http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealt...-_-Hunting_Hemingway


http://www.menshealth.com/hemingway/hemingway.html

http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealt...CM200000cee793cd____

Check this out.Probably for the first time, a mainstream journal promoting hunting.The reporter trying to be almost apologetic and making it sound almost politically correct.Yet, good reading.Always liked Men's Health.Probably the best magazine for men.

Best- Locksley,R.

Thanks for the link....I'm glad I took the time to read it.

the chef

I am listening to it now!

Frankly, I'm not sure "Hem" has done modern hunters any great favors. He was more than a bit of an asshole on all fronts who now causes non-hunters to see us as guys who are just out to assure themselves of their own manhood.

JMHO,

John

I had great pleasure in reading his books.It appears that he enjoyed his life to the fullest, despite his malady.Seems like a great man.John what don't you like about the guy?

nothing wrong with proving manhood...its those that dont that seem to have the problem. its the old something must be wrong with YOU rather than something wrong with me...people who prove their manhood are good storytellers vs pleated khaki wearing minivan driving vegitarian ooh guns are dangerous so lets only let the bad guys have them hair parted neatly on the side smooth faced no scars or tatoos 401k earning socks and beltd matching miller lite drinking tofu eating decaf drinking speedlimit driving yes dear saying wussie!!!

shootaway,

I just think Hemingway was all about self glorification with little concern for the actual sport. It's a pattern he exhibits elsewhere and not just on the game fields of Africa or trout streams of North America. Frankly, I see him as a version of more modern "record book" hunters who care less about the glorious game or adventure itself and more about what the kill says about THEM. He cared about elevating himself and his reputation as an adventurer (for the sake of selling books I suspect) and little more.

Boomstick,

Some of us don't need to kill "bigger", "better" or "more" animals to feel like more of a man. I hunt for the hunt...not for the image that it presents to others about ME. Look, there is nothing wrong with a good story! In fact, I can tell one just as well or better than some egotistical Hemingway wanna-be. Honestly, if I have to read one more article like that in a modern magazine, I may just vomit! p.s. Hemingway would be nauseated by that huge sentence of yours.

JMHO,

John

JTG,

That's as feeble an attempt to trivialize Hemingway's life and extraordinary accomplishments as I've read anywhere.

Do you write for Ladies Home Journal?

Hemingway Trivia

Some unpublished Hemingway trivia stories. I was once fishing at Lindmeier's North Shore Lodge on Eagle lake in NW Ontario. Em Lindmeier's old father was there. The old man said he grew up in Oak Park, Illinois in the house next door to the Hemingways. He knew Hemingway when he was 12. Said he remembers him going off to some war as an ambulance driver and when he got back teaching the neighbourhood kids how to throw hand grenades.

Used to know Pete Czura who years ago was president of the Outdoor Writers of America. He said he hunted with both Hemingway and Ruark. He wouldn't say much about either but he did say that Hemingway was a drunk and that Ruark was a bigger drunk.

I knew a man named Odo Willscher who was Irwin Rommels adjutant in the Afrika Korp. He was a very good professional soldier and was also on the mission that rescued Mussolini from his Alpine prison. Odo was captured 8 times during WW2 and escaped every time. He knew Hemingway from Africa. Said he was just an asshole.

Finally a safari link. I know man man named Peter Willems who boxed for 10 years mostly in Miami Beach and Madison Square Gardens. Hemingway liked boxers and so invited Peter to his home in Key West. They had lunch and then Peter asked him for his autograph. Hemingway was being treated for brain cancer with electric shocks and he couldn't sign his own name. So he gave Peter an American officers hat he had and Peter wears that hat on safari to this day.

VBR,


Ted Gorsline

I agree that it was a good article, and that Men's health is an excellent magazine. Incidently the PH's love them, and the South African version (available in the Joburg book stores) is maybe even better. I was glad to see them publish an article like this.

I didn't know he had brain cancer,I thought he shot himself because he was nuts.

Dear Shootaway,

I don't really know what he had but I have been told twice that he had a brain tumour. Once at his home/museum in Key West and once by ex-boxer Peter Willems. Peter said when he met him the pupils in his eyes were of significantly different sizes possibly from shock treatment. Peter said he could no longer write his own signature let alone a novel.

Oddly enough he still wanted to box with Peter although he was at this stage incapable of doing do. He liked to fight with people but often did not win. The former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson broke his jaw and another writer named Morley Callahagn knocked him cold.

VBR,


Ted Gorsline

.

quote:

Originally posted by ALF:
On the morning of July 2, 1961 Hemingway rose early, as he had his entire adult life, selected a shotgun from a closet in the basement, went upstairs to a spot near the entrance-way of the house and shot himself in the head.

