> 00:26:12.630 You can't really understand his work without 00:26:12.630 --> 00:26:14.930 grasping this. Explain it again. It's like what 00:26:14.930 --> 00:26:17.549 you see is only a small part. Exactly. It's the 00:26:17.549 --> 00:26:19.269 perfect metaphor, isn't it? The visible stuff, 00:26:19.430 --> 00:26:21.369 the facts, the dialogue, the action, the objective 00:26:21.369 --> 00:26:23.589 descriptions. That's like the one eighth of the 00:26:23.589 --> 00:26:25.670 iceberg floating above the water. Right. But 00:26:25.670 --> 00:26:29.559 the other seven eighths. The real bulk, the meaning, 00:26:29.740 --> 00:26:32.539 the symbolism, the deep emotion, the backstory, 00:26:32.980 --> 00:26:36.880 all of that operates submerged, out of sight. 00:26:37.059 --> 00:26:39.119 And that's deliberate. The writer leaves things 00:26:39.119 --> 00:26:42.180 out. Deliberately. But crucially, the writer 00:26:42.180 --> 00:26:45.559 must omit things they know intimately. You can't 00:26:45.559 --> 00:26:47.400 omit something you don't understand yourself. 00:26:48.380 --> 00:26:51.099 That deep knowledge is what gives the sparse 00:26:51.099 --> 00:26:53.579 prose its weight, its resonance. So the reader 00:26:53.579 --> 00:26:56.079 has to do some work. The reader has to lean in. 00:26:56.960 --> 00:26:59.140 Participate. You have to feel those unstated 00:26:59.140 --> 00:27:01.480 things based on the clues provided by the visible 00:27:01.480 --> 00:27:04.099 part. And this whole theory, this structure, 00:27:04.240 --> 00:27:06.619 it forced it into that famous style. The short 00:27:06.619 --> 00:27:08.859 sentences. Clear, short, declarative sentences. 00:27:09.119 --> 00:27:12.230 Simple grammar. Almost childlike sometimes. Something 00:27:12.230 --> 00:27:14.349 like 70 % of his sentences are simple sentences 00:27:14.349 --> 00:27:16.890 lacking complex clauses. And that gave his writing 00:27:16.890 --> 00:27:18.990 that visual feel, didn't it? Almost cinematic. 00:27:19.329 --> 00:27:21.809 Very cinematic, and intentionally so. He talked 00:27:21.809 --> 00:27:24.069 about using techniques like cutting quickly between 00:27:24.069 --> 00:27:26.490 scenes or splicing images together, creating 00:27:26.490 --> 00:27:28.730 what he called a multifocal photographic reality. 00:27:29.009 --> 00:27:30.970 You can see the journalist's eye there. Absolutely. 00:27:31.509 --> 00:27:33.690 Translating directly into literary technique. 00:27:33.930 --> 00:27:37.049 Well, let's talk about emotion. Because the iceberg 00:27:37.049 --> 00:27:41.299 theory... Did it mean no emotion? That's the 00:27:41.299 --> 00:27:43.519 common misreading, isn't it? Early critics and 00:27:43.519 --> 00:27:45.039 even some followers thought he was trying to 00:27:45.039 --> 00:27:47.779 eliminate emotion, just focus on action on the 00:27:47.779 --> 00:27:50.220 surface. But no, that wasn't the intent at all. 00:27:50.400 --> 00:27:52.980 So what was the intent? The intent was to portray 00:27:52.980 --> 00:27:55.920 emotion realistically by relying on what the 00:27:55.920 --> 00:27:58.839 modernists like Pound and Elliott called objective 00:27:58.839 --> 00:28:01.779 correlatives. Objective correlatives. OK, meaning? 00:28:01.819 --> 00:28:05.029 Instead of saying he felt devastated. You show 00:28:05.029 --> 00:28:07.150 the character performing an action or observing 00:28:07.150 --> 00:28:09.650 an object that evokes that feeling in the reader. 00:28:09.789 --> 00:28:11.769 Like watching a cup shatter or just standing 00:28:11.769 --> 00:28:14.430 silently by a river like you said earlier. Exactly. 00:28:14.809 --> 00:28:17.289 The emotion is conveyed indirectly through this 00:28:17.289 --> 00:28:19.569 carefully chosen collage of objective images, 00:28:19.829 --> 00:28:22.849 facts, and actions. Hemingway felt that trying 00:28:22.849 --> 00:28:25.789 to describe emotion directly was maybe dishonest 00:28:25.789 --> 00:28:28.309 or just beyond him as a trained newspaper guy. 00:28:28.769 --> 00:28:30.890 He said the important thing was to know the sequence 00:28:30.890 --> 00:28:33.799 of motion and fact which made the emotion. So 00:28:33.799 --> 00:28:37.339 the iceberg theory was almost like literary armor, 00:28:37.539 --> 00:28:41.140 allowing him to deal with tough subjects indirectly. 