Papa y el tirador: biographical parallels in Hemingway's "I guess everything reminds you of something".

Clark, Robert C.

Hemingway's' relationship with his youngest son, Gregory, became increasingly acrimonious in the years following Pauline Hemingway's tragic death in 1951. Father and son blamed one another for her demise, and it does not appear that they ever reconciled. Around 1955, Hemingway wrote a biographically-based short story called "I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something;' possibly as a means to come to terms with what had happened. When considered alongside the biographical events that inspired it, "I Guess" provides insight into the complex emotions that fueled Ernest and Gregory's estrangement.

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WHILE VISITING CUBA IN 1952, Gregory Hemingway initiated a conversation with his father about "future plans and all that had happened recently" (G. Hemingway 8). Gregory's mother, Pauline, had died several months earlier of what Gregory would later maintain was complications resulting from a tumor of her adrenal gland (11-12). Her death was only a day or two after her youngest son had been arrested for being in a women's restroom while cross-dressing (V. Hemingway 254). The subject of the father-son talk soon turned to Gregory's arrest. Attempting to move beyond what had transpired, Gregory maintained that he said, "It wasn't so bad, really, Papa." Ernest Hemingway's alleged reply set into motion the decay of an already troubled relationship: "No? Well it killed Mother" (G. Hemingway 8). In the wake of Pauline Hemingway's death, Gregory and Ernest developed a mutual resentment.

On the night of 30 September 1951, Ernest received a phone call from Pauline about Gregory's problem with the police. No one knows the content of the conversation, but it was probably heated. Relying upon the testimony of Pauline's sister Jinny, Gregory wrote in Papa: A Personal Memoir that his father unleashed a vitriolic attack on Pauline, blaming her for their son's lack of discipline (7). (1) Approximately eight hours after the exchange between Ernest and Pauline concluded, she died in a Los Angeles hospital. In his memoir, Gregory says the autopsy report showed that Pauline had died of a pheochromocytoma, a rare and unusual tumor of the adrenal gland. Such tumors 'can secrete adrenaline intermittently, causing catastrophic increases in blood pressure that can rupture an artery or other blood vessel. Stressful events, such as Gregory's arrest or Ernest's quarrel with Pauline, could trigger an acute, potentially lethal release of adrenaline: "A stimulus as slight as standing up suddenly, being bumped from behind in a crowd, or getting emotionally upset by a bad dream could make the intermittent type 'fire off' and start putting out those tremendous quantities of adrenaline" (11). Gregory described how the secretions likely caused Pauline's blood pressure to escalate and then rapidly drop to zero. Gregory said that he wrote to his father and described Pauline's condition, concluding that his "minor troubles" were not what caused his mother's attack but rather her heated argument with Ernest (11-12). Although Hemingway corresponded with his youngest son after Gregory's 1952 departure from Cuba, they never saw each other again (8).

Hemingway wrote "I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something" in response to his falling out with Gregory. "I Guess" is unusual in that it is about a son who disappoints his father; Hemingway more frequently wrote about fathers who fail their sons. In a review of the posthumously published Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, where "I Guess" was first collected, Lee Lescaze wrote: "there are also two stories [ostensibly "I Guess" and "Great News from the Mainland"] in which Hemingway is the father betrayed by a weak son. They are cruel, unforgiving tales almost impossible to reconcile with the sensitivity in his great stories of Nick Adams [sic] coming of age. He knew what it is to be adolescent better than what it is to be a parent" (17). Lescaze made an understandable mistake when he said that "Hemingway is the father." Because the story is based on Hemingway family history, the distinction between narrator, father, and author is blurred. The father-son relationship is complicated and cannot be reduced to simple terms. "I Guess" is a biographically-based narrative that exposes the complex emotions leading to the collapse of Gregory and Ernest's relationship. "I Guess" has received scant critical attention. Perhaps scholars, like many reviewers, have decided that it is not a "great" Hemingway tale and thus deemed it unworthy of a thorough explication. Joseph M. Flora wrote a brief analysis based primarily upon Gregory's memoir (105--107). Among Hemingway's biographers, Baker, Lynn, Mellow, and Reynolds make no mention of "I Guess." Only Jeffrey Meyers touches on the history behind the work, but he offers little in the way of exegesis (291-292).

Neither the manuscripts nor the published version of "I Guess" contain information about when the story was written. If, as the story itself suggests, "I Guess" was written seven years after the events described, then it was probably composed in 1955 (Benson 453). Gregory turned 24 in November 1955, and was on his father's mind. In a letter to Philip Percival dated 4 September, Ernest wrote, "Everybody is waiting to hear from Mayito. I saw his oldest boy and he said everything was going fine on the place.... His kid is turning out absolutely first rate. And Mayito gave up on him once so maybe Gregory will turn out...." (SL 846). Hemingway's comments about Gregory are both hopeful and disparaging; it seems that he was not sure what to think about his son. Given his sentiments about Gregory at the time, it is conceivable that Hemingway chose this period to write a narrative illustrating his mixed impressions of his son.

