Word: papae
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...PAPA HEMINGWAY, by A. E. Hotchner. An old friend paints a wonderfully perceptive and poignant portrait of the writer who was both a symbol and an idol to his generation...
...noted that Hemingway never wore underwear and seldom bathed in water; he preferred sponge baths with rubbing alcohol. Hotch listened patiently when Papa told tales about his sex life, some of them fanciful. Hemingway claimed, for example, that he had once shacked up with Mata Hari (obviously untrue, since 41-year-old Mata Hari was executed in 1917, a year before Ernest, then 18, got to Europe as an ambulance driver on the Italian front). On one occasion, Papa boasted drunkenly that he had sired a child by an African bride whom he had acquired on a safari (possibly true...
...Papa had a bad temper, says Hotch. When he drank, he sometimes grew quarrelsome and querulous with his fourth wife, "Miss Mary," whom he adored and once described as "my pocket Rubens." He slyly made sport of pestering strangers by extravagantly praising something they wore. He was also a hypochondriac, forever lugging around samples of his urine. He was convinced that he had skin cancer (his own diagnosis), and grew his beard to cover the white scaling on his face...
Unreasonable Delusions. The most perfect Hemingway hero, unhappily, did not decline as a Hemingway hero should have. Papa grew increasingly gaunt and anxious in his last months. He got upset over trifles, worried that an airline would not accept him with excess baggage, despaired because he was sure he could not pick up his guns at Abercrombie & Fitch after his lawyer had neglected to pay a bill. Gradually, he began to believe that he was being followed by Government agents and that his family and friends had somehow betrayed...
Most of the details of Papa's eventual hospitalization at the Mayo Clinic, where he received electroshock treatment, have been told before. But Hotchner gives them a special poignancy. There is, for example, an account of Hotchner's last visit, in June 1961, when Hemingway, suffering from delusions and high blood pressure, complained bitterly: "What does a man care about? Staying healthy. Working good. Eating and drinking with his friends. Enjoying himself in bed. I haven't any of them. Do you understand, goddamn it? None of them!" And so, less than a month later, Papa Hemingway...