At Islamorada, in the Florida Keys, as you head toward Key West, there is a giant fishing outfitter store called World Wide Sportsman, and sitting inside on the main floor is a vintage sportfishing boat with the name Pilar lettered on it. “PILAR—the half-sister ship to Hemingway’s famed ‘Pilar,’ ” a handout sheet proclaims. It goes on to say that this Pilar was built at a different Brooklyn shipyard a year before Hemingway’s Pilar. Only in superficial ways do the two look alike.
Several months ago, as I was writing this, I went to Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, and spent most of a day with Dana Hewson, arguably the foremost wooden boat expert in America, who, as I’ve noted in the preceding Essay on Sources, is vice president for watercraft preservation and programs at Mystic. He is also a member of what was formerly known as the Hemingway Preservation Foundation Advisory Board and is now the Finca Vigía Foundation. As noted, the foundation is a private group, based in Boston, seeking financial ways to preserve, in cooperation with the Cuban government, Hemingway’s home and property. The day I spent with Dana brought me all the way over in believing that the boat on Hemingway’s hill is the real Pilar. Actually, I had believed it for a good while.
In November 2002, Dana had traveled to Cuba as part of the American delegation that participated in a formal signing of a document (Fidel himself was at the signing table) to begin the process of preserving Hemingway’s home and property. The day after the signing, Dana examined the boat closely. He was allowed to get on board, comb her cabins, open her hatches, make sketches and measurements. After he returned home, he wrote up a brief condition assessment, with recommendations for Pilar’s repair. Dana was sure the Cuban government would never allow the boat on Hemingway’s hill to leave Cuba, and he was right.
Several years went by. The Finca Vigía Foundation did what it could to raise money. It wasn’t that Dana’s urgent recommendations for Pilar were being ignored—just that the bureaucratic wheels turn very slowly in a socialist country that often doesn’t have the money to provide basic needs for its people and that furthermore is in a suspicious standoff with what it regards as imperialist America. Both the Cubans and the American group were working hard to come up with a feasible plan for restoration. Meanwhile, in June 2005 Finca Vigía was named to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places (even though Hemingway’s home wasn’t in America). The next year, the finca was listed on the World Monuments Watch of the 100 Most Endangered Sites on the globe.
That same year, 2006, in April, Dana went again to Cuba with members of the Finca Vigía Foundation. He again studied the boat on the hill, to see what temporary changes might have occurred, and while there he and others from the foundation got the news that the Cuban government would provide the funds for a complete restoration. The work would be done by preservation experts at Marina Hemingway in Havana.
And it has been done, and well. Pilar is now shiny as a new penny. Dana is pleased.
Through the years, Dana has heard talk of the “bogus boat.” One of the first things he told me in our day together is that when he opened the hatches on that first visit in 2002 and looked inside, he saw two engines. “No question,” he said. The main engine and its shaft came down the center; the secondary engine was at the port. “There was no second shaft installation, but there were two engines; I take that as just something that happened during one of the temporary restorations through the years. It would have been cheaper. They got rid of the second screw to save money. They would have done other things like that in the various inadequate restorations.”
We spread out a couple dozen photographs of the boat that had been taken through the years. He said, “I just don’t see any way to prove that the boat there now isn’t Hemingway’s boat, given the amount of changes and restoration work this boat has undergone. Let me put that another way. Everything that seems ‘wrong’ about this boat—and by that I mean everything that’s not necessarily true to the Wheeler tradition or the look of the boat that Hemingway bought in 1934, or the boat that he made adjustments to through the years—can be explained by whatever restoration processes she has undergone.”
He said, “When does a boat begin to deteriorate? When they chop the tree down. George Washington’s ax—the head has been changed twice. The handle has been changed twice. Is it still George Washington’s ax? What’s the answer to that? I don’t think there is one. You are always working on a boat, fixing her, making repairs, doing changes.”
