Here’s Ernest Hemingway in a letter to Charles Scribner attacking James Jones and his first novel, From Here to Eternity. The book won the National Book Award for fiction in 1952. Scribner published both Hemingway and Jones:
About the James Jones book … It is not great no matter what they tell. To me is an enormously skillful fuck-up and his book will do great damage to our country. Probably I should re-read it again and give you a truer answer. But I do not have to eat an entire bowl of scabs to know they are scabs; nor suck a boil to know it is a boil; nor swim through a river of snot to know it is snot. I hope he kills himself as soon as it does not damage your sales. If you give him a literary tea you might ask him to drain a bucket of snot and then suck the puss out of a dead-nigger’s ear… How did they ever get a picture of a wide-eyed jerk (un-damaged ears) to look that screaming tough. I am glad he makes you money and I would never laugh him off. I would just give him a bigger bucket of the snot detail. He has the psycho’s urge to kill himself and he will do it. Make all the money you can out of him as quickly as you can and hold out enough for Christian Burial. Wouldn’t have brought him up if you hadn’t asked me. Now I feel as unclean as when I read his fuck-off book. It has all the charm and trueness of the real and imitation fuck-off. Mary sends her love to you and to Vera. Best always, Papa.
Hemingway's comments were rather unkind, quite disgusting and racist. He had that anti-Semitism problem with The Sun Also Rises and now this. He's the Rick Perry of American literature. And why the hyphen between the words "dead" and the racial slur?
Now that I know that From Here to Eternity damaged the country, I think I should read it. Especially now that the gay sex scenes, cut out when it was first published, have been restored.
Interesting that Hemmingway, who went on to commit suicide, called for Jones to die this way.
I got this quote off the Counterpunch website.
No comments:
Post a Comment