Founders - #194 Ernest Hemingway (Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy)

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

What I learned from reading Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961 by Nicholas Reynolds. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

In 2010, I was a historian for the best museum you've never seen, the CIA Museum. We were preparing to install a new exhibit on the Office of Strategic Services, OSS, America's first central intelligence agency. I was tasked with finding out everything I could about this experimental organization, which included researching the company roster. Hastily pulled together to fight the Axis, OSS was an odd creature. At once, a collection of men and women from the upper crust of society on America's East Coast

and a magnet for astonishingly talented and creative people from all walks of life. From Wall Street lawyers to Hollywood filmmakers, even the future chef Julia Child. In OSS, they could almost literally design their own adventures. My head swimming in research, I made an offhand connection one day that would lead to uncharted waters. I remember reading in the past that Ernest Hemingway and Colonel David Bruce of the OSS had liberated the bar of the Ritz in Paris from the Germans in August 1944. Now I wondered if there

was more to the story. Hemingway would not have been out of place in the OSS. He loved secrets and the edge they gave him. He craved action, but was not cut out for conventional soldiering. He moved easily between social and economic classes and across borders. I thought to myself that he had a lot in common with many of the other men in the spy business whom I had met or read about. So had he been an OSS spy of some sort? What was the full story about Hemingway and intelligence in World War II? The writer had tried his hand at various forms of spying and fighting on two continents. The way stations were varied, often exotic.

The battlefields of Spain, the back streets of Havana, a junk on the North River in China. He seemed to gravitate to men and women who operated on their own in the shadows. And then I learned something that surprised me. He had signed on with another intelligence service, one that did not fit the conventional narrative of his life. That service turned out to be the Soviet NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB. A lifelong Hemingway admirer, I felt I'd taken an elbow deep in the gut. How could this be? The characters he created embodied so many American values we still cherish. Truth, bravery, independence, grace under pressure, standing up for the underdog. His voice was uniquely American and revolutionary. He had changed the course of American literature in the 1920s.

Why would he sign on and why would he do it secretly? His greatest work, after all, came from sharing, not hiding his life experiences. And so I set out on a quest, day after quiet day, in reading rooms all over the country. I paged through his correspondence. He was almost as great a letter writer as a novel writer. I wanted to uncover the backstory. Research has always been seductive for me. It felt right for one visit to the archives to lead seamlessly to the next. One more obscure book about the Spanish Civil War or World War II or the Cold War was never enough.

And so, over the next three years, I filled in the outlines of the new Hemingway portrait from my unusual sources. Ultimately, I concluded that Hemingway's dalliance with the NKVD and the political attitudes that explain it made an important difference in his life and art. It influenced many of the decisions he made during his last 15 years, where he lived, what he wrote, and how he acted. The chapters of the Cold War, the Red Scare, the Cuban Revolution, and two months before his death, the Bay of Pigs made things worse for him. He did not understand politics and intrigue as well as he thought he did, and for long stretches of time he overestimated his ability to control himself and others, even to change history. In the end, he began to understand his limits,

and came to the tragic conclusion that the only way to reassert control was to kill himself. That is the story I tell in this book. That is an excerpt from the introduction. It's a fantastic book that I hold in my hand and the one I'm going to talk about today, which is Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy, Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures from 1935 to 1961. And it was written by Nicholas Reynolds. Okay, so before I jump into what I learned from the book and some highlights for you, I want to tell you how this book came about. This has been several months in the making. I knew I wanted to read a biography of Ernest Hemingway. And a lot of it has to do with this quote that Steve Jobs said when he was giving a commencement address.

I think it was at Stanford back in 2003. I just want to read you what he said. He says, when you grow up, you tend to be told that the world is the way it is. And your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life. Have some fun and save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. That you can change it. That you can influence influence it and then he skips a little bit

and says once you learn that you'll never be the same again and i want to point out what one quote right there or that one word broader life can be much broader so i knew i was going to be doing a series of biographies on writers and specifically hemingway because hemingway treated life he lived life to the fullest he treated it like the adventure it is. And I think so few people actually do that, given exactly what and that's what Steve Jobs was echoing. You know, they say that the prescription for life that society is giving you is so limited, and life can be so much broader, it can be as broad as you want to make it. And so reading about and learning from people like Ernest Hemingway, I think serves as a reminder to you

and I that life can be whatever we want it to be. It can be as broad or as narrow as you want it to be. Okay, and then second thing, second to last thing I want to tell you before I jump into the book, this is probably the book that I prepared the most for. When I got this idea to read a biography of Ernest Hemingway, I was like, well, I can't read a biography of Ernest Hemingway if I don't read Hemingway. So I wound up reading three of his novels in order. I read The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. And so once I finished those three novels, those three books, I started listening to the audiobook of this book. I thought I was going to read like a proper extensive biography of Ernest Hemingway.

The one I picked up was terrible. I wound up giving up the quickest I've ever given up on a book because the writing was so bad. But while I was listening to this audio book, I thought it was the opposite. It was amazing. It was fun. I couldn't believe there's so much unbelievable things that happen in his life that take place in this book that about halfway through the audio book, I ordered the paperback version. And once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. So that's a clear indication that I need to make a podcast about this. So I'm going to jump right back into the

book. I want to tie, there's just one sentence that's going to set the tone for the life of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway was not there just to observe. And so that reminded me about the part of the book I did last week or a couple days ago whenever it was on Arnold when this guy was saying hey I'll pay for your plane ticket you can fly to this this competition just to watch and Arnold's like watch no no I'm not here I'm not merely here to be a spectator in life I'm here to take part and that is definitely a main theme of the life of Hemingway so in addition to the fact that I wanted to study Hemingway because he treated life like an adventure, I also want to study him because he got to the very, very top of his profession. And his work still resonates to this day. My favorite book, the book that I liked the most of

his was The Old Man and the Sea. And it was published in 1950, 70 years ago. And you can pick that book up today and still be wildly entertained and learn something from it. So it says, by the year 1935, Hemingway had climbed to the top of his profession. Born just before the turn of the century, this ambitious young man from Illinois had started a revolution in literature while still in his 20s. His two bestsellers, The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, reflected how much he had lived in his first three decades. He was a wounded veteran by 19, then a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star, and a member of the Paris branch of the lost generation of legendary talented writers. The Nobel Prize for Literature that Hemingway had later received explains the

appeal of his work. His writing honestly and undoubtedly reproduced the hard countenance of the age with the trademark combination of simplicity and precision. And I think reading three of his books, that simplicity and precision really culminates in The Old Man and the Sea. I like The Sun Also Rises as well. I like For Whom the Bell Tolls less than either of the other two books. But in The Old Man and the Sea, just his brevity, his simplicity, his precision, the way he, I'm not going to ruin the plot of the book, but essentially almost the entire story takes place with one individual by himself on a boat, and it's wildly entertaining. And again, really quick to read, which again, I really appreciate writers like Hemingway, because when you read a lot, you read there's

just a lot of writers that are not writing to be read. I don't know if they're writing for fellow adulation from maybe critics or other academics or other cases, but their writing is terrible. Hemingway wrote to be read. When he wrote, he was a soul of brevity, telling compelling stories and spare prose that spoke to millions of readers. His central theme was personal courage. He displayed a natural admiration for every individual who fights the good fight in a world overshadowed by violence and death. Hemingway was so successful that he was now on his way to becoming a touchstone for every American writer. So he is about he's in his by 1935. He that would put him in his mid 30s. So it says he was so successful that he now became on his way to become a touchstone for every American writer

and a role model for American individualists. That's an important, his love of both the underdog and the individual is an important theme that we're going to revisit a couple times today. They were reading Hemingway, quoting him, copying his behavior, and seeking his advice. He had only a handful of competitors. And on the next page, there's this sentence that I think tells us a lot about Hemingway. It says, the editors lashed back that Hemingway was too focused on the individual and did not understand the powerful economic forces determining the course of history.