Does it amaze anyone else that gun companies put out "Hemingway" shotguns? It's a bit like marketing Kennedy commemorative Mannlicher-Carcanos!

John

I think his daughter Murial died at a young age,was that suicide?

Hemingway has been marketed to death wherever he set foot because he is still a brand name to cash in on. I am a Canadian so I can go to Cuba and once I went there duck shooting. The tour guide in Havannah dragged us around to two old Hemingway bars one where he actually drank and another where he invented a drink of some kind. There is a Hemingway home/museum in Key West and two bars in Key West both called Sloppy Joes (old and new) who are fihghting over whether he drank there or not. And recently I was on the German/Belgian border where Patton crossed into Germany and the Germans were putting together a "Hemingway Trail" for American tourists evenb though he sued to shoot Germans. There is a Hemingway chain of bars etc etc. The guy is almost as well known as Walt Disney and he has been dead alot longer. Hemingway was pretty good at marketing himself. He didn't just submit stories and wait for ediotrs and publishers to respond. He married his publisher's daughter.



VBR,


Ted Gorsline

quote:

Originally posted by Ted Gorsline:
He liked to fight with people but often did not win. The former heavyweight champion Jack Johnson broke his jaw and another writer named Morley Callahagn knocked him cold.

My favorite example of Hemingway being a complete asshole actually relates to his love of boxing. Apparently, he used to step off the Pilar in Havana after a day of fishing and, pumped up on his own sense of machismo, offer "cash to any black man who can knock me out". What a guy! Frankly, I'm surprised someone else didn't shoot him long before age 62!

John

One thing I have to say is, Hemingway was one hell of a writer. He was a good guy to look up to, as well, because he knew what he liked, and that's what he did to make a living. Anyone else jealous???

Dear Jason,

He was an excellent writer, one of the best ever, but what I think people envy most of all about him was not his writing but the way he lived.

Jack O'Connor was the best gun writer of all time but even he scalped material from Hemingway and used it as his own. O'Connor has a funny line in reference to the animal rights movement. He says,"their hearts are full of love but their heads are full of duckfeathers." He scalped that directly from Hemingway.

I find I like some of the stuff considered Hemingway's worst writing better than the stuff considered to be his best likely because of personal interest.

I am interested in bulls because I once worked on an open range cattle ranch so I prefer his non fiction "Death in the Afternoon" to his most famous novel the "Old Man and the Sea."


VBR,


Ted Gorsline

quote:

Originally posted by Ted Gorsline:
Dear Jason,

He was an excellent writer, one of the best ever, I am interested in bulls because I once worked on an open range cattle ranch so I prefer his non fiction "Death in the Afternoon" to his most famous novel the "Old Man and the Sea."


VBR,


Ted Gorsline

Ted, 90% of everything he wrote was FICTION! He was only in Africa one time, and spent most of that drunk! He could spin a yarn though!

Personally, the only thing he wrote that I liked well enough to finish was "OLD MAN and THE SEA", and I enjoyed the Movie with Spencer Tracy better than the book.

I guess everyone has their likes, and dislikes, but I didn't like either Hemingway's, or Ruark's writeing! I think they both were a little too much self horn blowers.Their biggest claim was to see how long they could stay drunk!

JohnTheGreek
one of us



"Posted 02 March 2006 10:47 Frankly, I'm not sure "Hem" has done modern hunters any great favors. He was more than a bit of an asshole on all fronts who now causes non-hunters to see us as guys who are just out to assure themselves of their own manhood.
JMHO, John
"Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and the powerful." --Edward Abbey"

John: I knew Edward Abbey while he was busy burning his brain with drugs and alcohol in Tucson during the last few years of his life, and Cleveland Amory and I both worked at newspapers here.

Even to this day I still can't say who was the more rabid anti-hunting zealot, Abbey or Amory.

I guess I'd have to give the nod to Abbey, but that's probably only because he libeled the Tucson Citizen's outdoor editor (me) in one of the books he scribbled in a stupor.

BillQ

And I thought Hemingway had two safaris in Africa, with the last one involving a near fatal bushplane crash ... maybe he passed his flask to the pilot? Of course Hemingway wrote FICTION mainly. That was his main purpose in life, to write fiction well.

Give'm hell, BillQ.

Ditto to your last post MacD37, especially when Ruark is considered, I dislike his writing intensly....

quote:

Originally posted by Ted Gorsline:

Jack O'Connor was the best gun writer of all time but even he scalped material from Hemingway and used it as his own. O'Connor has a funny line in reference to the animal rights movement. He says,"their hearts are full of love but their heads are full of duckfeathers." He scalped that directly from Hemingway.

Well, like I have always said,"good artists borrow, but great artists STEAL!".....OK, OK...that was really Picasso who said that.

