During the 1950s Ernest Hemingway became increasingly fearful about suspected surveillance by the FBI & IRS, his suspicions contributing to his depression and eventual suicide. No one believed him at the time, not even his last wife, Mary, but Hemingway was constantly vigilant. The FBI files on him are astounding. In August 1947, for example, agent L.B. Nichols reported that “one of the real danger spots in Cuba was centered around Ernest Hemingway.” “We ought to try and keep close to this development,” reads Hoover’s hand-written comment on one confidential memorandum about Hemingway. Hoover’s agents tracked Hemingway’s activities for decades, even conferring with the doctors at the Mayo clinic about their “problem” patient. Even imaginary fears, it turns out, can be based in reality. During the twenty years Hemingway lived in Cuba, he was watched by FBI agents reporting directly to Hoover. At the same time, America’s most famous author was friends with the American ambassador, who approved Hemingway’s vigil against German U-boats threatening Havana’s harbour during WWII. There are, moreover, reports of Hemingway in the late 1950s supporting the Castro revolution. What were his relations with the US government? With the Cuban governments of Batista and then of Castro’s political revolution?

One unexplored source of information about this topic is Kheminguei na Kube by Russian writer Yuri Paporov. In the late-1960s, early 1970s, Paporov, working in Cuba, interviewed everyone he could find who had known Hemingway. Published in the Soviet Union in 1979 in Russian, these interviews were translated into Spanish in 1993 as Hemingway en Cuba. Twenty years later, this relevant resource has not yet been published in English. Because it has not been made accessible to the great majority of Hemingway scholars, mostly unilingual in English, the book is not widely known. One wonders if Paporov’s book is deliberately being ignored or has fallen victim to the Hoover habit of suppressing anything Communist.

James D. Brasch, co-author of Hemingway’s Library, has made a compelling case for the translation of Paporov’s book in his That Other Hemingway: The Master Inventor (2009). With the help of a colleague who translated one chapter from Paporov’s original Russian edition, Brasch presents the perspective of Hemingway’s longtime friend and doctor in Cuba, Jose Luis Herrera. Hemingway had met Herrera in Spain during the civil war, and Herrera had been exiled to Cuba by the Spanish government after the war. Herrera discusses Hemingway’s health and marital conflicts, and also describes at length Hemingway’s “attitude toward the Cuban revolution.” Herrera “reported that, until he died, Hemingway supported both the Spanish Communist Party and the Communist party in Guanabacoa, the capital of the municipio [township] in which [Finca Vigia, Hemingway’s home in] San Francisco de Paula is located.” Brasch provides a tantalizing glimpse into the opinions and information available from Paporov’s research and concludes that “Hemingway’s views on Dr. Castro and the revolution were obviously not comfortable or popular during the cold war antagonism of 1959.” Brasch’s That Other Hemingway was self-published in 2009, so perhaps his discoveries are not widely known.

Paporov’s book provides the views of many eyewitnesses of Hemingway’s political opinions and involvement. Paporov writes, “In relation to Hemingway’s support of the initial faith in the Cuban Revolution we have to consider [for example] the testimonies of [Hemingway’s sometime secretary] Roberto Herrera, the chief Editor of El Mundo, Luis Gomez Vanguemert, [artist’s model] Sara Cheméndez and [journalist] Mario Cuchilán.” (p. 392) After 5 pm, “Papa” frequently visited “El Hoyo” Bar, alone or in the company of his new secretary Valery Smith. He invited people he considered interesting to discuss politics with him. One day he was coming out of the Art Museum when he saw the newspaper headlines stating the victory of the army against the “barbudos”—the bearded men. Hemingway became very angry and said that those were all a bunch of lies. Hemingway further claimed that Batista thought announcing victory in the papers would help him get rid of Castro and his followers. Vanguemert gives a further example of Hemingway’s support of the rebels when at another art exhibition Hemingway expressed his disbelief in the rumour that Fidel Castro had been killed by the army. Hemingway yelled that those were lies published by the newspapers that supported Batista, and that they would not be able to kill Fidel: “They [the revolutionaries] would win no matter what,” declared Hemingway. He financially assisted a revolutionary newspaper in support of the communist cause in Cuba, as expressed by some journalists who came to ask “Papa” for money. Hemingway did not expect or receive any explanation of what the money would be used for.

