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Ernest Hemingway- FBI Vault

Tuff case.
An acquaintance of my Fathers' was an acquaintance of Hemmingway. He didn't mention much about it other than to speak of the contrast from his younger days and to his last few years.
A great difference. Looks like the gov't drove him mad. Cages don't always have bars.

While the man was a genius with the pen, he was definitely a man who cared not what God would think about him blowing his brains out.

I know he had health problems and felt hounded by the FBI but he was an alcoholic, and that breeds depression.

Compare Hemingway’s FBI interference with what, say, Sara Palin endures. The FBI didn’t cause his depression, decline and demise. It was incidental.

The Second World War The United States entered World War II on December 8, 1941, and for the first time in his life, Hemingway sought to take part in naval warfare.
Aboard the Pilar, now a Q-Ship, Hemingway's crew was charged with sinking German submarines threatening shipping off the coasts of Cuba and the United States.
Hemingway came under surveillance by the FBI both during World War II and afterwards (most probably because of his long association with marxist Spanish Civil War veterans who were again active in Cuba) for his residence and activities in Cuba.
"....the Hemingway account "The Shot"[ is used by Cabrera Infante] and others as evidence of conflict between Hemingway and Fidel Castro dating back to 1948 and the killing of "Manolo" Castro, a friend of Hemingway.
He was receiving treatment in Ketchum, Idaho for high blood pressure and liver problems, this may in fact have helped to precipitate his suicide, since he reportedly suffered significant memory loss as a result of the shock treatments.
In a particularly gruesome suicide, he rested the gun butt of the double-barreled shotgun on the floor of a hallway in his home, leaned over it to put the twin muzzles to his forehead just above the eyes, and pulled both triggers. The coroner, at request of the family, did not do an autopsy. Other members of Hemingway's immediate family also committed suicide, including his father, Clarence Hemingway, his siblings Ursula and Leicester, and his granddaughter Margaux Hemingway.
Some believe that certain members of Hemingway's paternal line had a hereditary disease known as haemochromatosis (bronze diabetes), in which an excess of iron concentration in the blood causes damage to the pancreas and also causes depression or instability in the cerebrum.

Best of all he loved the fall
The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods
Leaves floating on the trout streams
And above the hills
The high blue windless skies
Now he will be a part of them forever
Ernest Hemingway - Idaho - 1939
http://www.ernesthemingway.org.uk/

I found the posted comments interesting, as pretty much all of them make the assumption that FBI surveillance of Hemingway was unjustified or tyrannical.

In actual fact, not only was he a strong Communist sympathizer, it appears he was a KGB agent for quite a number of years and was finally dropped by them for lack of productivity, not resigning himself.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/09/hemingway-failed-kgb-spy

http://books.google.com/books?id=LQptupxaGwsC&pg=PA511&lpg=PA511&dq=hemingway+communist&source=bl&ots=5nhXI48R9e&sig=hfAZqzmOGRO18etSWeNoZTmVCsE&hl=en&ei=4U0RTqexIKrk0QHd2Oi-Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=soviet&f=false

IOW, he was a conscious and voluntary secret agent of a foreign power dedicated to the subversion and overthrow of the United States Constitution. What was inappropriate at all about the FBI keeping an eye on him?

Not everything can be blamed on Hoover. Even the biggest conspiracy theorists must admit Hemingway spent most of his life shooting off his mouth.

Papa Was a Communist Sympathizer

Released: 7/14/1999 12:00 AM EDT
Source: University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1999

CONTACTS: Keneth Kinnamon, professor of English literature
UA English Office: (501)575-4301

Allison Hogge, science and research communications officer (501)575-6731, alhogge@comp.uark.edu

PAPA’S POLITICS: UA PROFESSOR’S RESEARCH EXAMINES HEMINGWAY’S COMMUNIST TIES

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — As the 100th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s birthday approaches on July 21, literary fans across the world will be paying homage to a writer acclaimed as the leading voice of the Lost Generation. But a University of Arkansas professor claims these fans have mis-characterized the famous author.