I would say that's a key to his personality. He valued the individual. He did not think of himself as belonging to a group. And one thing I admire about Hemingway, tying back to this idea that he treated life as an adventure, he didn't live in one spot all the time. The longest place he ever lived would be in Cuba. But he lived all over the world. He lived in Key West, which we're going to get to right now. But he saw the entire world. He was constantly traveling. It's amazing. It's almost like, have you ever seen the movie Forrest Gump where Tom Hanks playing Forrest Gump.

The characters always are like every single there's like every single historical event he just happens to be. Hemingway has a lot of that in him, whether you seem either in China meeting the future leaders of the communist leaders in China. He's he's watching the D-Day invasion of Normandy off the coast of France from a boat. He just happens to be there. When the Allies liberate Paris, he's there. He just has all these experiences. He just pops up like he's Forrest Gump. So this is a little bit about – and when he goes into – this book goes into a lot of detail about where –

when he does choose a place to call home. I think it says a lot about what's important to him. Hemingway had moved to Key West. It was a place – and remember, this is in the 1920s. OK, let me go back to that page. It says it was a place where the robust, handsome sportsman who was six feet tall and solidly muscled could live a halfway rugged outdoor life barefoot, wearing plain T-shirts, half unbuttoned and shorts. In 1928, Key West was a poor man's tropical paradise, reachable from the mainland only by rail or boat. So I'm going to pause in the middle of that paragraph. If you don't know, it's the southernmost tip of the United States.

It's closer to Cuba. It's 90 miles from Cuba than it is to Miami. And I've been to the Keys, I don't know, 10 times, maybe a dozen times. The some of the strangest experiences of my life and strangest people I ever met live happened in in the Keys. It's bizarre even to the same. It's much more developed now than it was in Hemingway's day. Hemingway's day, it's like almost living. And what he liked about it. So I'm not really I'm in America, but I don't really, I'm not really in the country. So it says it was a poor man's tropical paradise, reachable from the mainland only by rail or boat. Now there's a seven mile bridge. Many of the streets were not paved. Many of the buildings had no plumbing or electricity. The closest thing to

a grocery store was a small warehouse that sold necessity. So most of the people live there. You might buy rice and beans, stuff like that at the warehouse, but mostly they're catching, they're eating mostly seafood. He had a goal at one point in his life to be the world's best deep sea fisherman. It was something, a passion of his his entire life. It's also why he chose to live in Key West and later in Cuba. It was a place of shabby discomfort, good friends, gambling, 15 cent whiskey and 10 cent gin he's definitely an outsider definitely a misfit he he's attracted to these bizarre people in these bizarre places part of the island's charm was that the mainland was far away uh the key west was a town of independent fishermen and bootleggers and on this page is a picture of his house in the keys i've actually been there um and

the note i left myself was you you know you you were good at your job when they turn your house into a museum so not only is his house in key west a museum but also his house in cuba is a museum uh talks about his personality and why he might want to pick uh to live in a place like the Keys, which was very remote. Hemingway placed a premium on rugged self-reliance. So now we're going to jump ahead to Spain. The book is kind of in a chronological order, but it goes back and forth with flashbacks and stuff. So again, you got to read the book to get the whole story like every other book that I talk about. And this is a fantastic book. I'm buying copies for friends. Like there is so much in this book that has to, there's like a history of everything that's going on that I have

to omit. But it's very fascinating. And this is a little bit about, I want to bring this, this, these two paragraphs to your attention because there's something that was very consistent with Hemingway's. How many times he was within inches or minutes of death. Even when they said he was, by the time he was like 19 or 20, he was an injured, he got injured in World War I. He was an ambulance driver for the Red Cross. And they wound up getting shelled

by I think German artillery. I can't remember. It was Germans definitely shot at him. I don't remember if it was bullets or missiles or bombs or whatever. But the guy next to him wound up dying. He wound up being in the hospital for six months.

In this case, he's going to cover the civil war that's happening in Spain in the 1930s, and they just light up his car. And this happens several times. There's pictures in the book of what the car looks like. It's unbelievable. It's a description of what happened.

The time was the spring of 1937, the place Spain. A photo shows that the once elegant black sedan had been riddled with bullets, probably from a passing enemy fighter plane. It is now a wreck, front tire flat, windshield shattered, one headlight dangling from its socket. The car's engine is exposed. Its hood lying useless a few feet away. The open door suggests that the passengers got out fast. Two of those passengers was Hemingway and a columnist named Joris Ivins.

They stand between the camera and the wreck, miraculously unscathed. For most of his life, Hemingway liked to live on the edge and take risks. But the expression on his face suggests that, at least this time, the brush with death was close enough for him. And that's also something I learned and come to respect about Hemingway. You might not agree with his views on things or the way he acts. He is a wild, uncontrollable person, definitely not civilized by any means. But he is willing to make sacrifices and pay the pay. If there's going to be consequences for his actions, he's willing to deal with those consequences, both good and bad.

In many cases, he puts himself in the very real possibility of dying. He is not cowardly by any means this is just a highlight of something most of which I'm going to omit that the book talks about a lot it's just the level of violence because you're dealing with all kinds of it's a book about spying in some cases so you have the CIA, the NKVD

the British version of that I don't remember what the name is. Japanese spies, Chinese spies. But again, I'm going to read the sentence. And the reason I'm reading the sentence is because they're describing events that took place, let's see, almost 100 years ago. And this still goes on today. We just saw the same thing happen to the journalist Jamal Khasagi. I think that's how you pronounce his name. And it says the NKVD would lure a Trotskyite in for an appointment, then interrogate,

kill and cremate him, leaving no trace whatsoever. So let me go back to what I was just talking about, why he was willing to put himself in so many dangerous situations what his goal was he wanted to be the not a not one of the war con war writer of his generation war and his reason was war gave answers that could be found nowhere else and again he had a very early experience and it's something he had an experience with war from the time he was 18 to almost his entire life minus minus maybe his last decade. World War II was basically his last experience with war. And he lived about another decade, decade and a half after that. But he wanted to be the war writer.

Now, he doesn't say war correspondent, even though that's the job he has. And he was going to wind up getting in trouble later on because he doesn't, he's like, I'm not here to just report. So he, in many cases, he'll pick up guns. There's so many unbelievable things in this book. He winds up, he winds up encountering these French guerrillas right before the end of the war in the liberation of Paris. And he can speak

French, speaks a bunch of languages. He winds up leading them. They take over a hotel. And he's supposed to be reporting on the war. And they capture a bunch of German soldiers. This is going to blow your mind. It is going to blow your mind. So I do want to bring one thing to your attention that I didn't. Again, it's kind of weird when you discover one thing and then you see it. Now that I've been aware of this book, I've seen it mentioned a few times. I was actually surprised about this. This is a. Well, let me tell you what's going on in the story. So there is the Comintern. The Comintern was like an organization that was controlled by the soviet union that would advocate for world communism right and so what they would do is they would figure out a way to convince people to adopt communism is is through propaganda

so they would want to um to recruit a bunch of writers or famous people actors whatever the case is to their side so then they can kind of preach the gospel of the common turn. So Hemingway, they try to recruit Hemingway. He is never a communist. He's definitely on the left, but he is more, he describes himself as an anti-fascist, but he was never a communist. They try to recruit him. And even when the books are saying, oh, he signed on with NKVD, he didn't do anything with them. And this is before the Soviet Union wound up being an enemy of, you can't call him a traitor because it wasn't they were allied they were american ally at the time um and but anyways i i thought that part of the book was a little bit overplayed because then i i'm reading through the book i'm like okay i listened to the

i listened to the audiobook right and then i read the book and i was like where the hell did i miss the part where he's actually contributing to the nkvd and at the end it's like well you know he signed on you never really did anything with them i was was like, all right, well, come on. I mean, he's got enough. There's enough interesting things in his life. We don't have to overplay that part, I guess, was my interpretation of it. Maybe I missed it. I don't know. But that was my interpretation. So anyways, this is where the commenter is trying to recruit Hemingway. He's never going to sign on and be a full-fledged communist. He thought, again, he's an individual. I like to have a loose association with fellow irregulars, fellow misfits, but I'm not going to do your bidding.