The years leading up to the composition of "I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something" had been tumultuous for Hemingway. In 1950, nervous about the upcoming publication of his first novel in over a decade, Across the River and into the Trees, he wrote a letter to Lillian Ross in which he talked about committing suicide, and when the book was almost universally panned by reviewers, he was outraged (Lynn 553, 555-538). Evelyn Waugh wrote that critics had for years been engaged in a "whispering campaign" saying that "Hemingway is finished" (280). In the early 1950s, three people who had played prominent roles in Ernest's life passed away. His mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, died in June 1951, an event followed by Gregory's trouble and Pauline's death. In February 1952, six months before the publication of The Old Man and the Sea, Charles Scribner died from a heart attack (Reynolds 45).

By 1955, Hemingway's circumstances were considerably different from what they had been five years earlier. Two African plane crashes in 1954 had further undermined his already shaky health, but a Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and Sea in 1952 and a Nobel Prize in 1954 motivated him to continue writing. On 8 April 1955, Fraser Drew visited the Finca Vigia. In the notes he took about the visit, Drew commented on Hemingway's failing health. He also stated that Hemingway conducted himself with dignity and humility, thanking Drew for going to the trouble of coming to Cuba (91-92). Not everyone who came by that summer, however, was considered a welcome guest. On 14 April, Hemingway composed a letter to Carlos Baker complaining about how a morning writing session had been "bitched" by a group of vacationing Princeton sophomores. Baker had given the young men a letter of introduction, and Papa grudgingly entertained them while doing his best to be friendly (Goodman et al. 101-102). Expressing his frustrations, Hemingway told his friend A. E. Hotchner that "this all sounds like one long blab of crybabyismo, but when I get interrupted when I'm working good it really ruins me." (Hotchner 148). Continuity and momentum were vital to Hemingway.

Gregory's life in the 1950s was equally volatile. From 1949 to 1950, he had experienced a troubled one-year stay at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland (Meyers 479-480), but his academic career was ultimately successful enough to get him into medical school in Miami in 1960. Unfortunately, Gregory's intellect was not enough to prevent his relationship with his increasingly famous father from unraveling. In Strange Tribe, John Hemingway records how, in the later months of 1952, Gregory began writing letters in which he threatened to "beat" his father (115). In a response dated 8 November 1952, Ernest called Gregory's threats of physical violence "comic" and demanded that his son write an apology to Mary. Ernest subtly mocked his son's intelligence, telling him that his handwriting was "ill formed and illegible.... It has shown a progressive degeneration since you left prep-school" (122). While Hemingway's tone toward Gregory is derisive, it is less angry and more measured than his son's. In a letter dated 13 November 1952, Gregory accused Ernest of being an uncaring husband to Pauline and Mary (117), prophesied that Papa would "die unmourned and basically unwanted" (118), and opined that The Old Man and the Sea was "as sickly a bucket of sentimental slop as was ever scrubbed off a barroom floor" (119-120, see also Meyers 481).

In the war of words that followed Pauline Hemingway's death, there were no winners. The emotional stress of the 1950s is reflected in Ernest's writing. He was on the verge of writing exposes in A Moveable Feast of former mentors and friends such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. It would have been relatively easy for Hemingway to publish a story with the power to embarrass his youngest son, but Ernest never published "I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something." Before Mary Hemingway turned her husband's papers over to the John E Kennedy Library, she wrote "Not To Be Published" across the top of one of the story's manuscripts (Folder 485). Although Mary was not close with Gregory after 1951, she may have blocked publication in order to save the family from potential embarrassment. She was close with Gregory's third wife, Valerie, and may have kept the story out of the public eye in deference to someone she respected. Regardless of Ernest or Mary's wishes, after their deaths, "I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something" was eventually released to the public with permission from all three of Hemingway's sons, including Gregory.

"I Guess" is divided into four distinct parts. The chronology of events is non-linear; time is handled in a complex manner. The early action of "I Guess" is subdued despite there being reason to celebrate. Stevie has won first prize in a short story contest at school. Papa, who is a writer by trade, has been sent a copy so he can encourage and nurture his son's talents. (2) Eager to help, but also cognizant that the boy has already reached a high level of proficiency in creative writing, the father does not want to intrude unless his son allows him to: "I don't want to look over your shoulder or breathe down your neck" (CSS 597). Papa asks Stevie if he has read W. H. Hudson's boyhood memoir Far Away and Long Ago, probably assigned as recommended reading for the writer-in-training. Stevie replies that he has and thought it was fine. The father then proposes some writing exercises. He offers to take the boy to a cockfight in nearby Havana or to shoot dice at a bar, the idea being that they could use their observations for inspiration. Stevie makes it clear that he has little interest. The boy's terse, repeated refusals seem arrogant. At the end of the first section he says, "Probably it's better for me to go on the way it was in the story" (598). His father, no longer willing to force the issue, acquiesces.