00:28:41.559 --> 00:28:43.259 That's a really interesting way to think about 00:28:43.259 --> 00:28:46.900 it. Describing unspeakable trauma through action 00:28:46.900 --> 00:28:49.779 and implication rather than explicit emotional 00:28:49.779 --> 00:28:52.940 declaration. Okay, so using that technique, what 00:28:52.940 --> 00:28:55.640 were the big themes he kept returning to? Well, 00:28:55.680 --> 00:28:58.619 the recurring ones are pretty clear. Love. War, 00:28:58.880 --> 00:29:02.960 expatriation, wilderness loss. Nature, for instance, 00:29:03.079 --> 00:29:05.559 is huge. As a place for redemption. Often, yeah. 00:29:05.640 --> 00:29:08.380 A place for rebirth, for rest. Where characters, 00:29:08.500 --> 00:29:10.680 especially men, wounded physically or psychologically, 00:29:10.940 --> 00:29:14.059 can find solitude and maybe start to heal. Think 00:29:14.059 --> 00:29:15.779 of Nick Adams again in Big Two -Hearted River. 00:29:15.900 --> 00:29:17.900 And the focus is often on the act itself, right? 00:29:17.940 --> 00:29:20.119 The fishing, the hunting. The rigor, the discipline, 00:29:20.240 --> 00:29:22.240 the dignity found in the skilled act itself. 00:29:22.579 --> 00:29:25.079 Rather than just, say, winning or losing, it's 00:29:25.079 --> 00:29:26.920 about how you do it. And underpinning all of 00:29:26.920 --> 00:29:30.359 it. Death. Always. Death permeates his work. 00:29:30.759 --> 00:29:33.539 Characters often achieve authenticity or maybe 00:29:33.539 --> 00:29:36.220 redemption by how they face death with courage, 00:29:36.220 --> 00:29:38.519 with dignity. Right. Whether it's Francis McComber 00:29:38.519 --> 00:29:40.920 or a bullfighter in the ring or Santiago fighting 00:29:40.920 --> 00:29:43.559 the sharks. It's that idea that if the world 00:29:43.559 --> 00:29:46.579 is ultimately meaningless, as many modernists 00:29:46.579 --> 00:29:50.140 felt. Then the only real response is an authentic, 00:29:50.279 --> 00:29:53.319 courageous action in the face of that meaninglessness. 00:29:53.880 --> 00:29:56.359 Grace under pressure. OK, but we also touch on 00:29:56.359 --> 00:29:58.559 the gender stuff. Because that's been a big point 00:29:58.559 --> 00:30:00.940 of critique, hasn't it? Hugely contentious. Yeah. 00:30:01.160 --> 00:30:04.720 Early critics often praised his. male -centric 00:30:04.720 --> 00:30:07.180 world, saw the women sometimes falling into these 00:30:07.180 --> 00:30:09.880 archetypes, the castrator or the love slave. 00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:12.839 But later critics pushed back hard. Oh, absolutely. 00:30:13.099 --> 00:30:15.680 Later feminist critics especially characterized 00:30:15.680 --> 00:30:18.799 a lot of his work as deeply misogynistic. They 00:30:18.799 --> 00:30:20.319 point to the way characters like Brett Ashley 00:30:20.319 --> 00:30:22.960 in The Sun or Sars Rises are framed sometimes 00:30:22.960 --> 00:30:26.420 seen as this destructive dark woman goddess figure 00:30:26.420 --> 00:30:29.079 versus someone like Margot McComber in The Short 00:30:29.079 --> 00:30:31.380 Happy Life who's arguably presented as a kind 00:30:31.380 --> 00:30:34.009 of light woman that also... Potential murderous. 00:30:34.349 --> 00:30:37.089 It's complex and often uncomfortable. And the 00:30:37.089 --> 00:30:40.089 theme of emasculation comes up a lot, too. Constantly. 00:30:40.789 --> 00:30:43.789 Literal emasculation from war wounds, like Jake 00:30:43.789 --> 00:30:47.190 Barnes in The Sun, also rises. But also figurative 00:30:47.190 --> 00:30:50.069 emasculation in relationships. Critics often 00:30:50.069 --> 00:30:52.309 tie this directly to the broader cultural and 00:30:52.309 --> 00:30:54.650 psychological wounds of that post -WWI generation. 00:30:55.069 --> 00:30:58.009 Okay. Which brings us, sadly, to his final years. 