Friday, July 06, 2012

You Can Now Read All 47 A Farewell to Arms Endings

According to the man himself, Ernest Hemingway wrote 39 different endings to A Farewell to Arms before picking a winner. (In case you're not in high school anymore: "After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.") 
According to Scribner and the Hemingway archives, he actually wrote 47 endings, and the alternate versions will be published together in a new edition next month. Are any of them cheerier, you might be wondering? Do Catherine and the baby get a second chance? Here's a sample: "That is all there is to the story. Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you." 
There's also a Fitzgerald-suggested line about how the world "breaks everyone." So: No, is the answer.

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