E.H. R.I.P.

A correspondent reminded me that yesterday was Ernest Hemingway's birthday, which I don't often remember . . . not like I remember the anniversary of his death, which affected me, perhaps profoundly.

I'd just turned eighteen, and had ambitions to be a writer – though I hadn't written much, really.  Started a novel but it sputtered out.  That night I staggered out of a bar in Washington, D.C. with some cronies and saw the early headlines of Hemingway's death.  The first story said it was an accident, cleaning a double-barreled shotgun.  How on Earth could that happen?  You would notice when the cleaning rod didn't go through.

The gang I was with were all science fiction readers, but we knew Hemingway, or at least about him.  We sat down in a Howard Johnson's to drink coffee and sober up before the drive home and traded what little we knew about the man, and what little we knew about suicide.

I know a lot more about Hemingway now, but suicide is still a primal mystery to me.  Optimistic me.  Hemingway was a physical wreck from a lifetime of alcoholism and the sequelae of a dozen serious accidents – how many people survive two plane crashes in the same week? – and doctors kept him drugged to the gills for pain and depression.  He tried to commit suicide several times after he left the hospital, and finally succeeded, with a little help from his wife.  Cynics say she was sick and tired of him, and left a loaded shotgun in the kitchen for his convenience.  I don't think it was that deliberate.  (The fact that the shotgun was loaded, some writers don't seem to understand, was unremarkable in their household.  They were both inveterate hunters and had experienced a lot of combat.  The house was and remains isolated and vulnerable.)

The suicide was tragic, but in pharmaceutical and psychological perspective it was unsurprising, perhaps predictable.  Would it have happened today?  Maybe not.  He'd had his skull blasted with line-current electroshock therapy several times and was washing down antidepressants with one or two bottles of red wine a day.  He was sturdy as a bull, but those of us who read Hemingway know that bulls are vulnerable, and fated.

Joe