He said, “Did the Cuban government take her into a back shed sometime back there and in the process of starting to repair her say, ‘Oh, it’s too damn hard, we’ll just build a replica and pass her off as the real boat?’ Yes, governments lie. Ours does. Theirs maybe more. Ernest Hemingway means an awful lot to the Cuban people, and so does his boat. His boat means an awful lot to American literature. But does any of that translate to the fact that somebody in Cuba pulled a fast one? From everything I’ve studied, I believe she’s the real boat. Or at least I say it cannot be proven she isn’t the real boat. That’s where I stand.”
Me, too. To tell the truth, I am sort of secretly glad we can’t know for certain; that she resists knowing, as her captain himself finally resists knowing. Which makes Pilar a better metaphor and storytelling vehicle than I ever bargained for.
—P.H., January 2011
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Along with this list, interested readers are invited to consult the Essay on Sources, for not everything cited there is included here, and vice versa. Also, I’ve omitted in this list bibliographic information on Hemingway’s own works, based on the idea that those works are easily accessible on their own, although in the source essay I’ve listed the dates and titles and places of publication for the Hemingway journalism that comes up in the text itself.
Algren, Nelson. Notes from a Sea Diary: Hemingway All the Way. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965.
Arnold, Lloyd. Hemingway: High on the Wild. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1968.
Ashe, Fred. “A Very Attractive Devil: Gregory Hemingway in Islands in the Stream.” Hemingway Review 28, no. 1 (Fall 2008).
Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969.
——. Ernest Hemingway: The Writer as Artist. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972.
——, ed. Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1981.
Bedford, Sybille. Aldous Huxley: A Biography, vol. 2, 1936–1963. London: Chatto & Windus, 1974.
Beegel, Susan F., ed. Hemingway’s Neglected Short Fiction: New Perspectives. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1989.
Benson, Jackson J., ed. New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990.
Bethel, Rodman J. Flagler’s Folly: The Railroad That Went to Sea and Was Blown Away. Key West, FL: Slumbering Giant Publications, 1987.
Bigelow, Gordon E. Frontier Eden: The Literary Career of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1966.
Brasch, James D., and Joseph Sigman. Hemingway’s Library. New York: Garland Publishing, 1981.
Brian, Denis. The True Gen. New York: Grove Press, 1988.
Broer, Lawrence R., and Gloria Holland, eds. Hemingway and Women: Female Critics and the Female Voice. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002.
Bruccoli, Matthew J. Classes on Ernest Hemingway. Columbia: Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, 2002.
——. Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship. New York: Carroll & Graff, 1994.
——. Scott and Ernest: The Authority of Failure and the Authority of Success. New York: Random House, 1978.
Burgess, Anthony. Ernest Hemingway and His World. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978.
Burrell, Rose Marie. Hemingway: The Postwar Years and the Posthumous Novels. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Busch
, Frederick. “Reading Hemingway Without Guilt.” New York Times Book Review, January 12, 1992.
Buske, Morris. “Hemingway Faces God.” Hemingway Review 22, no. 1 (Fall 2002).
Clark, Robert C. “Papa y el Tirador: Biographical Parallels in Hemingway’s ‘I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something.” Hemingway Review 27, no. 1 (Fall 2007).
Colapinto, John. “The Good Son.” Rolling Stone, September 5, 2002.
Comley, Nancy R., and Robert Scholes. Hemingway’s Genders: Rereading the Hemingway Text. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.
Connett, Eugene V., ed. American Big-Game Fishing. Lanham, MD: Derrydale Press, 1935.
Cowley, Malcolm. “Hemingway’s Wound—And Its Consequences for American Literature.” Georgia Review, Summer 1984.
——. “A Portrait of Mr. Papa.” Life, January 10, 1949.
——. A Second Flowering: Works and Days of the Lost Generation. New York: Viking Press, 1973.
Crews, Frederick C. “Pressure Under Grace.” New York Review of Books, August 13, 1987.
Curnutt, Kirk. Coffee with Hemingway. London: Duncan Baird Publishers, 2007.