A new study of Hemingway, conducted by Dr. Keneth Kinnamon, indicates that the author’s social activism and leftist politics leave him far from “lost” and even dissociate him from the generation of post-war writers he supposedly founded.

In fact as Hemingway aged, said Kinnamon, his political involvement grew more radical, culminating in donations to finance the rise of the Communist Party in Cuba.

Over the past 5 years, Kinnamon has conducted an extensive study of Hemingway’s personal letters and correspondence — examining the author’s own arguments and self-descriptions to gain a complete understanding of Hemingway’s social views and personal politics.

As part of his research, Kinnamon had portions of Hemingway’s FBI file declassified. The file documents nearly a decade of continuous surveillance that began in the 1950s as a result of the author’s political activities.

Kinnamon will present his findings later this month at a conference in Oak Park, Ill., where Hemingway was born. In addition, he has published an essay entitled, “The Early Development of Hemingway’s Political Consciousness,” in a publication of the Center for Culture in Valencia, Spain, called Hemingway in Our Time.

“Hemingway was very protective of his political views. More than many of the writers of his time, he shied away from didacticism in his work and made his political points subtly,” said Kinnamon.

“By examining his letters, I’m finding a more candid statement about his personal beliefs — one that is more frank and open and gives us a better understanding of the man than if we viewed him exclusively through his fiction.”

What Kinnamon has uncovered are the written records of a man who not only held strong convictions about political and social issues, but who actively took part in them — often playing a dual role of journalist and soldier.

More...

http://www.newswise.com/articles/papa-was-a-communist-sympathizer

As a young man, Hemingway sympathized with the Socialist Part in America. His first and only vote was cast for Eugene V. Debs — a socialist leader who ran for presidency five times in the early part of the century. According to Kinnamon, the writer’s political opinions only leaned further left as he grew older.

In 1935, Hemingway went abroad as a news correspondent to cover the Spanish Civil War. But his sympathy for the people’s rebellion soon compromised his objectivity. By the close of the revolution, Hemingway had become involved with many of the socialist and communist volunteers in the resistance.

During World War II, the author took an even more active political role. He had his 38-foot fishing vessel, The Pilar, designated as an official Q-boat and equipped it with a crew to patrol the Caribbean for Nazi submarines. Later, he would accompany U.S. troops during the Battle of the Bulge and even lead his own guerilla force in the liberation of Paris.

But the political stand that would have the greatest impact in Hemingway’s life came after the war, when he had settled in Cuba.

Though his American citizenship made outright political activity impossible, the author continued to support his political interests covertly. Kinnamon’s research reveals that Hemingway channeled money through a Cuban friend to support the Communist Party in its rise to power.

Despite the threat of McCarthyism and the controversy of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Hemingway remained a staunch supporter of Fidel Castro. When the author’s political loyalties came to light in the late 1950s, the FBI opened a file and began a program of surveillance that documented Hemingway’s activities up to his death in 1961.

“At times, Hemingway would be sitting in a restaurant and would say to his companion, ‘The man at the next table is an FBI agent.’ His friends considered it paranoia, but more often than not, Hemingway was right,” said Kinnamon.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/papa-was-a-communist-sympathizer

When producer David O. Selznick crowed that his wife, Jennifer Jones, was starring in “A Farewell to Arms” and he’d pay Hemingway a $50,000 bonus from any profits, the novelist wrote back: “If by some miracle, your movie, which stars 41-year-old Mrs. Selznick portraying 24-year-old Catherine Barkley, does earn $50,000, you should have all $50,000 changed into nickels at your local bank and shove them up your [bleep] until they came out of your ears.”

Darryl F. Zanuck, the boss of 20th Century Fox, was trashed when he asked Hemingway to shorten the title of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” which starred Gregory Peck. Hotchner quotes Hemingway, “I said, you want something short and exciting that will catch the eye of both sexes, right?” He then reeled off the first letters of Hollywood studio names that together spelled out the F-word. “That should fit all the marquees and you can’t beat it as a sex symbol.” Zanuck titled the film “The Macomber Affair.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2007571/posts

Hemingway was one of the 5 most over rated American writers of all time.

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Too bad Obammy hasn’t an ounce of Papa’s testosterone,