|
The truth about True at First Light
INTERVIEW BY JAY LEE MACDONALD
True at First Light, the fifth and final posthumous book from Ernest Hemingway, is a "fictional memoir" based on the author's 1953 African safari. Derived from a 200,000-word manuscript drafted by Hemingway in 1954 and subsequently set aside, True at First Light arrives in bookstores this month to commemorate Hemingway's centennial birthday celebration on July 21.
The task of editing an expansive, unfinished manuscript by one of this century's literary masters might have proved daunting for even the most astute Hemingway scholar. Equally daunting for a publisher was the task of identifying the right editor. Publishing scion Charles Scribner III, whose grandfather was Hemingway's good friend and publisher, found someone uniquely qualified: the author's own son, Patrick. Although Patrick Hemingway had no previous experience as a book editor, his credentials for the project were unparallelled: he had familial intimacy with the author's "voice"; he had accompanied his father on the safari; and, as a copyright holder, he was thoroughly familiar with the author's body of work.
The result of this unique literary collaboration between author father and editor son (albeit several decades after the manuscript was drafted) is a fascinating look at the author in his mid-50s, a mellower, self-effacing literary lion overlooking his African domain.
BookPage spoke by telephone with Patrick Hemingway from his home in Bozeman, Montana, and Charles Scribner III from his New York office about the genesis of the book and the question that most seems to intrigue readers: Just how true is True at First Light?
BookPage: How did the publication of True at First Light come about?
Charles Scribner: Before Hemingway died, he boasted to my father that he had several unpublished manuscripts in a safe that would someday earn very good royalties for his heirs if he didn't live to complete them. When he died, Mary Hemingway went to their estate in Cuba, the Finca Vigia, and was able to retrieve those manuscripts and bring them home in exchange for deeding all of their Cuban property and possessions to the Cuban people. In other words, Castro's government wanted everything of Hemingway's left behind, but they were willing to let her bring the manuscripts home to the U.S. In all, not a bad trade. In the long run, the manuscripts were worth more and certainly were of more value to the world of book lovers.
In 1971, Mary offered part of the African manuscript to Sports Illustrated, and at the end of 1971 and early 1972 they published a series of three excerpts. These came from the same raw manuscript from which this book comes, but understandably tended to focus more on the "sporting" aspects of the safari. As a result of the serialization, that manuscript went back into the drawer because something had now been done with it.
BP: You call True at First Light "a fictional memoir." Was this in any way a journal?
CS: Scholars have referred to the manuscript by the title given it by Sports Illustrated, "The African Journal." But Hemingway never called it that, and to call it a journal would be misleading about the nature of the manuscript. Actually, to his credit, the person who first pointed out to me, very emphatically, that that title was totally misleading and would confuse people was Patrick, who had been along on the safari and knew full well that it was not a journal. But scholars didn't know that.
BP: It has been more than a decade since the publication of Hemingway's fourth posthumous book, The Garden of Eden. Why did it take so long to publish True at First Light?
CS: It was clear to me that this manuscript would need a very knowledgeable and sensitive editor because of this interweaving of fiction and nonfiction. The scholars who came to me volunteering to edit it tended to think of it as a journal; they approached it as though it were Hemingway the reporter on safari. It was only Patrick who appreciated that it was a work of fiction, a blending of fiction and nonfiction. So it became clear to me that he was the ideal editor. At that point, it was merely a matter of waiting until he felt the spirit moving him to tackle, for the first and last time, a manuscript of his father's.
BP: The average reader will ask: How much of this "fictional memoir" is true?
Patrick Hemingway: None of it! I mean, it is a work of fiction. I hope that's clear. I was somewhat misled by the cut that was done by Sports Illustrated where it was presented as a journal. It certainly wasn't a journal; it was written a year after the event.
BP: What prompted you to undertake the project?
PH: I was the most knowledgeable person in the world about this manuscript as far as the writer and his context and the material. Because I have been one of the three copyright owners, together with my brothers, since my stepmother died, I am very familiar with Hemingway's work. I listen to it constantly when I'm traveling, I own all the recorded tapes of his work, I read it, I refer to it. As an editor, it was not a difficult job for me.
BP: Were you intimidated at first by the project?
PH: Well, yes. I am not a professional editor. I do think that if this book is any good, it's because Hemingway wrote it, not because I edited it.
BP: What criteria did you use?
PH: It was essentially to keep as strong a story line as the original manuscript would allow. I had identified what I felt were the two principal story lines; one is a lion hunt, the second is a leopard hunt. Then there is a more complex story line that involves sexual politics and the triangle between a husband and wife and another woman. I wanted to make them as strong as possible and as integrated as possible. My tool was cutting, not making up material or inventing transitional passages. Just cutting. We ended up taking out about a quarter to a third of the manuscript.
BP: Much will be made of the narrator's love affair with the young African woman, Debba. Is there reason to believe that some version of this actually took place?
PH: In The Green Hills of Africa, Hemingway wonders whether a work of absolute truth can compete with a work of fiction. At the same time, he says there isn't any love interest in this book, he's happily married, and that the reader is free to insert any love interest he or she may have at the time. Now, you see a professional writer protesting a little bit about writing a novel and always having to have a love interest. Debba is there in this manuscript to provide a love interest, together with the complexities of him being a married man.
BP: In the editing, were you able to sense where Hemingway was headed with the book?
PH: I think I did. I think he was planning to incorporate [Hemingway's actual] plane crashes in it. There is a certain amount of forewarning, that he's very reluctant to leave this place, that he doesn't see why they should go to Central Africa. I think his description of the crashes would have been horrific. He was building up some tension there that would have been very explosive. But given what we had to work with, we simply couldn't indulge ourselves in that.
BP: In the future, can we expect to see portions of the raw manuscript that ended up on the cutting room floor?
CS: No more or less so than with any of the other Hemingway books. There is material on the cutting room floor of books published in his own lifetime and a great deal more of the posthumous publications. Eventually, scholars probably will not resist the temptation to publish everything, including his discovered laundry lists. I honestly don't think there is anything "on the floor" that would add to the enjoyment or illumination of this work. If there were, we would have included it.
In celebration of the centennial of Hemingway's birth, Scribner Classics presents three new editions of his work:
The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories
Scribner Classics, $25
ISBN 0684862212
Death in the Afternoon
Scribner Classics, $35
ISBN 068485922X
To Have and Have Not
Scribner Classics, $25
ISBN 0684859238
Also look for these Hemingway titles in the Scribner Classics Collection:
A Farewell to Arms
Scribner Classics, $27.50
ISBN 0684837889
A Moveable Feast
Scribner Classics, $22
ISBN 0684833638
Across the River and into the Trees
Scribner Classics, $26
ISBN 0684844648
The Collected Short Stories
Scribner Classics, $30
ISBN 0684837862
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Scribner Classics, $27.50
ISBN 0684830485
Green Hills of Africa
Scribner Classics, $25
ISBN 068484463X
The Old Man and the Sea
Scribner Classics, $20
ISBN 0684830493
The Sun Also Rises
Scribner Classics, $25
ISBN 0684830515
Jay Lee MacDonald is a writer in Naples, Florida.
|
Support your