He was way too type A, strong personality to ever do that. But anyway, so they're recruiting him and this other lady named Barbara Tuckman. So it says Barbara Tuckman would write the bestseller, The Guns of August, which attracted the attention of JFK, President John F. Kennedy. So that book, we just learned about this book recently on podcast number 188.

That was the book that Joe of Trader Joe's, the founder of Trader Joe's, was reading when his company almost went bankrupt. So it's a book on war, ostensibly. But his point was that the book's main concept, this is Joe's point, the book's main concept is that there are multiple solutions to non-convex problems. So that applies to combat, non-convex problems, but also to business. And so he had the idea. Well, there's multiple there's multiple solutions and multiple paths out of impending bankruptcy. I just have to find them. And so let's go back to his time in Spain that this time in Spain. So now he's doing reporting but he considers himself a war writer so this is what his experiences in spain are going to be

he writes about in the sun also uh no not the sun always rises that's in that's about um bullfighting and like paris writers for whom the bell tolls um okay so we're not there yet so it talks about like now he's putting himself in harm's harm's way more about his personality perhaps to test himself he had not been in combat for almost 20 years he seemed to relish going out into the battlefield with the crews so it says it turned out the cameraman that he's with had forgotten his camera hemingway crawled back on his hands and knees to look for it while enemy sharpshooters marked his path with near misses. Bullets hit close by. This happens over and over again to him.

The group that he's with, these guerrillas, they were filled with tough, colorful, and educated men, as well as a few women from various countries, including the United States. The kind of people who appealed to Hemingway, it gives us some of the personality traits of the people he admires. They were not just dreamers, but men risking their lives for their beliefs. They were authentic.

So again, a lot of times when people say what they admire in other people, it's traits that they may want to have in themselves. He definitely admired men that risked their lives for what they believed in, and they were authentic. He tried to do both of those. And this is interesting where he talks about the communist guerrillas that he's embedded with in Spain coming from all over. If you happen to read For Whom the Bell Tolls, the main character, Robert Jordan, I think is the main character's name in that novel, is an American teacher who had come to Spain to help fight the Civil War. And he's the one that has the skills and winds up blowing up bridges,

which we'll learn more about later on. Nope, nope, nope. We're not going to learn about it later on. We're going to learn about it right now. I thought this was coming in a few pages. All right, so it says this is the experiment. The experience I'm about to describe to you now actually happened in real life. It is the main plot of For whom the bell tolls. So this is why, again, I think of, I'm going to talk to you more about

how he approaches work because he gets his top of his profession. I think that's very interesting to you and I, but really it's about exposing yourself to a wide variety of experiences. So those experiences can influence your work. So it says, traveled near but not on a road and finally under cover of darkness crawled up to a set of railroad tracks on a small bridge over a river before long they could hear a train in the distance and see sparks from the locomotive lighting up the night sky the train was moving slowly enough to give to give them time to carefully prime their charges while hemingway rummaged around in his pack for a camera at the gorilla's urgent, he turned off the flash, but was able to use the light from the explosion to photograph the attack.

The bridge collapsing into the water just before the locomotive reached the riverbank. The cars coming off the rails, their iron wheels plowing up the earth before they came to rest. Now useful only as scrap metal. The guerrillas did not wait for the enemy to react, but started for home at once. That is the main plot, which is a lot longer in the book, of For Whom the Bell Tolls. And then this is more on how his time in Spain

related to his work. Hemingway was also in Spain as a suitor, humanitarian, military advisor, and above all, writer. As he tried to explain to the guerrillas, the writer and the reporter were different the reporter wanted facts for a story to follow as soon as he could as soon as he could get through the writer wanted to absorb the experience of wartime which is when

years later when when he gets back home it's going to make his writing more profound and resonating more because he actually saw these things. He actually experienced them. Now, what was interesting is how he had a blind spot. At this time in history, regardless of whether in the left or right, they're all authoritarians. And this reminded me of advice that Charlie Munger gives that I think is really good. And he's like, listen, avoid intense ideology. It turns your brain to mush. And so throughout his life, the closest relationships that Hemingway is going to have are forged in these areas where, whether it's in his time in Spain or in World War II, he goes through extreme experiences with these people and he winds up with lifelong friends. And one of them is this guy named Regler. Regler was, had to flee, I think he was

Jewish. So he had to flee Germany. He saw the authoritarianism that was happening in Germany in the 1930s, right? And so he's a Jew and a communist. And he winds up going to Moscow thinking, okay, I escaped these authoritarians. And then he starts seeing the behavior by Stalin. He's like, wait, you guys are plain to be the enemy, but you're doing the enemy to Hitler and fascist fascism. But you're doing the exact same thing. And so he tried to educate Hemingway on this. And Hemingway eventually gets this later on, but not to the degree that Regler does, because he's just like, I've seen the show trials and executions and all the stuff that is happening in Germany is now playing out in Russia as well. And we saw this before. This is podcast number 159. Andy Grove winds up being essentially the third co-founder of Intel, right? His memoir, Swimming Across, only covers the first 20 years of his life. And one part of the story, Germany is controlling Hungary where he lives. And then eventually they're, quote unquote, liberated by Russia. And they're happy

for a little bit. And then they start seeing the same thing where the Germans would pull people, pull his relatives out of their house and execute them. The Russians start killing people. They wind up raping his mother and all the women living in his apartment building. And so you read that book. And first of all, it's just extremely well written and an amazing story that he survived that. But you just you see that there is the authoritarians, people that want complete control, more like than they are. They profess to be different and so that's what regular saying regular was living in moscow where he

started to understand in a way hemingway never would what it was like to live under the dictatorship on a day-to-day basis often it ominously mirrored nazi germany and regular speaks about this so much he tries to educate hemingway about this that eventually he's forced to flee russia too so he had to leave imagine living the experience now in your life you have to flee the anti-semitism in germany you get to moscow and you realize hey this isn't right either you speak up about it and they're like you either leave the country or we'll kill you and i think uh regler has to live the rest of his life in mexico uh one thing about um ernest hemingway he has a volcanic temper which i i'll go into I don't even know if I go into today,

but there's definitely a few stories in the book that express that. He also has a gigantic ego and does not think that rules apply to him at any means. And this is something we've seen a lot in these biographies. He considered himself to be more influential than he actually was, believing that others live by what he said and wrote about Spain. For one, the young writer Bessie was surprised to learn that Hemingway believed that it was his speech in New York City in June 1937 that motivated Bessie to travel to Spain and join the battalion. Bessie quoted Hemingway as saying that he knew, quote, that my speech influenced a lot of boys to come over here. This was, Bessie continued, the kind of egomania, and this is coming from his friend, the kind of egomania the guy suffered from. I decided to go to Spain long before I heard his

speech. And this is the part I mean about the rules don't apply to him. We're still in Spain at this point. On the battlefield, Hemingway continued to alternate between witnessing and participating in the fighting. He logged many miles with fellow journalists, this guy named Jay Allen from the Chicago Tribune, and then Herbert Matthews of the New York Times. Matthews is his friend. They went on to being friends for a long time, including when Hemingway lives in Cuba and listened to what he's going to do to him. And did not hesitate, Hemingway did not hesitate to set aside his notebook and pen when a loyalist needed his help. These are the guerrillas fighting the fascists. That's what he calls them in Germany, or excuse me, in Spain. Hemingway called on his calling to help move an artillery piece stuck in the mud. So he's getting in. He's like, these guys need your help. We're not just

here to write about it. Let's actually help. And got angry when Allen refused, claiming that he was hired to write, not fight the war. See, Hemingway never made that distinction, nor did Hemingway appreciate the lecture on the laws of war that followed how reporters had no legal right to carry sidearms heming was not only carrying guns he was firing at the people hemingway pitched in again when a truck load of youths the truck turned upside down and boys were strewn along the roadway hemingway left from the car and started giving first aid while matth Matthews got out his notebook and started asking questions of the injured. Oh my God. Hemingway shot, shouted at Matthews to get the hell out of the way before he Hemingway killed him. And now we have, so the note,

the reason I want to move to this next section is because he's Hemingway is now looking back at his time in Spain. I remember he's in his early to mid-30s. He is, no doubt to myself, it's no wonder he created a novel so many people loved. His soul was in it at the time. He's going to look back and realize, okay, I was a little bit too bought in. And his book actually talks about, which is interesting, because his book made both people mad, both sides mad, because they talked about the atrocities on both sides.