00:30:58.880 --> 00:31:01.359 The decline. Yeah, the final struggle. They moved 00:31:01.359 --> 00:31:05.160 from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho in 1959. Castro was 00:31:05.160 --> 00:31:07.200 nationalizing property, but it also coincided 00:31:07.200 --> 00:31:09.599 with a really severe mental downturn for Hemingway. 00:31:09.700 --> 00:31:11.579 He was working on the Paris memoir then, wasn't 00:31:11.579 --> 00:31:14.460 he? A movable feast. Yes, shaping it from notebooks 00:31:14.460 --> 00:31:17.099 he'd rediscovered famously in trunks left at 00:31:17.099 --> 00:31:20.160 the Ritz Hotel in Paris back in 1956. A return 00:31:20.160 --> 00:31:22.559 to that formative time. But his mental state 00:31:22.559 --> 00:31:25.140 was deteriorating rapidly. Paranoia became overwhelming. 00:31:25.680 --> 00:31:28.099 He was absolutely convinced the FBI was actively 00:31:28.099 --> 00:31:31.259 monitoring him in Ketchum, tapping phones, intercepting 00:31:31.259 --> 00:31:33.920 mail. And the chilling thing is, they were, weren't 00:31:33.920 --> 00:31:36.720 they, to some extent? They were. As we mentioned, 00:31:36.880 --> 00:31:38.839 they had compiled a huge file on him over the 00:31:38.839 --> 00:31:41.400 years due to his Cuba activities and other things, 00:31:41.480 --> 00:31:44.259 and apparently surveillance did continue right 00:31:44.259 --> 00:31:47.259 up until his death. So some of his paranoia had 00:31:47.259 --> 00:31:49.779 a basis in reality, which must have made it even 00:31:49.779 --> 00:31:52.349 worse. And physically. Failing eyesight made 00:31:52.349 --> 00:31:55.049 writing incredibly difficult. He couldn't organize 00:31:55.049 --> 00:31:57.190 complex manuscripts like The Dangerous Summer, 00:31:57.329 --> 00:31:59.849 his account of the 1959 bullfighting season, 00:32:00.069 --> 00:32:02.089 just physically and mentally couldn't manage 00:32:02.089 --> 00:32:06.150 it. And then came the diagnosis. 1961. Hmm. Diagnosed 00:32:06.150 --> 00:32:08.569 with hereditary hemochromatosis. Which is? It's 00:32:08.569 --> 00:32:11.009 a genetic condition where your body absorbs too 00:32:11.009 --> 00:32:13.369 much iron from your diet. The iron builds up 00:32:13.369 --> 00:32:17.210 in your tissues, organs, liver, heart, pancreas, 00:32:17.210 --> 00:32:19.730 and crucially the brain. It leads to serious 00:32:19.730 --> 00:32:21.970 physical and mental deterioration over time. 00:32:22.170 --> 00:32:24.390 So you've got this genetic condition, plus the 00:32:24.390 --> 00:32:27.329 lifetime of heavy drinking, plus the head injuries. 00:32:27.450 --> 00:32:29.490 All those head injuries, nine or more serious 00:32:29.490 --> 00:32:31.809 concussions, battering his head against that 00:32:31.809 --> 00:32:34.950 plane door in Africa. Neuropsychiatrists looking 00:32:34.950 --> 00:32:37.230 back now widely believe he was suffering from 00:32:37.230 --> 00:32:40.309 chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE. Like athletes 00:32:40.309 --> 00:32:43.450 get. Exactly. A form of dementia caused by repeated 00:32:43.450 --> 00:32:46.869 brain trauma. It would have profoundly worsened 00:32:46.869 --> 00:32:48.950 his depression, paranoia, cognitive decline. 00:32:49.130 --> 00:32:51.730 A perfect storm, really. And the treatment they 00:32:51.730 --> 00:32:55.630 tried was controversial. Electroconsulsive therapy, 00:32:55.910 --> 00:32:59.630 ECT. He was admitted to the Mayo Clinic for severe 00:32:59.630 --> 00:33:02.150 depression and underwent multiple sessions, maybe 00:33:02.150 --> 00:33:05.750 as many as 15, in late 60 and early 61. And for 00:33:05.750 --> 00:33:09.690 a writer whose entire capital was his mind, his 00:33:09.690 --> 00:33:12.869 memory. It was devastating. He lamented it bitterly, 00:33:12.890 --> 00:33:15.150 said something like, what is the sense of ruining 00:33:15.150 --> 00:33:17.750 my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, 00:33:17.930 --> 00:33:20.690 and putting me out of business? He felt it destroyed 00:33:20.690 --> 00:33:23.509 his ability to write. And just days after being 00:33:23.509 --> 00:33:25.289 released from the Mayo Clinic the last time. 00:33:25.470 --> 00:33:28.509 July 10, 1961, just two days after getting home 00:33:28.509 --> 00:33:31.430 to catch him, he quite deliberately, as Mary 00:33:31.430 --> 00:33:33.920 later put it, took his favorite shotgun. and 00:33:33.920 --> 00:33:35.980 ended his life. Mirroring his father's suicide 00:33:35.980 --> 00:33:39.140 decades before. Tragically, yes. And that pattern 00:33:39.140 --> 00:33:41.640 continued in the family. His sister Ursula, his 00:33:41.640 --> 00:33:44.140 brother Lester. They also later died by suicide. 