The opening paragraphs of "I Guess" contain several biographical parallels. Like Stevie, Gregory expressed a desire to write. According to Papa: A Personal Memoir, Gregory was motivated to become a professional writer because he wanted to be a "Hemingway hero." He described a "Hemingway hero" as "the better parts" of his father, someone who could do "all the exciting things that allowed you to exhibit grace under pressure" (101). Paradoxically, as he felt his famous father had become "a snob and a phony" when he "joined the international set" (100), Gregory wanted to lead the "glamorous life" of a professional writer (101). For his part, Hemingway was "delighted" by his son's interest in writing and gave Gregory a reading list (101).

By all appearances, Gregory did attempt m transform himself into a writer. He was an associate editor of the Canterbury School newspaper, The Tabard.

In the 1947-48 academic year, his junior term, he entered a piece of written work into a contest. For his efforts, he was awarded first place in the category of "Historical Prize Essay." According to Canterbury School staff member Algis Stankus-Saulitis, Gregory's victory was announced in the June 1948 issue of The Tabard. The contest featured multiple categories, including one for best short story, but the school does not ,have any record of Gregory winning a prize for a short story (Stankus-Saulaitis, "Re: Hemingway's Son(s)"). Gregory himself maintained that he plagiarized a short story by Turgenev, one of his father's favorite writers (106). The pressure to succeed was probably immense for the son of a world-renowned author: Jeffrey Meyers wrote that the youngest of the Hemingway boys was viewed as the "most promising" (479). If any of them could follow in Ernest's footsteps, it would be Gregory.

In addition to details about the writing contest, the first section of "I Guess" contains a reference to cockfighting. In his memoir, Gregory records a memorable experience at a cockfight when he was young. Despite his father's explanation about why los gallos were required to continue fighting even when they were clearly dying, Gregory did not embrace the "spectacle." Repulsed by the cruelty and greed of the men who owned the birds, he concluded that "it just didn't seem to belong to the realm of sport" (51). When the father in "I Guess" suggests writing about the things that "stayed with you," he gives an example from a cockfight: "Things like the handler opening the rooster's bill and blowing in his throat when the referee would let them pick up and handle them before pitting again" (CSS 598). In his memoir, Gregory described such actions by the handlers as a nefarious form of "emergency first aid" (51).

In the opening of "I Guess," the interaction between Stevie and Papa seems superficially ideal. The strained dialogue suggests that something is not right between them. According to some accounts, Ernest and Gregory had a similarly tenuous relationship. Pauline and Ernest were officially divorced in 1940, complicating visitations between her boys and their father (Baker 366-367). According to Gregory himself, his summer vacations were often spent in Cuba with his "rich playboy" father, "swimming, playing tennis or baseball, shooting, fishing, and going to Havana" (49).

In the first section of the Hemingway novel posthumously published as Islands in the Stream, the protagonist's youngest son, Andrew, is described in this way: The smallest boy was fair and was built like a pocket battleship. He was a copy of Thomas Hudson, physically, reduced in scale and widened and shortened. His skin fleckled when it tanned and he had a humorous face and was born being very bid. He was a devil too, and deviled both his older brothers, and he had a dark side to him that nobody except Thomas Hudson could ever understand. Neither of them thought about this except that they recognized it in each other and knew it was bad and the man respected it and understood the boy's having it. They were very close to each other although Thomas Hudson had never been as much with this boy as with the others. This youngest boy, Andrew, was a precocious excellent athlete and he had been marvelous with horses since he had first ridden. (57-58)

Gregory felt that this passage was about him and liked it enough to use it as the epigraph to his memoir (V. Hemingway 213-214). The second-to-last sentence of the quotation is telling. Although Thomas Hudson loves his son, he also recognizes that his relationship with him is based more on psychological and physical similarities than time spent together.

