Podcast Notes — Ernest Hemingway
Podcast Title: ERNEST HEMINGWAY: HOW PAIN AND PSYCHOSIS BROUGHT DOWN THE MAN EVERYONE CALLED PAPA!
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So what happened to Ernest Hemingway that led to his death in July of 1961, when he was 61 years old? I didn’t know that it was by suicide, and I also didn’t know the circumstances surrounding the last few years of his life leading up to that suicidal moment, circumstances that encompass his own father, the FBI, the Mayo Clinic, and Fidel Castro…..
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[AUDIO CLIP SEGMENT — Excerpt from Hemingway’s Nobel prize acceptance speech]
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In late 1954 Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Some say that it’s because the world thought he was dead, lost in a plane crash earlier that year. In fact, Hemingway had survived, and modestly, in his acceptance speech, said, “No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the prize, can accept it other than with humility…according to his knowledge and his conscience.”
A few years previous he’d written perhaps his greatest work, The Old Man and the Sea. For all accounts, one would expect Hemingway to be on the top of his game. Seven years later he was to take his own life with his favourite shotgun in the front hall of his home in Ketchum, Idaho, USA.
SEGMENT 1 — Explaining how the I stumbled across the detail
In creating this episode, I struggled and it has taken me a long time to piece it together. This being one of the first episodes, I had to really think about the purpose behind the podcast. It is to share knowledge that is uncovered as I go about the day-to-day. Things I feel I should have known. The thinking is perhaps I’m not the only person, and by sharing these stories about people, places, and events there will be others who can benefit. Perhaps there’s going to be some eye-rolling and a pedantic tone. I know I’ve felt that way sometimes listening to others. Sorry about that!
My other purpose, however, is to document new learning for myself, as a way to grasp hold of knowledge that so often slips through my fingers and disappears downstream. It’s my net that let’s me haul my catch to the bank.
This then is the primary purpose of the podcast, and all episodes that follow. Should others benefit then that’s a bonus along the way. I hope that is so.
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I came across the basic fact of Hemingway’s suicide while reading Neil Peart’s “Ghost Rider”. Peart was the drummer behind Canadian rock ‘n roll band RUSH that began playing in the 1970’s. The band was still active up until 2015, when Peart retired from playing due to health issues. “Ghost Writer” documents Peart’s 14 month solo motorcycle journey from Quebec to British Columbia, south through the United States, and on to Central America. He’d created the memoir following the double tragedy of losing first his daughter, and then his wife, in 1998.
I love RUSH, and adventure motorcycling, and I bought the book several months ago, but had not committed to it. Then in January 2020 Peart passed away due to brain cancer, and regrettably I picked up the book again.
About a third of the way into his odyssey Peart documents his journey throug Idaho:
Next morning, I started out riding eastward on the Sun Valley …… (p.122)
LIke many, I’d read Hemingway, and Old Man and the Sea is a staple high school English class around the world. I need to know more.
SEGMENT 2 — The the 4w’s of the detail (who, what, when, where)
As Peart explained, Hemingway took his life in 1961. It was in fact July 2nd, and the culmination of several years or pain in which Hemingway’s life had lost all that mattered to him.
Looking back, the time period of the Nobel award, 1954, marked the beginning of the end for Hemingway.
SEGMENT 3 — Elaborate and explore the WHY/HOW of the detail
Hemingway, it would seem, was lucky to be alive at all to accept his nobel prize. Throughout his life Hemingway was well acquainted with pain. Car accidents had broken bones, he suffered dysentry, anthrax, and injured his skull in a mishap at his apartment in Paris. But The list of accidents and injuries in 1954 are astounding:
- While on expedition in the Belgian Congo Hemingway survived two plane crashes within a week of each other, with burns, two cracked discs, a kidney and his liver was ruptured, he had a dislocated shoulder and a broken skull.
- Then, a few months later, still not fully recovered but on a fishing trip he was caught up in a brush fire, and again severe burns covered much of his body
- The illnesses that had plagued him earlier in life returned in late 1955 and Hemingway was bedridden for several months, recovering from liver damage brought on by heavy drinking — and although he’d been told to take it easy, the advise didn’t hold
- trip to Europe later in 1956 and again illness — high blood pressure, liver disease, and arteriosclerosis
→ From 1957–1959 Hemingway began work on several novels, following on from the discovery of some old notebooks and outlines he’d left in a trunk at a Paris hotel 30 years ago — he dragged that trunk to his winter home in Cuba — it had been in Cuba, in 1939, where he’d written For Whom the Bell Tolls (though Hemingway did travel frequently between residences in the US, Cuba and Europe.
→ but in ‘58-’59 Hemingway fell into depression — Castro meanwhile had been threatening to national property and assets in Cuba belonging to Americans, and Hemingway and his 4th wife — Mary Welsh moved to their summer home in Ketchum, Idaho
→ but he remained on good terms with the Castro gov’t, (during WWII had assisted the Cubans with their defense against German u-Boat attacks) — he’d even left behind three of the novels he’d attempted but struggled with, with the idea to return to them at a later date — these have never been recovered as Castro followed through on nationalization after the Bay of Pigs invasion attempt in April of 1961
→ by the fall of 1960 Hemingway’s depression gradually became worse, and paranoia began to set in — he believed the FBI had been following his movements, and there was some truth to this as later documents were to reveal Hemingway was under suspicion due to this association with Castro
→ in the midst of this depression and paranoia Hemingway struggled to write, and the prolific man who had penned 80,000+ word novels had trouble writing a simple reply to an invite to attend the inauguration of JFK
→ December and January saw his condition worsen, and Mary Welsh along with personal physician George Saviers decided on a trip to the MAYO Clinic — where Hemingway underwent Electroconvulsive therapy — where 70–120 volts of electricity was repeatedly shot through his brain
→ this was repeated in April of 1961 when Mary “found Hemingway holding a shotgun” in the kitchen one morning. A few months later he was to finally able to bring his pain to an end.
→ It’s since been suspected that Hemingway’s decline in health in the fall of 1960 was due to hemochromatosis, an inability of the body to process iron — leading to severe mental and physical deterioration. Incredibly, Hemingway’s father had also taken his own life, as had Hemingaway’ sister Ursula and brother Leicester
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- Closing remarks
I suspect that had today’s advances in medical and psychiatric knowledge been around, Ernest Hemingway would have survived through the illnesses, and perhaps finished those stories that were locked inside his mind. I can only wonder about the agony he must have felt and the fear he underwent. We’re so lucky today, in 2020, even as we deal with this Coronavirus pandemic, to have modern science come to the rescue. I’ve certainly learned, however, never to take anything for granted, and to hold great empathy for those struggling with mental illnesses.
- Calls to action (book recommendation that’s connects, also ask for feedback)
- Thanks for listening to the show. I hope you learned something through, this, I know I did.
Thanks!
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SHOW NOTES
A brief excerpt from Hemingway’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HemingwayNobelSpeechIntro.ogg