Paporov incorporated into his book an interview with Hemingway from Nov. 1959 by Seattle-based journalist Emmett Watson. Watson quoted Hemingway at length, but a few of his words are the source of my title: “Castro’s movement awakes great hope. I believe in the Cuban people’s cause. . . . I pronounce myself in favour of the Castro revolution, because it has the support of the people. I believe in its cause.” (p. 397) There is great confusion, even doubt, about the existence of this interview. Paporov reported that Castro himself quoted Watson’s interview on Cuban television, while Herrera maintained it was published on the front page of a local newspaper in Idaho. Brasch includes the entire quotation in his book in order “to invite further information on its origin, its authenticity, and its exact contents,” and he concludes, “the possibility that it is a fabrication must be entertained” (p. 128). However, a Google search in January 2014 found evidence of the interview’s existence: the Milwaukee Sentinel of March 11, 1959 published Watson’s “Sun Valley Interview” with Hemingway and much of the wording echoes the language of the passage quoted by Paporov and translated in Brasch. Furthermore, Herrara claimed that Hemingway recorded his views for a local radio station, but “it was suppressed and no paper in the U.S. reproduced the article.” Herrara might have been mistaken, for on January 23, 1959, page one of the Eugene [Oregon] Register-General prominently displayed an article, “Hemingway Defends Cuban Trials,” based on a telephone interview with the writer. Hemingway’s support of the Castro revolution, his political activity while in Cuba, may indeed have been muted in the American press, as Herrara maintained, out of embarrassment or fear or politics, but there is evidence that Hemingway’s views were in the news.

Paporov’s Hemingway en Cuba is not all hero-worship of Hemingway nor entirely a discussion of politics. The book also presents differing portraits of Hemingway’s relationship with Cuban art and artists. The Cuban journalist Edmundo Desnoes expressed in the Mexican magazine, Siempre, that “Fidel Castro was extremely magnanimous when he declared that ‘all of Hemingway’s writings supported human rights’: [Hemingway] lived in Cuba as a retired Englishman in one of its colonies, sympathizing with the Cuban people but looking down on them from La [Finca] Vigía.” (p. 404) Desnoes criticized Hemingway for writing in English and publishing his books in the USA, dismissing him as “just a wealthy traveler, who stayed in the most elegant hotels and drank expensive champagne with black beluga caviar.” In contrast, writer Julio Travieso remembered when he visited Hemingway’s home in the year of the Revolution (1959) and liked his “simplicity and practicality, without any superficial luxuries.” Travieso mentioned that many thought, out of arrogance and contempt, Hemingway rarely had any contact with Cuban writers, but Travieso did not agree with this view. He believed that Cuban writers at that time were “scarce with scant production.” Therefore, why would Hemingway know them? “It is not surprising at all that he would not know the Cuban writers of the pre-revolutionary period.” Furthermore, Travieso believed that “Hemingway did not like to have frequent interaction with American writers and intelligentsia … [this was] the attitude of a cultivated man that neither loved intellectuals nor led an intellectual life.” (p. 416) On the contrary, Paporov’s collection of interviews with so many of Hemingway’s contemporaries and colleagues portrays Hemingway politically and intellectually engaged in lively discussion with the issues and the people of his time and place.

There is much to be discovered in Paporov’s book which then needs to be corroborated by comparison and cross-reference to other material. For example, Norberto Fuentes has published Hemingway in Cuba and Ernest Hemingway: Rediscovered, both readily available from the outset in English. Fuentes’s Hemingway in Cuba, translated from Spanish in 1984, has been criticized by biographer Jeffery Meyers, yet praised by Allie Baker of The Hemingway Project. There are certainly inaccuracies in both books, but the relevant point is that Paporov needs to be translated like Fuentes in order to receive both blame and praise, in order for us to discover the true gen. It was exciting to see, in the Fall 2013 issue of The Hemingway Review, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera quoting both Fuentes and Paporov in the same sentence in his exploration of the connotations of Cuban dialect for understanding Hemingway’s relationship with the art and people of that island nation. The article highlights the limitations placed on scholarly use of Paporov without a solid grasp of Russian or Spanish.

