Carnivore Dreams – Hemingway

Papa.

Most photos of Hemingway are of him middle-aged or old, with the white beard, or at the prime of his life with a huge Marlin fish or gun in his hand. But I like to think of him young, when all about who he was and who he became was forming — when he was hurt as all of us are — and what led to not only his fine writing, but his mistakes and regrets. I’m re-reading A Moveable Feast, arguably my favorite Hemingway book. Though his fiction was always autobiographical, this, of course, is nonfiction.

He says of his first wife Hadley when returning from a trist with his soon to be second wife, Pauline: ”When I saw my wife . . . at the station, I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.”

And I suspect that was one of the things…