Curnutt, Kirk, and Gail D. Sinclair, eds. Key West Hemingway: A Reassessment. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009.
Dancey, Thomas B. “Chicago to Mackinac: Story of the Northern Michigan Transportation Company.” Michigan History Magazine 30, no. 3 (July–September 1946).
Didion, Joan. “Last Words.” New Yorker, November 9, 1998.
Doctorow, E. L. “Braver Than We Thought.” New York Times Book Review, May 18, 1986.
Donaldson, Scott. By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway. New York: Penguin Books, 1977.
——, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hemingway. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Donaldson, Scott, in collaboration with R. H. Winnick. Archibald MacLeish: An American Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.
Donnelly, Honoria Murphy, with Richard N. Billings. Sara & Gerald: Villa America and After. New York: Times Books, 1982.
Dos Passos, John. The Best Times: An Informal Memoir. New York: New American Library, 1966.
Eby, Carl P. Hemingway’s Fetishism: Psychoanalysis and the Mirror of Manhood. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.
Erb, Mary Whitfield, Cynthia Beadell Hermann, and Charles E. Schloff. Walloon Yesterdays: A Glimpse of the Past Through Photographs and Memories. Petoskey, MI: Mitchell Graphics, 2003.
Farrington, S. Kip, Jr. Atlantic Game Fishing. New York: Kennedy Brothers, 1937.
——. Fishing with Hemingway and Glassell. New York: D. McKay, 1971.
——. Sport Fishing Boat. New York: W. W. Norton, 1949.
Federspiel, Michael. Picturing Hemingway’s Michigan. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010.
——. “Up North with the Hemingways.” Michigan History 91, no. 5 (September–October 2007).
Fenton, Charles A. The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway: The Early Years. New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1954.
Finney, Ben. Feet First. New York: Crown, 1971.
Fleming, Robert E., ed. Hemingway and the Natural World. Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1999.
Fuentes, Norberto. Hemingway in Cuba. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1984.
Gellhorn, Martha. Travels with Myself and Another. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978.
Gingrich, Arnold. Nothing but People: The Early Days at Esquire; A Personal History, 1928–1958. New York: Crown Publishers, 1971.
——. The Well-Tempered Angler. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.
Griffin, Peter. Along with Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Heilner, Van Campen. Salt Water Fishing. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946.
Hemingway, Gregory H. Papa: A Personal Memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.
Hemingway, Jack. Misadventures of a Fly Fisherman: My Life with and Without Papa. Dallas: Taylor Publishing, 1986.
Hemingway, John. Strange Tribe. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2007.
Hemingway, Leicester. My Brother, Ernest Hemingway, Memorial Edition. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 1996.
Hemingway, Lorian. Walk on Water: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
Hemingway, Mary Welsh. How It Was. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.
Hemingway, Valerie. Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways. New York: Ballantine Books, 2004.
Hotchner, A. E. Papa Hemingway. New York: Random House, 1966.
Jobst, Jack. “Gone Fishin’.” Michigan History 79 (November–December 1995).
Johnson, Donald S. “Hemingway: A Trout Fisher’s Apprenticeship.” American Fly Fisher 15, no. 1 (Summer 1989).
——. “Hemingway’s Fishing Apprenticeship.” Outdoor America, Summer 1987.
Kaplan, Moise N. Big Game Anglers’ Paradise. New York: Liveright Publishing, 1937.
Kazin, Alfred. An American Procession. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984.
——. On Native Grounds. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
Kemp, Tom. “The Fishing Life of Ernest Hemingway.” Fisherman, January 1958.
Kennedy, J. Gerald. Imagining Paris: Exile, Writing and American Identity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.
Kert, Bernice. The Hemingway Women. New York: W. W. Norton, 1983.
Langley, Joan, and Wright Langley. Key West: Images of the Past. Key West, FL: C. C. Belland and E. O. Swift, 1982.
Langley, Wright, and Stan Windhorn. Yesterday’s Key West. Miami: Seeman Publishing, 1973.