Walter Houk, a diplomat at the US embassy in Havana from 1949 to 1952 whose wedding reception was hosted by Hemingway at Finca Vigia, stated in a recent interview in the Boston Globe, “The Cuban years are not well known because the great biographers didn’t go there.” (Boston Globe, May 4, 2013) Mary Hemingway arranged for Carlos Baker to visit the Finca after Hemingway’s death, not once but twice, but Baker cancelled both times at the last minute. One wonders why he did so. Brasch’s theory is that Charles Scribner, on the board of Princeton at the time, suggested support of Hemingway’s life and interest in Cuba would be in poor taste given the politics of the times. Canadians, in contrast, have enjoyed a relatively open relationship with Cuba, in great part because of the influence of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau who developed a friendship with Castro, went to Cuba on an official state visit with his wife, who especially was admired by Castro, and their infant son, and later returned on private visits. Castro attended Trudeau’s funeral in 2000, sat alongside former President Carter, and consoled the family, notably Trudeau’s son Justin, current leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and possibly the next Prime Minister. Being Canadian allowed Brasch and Sigman to gain Mary Hemingway’s support to visit the Finca to catalogue the library; she wrote a letter directly to Castro asking for his permission, which he granted.

Are past and current American politics barring access to valuable information? So many of the FBI files on Hemingway are redacted to this day. Norberto Fuentes, once a friend of Castro, fled Cuba and resides now in the USA and has published anti-Castro articles and books. Perhaps both factors contribute to his successful publication in English. In contrast, Paporov was a citizen of the Soviet Union, a former KGB agent, a biographer of Trotsky, and to my knowledge he is a resident of Russia today. Paporov doesn’t have the American connections Fuentes has or the political correctness acceptable to Americans. Does the Cold War fear of the USSR, of Communism, lurk and hover over Paporov and his book? Cuban-American relations today do seem to be improving. Barack Obama significantly shook hands with Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service. Current co-operative ventures between the Finca Vigia Foundation and Cuban colleagues with regard to preserving and restoring Hemingway’s home, his library and his papers are encouraging, but publication of Paporov, with its reminders of past political animosities, might cause embarrassment and upset these fledgling joint undertakings.

Politics, past or current, should not hinder the free exploration of literature and ideas, but alas, it happens everywhere. Consider the publication history of Charles Yale Harrison’s Generals Die in Bed (1930): it was criticized for presenting an unflattering picture of Canadian troops in WWI, and the novel was ignored until its re-publication in 1970. The title was briefly parodied in Hemingway’s story “The Natural History of the Dead.” Consider also the fate of Alexander Solzhenitsyn who wrote Prussian Nights, a long poem describing the Russian rape and slaughter of East Prussians in January 1945 which he witnessed as a captain in the Soviet Red Army. He was banished to the Soviet gulag for years. “Politics,” says Canadian author Margaret Atwood, “is everything that involves who gets to do what to whom. . . And politics also has to do with what kind of conversations you have with people, and what you feel free to say to someone, what you don’t feel free to say.” Do we have the freedom today to reveal and study the politics of Hemingway during his long tenure in Cuba?

Such intriguing political questions were the motivation and background when my wife, Dr. Eleanor Johnston, and I created a novel about Hemingway’s last days in Cuba, Hemingway’s Island, to our knowledge the only fictional treatment of Hemingway’s politics in Cuba. Our young narrator, a Canadian Doctoral candidate in American Literature, explains to his friends in Cuba all about Paporov’s book and his desire to see it translated: “I have this goal to get it published in English because then it will be easier to use Paporov’s ideas in my thesis. Imagine, a book written by a Russian about Hemingway in 1950’s Cuba! It’s my silver mine.” Our narrator is wrong: Paporov’s Hemingway in Cuba would be a gold mine for us all!

