I have always loved books like, Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts from a Life, the ones that tell a story not just of written words, but by weaving together photographs, letters and telegrams, notes and snippets collected over the course of a lifetime.
I have always believed there is a thin line between a collector and a hoarder. A collector can truly live in a world of the marvelous and magical, while a hoarder lives in a world of sickness and decay. Thank God that someone had the foresight to gather this ephemera, which could have easily been discarded along the way of Hemingway's rambling, roaming life; and put together this magical collection in a way that offers new insight into the writer/adventurers life.
Given the current state of thinking on the keeping of journals among the writer community, I was struck by the fact the Hemingway did not keep a journal or diary; he seemed like the perfect candidate for the practice. That being said, it raises the value of the work done curating this collection by Michael Katakis, the manager of the Hemingway estate. Katakis does a wonderful job of utilizing two way communications to detail the story in these pages; letters, notes and telegrams to and from Hemingway, often dashed off on whatever was handy when he jotted of a note. A formal telegram from President-elect Kennedy invited Hemingway to inauguration events, coupled with the scrawled, back of steno notebook page reply of regrets due to health issues.
This book also made me a bit sad for future generations; like many I don't have a large collection of photographs, letters or cards to gather memories. To put together a collection of this type in the future we may need to package copies of SD cards, jump drives and outdated smartphones, complete with cracked screens to tell our story. We live in such a mobile, disposable society that we will lose so much of our personal history in the futile search for the next meme or viral video. Then again it got me to ponder the endless stacks of journals and notebooks in which I have scrawled millions of words on every topic imaginable and what my family would make of them as they thumbed through the pages.
For now I will have to be content with this amazing collection and the insights it gives this Hemingway fan, into the storied history and ramblings, both real life and on paper.
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