And they're like, no, no, no, you should only talk about that side. Or, hey, I thought you were with us. It's just really interesting, just a fundamental aspect of human nature, this tribalism that we all engage in, that I think I always want to be aware of. Make sure I'm not having my mind or my thoughts polluted by our inevitable instinct to, you know, have an us versus them mentality. So this is looking back more than a decade later, he would admit during the war that started for him in Spain, he had become so stinking righteous that he gave him the horrors to look back on. For Hemingway, the Spanish Civil War was not just an outlet for a writer who wanted to be a fighter or just source material for his next book. In words and actions, literally on and off the battlefield, Hemingway fought for the Republic and against fascism both when it furthered his career and when it did not he was willing to make personal

and professional sacrifices so let me repeat that sentence because it's apparent over and over again he was willing to make personal and professional sacrifices okay so now we get in these actual work how he actually constructs his novels and these books that he wrote so long ago and that people are going to be reading them probably for hundreds of years from now. It's just amazing to me. So this is his state of mind as he begins to work. And we also see what he – he understands he's a – I'm not a sick individual. That's not the right way to put it. He is depressed when he's not in combat.

So it says – and I think this is i i'm not like trying to criticize him here this is something if you read any kind of military history for thousands of years people have talked about this like they're in the most dangerous terrifying sometimes terrible environments of their life and they look back at it as that was the best job i ever had that was the best time of my life um so it says, from Key West, he felt both angry and guilty. He had seen town after town bombed to the ground,

the inhabitants killed, the columns of refugees on the roads bombed and machine gunned, shot and shot again. It was the sort of thing that kills things inside of you. He could not bear to think

about his good friends who were still in the thick of things. It was better to be with them. He had, and this is what I mean, he had slept good and sound every night in spain throughout the whole war um he had never felt better these are his words he concluded that one's conscience is a strange thing and not controlled either by a sense of security nor danger of death he wrote that he

had now he's back in key west this is how crazy this is now he wrote that he had now he's back in Key West. This is how crazy this is. Now he wrote that he had bad dreams every night, really awful ones in the greatest detail. It was strange because he never had any bad dreams in Spain. I mean, just think about that. You put me in a horrible environment, environment where I could be killed at any moment and I'm sleeping like a baby. I'm back home in a place where I love. And because of that sense of adrenaline, competing for the highest stakes, I feel depressed. And this is something he deals with his entire life. And this deep depression that he has leads in part to him shooting himself.

And so the one thing he can do is he just throws himself into work. So it says, for Hemingway, now is the time to withdraw from the world and work. This is when he's writing For Whom the tolls the only thing this is a quote from him the only thing about a war once it has started is to win it and that is what we did not do the hell with war for a while i am not killed so i have to work and so one of the things i most admire about hemingway and i don't know how he does it because the guy his main interests in life are reading, writing, drinking, war, and women. And this guy drinks. And I would speculate that that causes, I mean, if you drink as heavily as he did for multiple decades, I can't imagine. I mean, not only does it break down your body,

but it's got to be depressing long-term, right? So he still had some kind of weird discipline though to wake up early. And so what he would do is he'd wake up every day before dawn and just write uninterrupted for hours at a time till about the early afternoon. So he's probably putting, let's say, six, maybe seven hours of uninterrupted writing. And then he would go and live his other life for the other part of the day. And so he'd go fish, he would drink would drink he would shoot he would date because he collected four five four wives throughout his life was a terrible husband by the way um never faithful had tons of mistresses everywhere so that's just the kind of life he would want some after like a

morning of solitude and writing he would then come like he would want to hang out with friends and play uh cards and be physical. He was very similar to how Theodore Roosevelt talked about the benefits of getting out of your mind and into your body and doing things that are exhausting and difficult. I think Hemingway would have agreed with Roosevelt. Now let's go back to that guy Regler, the friend I told you about that escaped Germany, then had to escape Moscow to go to Mexico. And this is his description of Hemingway, which is his lifelong friend. And it's part of the reason why I wanted to study him. And I'll tell you which sentence jumps out at me.

Regulars seem to understand how his friend thought, describing Hemingway as basically unpolitical. Ernest had a better grasp of the law of the jungle than of politics. He was more like a hunter than a politician. He thought in terms of black and white, of life and death. He did not see that modern dictators had no respect even for the law of the pack. Hemingway did not stand for Western democracy, but for, this is the part that jumps out at me, but for experiencing life in all its fullness, but for experiencing life in all its fullness. I'll repeat it one more time for experiencing life in all its fullness. That is, I think the main point of studying people like Hemingway. It's a reminder of how full life can be if we want it to be in places like the

hills of Africa or the waters off of Key West. This is more about his focus while he was writing For Whom the Bell Tolls. And he wrote a lot of this. This is fascinating to me because this is not a short book by hand. He winds up, I think, writing. There's a picture in the book where he's writing pencil, and then I think types it up and then edits it in pencil, if I'm not mistaken. He said some interesting, actually, that made me think. Let me grab this quote. There's a bunch of quotes about writing that he has.

He says, writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. I thought that was fantastic. And then he says, it wasn't by accident that the Gessberg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics. So he's telling us to be brief. So anyways, there's a picture of him editing this book. Let me go back into this. During the first months of World War II, hemingway remained deeply absorbed in his book

occasionally i don't know there's like drilling happening and i have no idea what's going on i don't know if you guys can hear that sorry if you can i'm just going to push through though hemingway remained deeply absorbed in his book occasionally surfacing to write letters or tend to gellhorn this is his third wife uh she commented in a letter that he was like an animal with his manuscript, keeping it close to him or hiding it in a drawer under other papers. He never willingly showed it to anyone and would not talk about it. So let's go back to that. She commented in a letter that he was like an animal with his manuscript,

keeping it close, hiding it, and never talking about it. So this is the beginning of World War II. He is not, he's living in Cuba at this point, but he's not, he hasn't traveled to Europe yet. He actually gets hired or asked to do some like procures, like some, some information gathering, some like, almost like spying for the United States. This comes from the U.S. Secretary of Treasury. They want him to go to China and do some research because they're about to provide, the United States is about to provide economic support to China in their fight with the Japanese.

So he said he wanted Hemingway to go on a fact-finding mission, a common practice at the time. A senior governor official might ask a prominent citizen or politician to travel overseas, immerse himself in the local scene, and report his impressions. Hemingway was flattered to be asked. This is the kind of recognition report his impressions. Hemingway was flattered to be asked. This is the kind of recognition he craved. In his mind, he was more than just a novelist or a journalist. He was a sophisticate who understood how the world worked and could use his understanding to help shape events. Hemingway thought that spying was one more of his many life skills,

and he was not wrong. And so it's during this time we see more of his many life skills and he was not wrong. And so it's during this time we see more of his aspects of his personality. Another example, he does not feel rules apply to him. And then he talks about how good it feels to be great at what you do. And then we see his preferred method. He just wants a loose association with fellow misfits. He does not want

to be part of a group. Another trait he shared with other spies was an assumption that everyday rules did not apply to him. Hemingway been living and this is not this is also applies to his work that's why i'm bringing it up hemingway had been living by his own code for decades in literature it had to do with his revolutionary writing style he talks about now this this point of story that for for whom the bell tolls is already out and it's selling really well and it's being reviewed very well so it says he described how it felt almost too good to write as well as he could and then have his work sell. He loved things military and being around soldiers, but he did not want to join any man's army. His preference was for a loose

affiliation with other irregulars, which made him feel like he was part of the action, but left him free to come and go as he pleased. And this sentence tells us a lot about his personality. Hemingway was a man who did not mind hardship, especially in the service of a cause he believed in, but he also would tolerate luxury. And we see that like he's, you know, he's on the battlefield, he's cold, he's in danger, he's not eating very much. And then they'll wind up taking over like a village or like a hotel. And then they'll just live it up.