We have created a podcast of our novel, Hemingway’s Island, first published in 2012. The book begins with Mary Hemingway in July 1960 writing an article for Life magazine about her last days in Cuba with husband Ernest Hemingway. Chapters alternate between Mary’s article and the adventures of Alf O’Malley, University of Toronto graduate student, fifty years later as he travels to Cuba with his pregnant girlfriend Beth to search for Mary Hemingway’s long-lost article.

You can connect to the link above by passing your cursor over the title, and listen to each episode in sequence, or download each podcast to your own device.

Hope you enjoy our reading.

Wayne & Eleanor

With a simple Google search, one can quickly establish the contribution to Hemingway scholarship of James D. Brasch & Joseph Sigman’s Hemingway’s Library: The Composite Record (Garland, 1981). Hundreds of hits appear, mostly bibliographical, indicating that any exploration of Hemingway’s writing requires reference to the books Hemingway read and hence to Brasch and Sigman’s bibliography. This manuscript is now available online, thanks to the generosity of its authors and the efforts of The John F. Kennedy Library.

Few people know, however, the story behind the creation of this valuable resource. As a student of Brasch & Sigman in the late 60s and again at the Graduate level in 1974-75, I was in on the story from its inception and have heard, over the intervening years, Jim Brasch recount the details of their adventure. Brasch has emphasized the complications and the levels of bureaucratic obfuscation the two men encountered. In this short article, I will share a few of these backstories which lead to intriguing speculations about the state of the library at the Finca Vigia and suggest avenues for research into the influence of Hemingway’s reading on the development of his craft.

In 1971, Emily Watts’ book, Ernest Hemingway and the Arts, raised awareness of and interest in the influence of painters, particularly Cezanne, on Hemingway’s writing. Michael Reynolds’ early explorations (1976 & 1980) offered excellent insights into the influence of Hemingway’s reading on his writing, but Reynolds never had access to Hemingway’s actual books. Furthermore, the many descriptions of Hemingway’s early years in Paris rarely explored the rich poetic milieu in which his artistic talents developed. A recent documentary, “Paris: The Luminous Years” by Perry Miller Adato, shown on PBS, illustrates the Paris of Hemingway’s time dominated by poets including Appollinaire, Eliot, Joyce, and Pound. How would the works of such poets have affected the young Hemingway’s writing? Woody Allen’s recent “Midnight in Paris” humorously but accurately highlights the rich mix of artistic influences in Paris of the 1920s. Hemingway’s library at the Finca Vigia reflects so much of this artistic development that an exploration of what Hemingway read, in the context of these recent insights and influences, could well shift the focus of Hemingway scholarship from increasingly minute details of Hemingway biography to deeper insight into the development of his craft.

The Library adventure had its origin in 1976, when Brasch & Sigman attended the Hemingway conference in Alabama. During the question and answer period after Mary Hemingway’s lively talk on the literary men in her life, cleverly omitting any mention of Hemingway, she referred to Hemingway reading the poems of Baudelaire to her at bedtime. Mary also commented that she and her husband always travelled with a huge bundle of books. She then referred to their extensive library still at the Finca and remarked that it was a shame that scholars did not explore the influence of Hemingway’s reading on his writing. Those hints by Mary suggested that Hemingway’s devotion to books was the aspect most seriously ignored by their biographers.

Brasch and Sigman spoke with Mary after the question period, pointing out that they were Canadians and therefore not prohibited from visiting Cuba as were the American scholars at the conference. The two Canadians asked if she would approve their admission to the Finca Vigia. Mary probably had her own agenda, yet nevertheless agreed on the spot to support their visit and promised to write a letter to Fidel Castro asking permission for them to catalogue the library. Neither Mary nor the two academics knew at the time that Castro had a sincere affection for Canada developed through his close friendship with Pierre and Margaret Trudeau and was most likely to give his permission. Castro’s little recognized admiration for Canada has recently been examined and recorded by Professor Robert Wright in his Three Nights in Havana, a book endorsed by James Hyndeman, the Canadian ambassador to Cuba in the 1970s who co-incidentally handed Mary Hemingway’s letter of request to Fidel Castro.