00:33:44.400 --> 00:33:46.660 A very dark thread running through the Hemingways. 00:33:46.859 --> 00:33:49.480 It's such a tragic end. But despite that, his 00:33:49.480 --> 00:33:53.599 influence, it's immense. Undeniable. That style. 00:33:54.200 --> 00:33:57.799 The lean, hard, athletic prose. You could argue 00:33:57.799 --> 00:34:00.440 it's the single biggest change, the most fundamental 00:34:00.440 --> 00:34:03.000 shift in American writing in the 20th century. 00:34:03.119 --> 00:34:05.440 You either copied it or reacted against it. Exactly. 00:34:05.460 --> 00:34:07.799 You couldn't ignore it. His stories, his way 00:34:07.799 --> 00:34:10.000 of seeing and writing, as the sources say, they're 00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:12.699 just unequivocally part of our cultural heritage 00:34:12.699 --> 00:34:15.590 now. Hashtag, tag, tag, outro. So we've really 00:34:15.590 --> 00:34:18.610 seen a life of just extreme contradictions, haven't 00:34:18.610 --> 00:34:21.590 we? Here's this man who craved grand adventure, 00:34:21.929 --> 00:34:25.650 danger, almost self -aggrandizing exploits, but 00:34:25.650 --> 00:34:28.610 wrote with the precision, the stripped down clinical 00:34:28.610 --> 00:34:31.250 focus of a journalist. Yeah. And the writer who 00:34:31.250 --> 00:34:34.809 chased fame, celebrity, became this huge public 00:34:34.809 --> 00:34:37.489 figure, yet constantly said he believed his work 00:34:37.489 --> 00:34:39.969 got worse as he lost that essential loneliness 00:34:39.969 --> 00:34:41.889 of the artist. It's fascinating. And the power 00:34:41.889 --> 00:34:44.530 of that work, I think. lies in how he managed 00:34:44.530 --> 00:34:46.650 to take the almost incomprehensible trauma of 00:34:46.650 --> 00:34:48.929 his time, the chaos of war, the betrayals of 00:34:48.929 --> 00:34:51.070 the body, the losses, and somehow give it form. 00:34:51.670 --> 00:34:54.690 Structured, powerful simplicity, using techniques 00:34:54.690 --> 00:34:56.889 like the iceberg theory. Giving objective shape 00:34:56.889 --> 00:34:58.670 to all that inner turmoil. That's it, exactly. 00:34:58.929 --> 00:35:01.469 So we really encourage you, if you revisit his 00:35:01.469 --> 00:35:04.949 work, maybe the sun also rises. Maybe the old 00:35:04.949 --> 00:35:07.869 man in the sea. Do it with this context in mind. 00:35:08.480 --> 00:35:10.800 Look for those wounds, the physical influences, 00:35:10.980 --> 00:35:14.199 the journalistic rigor behind every single carefully 00:35:14.199 --> 00:35:17.019 chosen simple sentence. See what's under the 00:35:17.019 --> 00:35:19.500 water. Yeah. And maybe here's a final provocative 00:35:19.500 --> 00:35:21.920 thought for you to mull over. We've talked about 00:35:21.920 --> 00:35:24.440 the iceberg theory, how its function was to convey 00:35:24.440 --> 00:35:26.960 powerful emotion through objective description, 00:35:27.139 --> 00:35:29.300 through facts and action. Right. Knowing what 00:35:29.300 --> 00:35:31.920 we now suspect about Hemingway struggles, the 00:35:31.920 --> 00:35:34.000 untreated physical trauma from head injuries, 00:35:34.260 --> 00:35:38.269 the CTE. the deep mental anguish? Does that legendary 00:35:38.269 --> 00:35:41.769 toughness of his style represent a kind of courageously 00:35:41.769 --> 00:35:45.610 faced truth? Or is it perhaps a masterful literary 00:35:45.610 --> 00:35:48.630 armor, something crafted specifically to conceal 00:35:48.630 --> 00:35:50.869 an overwhelming inner breakdown that he simply 00:35:50.869 --> 00:35:52.750 couldn't face or perhaps couldn't even articulate 00:35:52.750 --> 00:35:56.269 directly? Courage or concealment. Or maybe both. 00:35:56.409 --> 00:35:57.550 Maybe both. Something to think about.