In many ways neglected by his parents, Gregory spent Much of his boyhood in boarding schools or with caretakers. One nanny allegedly abused him psychologically by packing her bags and threatening to leave when Gregory committed minor behavioral offenses (Meyers 479) V. Hemingway 236-237). When Gregory was a toddler, Ernest and Pauline went on safari in Africa. In September 1945, Hemingway wrote the following in a letter to his future wife, Mary Welsh: "Went to Africa after Giggy was born. He born [sic] in Oct., went abroad following July and didn't come back until the next year after May or June. Along about April (ten months) Pauline said, 'I think I ought to see my Baby'" (SL 602). (3)

Yet despite having spent comparatively little "quality time" with his third son, Hemingway felt that they shared a mutual understanding. His "connection" with Gregory seems to have been based on his belief that they both possessed a "dark side." They saw it in one another, according to Hemingway. In a letter to Pauline about their son, he echoes some of the sentiments expressed about Andrew in Islands in the Stream: Giggy is better all the time I think. He has the biggest dark side in the family except me and you and I'm not in the family. He keeps it so concealed that you never know about it and maybe that way it will back up on him. But maybe too it will disappear as nearly all talent does along with youth and all the perishable commodities that shape our ends. (SL 524)

His statement that Gregory's dark side would one day "back up on him" seems prophetic in light of their eventual estrangement. And Gregory did not grow out of it as his father hoped he would. On the contrary, Gregory's psychological issues grew more extreme over the years.

In the second part of "I Guess," the negative aspects of Papa and Stevie's relationship begin to surface. Papa rationalizes his son's precocious writing skill by flashing back to how Stevie was also an excellent marksman at an early age. At ten he was competing with "grown men and professionals." Two years later, he was also hunting in the field with aplomb. Displaying patience and control, the boy "shot with beautiful style and an absolute timing and precision on high pheasants and in pass shooting at ducks" (CSS 598). Skill with firearms is of obvious importance to Papa. He takes great pride in what his son, who is barely strong enough to hoist a gun, is able to accomplish.

The bulk of the narrative in this section is about Stevie's performance in a "big international shoot" The tournament involves live "grey racing pigeons" catapulted from one of five traps set in a field. (4) The scene is narrated in a manner that evokes a sense of grace, speed, and fraternity. As professional shooters look on, the boy swiftly and flawlessly works his way through his rounds. Stevie responds to the compliments of his rivals with a slight nod and by saying "thanks" (CSS 599).

After his first round of shooting, Stevie asks his father if he can drink a Coke and Papa tells him, "better not drink more than half of one." Stevie agrees to only drink a little bit and then apologizes for being too slow on his last shot even though he hit his bird. Papa offers encouragement and the boy's next shots strike the bird twice within a yard of the trap, causing one pro to tell him that he "got an easy one." Stevie returns to his father, receives additional praise, and then gives Papa advice about one of the traps being loud on the release. The tip ends up hurting Papa's shooting as the trap has actually been greased (CSS 599).

This short exchange is a microcosm of the story. Stevie impresses his father with his talents, and Papa gives encouragement in return. The, boy does not boast about his skills, but his quiet confidence carries with it the suggestion of egotism. The only approval the boy cares about is his father's. The presence of the professional shooters means little to Stevie; they neither faze him nor do their comments register with him. And he is apparently upset with himself when he finds that his advice about the trap has not been helpful to his teacher: "Geez, Papa, I'm sorry. They greased it. I should have kept my damn mouth shut" (CSS 599). The incident also raises the possibility that Stevie may have lied about the trap. While I do not get the sense that Stevie wants to beat his father so much as he wants to make him proud, the narrator could be insinuating that this was another case of Stevie being dishonest. In any case, despite the boy's desire to be the best and to please and impress Papa, he ends up disappointing him.

From this point in "I Guess," the narrator becomes more judgmental about Stevie's character. The narrator's increased involvement may be traced to Hemingway's strong emotions about the actual shooting tournament behind the story. During the first weeks of August 1942, Gregory competed in a major shooting contest at the Club de Cazadores del Cerro in Havana. In his memoir, Gregory spent the majority of his chapter on Havana talking about what happened that day. Like his counterpart in "I Guess," he was ten years old.

Success on the firing range was one of the few fruits of this father-son relationship. Ernest loved to teach, and his youngest son proved to be an avid student. Gregory wrote in Papa: A Personal Memoir that he did not learn to shoot until the summer of 1942 (54). He quickly progressed to the point that he was Winning some minor matches, and he writes that his father "could see that I had the basic requirements for a good wing shot--quick reflexes and that x-factor that enables you to put together all the variables in your head in an instant" (56). In July 1942, Ernest shared these thoughts in a letter to Hadley Mowrer: Gigi is fine this summer. He is a better boy all the time. He is shooting marvellously and so is Patrick. The Local shooting club gave Gigi a gold medal engraved "To Gigi as a token of admiration from his fellow shooters, Club del Cazadores del Cerro." At nine years old he beat 24 grown men, all good shots and many of them very fine shots, shooting live pigeons.... Gigi is known in the papers as el joven fenomeno Americano and day before yesterday an article called him "el popularissimo Gigi." So now we say go down to the post-office and get the mail popularissimo or time for bed, popularissimo. But inside himself he is very happy to be the popularissimo and he shoots like a little angel. (SL 536)

Although the biographical details included here are important, Hemingway's comments about his son's state of mind are of more value. By remarking that he is "a better boy all the time," Hemingway counters his talk of dark sides and badness. When he writes that Gregory is "happy to be the popularissimo," he seems to be speaking for himself as well as his son.