Castro’s permission secured, Brasch & Sigman arranged to visit the Finca on three consecutive days in early January 1977. During their inspection of the Finca library, many frustrating disruptions occurred. Their access to the house and its rooms changed, for on the first day they were free to roam unobserved just about anywhere, but on the second day they were watched closely, and passage to the basement of the main house, while open when they arrived, was now barred by step-ladders. One door off Hemingway’s bedroom remained sealed during their entire visit, while Mary’s bedroom was closed to them for renovations. The storage area of the adjoining guesthouse was completely forbidden to them. One of the Finca’s gardeners with dirt and grass still on his shoes was formally presented as the head curator of the property. Most frustrating, in retrospect, on that first day inside the Finca, Brasch had ventured half way down the basement stairs, but was driven back by the darkness he encountered. We all know now of the valuable stash of Hemingway letters and papers in that basement area; Brasch could have unearthed them on that January day in 1977.

Other incidents convinced Brasch and Sigman that they were distrusted by Cuban officials and were under close surveillance during their time in Cuba. They suspected this upon their first meeting with the Cubans who had agreed to take them to the Finca at 9am but did not show up until 4pm. Frustrated by the precious time lost, that evening Brasch and Sigman encouraged each other by recalling what Mary had told them about Hemingway reading Baudelaire to her. The next morning Brasch mentioned to Marta Arjona, director of the Finca museum at the time, that Mary’s statement about Baudelaire had sparked their interest in studying Hemingway’s books. Without taking a breath Ms Arjona said there were three copies of Baudelaire in the collection and pointed out where they were. The two academics were convinced by her ready response that she must have been aware of their conversation in the hotel room the evening before. In order to test the security of their hotel room, Brasch and Sigman arranged the contents of their luggage in such a way that they could tell upon return to their room, that their bags were searched daily. Since they were convinced that their room was both bugged and searched, they spent many hours comparing notes and developing plans while seated on an isolated stretch of Marazul beach. Even there they were constantly followed. As well, they were often approached by Cubans asking them to purchase electronic and other goods at the government stores which are for tourists only, but they refused, not wanting to jeopardize their mission in any way. Finally, museum staff prevented them from visiting the Finca on the third day to catalogue the record collection. The delays and cancellations and surveillance greatly hampered their efforts to catalogue the Finca library.

One of the most disturbing incidents took place in the Havana airport as Brasch and Sigman prepared to return to Canada. Brasch had arranged his hand luggage so he could take advantage of prepackaged parcels of duty-free rum at the airport. When he tried to slip the rum into his carry-on, he discovered there was no room. In the space he had reserved for the rum he found a large sophisticated East German Leica camera, apparently inserted during an incident of “loss” of the luggage on the way to the airport. Fearing close scrutiny by airport security at that time dominated by Russians, Brasch threw the camera to an empty corner of the waiting area. He admits he wasn’t thinking clearly, so shaken was he by the discovery after days of relentless scrutiny; whether the camera had been placed in his luggage purposely or accidentally, Brasch just wanted the camera away from him as quickly as possible. His luggage was then cleared through customs.

Several days after returning home he called a former student who worked for a travel agency, and she discovered that the camera was in the lost and found at Toronto’s Pearson airport. No one knew how it got there, but she was able to arrange for Brasch to retrieve the camera. He finished the roll of film already in the camera and had it developed. The few pictures from Cuba were of groups of people standing rather formally at what appeared to be a gallery exhibition. Brasch deduced from the photos that the camera belonged to Marta Arjona, and he mailed copies of these pictures to her, explaining how he came to be in possession of the pictures and the camera, and offering to return the camera on his next visit to Cuba. Several months later he received a letter from Arjona, on plain lined paper, in a small handwritten script, thanking him for returning the pictures; the tone of the brief note made it clear that Brasch and Sigman would not be invited to return to the Finca. Brasch still has the camera and the letter.

