Posted on 07/13/2009 8:37:50 AM PDT by FromLori
Up till now, this has been a notably cheerful year for admirers of Ernest Hemingway – a surprisingly diverse set of people who range from Michael Palin to Elmore Leonard. Almost every month has brought good news: a planned Hemingway biopic; a new, improved version of his memoir, A Moveable Feast; the opening of a digital archive of papers found in his Cuban home; progress on a movie of Islands in the Stream.
Last week, however, saw the publication of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press), which reveals the Nobel prize-winning novelist was for a while on the KGB's list of its agents in America. Co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, the book is based on notes that Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, made when he was given access in the 90s to Stalin-era intelligence archives in Moscow.
Its section on the author's secret life as a "dilettante spy" draws on his KGB file in saying he was recruited in 1941 before making a trip to China, given the cover name "Argo", and "repeatedly expressed his desire and willingness to help us" when he met Soviet agents in Havana and London in the 40s. However, he failed to "give us any political information" and was never "verified in practical work", so contacts with Argo had ceased by the end of the decade. Was he only ever a pseudo-spook, possibly seeing his clandestine dealings as potential literary material, or a genuine but hopelessly ineffective one?
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
P.S.
And yes, he did have awful mental issues.
Poor man.
Yes, I loved his short stories.
(I have read everything he wrote.)
P.S. again…
I forgot. He also received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for “The Old Man and the Sea.”
You’re probably right - I don’t even know where I picked it up. I’ve been in DC a LOOONNNG time. I think it’s just one of the things you pick up if you live here, like the military alphabet which I know even though I didn’t serve, the No Such Agency, Child Improvement Agency...and the way we know not to ask again what someone does after they’ve deflected the question once.
“Compromised” does make more sense than “conscience”.
Good to see the literary aesthetes out today. Ah yes, Hemingway overrated. Granted, he’s no Jerry Jenkins, but...
I find it interesting how many CIA people AND communists wrote American novels...each trying to influence the masses ideologically through fiction. Still going on today.
So it goes.
Zelda was a very interesting person. I think she always had mental problems which got worse the older she got. F. Scott must have really loved her as he put up with a lot from her. I am pretty sure she was the basis for “The Great Gatsby” love, and that Fitzgerald was Gatsby.
Her Father was the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. I used to drive by their house often in Montgomery, on Sayre street naturally.
Fist of all, I must apologize for writing Hemingway with 2 “Ms.” I must be having a brain fart because I know better than that.
In 1936, it was hard to choose between the fascist Nationalists or the radicalized left Republicans whom Hemingway favored.
Today it would be like choosing between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. They are both dangerous.
He should have just kept out of it; but then, he was a writer.
Yeah, a writer who wanted to be a KGB agent.
Not all writers go as far as that.
He never gave them any secrets; therefore, they dropped him. He never had any “inside” information.
I would like to know our side of the story.
I've known some guys like him; much of what they do with their lives is playing. He's playing war, playing bullfighter, and was playing spy. Guys like this can do real damage, but they're just playing.
then their was the Fitzgeralds shutterbug son...who can forget F. Stop Fitzgerald.....
and lets not forget the 2 queer Irishmen....Patrick Fitzgerald and Gerald Fitzpatrick.....
‘Old Man...’ is Hemmingway in self parody mode. ‘The Sun Also Rises’ and the short stories are brilliant.
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