Gregory's success at smaller competitions in the tournament series carried over into the Cuban championship. In his memoir, Gregory recalled that going into the shoot, Hemingway was mildly confident in his son, telling him that he had an "outside chance." He helped the boy prepare mentally for what would be a long, grueling Havana summer day. Expecting the other contestants to control their nerves by drinking alcohol, Papa told Gregory to stick to small quantities of Coca-Cola. Finally, he reassured him by telling him there were no expectations on him, financially or otherwise: "And you might get hot; I've seen it happen before. You might get hot" (56-57). Despite his father's efforts to calm him, Gregory was nervous.

Allegedly surrounded by former shooting champions, men such as Batista's Chief of Police, and "grimly compulsive competitors, running polishing cloths again and again over their guns,' young Gregory did his best to hide his nerves (G. Hemingway 58). He later wrote that 150 were competing for the title (58-59), but an article by P. Martinez Bauza in a Havana newspaper reported that there were thirty-nine entrants. Approximately 400 spectators, however, were in attendance. (5)

Gregory recalled that' once the shooting began, he conquered his nerves and performed admirably (59). After seventeen rounds, only three tiradores were still in the running (Bauza). After spewing a few insults about his remaining competitors, Gregory told his father that he could "take them both." Nervous anticipation had given way to egotism. Three rounds later and needing to kill a twentieth bird in order to tie, he fought off his jittery nerves and nailed it, much to the pleasure of the spectators. Not long afterwards he was sitting at the bar bragging about his abilities when Hemingway pulled him aside and suggested that talking that way only detracted from his accomplishment. Gregory said that he "took the hint and changed the subject fast" (59-60). The next day, according to his memoir, Gregory found his face pictured in three Havana newspapers and accompanied by glowing tributes. Overnight, he had become a "Nino Modelo," or "model child" (60-61). (6)

But Gregory left important information out of the account he wrote in Papa: A Personal Memoir. He does not mention that he eventually lost the tournament, although "I Guess" alludes to that fact. Bauza's article contradicts his recollection of the names of his competitors and the situation. Gregory maintains that "by the seventeenth round only three of the original one hundred and fifty contestants were left, Mungo Perez, Cappie Cruz, and myself." He then talks about how he had made fun of Mungo for having "a fat ass like a woman" (58-59). The only problem is that there were no contestants named Perez or Cruz who hit at least 17 of 20 birds, and Miguel A. "Fatty" Garcia was probably the man Gregory mocked. Bauza played up the size difference between Garcia and Gregory, likening it to the confrontation between David and Goliath: Gregory is said to have weighed about 85 pounds to Fatty's 190. After 20 birds, Garcia and Gregory were tied with perfect scores. The first tiebreaker consisted of five rounds, and both contestants hit all five birds. In the second tiebreaker, another round of five birds, Gregory missed his first bird, but killed the final four. Fatty hit all five and won the championship, a perfect 30 of 30 on the day (Bauza), While Gregory had reason to be proud of his accomplishment, he also had reason to be humble given his narrow loss.

In the third part of "I Guess" Hemingway apparently seized upon Gregory's lack of humility for inspiration. The night after the shoot, Papa and Stevie have a talk. The boy tells his father, "I don't understand how anyone ever misses a pigeon." Irritated by his son's arrogance, his father tells him, "Don't ever say that to anybody else" (CSS 599). The boy presses the issue and reveals that he eventually lost the tournament because he did not kill his bird inside the fence. In other words, he feels as though he lost on a technicality. Frustrated that Stevie still does not understand, Papa curtly tells him, "That's how you lose" (600).

After attempting to explain the dangers of arrogance, the father is mentally brought back to where he began--wondering if the boy could truly be a prize-winning writer without having worked at it. Papa's still latent suspicions about Stevie's writing talent remind him of how the boy had to endure many painful hours of practice before becoming a great shot. Because Stevie has forgotten about the steps he had taken to become great, he no longer appreciates how what now came easily had once been difficult.