They'll get drunk on the best wine, the best alcohol. They'll eat the best food. He'll carry on affairs. Like he wants the full spectrum of life. He wants the zeros and the tens. Complete and utter misery that makes him feel alive. And then complete and utter debauchery. He'll partake in both. And this is right before he's going to travel to europe he's going to leave cuba actually no i'm

gonna i have some more stuff to tell you because he winds up doing this he winds up getting like a a ragtag band of spies under his own control in cuba too which is hilarious but let me just tell you what he was engaged in the four years before world war ii during the previous four years he immersed himself in a series of life events that would have exhausted most mortals, infidelity, divorce, and remarriage, committing himself heart and soul to a lost cause in Spain, cutting his ties to Key West and moving to Cuba, writing a 470 page masterwork of world literature, and traveling to another war in an unknown part of the world. And that's when he went to china okay so now this is about cuba it's almost like his muse you can really think it's a place he lived the longest he was depressed

towards the end of his life because a few days before he kills himself is the bay of pigs and he realizes i can never go back to cuba like they're not gonna let an american there no matter even if i was sympathetic to their regime or whatever the case is um so it's a place he deeply deeply loved says hemingway was in love with the island country. There was only 90 miles from Key West. It was foreign and exotic. Even before he lived there, he was repeatedly drawn back to Cuba, usually on fishing trips.

By the end of the decade, he had made the island his home. So it talks a little bit about where he lived and his house. Most rooms would soon turn into branches of the main library in hemingway's study stacks of books sprouted on almost every available surface by 1961 there would be something like 7500 books in the house so when i got to that part about him having 7500 books in the house i was reading a saw an article one time on Jim Mattis, the general, the American general. He has like a personal library of like 6,000 books or some crazy thing like that. But he talks a lot about the importance of reading.

And there's a quote by Jim I kept. He says, if you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate and you will be incompetent because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you. Hemingway talks about one of the worst things that happened to him when he winds up having to get electroshock therapy, go through depression. His inability to read, which was his love. The love of his life was reading. You see that 7,500 books. Let's go back to what he liked about Cuba. The American writer liked the choices and the freedom.

Remember this is 1940s. He's living in Cuba for, let's say 1940, maybe 19, the forties and fifties. This is, you know, wild,

wild West. There's, you got a small corrupt dictator for sure. This is even before Castro. You got the mafia, you got us businesses. It's, it. You got U.S. businesses. It's a wild place. So he says, the American writer, and that's just like Key West.

That's why he liked the Keys. He liked this pirate kind of lifestyle. The American writer liked the choices and the freedom that this island offered, the well-to-do expatriate. Life in Cuba was more colorful and exciting than life at home. The rules were different. That is, when there were any rules at all. Talks about some of the stuff he was into. There was the superb fishing. There was also the shooting club, cockfighting, already illegal in many American states and Cuban baseball. These

are some of the things he loved. So I've told you before, my father was actually born in Cuba. He fled at almost the same exact time him as and my grandparents fled Cuba the exact same year, actually. No, maybe two years before Hemingway did. They fled in 59 or maybe 60. But the reason I bring that up is because I remember, and I don't understand the appeal at all, but I remember my dad taking me to illegal cockfighting, to watch illegal cockfighting when i was like five or

six years old i have no idea why cubans like this the idea of cockfighting i guess they do they make a lot of money off it because they gamble and stuff but that is just something that that followed as the people you know hundreds of thousands maybe i don't even know the number the number is it's a large number would would flee Cuba for the United States, and they brought cockfighting with them. So it says, last but hardly least, Hemingway enjoyed the cool and quiet early mornings in Cuba, so conducive to writing as any other time and place he knew.

He liked to get up at dawn and work by himself. So there's that, his, the same work ethic and same preference for work that he had in the Keys, he brought it to Cuba. Cuban society also suited him. So that's another thing heminger was very informal he liked to be barefoot and so that's something he also liked about the society and keys and in cuba cuban society also suited him it was much less formal than american society as he noted happily a man only had to put on shoes when he went into town so it is from his residence in cuba his time there where he's going to work with the u.s government and set up

a anti-fascist spying group they're looking for germans in cuba in the water and then the water's out of there there's gonna be some there's gonna be some stories are gonna blow your mind this guy retrofits his boat and starts hunting German U-boats. I mean, it's just unbelievable. Before I get there, though, I want to talk about something that was surprising to me. Let me read this to you because I had learned this previously, but a lot of people I don't think knew this. The Eastern Front, this is the fight of World War II between the Russians and the Germans, was unquestionably the most manpower and intensive theater in the war. Its scale dwarfed most other battlegrounds in the greatest armed conflict in world history.

So not only is World War II the largest armed conflict ever to exist, but the Eastern Front, the Aus Front, is where almost everything happened. Statistics tell the story clearly. Between 80% to 90% of the German casualties in World War II would occur on this front. That is bananas, 80% to 90 percent of the german casualties in world war ii would occur on this front that is bananas 80 to 90 percent of german casualties this meant that something like 4 million german soldiers would die along with an estimated 11 million soviet soldiers so i didn't know any of this i always tell you the person that inspires me the most um the person the best what i feel is like the best podcaster to ever live is Dan Carlin. I almost said George Carlin. It's Dan Carlin from Hardcore History.

He has a four-part series called The Ghost of the Osfront. I think every one is like between an hour and a half to two hours long. It's in his back catalog, so you got to go and buy it. And it's worth every penny. It's worth hundreds of times what he charges for it. But it's just if you don't know anything, or even if you maybe read a couple books about the Ausfront, Dan Carlin did a masterful job.

There's so many anecdotes and stories in there that are just unbelievable, including being stuck in snow, laying down your captured soldiers when it's below freezing out, covering them with water so they freeze to death, and then driving your trucks out on that. I mean, there's just so many stories in that um and again he's the one that taught me how important the os front was uh to world war ii and it's just a great way to learn uh his podcast it's just a great way to learn about that let me go to this thing about

uh the crook factory so this is they're setting up this counterintelligence bureau in havana and how many ways running this thing. So he says he wanted to devote his time to a different kind of intelligence operation, one that would initiate and that he could initiate and control himself. Taking charge was something that he wanted throughout his life as a spy. This is a description of Hemingway's crew. of bartenders, wharf rats, down-at-heel pelota players, and former bullfighters, even priests, assorted exile counts and dukes. And this is just a crazy environment. All these people are living in Cuba at this time. Counts and dukes and several Spanish loyalists. In all, there were between 20 and 25 members of his crook factory. They went about their work in

unusual ways. So they're trying to collect information that will help the allies and usually spying on German people. He sets them up in bars and restaurants and hotels, in like bordellos, just everywhere all over the island. And their job is to collect information, bring it back to them for the information to him. He'll then write it up, synthesize it and turn it over to the U.S. Hemingway's leadership style may have been unconventional, but it was effective. And this is not only in Cuba. He was very effective with leadership when he chose to lead. It was really interesting because he was kind of like a lone wolf, you know?

He inspired loyalty and enthusiasm in his workforce. Despite the alcohol, again, he's drunk all the time. Hemingway made his agents focus on detail and—I don't even know how he—I wonder if he wrote with alcohol. Because I know he's drinking a lot at night, but he's writing in the morning, so I'm not sure. But his agents focus on detail and debriefing them thoroughly. After the meeting, he might stay up the rest of the night painstakingly writing and editing reports before driving to the embassy. He would then enter by a discreet side door and deliver his information to Joyce, that was his connection, who was impressed by Hemingway's diligence. So eventually he gets to the point where he's like, all right, I want to do something else.

