A tale of two Hemingways - photo 1

A tale of two Hemingways

Lot 190
07.12.2022 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
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$ 7 560
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
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Archive
ID 859709
Lot 190 | A tale of two Hemingways
Estimate value
$ 7 000 – 9 000
HEMINGWAY, Ernest (1899-1961), MEYERSON, Harvey (b. 1937). An archive concerning Meyerson's 1959 interview with Hemingway. [Includes:] MEYERSON, Harvey. Typescript of interview with Hemingway, [Ketchum, San Francisco de Paula and Evanston, March to April 1959]. With autograph corrections and emendations by Ernest HEMINGWAY. – HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Autograph letter signed ("Ernest Hemingway" and "EH") to Harvey Meyerson, San Francisco de Paula, 9 April 1959. With an autograph endorsement by Mary HEMINGWAY. – HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Autograph letter signed ("Ernest Hemingway") to Harvey Meyerson, Madrid, 25 May 1959. – HEMINGWAY, Mary (1908-1986). Autograph note signed ("Mary Hemingway”) to Harvey Meyerson, [San Francisco de Paula,] 9 April 1959. – HEMINGWAY, Ernest. The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, [1954]. Inscribed by Hemingway on the front endpaper, "To Harvey Meyerson best luck always from his friend Ernest Hemingway Ketchum 1959."

Typescript: 11 pages, 280 x 218mm (mild toning in spots and some corners dog-eared; autograph letters: 3 pages total, 278 x 214mm; autograph note: one page, 151 x 101mm (light toning). Book: Octavo (170 x 135mm). Cloth boards (top of spine chipped, light soiling).

"Hemingway serious and Hemingway laughing look like two different people."

Ernest Hemingway gives one of the last interviews of his life to a young journalism student who would
meet again with the author in Spain during the summer of 1959. This student, Harvey Meyerson, was mentioned (but misidentified) in A.E. Hotchner's memoirs. Meyerson contacted Hemingway as part of an assignment sponsored by Reader's Digest to conduct an interview that involved traveling to a distant location. Relishing a challenge, he sought out Ernest Hemingway for an interview. After several attempts he made contact with the author in Ketchum and Meyerson travelled to Idaho in early March 1959, spending two days with Ernest and Mary that concluded with an invitation to visit in Pamplona that July. After completing his typescript of the interview, which covered topics as diverse as hunting, Fidel Castro, travel plans, daily life in Ketchum and Hemingway's current writing projects, Meyerson sent it to Hemingway, who by late March had decamped to Cuba.

Returning the typescript interview with copious notes and corrections, Hemingway added in his letter of enclosure (9 April 1959) that the "piece is excellent - written well and clearly and with talent. Mary and I were sure you had the stuff after the first day…" and closing by providing contact information in Europe: "Keep in touch so I can find you," while assuring Meyerson would "be a good newspaper man and a good writer." In a short postscript, he adds that Meyerson was welcome to "use the peace [sic] wherever you wish." Hemingway's edits to the interview are mild, mostly adding details that he thought important and occasionally altering a direct quote (for example changing a description of the young woman who ran the local laundry from "Helluva nice girl," to "She's a very wonderful girl."). When Meyerson turned in his interview his professor rejected it as unsuitable for Reader's Digest and suggested it be completely re-written. Meyerson protested that not only had Hemingway edited it, he had complimented it, but it was not enough to change the professor's mind. Meyerson refused to make the changes the professor demanded, received a poor grade in the course, and published the interview in his hometown newspaper, the Honolulu Advertiser (3 & 4 May 1959).

Meyerson had already planned to travel to Paris after graduation, and from there he sent a copy of the published interview to Hemingway, who responded on 25 May that he would "be in Pamplona on July 6 but don’t know the address yet & will have to stay in a private house probably as the hotels are full. They rent out rooms … you will find one if you get there in time." Hemingway also offered financial assistance: "If you ever need money I can stake you." Meyerson did not take the offer of money and instead hitchhiked from Paris to Spain. After several days in Pamplona he met up with Hemingway who was in a party with several others including A.E. Hotchner. According to his own account, Meyerson felt very much like a prop in those interactions. Hemingway even "set up" Meyerson with a female companion, Valerie, who was to become the author's private secretary (and would later marry Gregory Hemingway), but Meyerson had already become smitten with a woman he had met earlier and was uncomfortable in the situation and was not afraid to show it. Overall, Meyerson found Hemingway to be rude and self-absorbed—very much unlike the Hemingway he encountered in Idaho. Meyerson spent very little time with the Hemingway group during the festival, preferring the company of his Spanish friends. Before departing for Barcelona, he tried to explain his actions to Hemingway, but the author refused to speak to him. For this Meyerson would be remembered (or rather misremembered) by Hotchner in his 1966 memoir, Papa Hemingway. Hotchner assigned him the name Mervyn Harrison, "who had interviewed Ernest in Ketchum the previous winter for an English thesis he was allegedly writing and had ended the interview by putting the bite on Ernest for money to finance six months in Paris to learn French at the Sorbonne." (p. 213). Other inaccurate accounts followed in the same volume. Meyerson also appears in Valerie Hemingway's memoirs under the name "Scott Brown," and is identified as a reporter from The Christian Science Monitor. "Brown" had been paired up with her and was clearly uncomfortable with the situation, and, Valerie claimed in her memoir, "later hanged himself" (Running With the Bulls, p. 30). Mention of Meyerson's missive to the author on his departure from Pamplona appears in "The Dangerous Summer," written for Life in 1960 that concludes with a conversation between Hotchner and Hemingway: "'Why do you waste your time with that creep' Hotch said. 'He's not a creep,' I said. 'He's a future editor for the Reader's Digest.'" Meyerson would later view this as supremely ironic inasmuch as he had been penalized for refusing to rewrite his Hemingway interview to fit the style of the Reader’s Digest.

[With:] 2 telegrams from Hemingway to Meyerson, 8 February and 8 March 1959 making arrangements for Meyerson's visit to interview Hemingway in Ketchum; two partial issues of the Honolulu Star, Honolulu, 3 & 4 May 1959 bearing the published interview with Hemingway in two parts under the title, "They All Like the Ernest Hemingways" and "Hemingway Discusses Books and Writers"; MEYERSON, Harvey. Typescript, Setting the Record Straight: My two encounters with Ernest Hemingway and their slanderous aftermath, 28 September 2022. Provenance: Harvey Meyerson.
Place of origin:USA
Auction house category:Letters, documents and manuscripts
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