1 hemingway's library - John F. Kennedy Library and Museum

always be "in supply." When he ran short, he was forced to read whatever was at hand, even his father's A.M.A.
journals. In 1948 Hemingway wrote to General C.T. Lanham from Italy, bitterly complaining about a dock strike
that had cut off his supply of magazines, newspapers and American books. As a result, he wrote Lanham, he was
forced to read all sorts of inferior material, a situation which led him to observe gloomily that most people were
awful writers.(22) In 1952 Hemingway condemned William Faulkner's Sanctuary because he was unable to re-read
it on board the Pilar even when all other reading material had run out. (23) Such books that could not be read even
when nothing else was available were a significant critical category for Hemingway:
I had never been able to read a novel by Ouida, not even at some skiing place in Switzerland where reading
matter had run out when the wet south wind had come and there were only the left-behind Tauchnitz
editions of before the war.... you can't read Dostoyevsky over and over. I had Crime and Punishment on a
trip when we ran out of books down at Schruns, and I couldn't read it again when we had nothing to read. I
read the Austrian papers and studied German until we found some Trollope in Tauchnitz.(24)
Sun Valley presented the same danger. In a 1941 letter to Toby Bruce, Hemingway worried if reading material
would be as scarce there as it sometimes was.(25) As might be expected, therefore, Hemingway never travelled
without a supply of books. In a 1925 letter to Sylvia Beach from the Hotel Taube in Austria he reported that he had
read all the books from her library and would mail them back if she wanted him to.(26) A book, like Paris, was a
moveable feast. The relation between hunting and reading in Green Hills of Africa is well-known:
P.O.M. got the books out of one of the musettes and she and Pop read while I followed down the ravine
down to the little stream that came out of the mountain side, and found a fresh lion track and many rhino
tunnels in the tall grass that came higher than your head. Itwas very hot climbing back up the sandy ravine
and I was glad to lean my back against the tree trunk and read Tolstoi=s Sevastopol.(27)
Later, when Toby Bruce began to chauffeur Hemingway, the custom continued: AWe=d move books everyplace he=d
go. If we were headed cross-country, he=d have a duffle-bag, later on one of those old Abercrombie and Fitch duffle
bags, that=d be loaded with books.@(28) Mary Hemingway has described the same habit: AWe always traveled with a
book bag. A bag just for books. A sizable bag.(29) When she and Hemingway departed for his second African
safari, they Ahad one big canvas bag bulging with books@ in their luggage. (30) Furthermore, as he traveled,
Hemingway always acquired more books. Betty and Toby Bruce recall one of the trips on which Toby drove
Hemingway from Key West to Idaho. At every stop, Hemingway bought fresh newspapers, magazines, and
paperbacks until on their arrival the car was filled to capacity. (31) Shorter trips were no exception: AEvery time
we=d go say to the airport, why here he=d be browsing through the pocket book libraries.@(32) Mary Hemingway
recalls that books were acquired in a similar way on trips to Europe: AEvery time we went to Spain he was forever
picking up books and bringing them back.@ French paperbound novels such as those of Georges Simenon were Athe
kind of thing we used to pick up in Paris and take with us to Spain or Africa.@(33) In addition, arrangements were
sometimes made to have books mailed to Hemingway on his travels.(34)
When he was at home Hemingway generally wrote in the morning and read in the afternoon and evening.
According to Lorine Thompson, AHe read an awful lot in bed at night.@ She recalls dining occasionally with the
Hemingways in their bedroom in the house on Whitehead Street in Key West: AWhenever you=d go up there...the
bed, all around the bed was covered with papers and books.@(35) Toby Bruce, who lived at the Finca Vigía during
Hemingway=s first years in Cuba, remembers that Ahe=d go to bed and read between dinner and going to sleep... Many
the time I=d be sitting there listening to the phonograph or whatever and I=d look in and here he=d be dead asleep with
his glasses on.@(36) Mary Hemingway describes a normal quiet day at the Finca when no guests were present in this
way. Hemingway would, of course, write in the morning.
After lunch as a rule we had a siesta, especially in the hot weather in the summer, and then wake up and
read in the sitting room unless we had guests. I used to lie on the sofa and read, and he had his chair. And
then, of course, we also took books to bed...We always took books to bed...He used to love to be read aloud
to. I used to do that in bed and also in the sitting room.(37)
In her autobiography Mrs. Hemingway describes reading to Hemingway during his recovery from hepatitis in the
mid 1950's: "I bought a reading lamp to put behind the chair at the foot of his bed and many evenings read aloud all
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