He winds up, he has this ship called, it's a boat. It's like a 38-foot boat called the Pilar. It was a fishing boat that he used not only in Keys, but also had in Cuba. And he winds up trying to attack German U-boats off the coast of Cuba and was willing to die to do so because he hated the Germans. He noted, this is a brief description of the closest encounter that he had. And he did this for months, maybe, maybe a year. He noticed another ship. It was a gray painted vessel and it made his pulse quicken. He decided to investigate proceeding at the moderate speed of seven knots. So his whole point is like like what their their idea was that he's collaborating with the u.s is like okay you're a fishing boat always just make sure that it always

appears you're fishing sometimes u-boats will pop up and they'll sometimes try to buy fish off fishermen or sometimes say hey we'll kill you if you don't give us like we need to redo supplies um and so they're like that may occur with you and then you just throw a grenade or you try to you know destroy the the u-boat. It sounds so ridiculous. He decided to investigate proceeding at the moderate speed of seven knots right for a boat that wanted to look like she was fishing, not speeding to a fight. She was, it talks about the boat that they're after. She was so large that she looked like an aircraft carrier to Hemingway's friend now serving his first mate uh the writer sailor's reply um was no wolf unfortunately she's a submarine and passed the word for everyone to be ready to close this was the moment the captain and crew had trained and hoped for he continued to steer towards the probable u-boat closing the distance between them dry mouthed but happy eager to attack the crew broke out submachine guns and hand grenades that's

not an an understatement he had an entire his wife talks about later on like they go out in the middle of the the ocean this is like towards the end of his life and for 30 minutes him and another guy have to just unload all the weaponry they were worried about uh like there's a revolution coming maybe they they think that they're sympathizers. He never wanted to betray the United States. He says over and over again in the book, I'm no fucking traitor. That's his exact quote.

Even though he did not like any government. He didn't like the U.S. government. He didn't like the Cuban government. He didn't like, he just, he was not a fan of governments in general. He was more the underdog, more like the people trying to take control. And I think that's part of why he was so confused by Castro's revolution at the very beginning.

But anyways, this idea where they're going after this German U-boat, it's like they're pulling out all these guns. They have like an entire arsenal, which is just crazy. This guy, the reason it's crazy is because he's one of the most famous writers in the world. Look what he's doing in his spare time. he wants to do this the crew broke out submachine guns and hand grenades uh hemingway wanted to hide they're hiding the guns hide his violent intentions the germans would only see the fishing boat uh trying to catch fish until it was too late the submarine changed course and sped up hemingway pursued but the target was moving too fast the submarine slipped from sight so it goes under and then the pilar floated alone on the ocean the event was so was a disappointment

for hemingway the warrior ready to die for his country he and his crew would as he later wrote have all gone to vahala for eternity happy as goats many of the cruises the hemingway commanded lasted for days and some and some uh lasted and two of them two of them ran for close to three months for long stretches the crew members had only each other for company they endured every kind of weather again we see hemingway willing to sacrifice for what he wants to do perhaps seeking to capture some of the hardship hemingway decided to name the operation friendless and there's pictures in the book of this is actually documented this actually happened which is just so crazy the united states government hiring the fame probably the most

famous american writer one of the most famous american writers to do covert operations against german u-boats okay so after a while he's like okay this is not this is not what the action is um german u-boats wind up being pulled back towards the war in europe europe is getting a lot worse. Americans are already on the ground at this point. So now he's going to go. He's like, all right, I got to get to World War II. I got to go to where the action is.

And this is where I mentioned like he's in. It's like the Forrest Gump version of Hemingway. So he's in Paris as the Allies try to take back. He's in France as the Allies try to take back Paris. He winds up again. He's going there as quote unquote war correspondent. But he's he's going to take prisoners. He's going to. His allies try to take Paris. He winds up, again, he's going there as quote-unquote war correspondent, but he's going to take prisoners. He's going to shoot people.

And he winds up leading this band of French communist guerrillas that I mentioned earlier. There, Hemingway created a rather well-organized, if tiny, headquarters complete with large maps tacked to the wall marking German positions and friendly patrol routes. And he literally developed intel that was useful for routes. He would find routes in for the allies that were not guarded by Germans. This is just crazy. Speaking English, French, and broken German, all salted with curses.

Hemingway took charge. He received intelligence couriers, refugees from Paris, and deserters from the German army, methodically gathering information and writing reports that he passed to Allied intelligence officers. He called in favors to get himself as close to the invasion beaches as possible. From a boat, a 38-foot landing craft, he watched history unfolding in the waters off Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Around and behind him was one of the greatest armadas in history. So now he's embedded with some U.S. soldiers, some ally soldiers. They wound up taking over this little village from the Germans. And this is where, I don't know if I left myself, is one of the most famous writers in the world is holding you captive, pantless. Bruce charged Hemingway with keeping order, and he did it in his own way. He is said to have come up with the novel idea of making his German prisoners take their pants off So eventually they progress out of the village by making the prisoners put on frilly jackets and wait on their captors.

So eventually they progress out of the village, and they went up pushing into Paris. And Hemingway, I remember somebody I just recently discovered back on podcast number 185 with Cesar Ritz, and that book was fantastic, but he founded Hotel Ritz in Paris. Hemingway admired Cesar Ritz's talent because they wind up taking at the very beginning of the book. The author talks about reading the stories like, is it really true that Hemingway liberated the Hotel Ritz from the Germans? This is a escape to the relative calm of the Ritz, the venerable establishment in the heart of Paris. That was more like a chateau than a hotel.

Remember on podcast number 185, that was Cesar Ritz's point. He had spent a lifetime working in and managing and running hotels. And he's like, this is going to be my masterpiece. It's going to feel like a large townhome. It's going to feel like a home instead of a hotel. And so it's interesting that there's a description. It's more like a chateau than a hotel, which was Hemingway's idea of heaven. There's a quote from him.

When I dream of the afterlife, the action always takes place in the parrot's ritz, Hemingway once wrote. Now this is Bruce, who was the American commander that was with Hemingway at this point. He says something about Hemingway that I think I'm going to tie to another idea that I read like three years ago.

I never forgot. So it says, Bruce concluded that hemingway had displayed the rare combination of advised recklessness and caution so a combination of recklessness and caution that knows how properly to seize a favorable opportunity which once lost is gone forever he's a born leader of man and of men and in spite of his strong independence of character is a highly disciplined individual. So that is really on the fleeting nature of opportunity. Podcast number 37 from the book The Fish That Ate the Whale, which is a biography of Sam Zemuri, one of the craziest life stories you'll ever read. Here's a quote in that book I've never thought about.

Or excuse me, never forgotten, rather. And it's describing zamuri and he's zamuri has the same kind of uh traits that that hemingway here has this this combination of recklessness and caution and how to seize a favorable opportunity which one once lost is gone forever there's a quote from the fish they ate the whale there are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot

afford to. So still in World War II, he winds up teaming with this is this is this guy that's going to be uh lanham his name's lanham his his uh charles t lanham colonel charles t lanham he goes by buck he winds up being hemingway's best friend for the rest of his life and uh so he's the person he's he's he said he's never been closer to another person than him and this is just a quick story about them together after 10 days later the two men were still testing each other they were at dinner in an old farmhouse eating a steak dinner in hemingway's honor when a german shell came through one wall and went out the other without exploding while most of the other diners scurried for shelter hemingway calmly continued to cut his

meat lanham told his guests to move or at least put on his helmet. But he refused, and they argued, while more shells tore through the walls, again and again, miraculously, without exploding. Not to be outdone, Lanham took off his helmet and resumed eating. The other diners, which were Lanham's officers, returned to the table after the shelling had tapered off. Some of them called Hemingway and Lanham brave. Others hinted at bravado. Lanham settled the matter.

