Monday, October 07, 2013

Ernest Hemingway’s Macho Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

‘To me heaven would be a big bull ring,” the cocky, manly writer par excellence wrote to his good friend F. Scott Fitzgerald from Spain in 1925, and outlines his version of heaven would be—including a house where The New Republic would be used for toilet paper. Excerpted from the new The To F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1 July [1925] 

Burguete, Navarra
July 1—
Dear Scott—
We are going in to Pamplona tomorrow. Been trout fishing here. How are you? And how is Zelda? 
hemingway fitzgerald
AP; Getty
I am feeling better than I’ve ever felt—havent drunk any thing but wine since I left Paris. God it has been wonderful country. But you hate country. All right omit description of country. I wonder what your idea of heaven would be—A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists, all powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. And hell would probably [be] an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows.
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