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HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Two typed letters signed ("Ernest Hemingway") to the English critic John Atkins, Finca Vigia, San Francisco de Paula, Cuba, 24 October 1951 and 28 December 1952. Together 6 densely typed pages, 4to, single-spaced, on Hemingway's onion-skin stationery with his address imprinted in red at top of each sheet, with about 110 words of revisions and insertions in ink in Hemingway's hand mostly in the margins (one 42-word insertion initialed by him); in fine condition.
"I LIKE...'THE SUN ALSO RISES,' 'A FAREWELL TO ARMS' AND 'FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS' EQUALLY WELL"
Excellent and richly literary letters to the critic who wrote The Art of Ernest Hemingway (London, 1962), one of the earliest books on the author. 24 October 1951 (Hemingway expounds at length on criticism in general and why he has normally refused to cooperate with critics, explains Across the River and into the Trees, and gives his opinion of his own works): "...I like the three novels The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls equally well. You should not ask me to judge them as I would not have published any of them if they were not the best thing that I could write at that time. When I wrote the first two novels I had not learned to write in the third person. The first person gives you great intimacy in attempting to give a complete sense of experience to the reader. It is limited however and in the third person the novelist can work in other people's heads and in other people's country...I prepared myself for writing in the third person by the discipline of writing Death in the Afternoon; the short stories, and especially the long short stories of 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber' and 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro' I put in and deliberately used up what could have made many novels to see how far it was possible to concentrate in a medium..."
26 December 1952 (Hemingway compliments Atkins on the book, which he finished reading during the writing of this letter, tells of his role in World War II, explains facets of Across the River and into the Trees in detail, writes of painters, and gives pungent views of other writers): "...I like Malcolm Cowley...I tried, truly, to like [Stephen] Spender but I couldn't. I have only seen [W.H.] Auden but I don't think I could like him. I like Cyril Connolly very much but he doesn't like me because I fight and he thinks I have megolamania...But I don't mind his vices which are pride, gluttony and snobbery...[James] Joyce had many vices: drunken-ness, unholy conceit, fear, pride, jealousy; but he was the best friend and best companion I ever had except George Brown, who is a boxer...I learned some good sound things from G. Stein. She learned to write dialogue from me and that made her bitter. Sherwood A. [Anderson] I do not think I learned very much from except a certain easing of the tension in the language. After I had learned that I had to learn to tighten it up again. Sherwood was such a charming, preposterous fake that he embarrassed me after the first few times I saw him...He was kind but he had the slimy, lying kindness of the sort of character that gives candy to little children for the wrong purposes... Gertrude [Stein] was a good friend of mine and she would only lie when Alice Toklas made her do so. She and I were very good friends and Toklas could not stand it. Gertrude was a lesbian and she explained all about it to me and how what they did was not a thing which gave them remorse because of the nature of the act and so on as though I had never lived in a whore house and heard this from so many people. But Gertrude and I were good friends and vice is anyone's personal affair...Gertrude, until she had change of life, was never a true lesbian. After change of life she became a patriotic lesbian. This for education and amusement if any..." Not in Letters, ed. C. Baker, and apparently unpublished.
Provenance: Jonathan Goodwin (sale Part 3, Sotheby's, New York, 12 April 1978, lot 723). (2)
"I LIKE...'THE SUN ALSO RISES,' 'A FAREWELL TO ARMS' AND 'FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS' EQUALLY WELL"
Excellent and richly literary letters to the critic who wrote The Art of Ernest Hemingway (London, 1962), one of the earliest books on the author. 24 October 1951 (Hemingway expounds at length on criticism in general and why he has normally refused to cooperate with critics, explains Across the River and into the Trees, and gives his opinion of his own works): "...I like the three novels The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls equally well. You should not ask me to judge them as I would not have published any of them if they were not the best thing that I could write at that time. When I wrote the first two novels I had not learned to write in the third person. The first person gives you great intimacy in attempting to give a complete sense of experience to the reader. It is limited however and in the third person the novelist can work in other people's heads and in other people's country...I prepared myself for writing in the third person by the discipline of writing Death in the Afternoon; the short stories, and especially the long short stories of 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber' and 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro' I put in and deliberately used up what could have made many novels to see how far it was possible to concentrate in a medium..."
26 December 1952 (Hemingway compliments Atkins on the book, which he finished reading during the writing of this letter, tells of his role in World War II, explains facets of Across the River and into the Trees in detail, writes of painters, and gives pungent views of other writers): "...I like Malcolm Cowley...I tried, truly, to like [Stephen] Spender but I couldn't. I have only seen [W.H.] Auden but I don't think I could like him. I like Cyril Connolly very much but he doesn't like me because I fight and he thinks I have megolamania...But I don't mind his vices which are pride, gluttony and snobbery...[James] Joyce had many vices: drunken-ness, unholy conceit, fear, pride, jealousy; but he was the best friend and best companion I ever had except George Brown, who is a boxer...I learned some good sound things from G. Stein. She learned to write dialogue from me and that made her bitter. Sherwood A. [Anderson] I do not think I learned very much from except a certain easing of the tension in the language. After I had learned that I had to learn to tighten it up again. Sherwood was such a charming, preposterous fake that he embarrassed me after the first few times I saw him...He was kind but he had the slimy, lying kindness of the sort of character that gives candy to little children for the wrong purposes... Gertrude [Stein] was a good friend of mine and she would only lie when Alice Toklas made her do so. She and I were very good friends and Toklas could not stand it. Gertrude was a lesbian and she explained all about it to me and how what they did was not a thing which gave them remorse because of the nature of the act and so on as though I had never lived in a whore house and heard this from so many people. But Gertrude and I were good friends and vice is anyone's personal affair...Gertrude, until she had change of life, was never a true lesbian. After change of life she became a patriotic lesbian. This for education and amusement if any..." Not in Letters, ed. C. Baker, and apparently unpublished.
Provenance: Jonathan Goodwin (sale Part 3, Sotheby's, New York, 12 April 1978, lot 723). (2)