AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Narrator

Peter Kelly Sounds Off with…

AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH ERNEST HEMINGWAY

“What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.”

                                                                                Logan Pearsall Smith

Ernest Hemingway

Kelly

Mr Hemingway you will be interested to know that in 1978 a minor planet was named after you…3656 Hemingway. It was discovered by the Russian astronomer Nikolai Chernykh.

Hemingway

I always did like Russian vodka.

Kelly

Would it also interest you to know that your books and short stories are still read in the year 2013?

Hemingway

I’m more interested in knowing where my commissions are going.

Kelly

Perhaps you could comment on your writing style which is so controversial.

Hemingway

I like to write in short sentences with short words about big fish, big cats and big chested women.

Kelly

Can you tell us why women don’t seem to universally admire you?

Hemingway

I drink a lot, often come home smelling of big game, and smoke smelly cigars.

Kelly

One of your most famous short stories is titled, The Killers. Why is it so successful?

Hemingway

Well, it’t a good thriller. Anybody can follow the plot. The whole pre story story is left out.

Kelly

Is that one of your literary devices? To leave much of the story in the subtext?

Hemingway

Yeah. You know it’s the iceberg theory.

Kelly

What’s that?

Hemingway

I just put in the facts… float them above the water and leave my symbolism to operate out of sight.

Kelly

You describe one thing even though something quite different is occurring below the surface.

Hemingway

Right. My readers figure things out for themselves.

Kelly

You have that hardboiled style…different than much of your so called Lost Generation contemporaries.

Hemingway

Kelly, what News Service are you from again?

Kelly

Peter Kelly Sounds Off

Hemingway

Is that a newspaper or what?

Kelly

We don’t do newspapers in 2103. We do blogging.

Hemingway

What the hell is a blog?

Kelly

A blog is a portmanteau of the term web log. It’s a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries or posts typically displayed in reverse chronological order..the most recent post appears first.

Hemingway

Well, you can have your blog webshit. What about books? I suppose you’ve dumped them too?

Kelly

We have e books, but lets not go there.

Kelly

What writer inspired you the most?

Hemingway

I would say, Joyce. Pound introduced him to me. Joyce and I were drinking buddies. He had a profound effect on me.

James Joyce

Kelly

How is that?

Hemingway

I told myself I had to do something much different than Joyce because I could never compete with that Irishman.

Kelly

You mean you chose the short pithy writing style vs Joyce’s verbosity?

Hemingway

Yeah.

Kelly

Do you think you were ever influenced by Freud’s concept of the preconscious and subconscious leading to stream of consciousness writing exemplified by the Molly Bloom soliloquy in Joyce’s, Ulysses and the works of another of your contemporaries, William Faulkner or the works of the cubist painters Braque and Picasso and …

Geroges Braque

Hemingway

(over)

Yeah, but I put it underwater.

Kelly

You were also a contemporary of Scott Fitzgerald. What was your impression of him?

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Hemingway

He was one of those Ivy Leaguers obsessed with wealth and social classes. But I liked Scottie.

Kelly

When you met he was already more famous… with Gatsby published…

Hemingway

That’s right. But when Scottie died I was better known than he was and at least as famous as Gatsby.

Kelly

Ah, OK, how about William Faulkner?

Hemingway

He didn’t think much of me. He said no one reading my stuff ever had to use a dictionary.

Kelly

You were part of Gertrude Stein’s so called post war expatriate generation.

Gertrude Stein

Hemingway

She had some good soirees all right. That’s how I got to meet Ezra and Pablo. We all called her, “Le Stein.” She actually had two Renoirs and a Gauguin on her walls.

Kelly

Were the soirees fun for you?

Hemingway

I never was very happy in her place. Bull in the china shop. She had all those doilies and lace curtains. Coffee served in demitasses. She always had me scrape my boots before I came in. She used big words like, obfuscation.

Kelly

Were you drunk most of the time when you were writing?

Hemingway

I can’t remember.

Kelly

There is a story that while you were in Paris you suffered a severe head injury when you pulled a skylight down on your head thinking you were pulling on a toilet chain. Is that true or just folklore or perhaps a story circulated by Gertrude Stein after your falling out with her?

Hemingway

I can’t remember.

Kelly

You had several wives. Were you simply not macho enough to keep them happy?

Hemingway

What they all wanted was some nine to five guy in a suit and tie who could take orders from the wife and do the dishes.

Kelly

That sounds like an oversimplification.

Hemingway

I loved all four of my wives.

Kelly

One last question.

Hemingway

Ok, make it quick. I have a plane to catch

Kelly

Your readers would like to know how you got inspiration for your stories?

Hemingway

Mostly from my travels and drinking buddies. Like the bull fighting stuff was from time I spent at my Marriott Time Share in Pamplona. The big game stuff came from visiting my Hyatt Time Share in San Diego which was near the zoo.

Kelly

That’s disillusioning. Maybe I’ll leave this out of the interview.

Kelly

Finally Mr Hemingway do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Hemingway

I would say write something about which you have first hand knowledge. Keep it earthy and believable. Eschew big words and long sentences.

Kelly

Anything else?

Hemingway

Yeah.

“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.”

Kelly

Incidentally where are you off to?

Hemingway

Back to Pamplona for a reunion with my Left Bank buddies. We like to get together every year for a few bottles of vino and to compare the latest wives but mostly to run with the bulls.

Kelly

Yes, that fits.

__________________________________________

Narrator

Ernest Hemingway participated in the WW11 D Day landings during the invasion of France both as a correspondent and a combatant. On one occasion he threw three grenades into a bunker killing several SS officers. He subsequently was awarded a Bronze Star. He died in 1961. The good reader will readily understand that the writer has, in some cases, played with historical fact.

Ernest Hemingway