Bill,

Assuming everything you assert is true (which I don't accept given that "the real work of men was hunting meat" for Abbey) does not justify dismissing the wisdom in my signature line or in other writings of Abbey. If in your post you are trying to defend Hemingway, please understand that I appreciate him in terms of his basic literary style and only think that he was of poor character (a fact he undoubtedly adored about himself) and was a poor ambassador for hunters. Hunting for self glorification is just bad form and Hemingway's habit has been taken up by many others. In contrast, the worst Abbey did was hunt the day before the season opened for the sake of political rebellion..."We prefer our meat poached". Honestly, I'd rather share a drink with Abbey than endure a seemingly bottomless bottle of stories told by Hemingway about his own greatness!

Best,

John

"Bill, Assuming everything you assert is true (which I don't accept given that "the real work of men was hunting meat" for Abbey) does not justify dismissing the wisdom in my signature line or in other writings of Abbey. ... In contrast, the worst Abbey did was hunt the day before the season opened for the sake of political rebellion..."We prefer our meat poached". Honestly, I'd rather share a drink with Abbey than endure a seemingly bottomless bottle of stories told by Hemingway about his own greatness! Best, John"

Please be assured that everything I said about Abbey was true. (I was neither defending nor knocking Ernest H.) Edward Abbey was an overage, drunken and drugged hippy who used every opportunity to knock those of us who hunt to all who would listen or read his 70s-style blather. I still hold this belief all these years after I shared a lunch with that jerk.

BillQ

If I find a book I like I really don't care about the author.....I like the book for how much enjoyment I get from it. I really like some of Hemmingway's short stories...The short Happy life of Francis Macomber...comes to mind.

RE Hemmingway's demise: .....drinking and depression can be synonomous and it's always been my belief that Hemmingway died of Alcoholism but it's truly of little value to know. His books are what they are.....if you like them...great...if not...well don't read them.

Hemingway lived in a time when hunting didn't need any "ambassadors." Those were the days. I am old enough that I can still remember them. Those who are younger may not.

Men were men and took pride in doing the things that men have done naturally for millennia. Such as hunting wild animals. Men hunted wild animals and felt no need to justify themselves to anyone at anytime. Those days are gone for far too many of us, unfortunately.

The fear of being "politically incorrect" will cut off your balls as well as a scalpel. Too many of us pay that fear way too much heed.

I apologize for butting into this thread about E.H., but I'm still concerned that anyone who hunts would rush to defend a man like Edward Abbey.

Abbey had a real attitude problem: He arrogantly believed to his death that he was superior and wiser than we mere mortals. He also felt he and those who shared his beliefs were above the law, as evidenced by his publicly admitted abuse of banned substances and his regular encouragement of illegal and sometimes violent dissent “for the sake of political rebellion.â€

The crap he wrote about the alleged evils of everything he disagreed with helped give rise to such terrorist groups as Earth First! and the U.S. branch of Animal Liberation Front, both of which have some of their roots in my hometown, I’m sorry to say.

His books were not all that he wrote. Abbey was a frequent author of letters to the editors of our local papers. He was especially hateful whenever anything having to do with hunting was presented in print in any manner other than disdain.

I could predict -- even before they were published -- when to expect a blistering letter from Abbey in response to one of my bi-weekly outdoors columns. I remember that he was extremely vitriolic when I eulogized a popular taxidermist whose sudden death shocked and saddened local hunters and anglers. The man’s poor widow was deeply hurt by Abbey’s venomous comments about her dead husband in particular and all taxidermists in general.

Edward Abbey certainly was not a man to be admired by hunters.

BillQ

Bill,

I think you need to be more specific. Given much his writing, as well as the fact that he was a hunter, I doubt very much that Abbey was "against hunting" as you generally imply. It seems much more likely that he was against killing only for what sadly passes as sport these days. Perhaps your friend the taxidermist was seen as a facilitator that egotistical bastards (like Hemingway) used to elevate themselves above one another. I think Abbey would have agreed that hubris ruins the hunt. Anyway, there are some quotes below for your "enjoyment".

"The real work of men was hunting meat. The invention of agriculture was a giant step in the wrong direction, leading to serfdom, cities, and empire. From a race of hunters, artists, warriors, and tamers of horses, we degraded ourselves to what we are now: clerks, functionaries, laborers, entertainers, processors of information."

"One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for awhile and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards."

"How to overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it."

"We are kindred all of us, killer and victim, predator and prey, me and the sly coyote, the soaring buzzard, the elegant gopher snake, the trembling cottontail, the foul worms that feed on our entrails, all of them, all of us. Long live diversity, long live the earth!"


In another interview he notes that he was once a hunter but "gave up deer hunting fifteen years ago, when the hunters began to outnumber the deer". When I look around my home state of Utah in the fall, I can start to understand Abbey in this regard. He also, incidentally, notes in the same interview that he is a member of the NRA so I suppose in some ways we are kindred...all of us.