Another disturbing incident occurred just after their return from Cuba; sitting in Brasch’s office at McMaster University, the two men disagreed on a small detail about the holdings in the library. To settle the matter, they decided to consult the 1200-page list of books, prepared by Cuban staff at the Finca library in 1966 for display at Expo ’67 in Montreal, a microfilmed copy of which had reached them through a German contact–another intriguing story, but not relevant to this one. This list, which Brasch and Sigman had taken with them to Cuba, was sitting in a cardboard box in the office. When Brasch opened the box, he found blank pages staring at him, 1200 blank pages. The implications hit Brasch and Sigman so compellingly that they sat in stunned silence for the better part of half an hour. The disappearance of the list—fortunately a copy of the original microfilm they had been given–made them realize how much they had been watched and tracked. An entire litany of incidents occurred to them, all pointing to the same conclusion: they had been constantly spied on, their hotel rooms bugged, their luggage searched. The reason behind the brief disappearance of their bags on the way to the airport was now apparent: someone stole the library list and substituted 1200 blank pages. During the process of this exchange, or while searching the luggage for possible theft from the Finca, someone, either inadvertently or purposely, must have placed Arjona’s camera into Brasch’s bag. It was clear that the Cubans had not trusted these two scholars and had been constantly monitoring, even frustrating, their research of Hemingway’s library.

Some bibliographical anomalies, however, have emerged from their exploration of the Finca library. The Composite Record of Hemingway’s Library prepared by Brasch and Sigman includes three rather curious texts. What interest would Hemingway have had in the following volumes?

Antonio Foresti, Mappamondo istorico, 13 volumes, published in Venice by Girolamo Albrizzi in 1695.

Pasqual Ramon Gutierrez de la Hacera, Descripcion general de la Europa, y particular de sus estados, ye cortes, especialmente de Espana, y Madrid antiquo y moderno, published in Madrid by Doblad in 1771.

Relatione della corte di Roma, published in Venice by Brigenci in 1664.

How do these books fit into any understanding of Hemingway’s creative process?

For example, all thirteen volumes of the Foresti were moved by Toby Bruce from Hemingway’s home in Key West to the Finca in the late 1930s. Why would Hemingway go to such lengths to hang on to them? Where did he get them? What possible use could Hemingway have had with such texts? Moreover, how have they survived the blistering heat and humidity of the Cuban climate? Indeed, are they still in the collection at the Finca Vigia? The list of the library’s holdings made by the Cuban staff indicates that these books were part of the collection in 1966.

Brasch and Sigman’s visit to the Finca in 1977 could not confirm that these books were still there, although Brasch made every effort to examine every old book he could see, for they were concerned about damage from dampness and bookworms. Originally, Brasch and Sigman had hoped to return to Cuba at a later date to film each and every book’s title page; consequently, during their first and ultimately only time there, they chose to read the titles of the first, middle and end books on each shelf, to compare their findings to the 1966 shelf list when they got back to McMaster. Brasch also photographed all the bookshelves, but the quality of the slides does not allow for close reading of the titles of texts. Where are those ancient tomes?

These ancient volumes lead to a number of questions about the present integrity of the library and about Hemingway’s craft. The project announced in 2002 to photograph Hemingway’s marginalia—a task Brasch and Sigman tried to arrange but refused by Marta Arjona–will perhaps shed some light on how Hemingway used these mysterious texts. Ernest Hemingway often initialed his comments in the margins of books. Such a survey could compare the inventory of the Finca library as it is today against Brasch and Sigman’s Composite Record or against the list made by the Cubans in 1966, to see if all the volumes are still there. If Adrian McKinty is giving us the true gen in his 2008 Times article, “Any book in Hemingway’s Library for $200,” there exists the real possibility that books have disappeared from the Finca. The possible toll of the Cuban climate is furthermore problematic. The lack of co-operation of Marta Arjona as experienced by Brasch and Sigman, and clearly documented by Rene Villarreal in his recent memoir, The Cuban Son, raises serious questions about the integrity and maintenance of the library. Hopefully, however, a close examination of the Finca library might reveal that these valuable ancient books were safely removed long ago to the excellent facilities at the Jose Marti Library.