Lea, Lawrence H. Prowling Papa’s Waters. Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 1992.
Lynn, Kenneth S. Hemingway. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.
Macrate, Arthur. History of the Tuna Club. Avalon, CA, 1948.
Mailer, Norman. Cannibals and Christians. New York: Dial Press, 1966.
Mandler, Lou. “The Hemingways at Canterbury.” Pallium 25, nos. 1 and 2 (Fall 2008 and Winter 2009).
Marek, Ken. Hemingway’s Michigan: A Driving Tour of Emmett and Charlevoix Counties. Mount Pleasant, MI: Clarke Historical Library, 2007.
Matthews, Bruce, and Ed Pritchard. Fin-Noir: The Legacy Years. Tulsa, OK: W. C. Bradley/ZEBCO, 2007.
McIver, Stuart B. Hemingway’s Key West. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 2002.
McLendon, James. Papa Hemingway in Key West. Key West, FL: Langley Press, 1990.
Mellow, James R. Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.
——. “The Hemingways: An American Tragedy.” Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1999.
Miller, Linda Patterson, ed. Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sara Murphy and Friends. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002
——. “The Matrix of Hemingway’s Pilar Log.” North Dakota Quarterly 64, no. 3 (1997).
Miller, Madelaine Hemingway. Ernie. New York: Crown Publishers, 1975.
Miller, Russell. Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard. London: Michael Joseph, 1987.
Mizener, Arthur. The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951.
Montgomery, Constance Cappel. Hemingway in Michigan. New York: Fleet Publishing, 1966.
Morrow, Lance. “A Quarter-Century Later, the Myth Endures.” Time, August 25, 1986.
Nagel, James, ed. Ernest Hemingway: The Oak Park Legacy. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996.
Nagel, Jan. “They Remember Hemingway.” Inside, July 2, 1975.
Ohle, William H. How It Was in Horton Bay. Horton Bay, MI: n.p., 1999.
Oliver, Charles M. Ernest Hemingway, A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 1999.
Ott, Mark P. A Sea of Change: Ernest Hemingway and the Gulf Stream: A Contextual Biography. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2008.
Price, Reynolds. A Common Room: Essays, 1954–1987. New York: Atheneum, 1987.
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Reiger, George. Profiles in Salt Water Angling: A History of the Sport—Its People and Places, Tackle and Techniques. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973.
Reynolds, Michael. Hemingway: The Final Years. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.
——. Hemingway: The Homecoming. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992.
——. Hemingway: The 1930s. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.
——. Hemingway: The Paris Years. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.
——. The Young Hemingway. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987.
Ross, Lillian. “How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” New Yorker, May 13, 1950.
Rovere, Richard R. “End of the Line.” New Yorker, December 15, 1951.
Ruhlman, Michael. Wooden Boats: In Pursuit of the Perfect Craft at an American Boatyard. New York: Viking Penguin, 2001.
Samuelson, Arnold. With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba. New York: Random House, 1984.
Sanford, Marcelline Hemingway. At the Hemingways: With Fifty Years of Correspondence Between Ernest and Marcelline Hemingway. Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1999.
Saunders, Ashley B. History of Bimini, vols. 1 and 2. Alice Town, Bimini, Bahamas: New World Press, 2000.
Scafella, Frank, ed. Hemingway: Essays of Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Spanier, Sandra, and Robert W. Trogdon, eds. The Letters of Ernest Hemingway: Volume 1, 1907–1922 (The Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway). New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Spilka, Mark. Hemingway’s Quarrel with Androgyny. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
Svoboda, Frederic. Hemingway in Michigan, Michigan in Hemingway. Mount Pleasant, MI: Clarke Historical Library, 2003.
——. Up North with the Hemingways and Nick Adams. Mount Pleasant, MI: Clark Historical Library, 2007.
Svoboda, Frederic, and Joseph J. Waldmeir, eds. Hemingway: Up in Michigan Perspectives. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995.
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