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NATION
• Thursday, March 29, 2012
HISTORY
Letters soften author’s image
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Hemingway’s personal papers show care, love BOSTON — Ernest Hemingway shows a tenderness that wasn’t part of his usual macho persona in a dozen unpublished letters that became publicly available Wednesday in a collection of the author’s papers at the Kennedy presidential library. In a letter to his friend Gianfranco Ivancich written in Cuba and dated February 1953, Hemingway wrote of euthanizing his cat “Uncle Willie” after it was hit by a car. “Certainly missed you. Miss Uncle Willie. Have had to shoot people but never anyone I knew and loved for eleven years,” the author wrote. “Nor anyone that purred with two broken legs.” The letters span from 1953 to 1960, a year before the prize-winning writer’s suicide. Whether typed or written in his curly script, some of the dispatches arrived on personalized, onionskin stationery from his Cuban villa Finca Vigia. The author also wrote from Europe, while on safari in Africa, and from his home in Idaho. The two men met in a Venice hotel bar in 1949, bonding despite a two-decade age difference because they’d both suffered leg wounds in war. “I wish I could write you good letters the way you do,” Hemingway wrote in a January 1958 letter from Cuba. “Maybe it is because I write myself out in the other writing.” E xper ts say the letters demonstrate a side to Hemingway that wasn’t part
NATION NEWS BRIEFS 1. CHICAGO
9/11 victims denied investments by alleged al-Qaida member
JOHN F. KENNEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSUEM/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ernest Hemingway (second from right), and Gianfranco Ivancich, right, dining with an unidentified woman, left, wife Mary Hemingway, second from left, and Juan “Sinsky” Dunabeitia, center at Hemingway’s villa Finca Vigia in San Francisco de Paula, Cuba.
“We have come at a most interesting time. Just in time to see the great Hemingway cry because he has to kill a cat.” of his persona as an author whose subjects included war, bullfighting, fishing and hunting. The Kennedy library foundation bought the letters from Ivancich in November, and Hemingway Collection curator Susan Wrynn met the now-elderly gentleman in Italy. “He still writes every morning,” she said. “Hemingway encouraged him to.” The letters, as a whole, show the author had a gentle side, and was someone who made time to be fatherly and nurturing to a younger friend, said Susan Beegel, editor of scholarly journal The Hemingway Review.
Hemingway’s letter about his cat’s death also showed the author’s struggle to separate his private and public lives. Hemingway told how a group of tourists arrived at his villa that day. “I still had the rifle and I explained to them they had come at a bad time and to please understand and go away,” he wrote. But one wasn’t deterred, according to the letter, saying, “We have come at a most interesting time. Just in time to see the great Hemingway cry because he has to kill a cat.” Hemingway also asks about his friend’s sister
Adriana Ivancich. The young Italian socialite became a muse for the writer after they met at a duckshooting outing in Italy. The woman was the model for the female lead in Hemingway’s novel “Across the River and into the Trees,” Beegel said. Experts say Hemingway credited her visit to Cuba in 1950 with inspiring him as he crafted the Pulitzer Prizewinning “The Old Man and the Sea.” He wrote of the literary award in a June 1953 letter to his friend, saying, “The book is back on the Best Seller lists due to the ig-noble Prize,” a line Beegel sees as self-deprecating humor. Hemingway went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature the next year. The Associated Press
MENTAL HEALTH
A federal judge has barred victims of the September 2001 terror attacks from claiming money an alleged al-Qaida member invested with a Chicago futures brokerage firm. U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly on Tuesday granted a government motion to reject the victims’ claims to nearly $7 million. The U.S. Department of Justice claims Abu al Tayyeb, through an associate, deposited nearly $27 million into an account with R.J. O’Brien & Associates in 2005. But poor investment decisions caused the money to dwindle. Federal officials froze the assets and are attempting to get the money. Victims’ attorney Sean Carte says they might amend their legal argument, adding there are a number of ways to get the money. The Associated Press
2. CLEVELAND
Sick pilot forces plane to make emergency landing At least one of five century-old incandescent light bulbs still works after being pulled from the cornerstone of a Cleveland-area building along with a time capsule. The Plain Dealer reports GE Lighting began a 100th anniversary celebration of the Nela Park operation on Monday at one of the park’s original buildings at the East Cleveland research center. The lead-box time capsule held photos of Nela founders, journals, a book of technical specifications and a Plain Dealer. The 40-watt light bulbs were packed in sand above the box. A special socket was used to show off one bulb’s longevity. The rest went to a research lab. The Nela industrial park is the headquarters of GE Lighting, and is listed as an historic place by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Associated Press
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Depression could play key role in Afghan deaths
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Soldier suffered emotional trauma after Iraq tour OLYMPIA, Wash. — The U.S. soldier accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians suffered a traumatic incident during his second tour in Iraq that triggered “tremendous depression,” his lawyer said Wednesday. Lawyer John Henry Browne said he could not discuss the details of the matter because it remains classified. But he expects the issue to become a focal point in the case against Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. “It caused him tremendous depression and anxiety,” Browne said. The lawyer previously said Bales experienced other major dangers in his deployments, including a serious foot injury and head trauma. In addition, a fellow soldier’s leg had been blown off days before the Afghanistan massacre, he said. Bales was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and other crimes. He is being held at a U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. A defense team is now in Afghanistan to collect evidence and interview other U.S. soldiers who knew Bales. “Everyone they’ve spoken to in the military has nothing but amazingly positive things to say about him,” said Browne, who is not part of the team in Afghanistan. Due to security concerns, Browne doesn’t think the team will visit the villages where the killings occurred. The investigators are likely to stay in Afghanistan a few more weeks. Browne questioned the
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TED S. WARREN/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
John Henry Browne, right, the attorney for Robert Bales, listens to testimony in Island County Superior Court, in Coupeville, Wash on Dec. 16, 2011. Bales is accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan.
U.S. government ’s case against Bales, noting there is no preserved crime scene to assess. “It’s going to be a difficult case for the prosecution to prove,” Browne said. Bales has indicated that he had no recollection of prescription drugs he may have been taking before the shooting — something the attorney took as an indicator of larger memory problems. The lawyer also said his client has a sketchy memory of the night of the shootings. U.S. military officials said Bales was drinking on a southern Afghanistan base on March 11 before creeping away to two villages at night, shooting his victims and
setting many of them on fire. Nine were children. Bales has had incidents involving alcohol and violence in the past. In 2002, He was arrested for a drunken assault of a security guard at a Tacoma casino. That charge was dismissed after Bales completed 20 hours of anger management training. In 2008, a couple accused an intoxicated Bales of grabbing a woman’s hand and thrusting it toward his crotch before kicking and punching the woman’s boyfriend, according to a police report. Prosecutors declined to pursue that case. The Associated Press
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