The first paragraph of the closing section of "I Guess" reads like a monologue. The narrator says that Stevie never showed his father a second story, but promises to send it once it is finished to his satisfaction. Stevie's statements sound trite and hurried: "He had a very good vacation, he said, one of the best and he was glad he had such good reading too and he thanked his father for not pushing him too hard on the writing because after all a vacation is a vacation and this had been a fine one, maybe one of the very best, and they certainly had had some wonderful times they certainly had" (CSS_600). Asked about the mythical second story, Stevie apparently cannot flee the scene quickly enough.

As it turns out, Papa does not discover that the first, prize-winning story was an act of plagiarism until seven years have passed. Encountering the story in a book in the boy's old room, the father "remembered the long ago feeling of familiarity.... [T]here it was, unchanged and with the same title, in a book of very good short stories by an Irish writer. The boy had copied it exactly from the book and used the original title" (CSS 600). Papa's realization puts into perspective his frustration with the boy after the shooting tournament and his confusion about having his offers of help rejected. The conclusion he reaches about his son, however, goes beyond a desire to punish minor offenses.

Without going into detail, the narrator says that during five of the previous seven years, "the boy had done everything hateful and stupid" (CSS 601). Before deciding on the adjective "hateful," Hemingway had written and crossed out "evil" and "vile" (Folder 485b). If the story ended here, it would indeed seem "cruel" and insensitive. Instead, Papa ponders an explanation for his boy's behavior: "But it was because he was sick his father had told himself. His vileness came on from a sickness." Despite the excuse of illness, the father-writer's conclusion is that the "boy had never been any good. He had thought so often looking back on things. And it was sad to know that shooting did not mean a thing" (601). His final analysis of Stevie is at best ambivalent.

According to Gregory, Ernest was initially overjoyed to learn that his son had won a writing contest. In his memoir, Gregory said that the two great successes of his youth were for a time linked with one another: "Only once before can I remember papa being as pleased with me--when I tied for the pigeon-shooting championship" (106). Valerie Hemingway's version of events seems to contradict Gregory's memories. She probably heard about the plagiarism from Ernest himself during her time as his private secretary in the two years before his death. Hemingway apparently told her that he knew the story was plagiarized as soon as he saw the magazine in which it was printed; Gregory states that he showed the story to his unwitting father and garnered his pleasure and approval before entering it in the contest (V. Hemingway 120; G. Hemingway 104-106). If her version is true, then Gregory would have been present when his father recognized his plagiarism and would more likely have remembered a punishment rather than paternal joy. For that reason, it is more likely that Gregory was not around to see his father realize that Ivan Turgenev had written the prize-winning work (G. Hemingway 106).

The ending of "I Guess" directly negates what Gregory thought were the two things he had done in life that captured his father's admiration: winning the story competition and almost winning the shooting competition. The first is deservedly exposed as a lie. The second is dismissed as not having meant a thing. However, the handwritten draft of the story does not end with the line about shooting being meaningless (Folder 485b). In a more charitable moment early in the process of composition, Hemingway allowed Stevie's shooting victory to remain valid. The ending in the posthumously published version is more extreme, evoking a sense that the son is beyond redemption, no longer possessing any favor with his father. Ironically, the story's logic echoes a letter Hemingway's mother sent to him as a young man. After describing how sons make deposits into a figurative maternal love bank account through good deeds and make withdrawals when they disappoint, she concludes by telling her son that "You have overdrawn" (qtd. in Comley and Scholes, 25). Perhaps Ernest felt that Gregory had done the same.

In the cases of Stevie and Gregory, the punishments do not fit the crimes. Having heard Hemingway's account of Gregory's first prize for his plagiarized short story, Valerie concisely stated the problematic mystery of his and Stevie's story: "This did not seem to me to be sufficient reason for a father to disown a son" (120). Something far more serious had to have happened during the period of time between the summer of 1948 and 1955. That something was Gregory's 1951 arrest in Los Angeles for being in a women's restroom.

While married to Gregory, Valerie discovered that he had an "addiction" to cross-dressing. He told her that it had all started at about age two when his parents were away in Africa and he was left in Ada's care. Distraught over her abusive actions, he began to remove his absent mother's stockings from her room and touch them to his face. Over time, he said, he began to associate women's clothing with comfort. He told Valerie that his addiction was limited to stockings and was not an indication of transvestitism or a desire to be a woman (V. Hemingway 237). However, his prior arrest in Los Angeles, still a secret from his wife, suggests that he was either less than honest with her or had not yet come to terms with himself during their marriage.