Best,

John

john...is that the evil monkey from "family guy"

Yup.

John, I admit I’ve read none of Edward Abbey’s books from front to back. I tried to get through “The Monkey Wrench Gang†and another whose title I’ve forgotten but I couldn’t. His stuff, including some of what you quoted, made me want to gag.

I did read every letter he wrote to our newspaper, however, and I also tried to have a reasonable discussion about hunting with him across a table but we were at opposite poles.

Edward Abbey may have hunted early in his life (although I doubt that he ever did much of it) but I assure you that in his last years he definitely was not our friend. His attacking a dead taxidermist because he saw all taxidermists as “facilitators†for elevating “egotistical bastards†is a perfect example of that egotistical bastard’s own abundant arrogance.

Incidentally, Cleveland Amory at a forum here in Tucson said he once had considered joining the NRA to protect his ability to own a pistol for protection.

Happy trails. It is obvious you and I will never agree about Abbey.

BillQ

quote:

Originally posted by billrquimby:
...is a perfect example of that egotistical bastard’s own abundant arrogance...Happy trails. It is obvious you and I will never agree about Abbey.

Bill,

Isn't it interesting that Abbey was offended most by ego and that results ultimately in him being being perceived as egotistical? It's true I guess, that ego in others is bothersome only to the degree that it insults our own. Myself, I am proud of my humility.

You are certainly right about us probably never coming to an agreement...and there's nothing wrong with that. Just as an aside though, I obviously don't agree with EVERYTHING Abbey wrote. I mean, without agriculture were would I get my Syrian Latakia and Louisiana Perique? There wouldn't be anything around worth stuffing into a nice hunk of English briar and lighting up!

See you on that trail!


Best Regards,

John

Hemingway was a king among men.

Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He ought to be judged for his fiction because that is what he did best and that is what made him famous. He really was a good writer.

But there was more to the man than the booze, poor health and deteriorating old age. The Late Jimmy Clark, the Outdoor columnist for the Toronto Star before and after WW1, knew him at the Star where Hemingway worked as a reporter. They used to go fishing together. He said after the war he was shocked to find that during the war Hemingway won an Italian medal equivalent to the Congressional Medal of Honour.

I am sure that as the years went on and the money flowed in the girls and the booze dominated his life. He must have lived like a modern day rock star.

But its funny how pervasive the man still is. I just returned from the hunting convention in Dortmund, Germany, and there I met a very nice old Hungarian named Arno Hakker who worked with one of his sons at Mweka Wildlife college in Tanzania.

When I read the Green Hills of Africa he takes me there with word pictures. The only other writer who has ever done that for me was Jack O'Connor when he wrote about the headwaters of the Muskwa and Prophet Rivers. I have now spent much time in Masailand and I still long to visit the headwaters of the Muskwa and Prophet Rivers. Not many writers can make you want to do that.

VBR,


Ted Gorsline

Scott Fitzgerald was good at that too.My favorite novel of all time was The Great Gatzby.I also liked The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway,but I liked Fitzgerald better.

boom stick....
You gotta quit holding back...!!
Go ahead...tell us what you really think..!!
Love it ..!!
Cheers all,
Don..( not needing to "prove" anything down here in LaFlorida)

I have always enjoyed Hemingway and Ruark. Hunting novels today are often full of long drawn out justifications on why people hunt, to manage game, feed villages. . blah..blah..blah Hem. and Bob went on safari because it made them feel good and they had a ball doing it.
And I love the way they wrote about it. I could almost taste the beer handed to me from the back of the Land Rover.

RobinO,

Thanks for posting the links. I enjoyed the articles as well as the authors webcast.

I didn't know there was an Outfitters store owned by 'Bunny' Allen and on Madison Ave. in NYC no less...

I was just listening to NPR and they did a piece on Hemmingway.

Evidently, today is the anniversary of The Old Man And The Sea. In 1952 on this day Hemmingway completed the book and made a call to his publisher at Scribbners and told them he has just finished his greatest work.

I really like Hemmingay.....His works and his life are both interesting and not everyone can say that. He lived.... whether or not I or anyone else argees with how he lived really doesn't matter.

Regards,
Dave

The late David Ommaney used to say that Bunny Allen's greatest skill as a professional hunter was pouring a drink. But he was a lady's man and you can add Ava Gardener to his trophy list. In fact you can add Ava Gardener to just about everybody's trophy list. I was once in Cairns talking to a guy nick-named Brazakka who used to take Lee Marvin out black marlin fishing. He said that whenever Marvin was in a bar in Cairns, and he had been drinking, he would announce himself by shouting, "Ask me if I ever bonked Ava Gardener" or words to that effect.

VBR,


Ted Gorsline