Photo: Debby Preiser
A man who let his own insides get eaten out by the diseases of fame had dreamed new books on this boat. He'd taught his sons to reel in something that feels like Moby Dick on this boat. He'd accidentally shot himself in both legs on this boat. He'd fallen drunk from the flying bridge on this boat. He'd written achy, generous, uplifting, poetic letters on this boat. He'd propositioned women on this boat. He'd hunted German subs on this boat. He'd saved someone (several someones) from shark attack on this boat. He'd acted like a boor and a bully and an overly competitive jerk on this boat.
He'd owned her, fished her, worked her, rode her, from the waters of Key West to the Bahamas to the Dry Tortugas to the north coast and archipelagos of Cuba. She wasn't a figment or a dream or a literary theory or someone's psychosexual interpretation -- she was actual.
-- From Paul Hendrickson's 2009 Hemingway Birthday Lecture, Looking for Ernest Hemingway through the Prism of the Pilar
Read about the Birthday Lecture in The Wednesday Journal of Oak Park.