It was a foolhardy test of fate. Hemingway was drawn to this writer, which is me, this warrior writer. So Buck Lanham is a warrior that likes to write. Hemingway is a writer that likes to go to war and so they they're they have similar interests even though they're oriented around like one's a warrior one's a writer um both admire the skills of the other person and so this is hemingway's description of him he says uh always he was always so much fun to be it was always so much fun to be with a man who was literate articulate and completely brave during a fight he was absolutely intact And he continues to describe his bond that he makes with Lanham.

And again, another reminder for us that he just doesn't care about rules. They don't apply to him. The writer who wanted to fight and the fighter who wanted to write complimented each other and formed a bond as strong as any Hemingway had ever had with another man. Hemingway mused that he had never been closer to anyone as a friend than to Buck, nor had he admired anyone more.

So when the war's over, he winds up getting in all this trouble because there's a bunch of other war correspondents. He's only there because he got this credential to be a war correspondent. And yet he's the only one really like going to war and engaging in war at the same time, you know, keeping people captive, doing all this crazy shit that he's doing. And so other reporters don't like that. They snitch on him. And so it says he was now being called to account for conduct on becoming a war correspondent. The allegations were that he had stockpiled weapons,

commanded troops, and joined the fight to liberate Paris. So he's all, he's like, I can't believe this. And he says, these allegations were all true. And so they wind up dropping nothing. Like they're not going to, he's an American icon. They're not going to put him on trial in America. So they wind up dropping it. He ends up getting some kind of bronze star

or some kind of award later on. But this is more about just his, he has skin in the game and then he's willing to make sacrifices. And so there's a firefight. They're surrounded by Germans. Lanham called for him. I'll be right there.

Wait for me, was Hemingway's instant response. To get to Lanham, he dashed to a firebreak where many others had died. He stayed with the colonel until the Americans have fought the Germans to a standstill and left them no choice but to surrender. It was for Lanham another pivotal moment in their relationship, one that he would never forget. Years later, he would write that all of the things that he had carried in his heart from those days, none was more alive than the memory of that night. And it's interesting because Mary, his fourth and final wife uh he hemingway has like a one one day it accounts like what day what he does the day before he kills himself and one thing

he did was reread uh a few times the the last letter that lanham uh sent him so there they had us close to the ship until hemingway killed himself. And though his job was to report on the fighting, he took the same risks as the men whose job it was to fight. He went outside the wire much farther than he had to go. He was cool under pressure, willing to fight when he had to. And he displayed a sixth sense that troops call a feeling in the tips of your fingers that mark the best practitioners in the art of war. So just a description of that there, him and two other guys are walking. The war's almost over, but it's not over yet.

Suddenly they heard a ripping sound that only Hemingway recognized, and he shouted, oh, God, jump. So they're in a car again to Walton and their driver, seconds before a German fighter fired a stream of bullets into their Jeep. The plane came back for a second pass, again firing down the middle of the road and missing the men in the ditch by a few feet, a very thin margin for a strafing. Again, he's's almost dying so many times in his life he just comes this close to death home hemingway calmly unhooked a canteen from his belt and offered walton a pre-mixed

martini walton had never enjoyed a drink more the three picked themselves up brushed off brush the dirt off their clothes and then walked on past the smoldering wreck of their ride. So eventually he leaves Europe, goes back to Cuba, and now it's time to write, and we see the same thing that happened after he left Spain. He's depressed again. This is really what he loves best. Hemingway started writing to Lanham, telling him how much he missed him. He's absolutely homesick for the regiment, he wrote,

that he had the black ass. That was Hemingway's description for depression. He talks about, I have the black ass all the time. He added that he had not been depressed during the fighting when there was a war to win and had Lanham's companionship. Same thing he was saying about his time in Spain. You see the echo there? That he had learned more while he and Buck were together than he had learned all together up until then. This was a supreme compliment from a man who put so much store by living life fully. There's that theme, the main theme of Hemingway's life, right? Living life fully, broad, full life, living life fully and

learning from it. For the writer soldier, Hemingway, war, especially ground combat, was the ultimate life experience. It is wicked to say, but it is the thing that i love best he felt most alive when risking his life all of his senses fully engaged hemingway relished being useful he relished the camaraderie that gelled in combat so i'm going to fast forward because now we're going to start getting into the decline of his life. And I thought this was very interesting. So that time after World War II, in the 50s, you have that McCarthyism where they're saying people are seeing communists around every corner. They're pulling people in front, especially famous people, mostly in Hollywood.

They're pulling them. They're making them come to testify in front of Congress, war like say i'm against communism and for america and everything else and so hemingway hates to see like this he feels like it's a violation of like civil rights and so he writes a letter to mccarthy which is just funny to me i'm just gonna read he says the letter itself is disjointed and obscene hemingway begins by questioning mccarthy's courage and war record some of us have seen the dead and you were not one of them I mean you didn't even see combat he tells McCarthy that he is a shit and invites him to come to Cuba for a private boxing match to settle their differences and now after I feel reading his writing studying his life that's a very McCarthy excuse me that's

a very Hemingway thing to do. Just something that's uniquely Hemingway, I guess. He writes a book in between before he writes The Old Man and the Sea, which again, I feel is my favorite book. I've only read three of his books, but by far my favorite book. I think it was fantastic. But really, I want to bring to your point, no one really knows anything. And really just try to listen to your own internal instincts. This is what critics said about hemingway about the book and hemingway as a writer right before he writes the older man to see he writes another book it's kind of it's not well received by critics and they just say something

oh this guy's done and it's just like hilarious in hindsight it's like yeah he's done he can he he should just give up and then he rips off and writes his masterpiece uh and his masterpiece for the record will be around and useful to future generations of humans way more than your shitty little criticism of him. And again, I just don't understand. I love what Steve Jobs said one time. He was somebody was criticizing him. He answers the guy's question, handles it well. And then he goes, by the way, what do you make that's so great?

Show me what you actually make. Or you just go around criticizing other people. And I think that's boom. handles it well. And at the end he goes, by the way, what do you make that's so great? Show me what you actually make. Or you just go around criticizing other people. And I think that's, boom, you nailed it. Steve Jobs nailed it there. That's fine if you want to criticize me, but if you want to criticize Hemingway, you damn sure better be able to write a novel better than him.

So this is what they say, and it's just so annoying to me. It's not even annoying. That's not the right word. It's predictable and I think distasteful, and it's not the kind of human I want to be. I think the Wright Brothers had it right, because back in the day, there's tons of people, super famous people, Thomas Edison, Hiram Maxim, the guy that was running Smithsonian, I can't remember his name at the time, all trying to do what Wright Brothers was trying to do, which is try to invent powered flight. And they constantly were asked, once they invented it invented to comment on the work of other people.

And they both said it like that's not that's not something we're going to do. Every person that's pursuing their path thinks that's the path. Like it's just like I'm going to essentially saying I'm going to focus on my own work. I don't need to comment about that other guy's work. I think just a lot of wisdom in what the Wright Brothers are saying, which pronounced, so says the Saturday Review of Literature, pronounced that the book was a synthesis of everything bad in Hemingway's previous work, and throws a doubtful light on the future. The New Yorker was sad that so fine and honest a writer had made such a travesty of himself. Time Magazine said the book showed that Hemingway,

the previously came champ, was now over 50 and on the ropes. So no, they were all wrong. He's going to now release two years after this release his masterpiece. And this is a little bit about that. I'm going to, I'm going to omit some parts in case you haven't read it. Cause I don't want to ruin the plot. The old man in the sea is a novella about a poor Cuban fisherman named Santiago, who is engaged in a personal struggle for survival. Just like his other books. There's a strong indication that Santiago was heavily inspired by somebody he actually knew in his life. After going 84 days in his one-man skiff without a catch, he hooks a marlin that he battles for three days.

I'm going to skip. I don't want to ruin the plot, but I'm going to get to the punchline. That is not the most important thing. As Santiago, written by Hemingway, famously tells the reader, a man can be destroyed but not defeated. That is a fantastic sentence. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. Santiago fought the good fight and endured with style and grace. He triumphed in spirit.

