![HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Autograph manuscript signed of the story "The Light of the World." [Nordquist L-Bar-T Ranch, Cooke, Montana, August 1932]. 24 pages, 4to and folio, pages 1-20 on good quality wove tan paper, 4to, 278 x 216 mm. (11 x 8½ in.), pages 21-24 on laid white paper, folio, 228 x 205 mm. (13 x 8 in.), all in dark pencil on rectos only, a working draft with extensive revisions by Hemingway, titled and signed ("Ernest Hemingway") by him in ink at beginning; most of top margin on first page irregularly torn away (presumably by Hemingway) and professionally renewed, first page and two others a little foxed, slight foxing to some other pages, each sheet in acid-free protective sleeve; the manuscript in very good condition.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2000/NYR/2000_NYR_09364_0301_000(011323).jpg?w=1)
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HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Autograph manuscript signed of the story "The Light of the World." [Nordquist L-Bar-T Ranch, Cooke, Montana, August 1932]. 24 pages, 4to and folio, pages 1-20 on good quality wove tan paper, 4to, 278 x 216 mm. (11 x 8½ in.), pages 21-24 on laid white paper, folio, 228 x 205 mm. (13 x 8 in.), all in dark pencil on rectos only, a working draft with extensive revisions by Hemingway, titled and signed ("Ernest Hemingway") by him in ink at beginning; most of top margin on first page irregularly torn away (presumably by Hemingway) and professionally renewed, first page and two others a little foxed, slight foxing to some other pages, each sheet in acid-free protective sleeve; the manuscript in very good condition.
"IT'S A LOVELY STORY": THE RECENTLY DISCOVERED MANUSCRIPT OF ONE OF HEMINGWAY'S PERSONAL FAVORITES AMONG HIS STORIES
Hemingway writes about finishing this story in a letter to Jane Mason of 27 August 1932 (sold in Christie's sale 10 December 1999, lot 182): "I have the manuscript, finally of 'The Light of the World' -- it's ready to send. Had to get it right and then copy it and the typewriter was busted [his wife Pauline prepared the typescript]. This is the original [presumably the very manuscript offered here]. Would enclose it now but reading it over it has so many words they do not print that you had better ask me for it. Then your blood is on your own head and I did not send you too rough a manuscript through the mail unsolicited. It has a lot or rather a few places that they won't print but it's a lovely story."
Hemingway's "lovely story" is a hard-boiled but elusive tale about two teenage boys, Nick Adams (unnamed) and Tom encountering adult low life in a small town in northern Michigan. After a disagreeable experience in a saloon, where Tom responds "Up your ass" to the bartender (changed to "You know where" in the published text), the boys go to the train station: "We'd come in that town at one end and we were going out the other. It smelled of hides and tan bark and the big piles of sawdust. It was getting dark as we came in, and now that it was dark it was cold and the puddles of water in the road were freezing at the edges. Down at the station there were five whores [the manuscript also has 'four' and 'a bunch of' scored through] waiting for the train to come in, and six white men [first 'six' and then 'three' crossed out] and four Indians [later in the manuscript mistakenly changed to 'three' -- Hemingway getting confused with the enumerations]. It was crowded and hot from the stove and full of stale smoke. As we came in nobody was talking and the ticket window was shut down." As soon as they enter, they notice a man [the cook] whose "face was white and [whose] hands were white and thin." Another man asks Nick Adams: "'Ever buggar a cook?'...'No.' 'You can buggar this one,' he looked at the cook. 'He likes it.'" ("Buggar" in the manuscript becomes "interfere with" in the printed version.) The boys then listen to an involved, black-humored argument between two of the whores (both enormously fat, named "Alice" and "Peroxide") as to which one knew and loved the boxer Steve Ketchel the best [confusing him with the "Great White Hope" fighter Stanley Ketchel]. At the end Nick has become interested in Alice and his friend Tom eases him out of the station. "'Which way are you boys going?' asks the cook. 'The other way from you,' Tom tells him." Hemingway biographer Michael Reynolds expresses the essence of "The Light of the World": "Night visitors in a surreal world of words without action, threats unrealized, temptations unanswered: it was an enigmatic story whose center lay just beyond definition" (Hemingway: The 1930s, p. 97).
The manuscript has revisions (in the same dark pencil, and then again in a slightly lighter pencil) by Hemingway on all but five pages. All of the deleted or changed words, phrases, or lines are very readable under the pencil scorings, showing the great pains Hemingway took with his writing and underlining his constant focusing on the subtlest details. Aside from the revisions noted above, one of the most important occurs in the very first line of the manuscript where Hemingway provides for the character Tom's presence in the story: "When he saw me (emended to us] come in the door..."
"The Light of the World" was rejected by Scribner's Magazine when Hemingway submitted it; the new editor, Alfred Dashiell, felt it was too raw for its readers. The story was first published in Winner Take Nothing (New York: Scribner's, 1933). Hemingway wanted to lead off this third collection of stories (issued 27 October) with "The Light of the World," but Max Perkins dissuaded him, suggesting "After the Storm" as an alternative. "Hemingway capitulated, despite his continuing fondness for the great whore named Alice and his belief that what he had written was far better than 'La Maison Tellier' of Maupassant" (Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, New York: Avon Books, 1980, p. 309). In his introduction (written 1938) to The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway the author lists the stories "I liked the best, outside of those that have achieved some notoriety so that school teachers include them in story collections...'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,' 'In Another Country,' 'Hills Life White Elephants,' 'A Way You'll Never Be,' 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro,' 'A Clean Well-Lighted Place,' and a story called 'The Light of the World' which nobody else ever liked."
