It was always lonely after rain but I was lucky to have the letters which had meant nothing when they came and I arranged them in an orderly manner again and put all the papers in order too. There were the East African Standard, the airmail editions of the Times and the Telegraph on their paper that was like thin onion skin, a Times Literary Supplement and an air-edition of Time. The letters opened fairly dull and made me glad I was in Africa.
One letter carefully forwarded by my publishers via airmail at considerable cost was from a woman in Iowa:
Guthrie Center, IowaJuly 27, 1953Mr. Ernest HemingwayHavana, CubaSeveral years ago, I read your “Across the River and Into the Trees,” when it was serialized in the Cosmopolitan. After the beautiful opening description of Venice, I expected the book to go on, and have considerable stature, but was vastly disappointed. Certainly there was opportunity to disclose the rottenness that MAKES wars, as well as to point out hypocrisy of the military organization itself. Instead, your officer was mainly disgruntled because HE had the PERSONAL MISFORTUNE to lose two companies of men, and as a result, received no promotion. Little or NO grief was shown for the young men themselves. Largely it seemed the ineffectual efforts of an old man to try to convince himself and other old men that young, beautiful and even rich young women would love an old man for himself alone, not because he could give her wealth and a position of prominence.
Later, “Old Man of the Sea” was published, and I asked my brother, who is mature, and spent four and a half years in the Army during War LL. if this book were any more emotionally mature than River and Trees, and he grimaced and said it wasn’t.
It is amazing to me that a group of people could award you the Pulitzer Prize. At least everyone does not agree.
This clipping was taken from Harlan Miller’s column of “Over the Coffee,” from The Des Moines Register and Tribune, and I have been meaning for some time to send it. Just add that Hemingway is EMOTIONALLY IMMATURE AND AN AWFUL BORE, and the review is complete. You have had four “wives,” and if you haven’t achieved morality, you should at least be getting a little common sense from your past mistakes. Why not write SOMETHING that is worthwhile, before you die?
Mrs. G. S. HeldThis woman did not like the book in any way and that was her perfect right. If I had been in Iowa I would have refunded her the money she had spent on it as a reward for her eloquence and the reference to War LL. I took to mean two rather than Long and Lousy and I read where a clipping had been inserted:
Maybe I’ve been slightly stuffy about Hemingway: the most over-rated writer of our time, but still a fine writer. His main faults: (1) scant sense of humor, (2) a juvenile brand of realism, (3) meager idealism, or none, (4) hairy chested bombast