The book won the Pulitzer for fiction, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Okay, but now here's the problem. That's his greatest work, but now the lifestyle he had, he's got a ton of injuries. I didn't know he had suffered multiple concussions in World War II. He had another concussion on his boat. He drank like a fish. He's a crazy person. Probably didn't sleep very much.

So he ages terribly. You see pictures of him when he's like 45. And then pictures when he's like 55. It's like, oh my God, that's not a decade. That's decades, man. But Hemingway did not feel great. He did not travel to Stockholm to receive the award. And instead sent an acceptance speech that was a dark reflection on his life's work. This is Hemingway did not feel great. He did not travel to Stockholm to receive the award and instead sent an acceptance speech that was a dark reflection of his life's work. This is Hemingway writing as at its best as a lonely life.

The writer grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. But he should always strive to create something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. And then we go into like this decline of his physical health and compounded with depression. The accident on his boat in 1950 was more serious than he left on. He got a concussion. He fell on like a gaff, which is like this big hook to like stab fish to death, I guess is what it's used for, and winds up like getting a concussion. And then he had like swelling in his spine. So anyways, it was more serious than he let on.

And it was coming after at least two serious concussions in World War II. In January 1954, he survived. This is unbelievable. So he goes to Africa. Again, he's all over the world. In January 1954, he survived two plane crashes in Africa during a 24-hour period. First, the sightseeing flight that he chartered crash-landed in dense brush in Uganda. Hemingway suffered a mild hour period. First the sightseeing flight that he chartered. Crash landed in dense brush in Uganda. Hemingway suffered a mild concussion.

Then the rescue plane. That came for him the next day. Inexplicably crashed and burned on takeoff. To escape Hemingway literally. Butted the door open with his head. Seriously compounding the earlier injury. Credited for saving. The lives of other people on board.

There was a rupture of kidneys, a collapse of his intestines, severe injuries to the liver, major concussions, several burns to legs, belly, right forearm, left hand, his head, and his lips. He also dislocated his right arm and his shoulder. Hemingway would never fully recover from these injuries. It marked the start of an irreversible downward spiral, one that was aggravated by various other illnesses and a deep depression. The thought that his work was deteriorating kept him up for more than one night.

So now he's only injured. There's a slow multiple year realization that, okay, I cannot stay in Cuba, a place that he loved. And so it says that this is his schedule right before Castro. At least until 1957, Cuba was Hemingway's safe haven. So it says he could settle back into the film routine at Tafinka that had nourished the body and spirit in his pash. He would still write in the morning, then he would swim in the pool after lunch, and then take his boat into the stream to troll for marlin. if the weather was rough and the fish weren't biting there was still shooting at his club or the occasional cockfight in the village in the evening he would linger over dinner with longtime cuban friends who dropped by almost every

day so he really relished he enjoyed it was his favorite place in the world he did not want to give it up and slowly but, he's getting intertwined. Batista sends guards multiple times to his house. And this is how John Wick starts. You don't bring people to your side by killing their dog. And so he had a bunch of drunk soldiers show up one time. This is right before Castro is going to throw out Batista. And he just, there's just, it's silliness. They come, they come by,

they're saying, oh, you know, we've heard, uh, uh, they basically say, you know, we, we hear there's like a, like a rebel soldier or an oppositionist that are here. So Hemingway opens the door. He's like, what do you want? They're reeking up alcohol. And he's like, listen, there's no oppositionists here. Um, there's no revolutionaries on his property. And he's like, you guys got to get out of here. And so they wind up not even searching his house they they just they went up turning around and leaving and the next morning his dog machicos was found dead uh with a head wound and they start coming to his property because he's got people coming from all over like all over the world to come visit him remember he's super famous at this point and so they come back and the rural guards come back they come back onto the property to confront hemingway who calmly

explained there was like you're running a conspiracy here who calmly explained they had nothing to worry about the only conspiracy was one to drink whiskey so this is another example of like his forced gumness where he's there for the revolution um and he's realizing he slowly but surely realizes he's definitely procrastinator at the beginning i don't i think that was tempered but a little bit because he writes his son no one is right both sides atrocious things aren't good and the overhead is murder might pull out of there the future looks very bad um it says by dawn cuba had no government and havana was quite literally lawless so as the years go by he realizes the revolution becomes very anti-american as well

and that's going to to cause him to he feels a lot of great sadness about he's spending time splitting aside between cuba and idaho at this point but he does come to a realization shortly before he dies that he's never going to see his place in cuba again that caused great sadness to him so this is more about his sad decline. His friends were taken aback by how much he had deteriorated over the past year. They had all seen the writer in most of his moods, but none like this, showing symptoms of extreme nervousness, depression, fear, loneliness, suspicion of the motives of others, insomnia, guilt, remorse, and failure of memory. Hemingway wrote Mary that he feared a complete physical and nervous

crack-up from deadly overwork this was one of the many pleas for help that he sent her that month she arranged for treatment by doctors at the mayo clinic where he would stay from november 30th 1960 to january 22nd 1961 so he dies he's going to kill himself in on July 2nd. So six months after he gets out of the Mayo Clinic. What were they doing there? The main diagnosis was depression, complicated by paranoia. Hemingway's psychiatrist opted for electroconvulsion therapy. The doctors sedated Hemingway, strapped him to an operating table and attached electrodes to his temples in order to run an electric current through his brain. The obsession still would not go away. The writer's paranoia about the government still did not lift.

And then the Bay of Pigs happens and says on the second day of the invasion, he drafted a letter to his publisher saying that he had tried and failed to edit his memoirs about his life in Paris in the 1920s. Everything he tried simply made things worse. This was not a passing complaint, but an acknowledgement of defeat. He could simply no longer do the work that had sustained him. So he talks about losing his memory, which he thought was the most valuable asset he had for his work because of the side effect of electro-convulsion therapy is memoryy loss.

He simply could no longer do the work that has sustained him. The distant fiasco at the Bay of Pigs was another defeat, one that was almost as painful. He understood he would never be able to go home, to walk under the ceiba tree, to the front door of the finca, or steer his boat out of the harbor past the old Spanish castle, or spend an afternoon drinking with his friends. When she went downstairs on the morning of Friday, April 21st, Mary found Hemingway in the sitting room with his favorite shotgun in his hand and two shells on the windowsill within easy reach.

For a harrowing hour and a half, she gently talked to him about the things they could still do. Go to Mexico, revisit Paris, maybe even Africa for another safari. When their good friend, the family doctor, arrived to take Hemingway's blood pressure, they were able to talk him into putting the weapon down. They took him to the local hospital, and as soon as possible, arranged to fly him back to the Mayo Clinic for another grim round of electroshock therapy in a locked ward. On the way, he tried to kill himself twice. At the airport, he attempted to walk into a whirring airplane propeller. At the end of June, Hemingway's Dr. Mayo decided that his patient was ready to go home. Mary suspected the truth,

that her husband had manipulated the psychiatrist into signing the discharge papers. He was still leaving broad hints that he planned to commit suicide, like the letter he had wrote earlier in the month to Rene, his Cuban quote-unquote son, who was keeping the finca up. Hemingway wrote that he was almost out of gas. He was a shadow of his former self. He didn't even have the will to read, a touchstone in his life that he had loved above everything. Writing, he remarked, was even more difficult. Hemingway asked Rene to look after his cats and dogs at his beloved Finca, and assured him that whatever happened, Papa would always remember him. Despite her misgivings, Mary and George Brown, the boxer from New York who had been his friend for decades, picked Hemingway up at the clinic and drove him back to Idaho on Friday, June 30th.

Two days later, Mary woke to what sounded like two drawers slamming shut, one after another, and went to investigate. She found Hemingway dead in the room where she had disarmed him in April. He had gotten up before anyone else, padded quietly downstairs, and with one of his double-barreled shotguns, killed what was left of the great American writer who had fought so hard for what he believed in. And that is where I'll leave it. For the full story, I highly recommend reading the book.

It's fantastic. If you want to support the podcast at the same time, you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player. That is 194 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.