SUNDAY REVIEW / ERNIE, THE PACK RAT

THE PAPER TRAIL--Mementos like Ernest Hemingway’s passport issued in 1923, when the author was 24 years old, make up the “Ernest Hemingway exhibition now thru January 31, 2016 at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York City.

“Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars” is on exhibit thru Jan. 31, 2016 at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

It is the first major museum exhibition devoted to the work of Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), one of the most celebrated American authors of the 20th century.

Organized in partnership with the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, it includes multiple drafts of Hemingway's earliest short stories, notebooks, heavily revised manuscripts and typescripts of his major novels—The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

OPENING SHOT—The first image you see entering the exhibition is of Ernest as a soldier taken in 1918 when he was recovering from shrapnel wounds.  He recovered at Milan’s Red Cross Hospital.  The exhibit shows a fictional Nick Adams coming to life on faded pages of Red Cross stationery.

The show also presents correspondence between Hemingway and his legendary circle of expatriate writers in 1920s Paris, including Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sylvia Beach.

Focusing on the inter-war years, the exhibition explores the most consistently creative phase of Hemingway's career and includes inscribed copies of his books, a rarely-seen 1929 oil portrait, photographs, and personal items.

This exhibition is organized by the Morgan Library & Museum in collaboration with the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

INSIDE THE MORGAN—The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Ave, New York City, is a short walk from Grand Central and Penn Station.

Lead funding for this exhibition is provided by Karen H. Bechtel, with additional generous support from Tina Santi Flaherty and the Charles E. Pierce, Jr. Fund for Exhibitions. After closing in Manhattan the exhibit travels to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

Source:  www.themorgan.org/

IMAGES FROM THE EXHIBITION:

LETTER FROM SALINGER—J.D. wrote to “Poppa” (the mystique was now in full bloom) from a psych ward of an Army hospital in 1946.  JD references “Lester,” who was Hemingway’s youngest brother

LETTER FROM F.SCOTT—A melancholy letter from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Hemingway on December 23, 1926.  F. Scott reflected on Ernest’s divorce and what was the beginning of the end the friendship between the two authors.

SPANISH YEARS—Hemingway (left) in July, 1925 sits with his wife Hadley and friends at a sidewalk restaurant in Pamplona, Spain. 

L-R: Hemingway, Harold Loeb, Lady Duff Twysden, Hadley, Donald Stewart (partially blocked) and Pat Guthrie. Reportedly Twysden, Loeb and Guthrie inspired the characters Brett Ashley, Robert Cohn, and Mike Campbell in The Sun Also Rises.

WAR CORRESPONDENT—Pack rat items that he never threw away appear in the exhibition, including a visa from the War Department issued in 1944.  On loan from the Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE—In an unsent rough draft of a letter to Harold Ross, Editor of the New Yorker magazine, Hemingway suggests where a critic can stick his recent review.

SO IS EVERY GOOD MAN—Crossed out lines from one of the notebooks Hemingway used to write “The Sun Also Rises.”