Hemingway, Ernest | Typed letter signed to Robert J. Carino; "Every book that I’ve written is as good as I could write at that time " - photo 1
Hemingway, Ernest | Typed letter signed to Robert J. Carino; "Every book that I’ve written is as good as I could write at that time " - photo 2
Hemingway, Ernest | Typed letter signed to Robert J. Carino; "Every book that I’ve written is as good as I could write at that time " - photo 3

Hemingway, Ernest | Typed letter signed to Robert J. Carino; "Every book that I’ve written is as good as I could write at that time "

Lot 36
08.12.2023 12:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Sold
$ 4 826
AuctioneerSotheby´s
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 1108755
Lot 36 | Hemingway, Ernest | Typed letter signed to Robert J. Carino; "Every book that I’ve written is as good as I could write at that time "
Estimate value
$ 3 000 – 4 000
Hemingway, Ernest
Typed letter signed ("Yours always, Ernest Hemingway"), to Robert J. Carino ("Dear Bob") at the University of Maryland

Half page on a leaf (277 x 215 mm) of Finca Vigia, San Francisco de Paula, Cuba letterhead (watermarked Esleeck Fidelity Onion Skin), 4 May 1952, accompanied by the original typed envelope with Habana, Cuba, postmark; envelope worn with loss at edges

A very warm and revealing letter written to a University of Maryland student who had evidently written to Hemingway about his enjoying a novel by Hemingway that he had read as a class assignment, touching on many themes of Hemingway’s philosophy of writing that he continually espoused over his career:

"Thank you very much for your letter. I’m glad if you and the class liked the book. Your letter made me feel very good. This is a Sunday morning and I don’t have to work and have two good books to read so I feel good anyway. But your letter made me feel even better.

"You see when you write you never think about the books that you have written. Once in a while you read a little part of one to cheer you up. But all the time you are trying to write better than you ever wrote before and to do what you could never do and it is rough. Every book that I’ve written is as good as I could write at that time and under those circumstances." Hemingway next describes an effect that he tries to achieve that he had ascribed to Turgenev in The Sun Also Rises; the principal character, Jake Barnes, reading Turgenev early one morning considered that one day he would recall what he had read and imagine that it had actually happened to him: "What I try for is to invent something that will come out so truly that whoever reads it will feel after they read it that it had happened to them and if I have good luck and get it right that it will become a part of their experience. That is what I shoot for. But it is awfully hard to do. I love to write. But it is harder all the time because of trying to best what I have written."

Hemingway next mentions his forthcoming novella, The Old Man and the Sea. "This fall I have a book I think you will like. I had the best luck writing it that I think I ever had. Truly, I believe you can take a chance and figure that you will like it. But now I’m writing again and trying to beat it and your letter makes me feel more like biting on the old nail again tomorrow." He also thanks Carino's professor for assigning his novel, "Please give my best to the Prof. If she hadn’t have liked the book she couldn’t have read it so that the class like it. Good luck whatever you do."
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