Posted on 03/26/2006 6:52:09 PM PST by girlangler
Hemingway's Fishing Boat May Be Restored
Ernest Hemingway's 40-foot, black-hulled fishing boat, the Pilar, could be getting a little restorative nip and tuck.
Local watercraft preservation specialist Dana Hewson and members of the Boston-based Hemingway Preservation Foundation are heading to Finca Vigia, Hemingway's estate in Cuba, where he will photograph and examine the Pilar.
"Professionally, this is a really fascinating project for me," Hewson told The Day of New London. He works at Mystic Seaport.
Hemingway sailed the boat when he lived in Cuba from 1939 to 1960, and is said to have conceived some of his greatest works, including "The Old Man and the Sea," while on board.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation placed the boat on its 2005 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places even though it's not in the United States.
The Boston group is working with the Cuban government to preserve the Pilar, along with Hemingway's home and thousands of Hemingway drafts, manuscripts, letters, photographs and books stored there.
The fear is that the warm, humid conditions will eventually damage the papers, which include the never-published epilogue of "For Whom the Bell Tolls."
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Nick Adams would have scorned such a thing.
...and all day all the time.
I wonder if they'll restore the bar? God knows besides the typewriter, he touched little else. Very sad. He was an innovative and a great writer for his time and I always wonder what it would have been like if he'd sobered up. Ray Carver's work blossomed afterward and I can't help thinking that after making it through the intial sober rough patches, that Hemingway would have experienced the same thing. Oh well it is all fish under the remodeled boat now.
Another case of spending millions to fix a $1000. boat. For G-d sakes........it's a boat, not a shrine!
Can they restore Cuba to its pre-1959 condition, too, while they're at it ?
Perfectly worded. He's is certainly no G-d, although in the literary world anything other than the real thing suffices. I couldn't agree anymore on the silly overpriced remodel.
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