The adventure of Brasch and Sigman in their pursuit of the books owned by Ernest Hemingway emphasizes the necessity for haste in preserving the Finca library. Scholarly exploration of the books on those shelves, with Hemingway’s signed marginalia, would enhance our understanding of the literary influences, rather than details of the author’s life, on Hemingway’s craft. A short anecdote will suggest the further implications of Brasch and Sigman’s Hemingway’s Library. Adeline Tintner, in a personal letter, enthusiastically praised the work of Brasch and Sigman in compiling Hemingway’s Library as “the greatest contribution to Hemingway studies that has ever been made . . . not only useful in itself but . . . [in] the cause of other uses.” Tintner states that her own work on “the impact of Henry James on Hemingway could never have been completed with any kind of authority if [she] had not had recourse to the Brasch-Sigman volume.” As well she could not have written of the link between Edith Wharton and Hemingway, and between D’Annunzio and Hemingway, “without the library volume.” But beyond her own academic use, Tintner explained, in private conversation with Brasch, that in the early 1980s she touted Hemingway’s Library to Leon Edel who immediately responded that he would undertake to compile the Library of Henry James. Tintner’s acknowledgements point to the rich material available for scholarly research in the libraries of all our writers. Writers are readers. Readers need to know what writers are reading and how they are reading them. To quote Tintner’s letter again, Brasch and Sigman’s Hemingway’s Library “has single-handedly changed the popular conception of Hemingway as purely an outdoor man without literary inclinations, to a ‘ferociously literary’ one, a phrase Henry James used about himself

. . . and Hemingway’s list [of books] is almost four times longer than James’s.” In her introduction to the Letters of Ernest Hemingway, Sandra Spanier suggests that “the letters represent the last great unexplored frontier of Hemingway studies.” Perhaps, but Hemingway’s library, especially the books currently at the Finca Vigia with his signed marginalia, remains the great undiscovered country for Hemingway studies. Too much time has elapsed since Brasch and Sigman’s exploration of the Finca. The library at the Finca Vigia is the key to the next level of understanding how his reading shaped the craft of his writing.
Works Cited

Brasch, James D. and Joseph Sigman. Hemingway’s Library: A Composite Record. Garland, 1981.

Reynolds, Michael S. Hemingway’s First War: The Making of “A Farewell to Arms.” Princeton, 1976.

__________. Hemingway’s Reading, 1910-1940: An Inventory. Princeton, 1980.

Spanier, Sandra and Trogdon, Robert. W., eds. The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, Volume 1, 1907-1922. Cambridge, 2011.

Tintner, Adeline R. Letter to Dr. Maureen Halsall, Acting Dean, Faculty of Humanities, McMaster University. November 13, 1986.

Villarreal, René and Raúl. Hemingway’s Cuban Son. Kent State University Press, 2009.

Watts, Emily S. Ernest Hemingway and the Arts. University of Illinois Press, 1971.

Wright, Robert. Three Nights in Havana: Pierre Trudeau, Fidel Castro and the Cold War. HarperCollins, 2007.

Wayne’s proposal for a panel presentation on “Ernest Hemingway and the United States Government,” sponsored by The Hemingway Society for the American Literature Association conference in Washington, DC, in May has been accepted. The title of his paper: “ ‘I believe in the Cuban people’s cause’: Hemingway’s Politics in Yuri Paporov’s Hemingway na Cuba.”

Hi Wayne and Eleanor, I visited Cuba in January, and read your book along the way. Great way to enjoy your thoughts on Cuba during my vacation. Attached is a photo of me holding your novel in front of the resort I stayed at. Thanks again for enlightening me about this great island and it’s wonderful people. Dan Toppari (Rotarian).