For a checklist of critical readings of "The Light of the World," see New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, edited by Jackson J. Benson (Durham: Duke University Presss, 1990). The only other manuscripts of the story are in the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library (Young and Mann 63A-B): a four-page manuscript in pencil (paginated 23-26), being a rejected "draft for conclusion of the story"; and a "typescript [prepared by Pauline], late draft, sparse ink corrections, seven pages."
With the Kennedy Library holding the vast majority of the Hemingway papers, and nearly all of the other manuscripts in institutional libraries, autograph manuscripts of his fiction have long been virtually unprocurable. With the discovery of those for this story and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (see following lot), the autograph manuscripts of his short stories are now all accounted for. THESE ARE THEREFORE THE ONLY AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPTS OF HEMINGWAY'S FICTION AVAILABLE.
"IT'S A LOVELY STORY": THE RECENTLY DISCOVERED MANUSCRIPT OF ONE OF HEMINGWAY'S PERSONAL FAVORITES AMONG HIS STORIES
Hemingway writes about finishing this story in a letter to Jane Mason of 27 August 1932 (sold in Christie's sale 10 December 1999, lot 182): "I have the manuscript, finally of 'The Light of the World' -- it's ready to send. Had to get it right and then copy it and the typewriter was busted [his wife Pauline prepared the typescript]. This is the original [presumably the very manuscript offered here]. Would enclose it now but reading it over it has so many words they do not print that you had better ask me for it. Then your blood is on your own head and I did not send you too rough a manuscript through the mail unsolicited. It has a lot or rather a few places that they won't print but it's a lovely story."
Hemingway's "lovely story" is a hard-boiled but elusive tale about two teenage boys, Nick Adams (unnamed) and Tom encountering adult low life in a small town in northern Michigan. After a disagreeable experience in a saloon, where Tom responds "Up your ass" to the bartender (changed to "You know where" in the published text), the boys go to the train station: "We'd come in that town at one end and we were going out the other. It smelled of hides and tan bark and the big piles of sawdust. It was getting dark as we came in, and now that it was dark it was cold and the puddles of water in the road were freezing at the edges. Down at the station there were five whores [the manuscript also has 'four' and 'a bunch of' scored through] waiting for the train to come in, and six white men [first 'six' and then 'three' crossed out] and four Indians [later in the manuscript mistakenly changed to 'three' -- Hemingway getting confused with the enumerations]. It was crowded and hot from the stove and full of stale smoke. As we came in nobody was talking and the ticket window was shut down." As soon as they enter, they notice a man [the cook] whose "face was white and [whose] hands were white and thin." Another man asks Nick Adams: "'Ever buggar a cook?'...'No.' 'You can buggar this one,' he looked at the cook. 'He likes it.'" ("Buggar" in the manuscript becomes "interfere with" in the printed version.) The boys then listen to an involved, black-humored argument between two of the whores (both enormously fat, named "Alice" and "Peroxide") as to which one knew and loved the boxer Steve Ketchel the best [confusing him with the "Great White Hope" fighter Stanley Ketchel]. At the end Nick has become interested in Alice and his friend Tom eases him out of the station. "'Which way are you boys going?' asks the cook. 'The other way from you,' Tom tells him." Hemingway biographer Michael Reynolds expresses the essence of "The Light of the World": "Night visitors in a surreal world of words without action, threats unrealized, temptations unanswered: it was an enigmatic story whose center lay just beyond definition" (Hemingway: The 1930s, p. 97).
The manuscript has revisions (in the same dark pencil, and then again in a slightly lighter pencil) by Hemingway on all but five pages. All of the deleted or changed words, phrases, or lines are very readable under the pencil scorings, showing the great pains Hemingway took with his writing and underlining his constant focusing on the subtlest details. Aside from the revisions noted above, one of the most important occurs in the very first line of the manuscript where Hemingway provides for the character Tom's presence in the story: "When he saw me (emended to us] come in the door..."
"The Light of the World" was rejected by Scribner's Magazine when Hemingway submitted it; the new editor, Alfred Dashiell, felt it was too raw for its readers. The story was first published in Winner Take Nothing (New York: Scribner's, 1933). Hemingway wanted to lead off this third collection of stories (issued 27 October) with "The Light of the World," but Max Perkins dissuaded him, suggesting "After the Storm" as an alternative. "Hemingway capitulated, despite his continuing fondness for the great whore named Alice and his belief that what he had written was far better than 'La Maison Tellier' of Maupassant" (Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, New York: Avon Books, 1980, p. 309). In his introduction (written 1938) to The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway the author lists the stories "I liked the best, outside of those that have achieved some notoriety so that school teachers include them in story collections...'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,' 'In Another Country,' 'Hills Life White Elephants,' 'A Way You'll Never Be,' 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro,' 'A Clean Well-Lighted Place,' and a story called 'The Light of the World' which nobody else ever liked."
For a checklist of critical readings of "The Light of the World," see New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, edited by Jackson J. Benson (Durham: Duke University Presss, 1990). The only other manuscripts of the story are in the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library (Young and Mann 63A-B): a four-page manuscript in pencil (paginated 23-26), being a rejected "draft for conclusion of the story"; and a "typescript [prepared by Pauline], late draft, sparse ink corrections, seven pages."
With the Kennedy Library holding the vast majority of the Hemingway papers, and nearly all of the other manuscripts in institutional libraries, autograph manuscripts of his fiction have long been virtually unprocurable. With the discovery of those for this story and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (see following lot), the autograph manuscripts of his short stories are now all accounted for. THESE ARE THEREFORE THE ONLY AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPTS OF HEMINGWAY'S FICTION AVAILABLE.