A Pique at Biography

Ernest Hemingway met A. E. Hotchner in 1948, and the world-famous novelist and the relatively unknown magazine writer soon became fast friends. They went fishing together in Cuba, watched bullfights in Spain, hunted the pheasant country of Idaho, and toured France. "Papa" and "Hotch" got along so well together that Papa gave his friend the right to adapt some of his novels and short stories for movies and TV. And because they were inseparable companions, Hotch became aware of Papa's gradually increasing periods of depression, his dark and suicidal moods. There was a time when Hemingway tried to jump out of a plane in flight; on another occasion he tried to walk into a whirling propeller. One morning, Mary Hemingway, Papa's fourth wife, found her husband with a shotgun in one hand, two shells in the other. He had just finished writing a note in which he made ominous references to his will.

All this, and more, went into the pages of Papa Hemingway, Hotchner's story of the novelist's final years, which Random House plans to publish in April. The book bristles with intimate details of Hemingway's slow deterioration. On reading the galleys, Mary says, she suffered "a traumatic shock." In a letter to Random House Board Chairman Bennett Cerf, she accused Hotchner of "shameless penetration into my private life and the usurpation of it for money." She demanded a long list of changes in the book. The author and the publisher agreed to many of them, but Hotchner flatly refused to delete the last chapter, which recalls how he urged Mary to transfer her husband from the Mayo Clinic to a specialized psychiatric hospital, how she refused, fearing what effect the publicity might have, and how, on July 2, 1961, Hemingway put the muzzle of a shotgun in his mouth and blew the back of his head off.

Invasion of Privacy. Mary's next move was to ask the New York State Supreme Court to enjoin publication. The book invaded her privacy, she said, and it violated the confidential relationship that existed between Hotch and Papa. But her main argument was that it appropriated her literary property. The law holds that the author of a letter maintains ownership of its contents, and Mary claimed that her husband's estate, of which she is both executrix and beneficiary, maintained ownership of the material Hotchner had used in his book.

The notes he had taken on conversations with Papa should be considered as letters from the author; it was as illegal for Hotchner to use the tape recordings he had made as it is for recordings of the radio broadcast of an opera or a symphony to be copied and sold. Almost all the material of the book, said Mary, was the stuff that Papa could have put into an autobiography. As such, it now belonged to her, and she had not given her consent for its use.

Nonsense, answered Hotchner. He had made most of the changes Mary had requested, and she was deceiving the court, asking it to enjoin a book that was far different from the one now scheduled for publication. His notes were his own property, he insisted. He had written them down well after the events and conversations had taken place. As for violating any confidential relationship, Papa knew about the book he was planning, said Hotchner; in fact, Papa encouraged him to write it. As for Mary's privacy, she was the wife of a famous man; she was a published author herself and a proper target for public scrutiny. What was really worrying Mary, Hotchner said, was her fear that his book might detract from the authorized biography she had commissioned from Princeton Professor Carlos Baker. Hotchner was also convinced that Mary wanted to hide from the public, "and perhaps herself, the truth of Ernest's death."

Detailed Fears. None of this meant that he was using anyone else's property, Hotchner argued. And even if he were, who was Mary to complain--either on her own behalf or for her husband? Scores of articles had quoted Hemingway during his lifetime, and Papa had never complained that his literary property rights were being violated. Hemingway had even written articles that included long quotes from Hotchner; both he and Hotchner had considered the practice perfectly proper. And what about A Moveable Feast, Hemingway's recollections of Paris, published posthumously by Mary? That book included intimate conversations with Hemingway's friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald; the chapter titled "A Matter of Measurements" detailed Fitzgerald's fears of sexual inadequacy. Fitzgerald had certainly not given his consent, and his daughter, the executrix of Fitzgerald's estate, had not been consulted.

To enjoin books like this, said Hotchner, moving himself up into fast company, would be the same as enjoining Plato from writing down Socrates' dialogues, or stopping Boswell from recording the doings of Samuel Johnson. If a friend of Shakespeare's or Chaucer's or Byron's had written his literary memoirs, would the court object?

At week's end, Judge Harry B. Frank was studying the galleys and the arguments and pondering his decision. Was the book really Papa's autobiography, as Mary claimed? Or were Mary's complaints what Hotchner called them: "Dismal whining, compounded from conjecture, frustration and pique, none of them actionable in equity"?

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