Hemingway had probably known about his son's cross-dressing addiction for at least eight years before the 1951 arrest, so the incident was not revelatory (J. Hemingway 45). Instead, his anger may have centered on Gregory's risking a public scandal. Regardless, Gregory was upset that his father's priority was protecting his own image. In her memoir, Valerie expounded on Greg's resentment: "He also felt that his father, his mother, and Mary were more concerned about the embarrassment publicity would bring than in finding a cure for him" (252). In "I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something" Papa's reply when Stevie says that he did not mean to be rude indirectly supports Gregory's claim about his father's priorities: "That's all right. Only don't say it to other people" (CSS 600). In both "I Guess" and Hemingway's family life, privacy is a precious commodity.

Hemingway did not trust critics or people who took an extreme interest in his life. Many of the vicissitudes of the 1950s were, in his opinion, the result of what had been written about him ("Success, It's Wonderful!" 65). One of his fears was that critics and biographers would accuse him of being homosexual (Drew 95). Perhaps he felt that Gregory's problems would serve as evidence against him. The events of 1951 had left him vulnerable to the very people he had put so much effort into suppressing. Writing "I Guess" carried with it a certain amount of risk, but putting it down on paper brought with it the reward of mental and emotional release.

"I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something" is, in part, the work of a man grieving over his son's illness. Scott Donaldson's brief comments on "I Guess" and "Great News from the Mainland" counter critics who tend to dismiss the former story as little more than a slam on Gregory: "Biographically ... these stories are of considerable interest. In two of them, Hemingway attempts to come to grips with moments of great emotional stress" ("Hemingway Collection" 5). An anonymous critic who reviewed The Complete Short Stories for Publisher's Weekly referred to "I Guess" and "Great News" as "touching" (51). Plagiarism and cockiness are minor symptoms of a much greater, unspoken problem. Papa tries to be a good father to his son, yet something seemingly uncontrollable has led the boy to do vile things to those who love him. Confronted with Gregory's manic depression, Hemingway used writing as a way to deal with his sense of loss and feelings of complicity. (7)

The handwritten draft of "I Guess" reveals what could be a glimpse into Hemingway's state of mind as he composed it. The second to last paragraph contains a sentence that was not crossed out but was inexplicably left out of other versions. The "forgotten" line is in parentheses: "But it was because he was sick his father had told himself. His vileness came on from a sickness. He was all right until then. (You must always think of him as sick.) But that had all started a year or more after that last summer" (Folder 485b).

The referent of the pronoun "you" is potentially ambiguous. The narrator indicates that the writer-father is speaking to himself, and so a good case can be made that "You must always think of him as sick" is intended to be another thing that Papa "told himself." Two other possibilities are more intriguing. The narrator or author of "I Guess" could be addressing the reader, pleading for the understanding of a person who may know what inspired the story's composition. Or this line could be Ernest Hemingway reminding himself that in spite of his son's actions, there are mitigating circumstances. The latter is more in keeping with the therapeutic aspect of the work. If Hemingway can convince himself to see Gregory as a person who is sick rather than as someone who consciously inflicts pain on people, then his son's actions will not seem as unforgivable.

Several of Hemingway's works appear to have been written as a means of emotional therapy. In some instances, he re-contextualizes historical facts to make an authorial character seem morally superior. Some critics consider A Farewell to Arms and especially "A Very Short Story" works in which Hemingway, through his narrators, addresses his bitterness over being rejected by Agnes Von Kurowsky. (8) "A Very Short Story" is similar to "I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something" in that it paints an idealized picture of the "victim" while heaping opprobrium on the person who generates the pain. The act of telling has a therapeutic effect. In "Fathers and Sons" Nick Adams is haunted by memories of his father. The narrator says that "if he wrote it he could get rid of it. He had gotten rid of many things by writing them" (CSS 371).

"I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something" is a complex mixture of love, anger, and regret. In his book Strange Tribe, Gregory's son John Hemingway writes, "I've known for a long time that Greg probably hated Ernest as much as he loved him" (120). "I Guess" suggests that Hemingway had similar feelings about Gregory. Read within the context of Hemingway family history, the tale becomes the work of a grieving father attempting to make sense of a failed relationship. Papa does not find or offer specific reasons for his son's behavior, but instead concludes with a denunciation. His claim that his "boy had never been any good" is perhaps understandable, but nonetheless remains dismissive and coldly absolute.

WORKS CITED

Anon. Rev. of The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition by Ernest Hemingway. Publisher's Weekly 232 (30 October 1987): 51.

Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. 1969. New York: Collier, 1988.

Bauza, P. Martinez. "Palabras: Goliat-David." 17 August 1942. Newspaper Clipping. Ernest Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Library. Boston, MA.

Benson, Jackson J. ed. New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1990.

Bruccoli, Matthew J., ed. Conversations with Ernest Hemingway. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1986.

--and Judith S. Baughman, eds. The Sons of Maxwell Perkins: Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe and Their Editor. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2004.

Catalog of the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library. 2 Vols. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.

Comley, Nancy R. and Robert Scholes. Hemingway's Genders: Rereading the Hemingway Text. New Haven: Yale UP, 1994.

Donaldson, Scott. "'A Very Short Story' as Therapy." In Hemingway's Neglected Short Fiction: New Perspectives. Ed. Susan F. Beegel. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1989. 99-105.

--. "Hemingway collection reveals fragments of the master." Rev. of The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition by Ernest Hemingway. Chicago Tribune 27 December 1987, sec. 14: 5.

Drew, Fraser. "April 8, 1955 with Hemingway: Unedited Notes on a Visit to Finca Vigia." 1970. Rptd. in Bruccoli. 89-98.

Flora, Joseph M. Ernest Hemingway: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1989.

Goodman, Jack, et al. "Hemingway Tells of Early Career; States That He 'Won't Quit Now.'" 1955. Rptd. in Bruccoli 99-102.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition. New York: Scribner's, 1987.

--. Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letter's, 1917-1961. Ed. Carlos Baker. New York: Scribner's, 1981.

--. "I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something." Manuscripts. Folders 485a + b. Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Library. Boston, MA.

--. Islands in the Stream. New York: Scribner's, 1970.

--. "Success, It's Wonderful!" 1950. Rptd. in Bruccoli. 65.

Hemingway, Gregory. Papa: A Personal Memoir. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.

Hemingway, John. Strange Tribe: A Family Memoir. Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2007.

Hemingway, Valerie. Running With the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways. New York: Ballantine, 2004.

Hotchner, A.E. Papa Hemingway. 1966. New York: William Morrow, 1983.

Lescaze, Lee. "Genius for Decisive Moments" Rev. of The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition by Ernest Hemingway. Wall Street Journal 22 December 1987: 17.

Lynn, Kenneth S. Hemingway. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1987.

Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway: A Biography. New York: Da Capo, 1999.

Nagel, James. "Catherine Barkley and Retrospective Narration in A Farewell to Arms." In Ernest Hemingway: Six Decades of Criticism. Ed. Linda W. Martin. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1987. 171-193.

Reynolds, Michael S. "A Brief Biography." A Historical Guide to Ernest Hemingway. Ed. Linda Wagner-Martin. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. 15-50.

Spilka, Mark. Hemingway's Quarrel with Androgyny. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1990. 279-314.

Stankus-Saulitis, Algis. "Hemingway's Son(s)." E-mail to Robert Clark. 2 April 2005.

--. "Re: Hemingway's Son(s)." E-mail to Robert Clark. 4 April 2005.

Waugh, Evelyn. "The Case of Mr. Hemingway." 1950. Rptd. in Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference. Ed. Robert Trogdon. New York: Carrol & Graf, 2002. 280-281, 283.

NOTES

(1.) Jinny disliked Ernest, so her allegations could be biased.

(2.) Joseph M. Flora writes that the story was sent to Papa by the boy's teacher. But the identity of the sender is ambiguous; the text of "I Guess" only says "her." I like the possibility that it was the boy's mother who sent it. Even though she is absent from the tale, such a reading gives her an external presence. It is also a reminder that Stevie's parents are probably divorced or separated, partially explaining why he has to leave at the end of the summer vacation.

(3.) Baker included the following footnote: "EH errs on the date of Gregory's birth, 12 November 1931, and of his own foreign travel, of which he did none in 1932. Pauline's remark was probably made in 1933 or 1934" (603).

(4.) Gregory Hemingway gives a thorough explanation of live pigeon shooting at Club de Cazadores del Cerro in Papa: A Personal Memoir (54).

(5.) This information can be found with press clippings from 17 August 1942 in the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library (Catalog II, 540). The name of the newspaper is unknown, but the column by P. Martinez Bauza is titled "Palabras: Goliat-David." Thanks to Susan Wrynn and her staff for tracking this clipping down and to my brother David Clark for help in translating Bauza's article.

(6.) Given Bauza's introductory comments and the date of the article, the tournament probably took place on Sunday, 16 August 1942. But biographers have presented varying accounts, and father and son do not appear to agree on what year the event took place. If the Bauza article identifies the tournament, then Gregory participated in the summer of 1942 when was he was ten years old. In his memoir, Gregory says he was eleven (59). Valerie Hemingway writes that Ernest said the tournament took place when Gregory was age nine (119). Meyers states that the contest took place in July 1942 and that the boy was ten (292).

(7.) Valerie Hemingway writes that Gregory was a "classic manic depressive" (257).

(8.) See Scott Donaldson, "'A Very Short Story' as Therapy," and lames Nagel, "Catherine Barkley and Retrospective Narration in A Farewell to Arms."

ROBERT C. CLARK

University of Georgia