PRESENTATIon | July, 2017 | Ketchum COmmunity Library, IDAHO
As the Hemingway in Idaho Fellow for the Community Library in Ketchum, Idaho for the summer of 2017, I planned, coordinated, and implemented an independent research project using the personal library in the Hemingway residence at Ketchum, Idaho. This work included generating:
one page reports on select items (Before You Go, Fate is the Hunter, and The Cabala)
and a public presentation.
The public presentation (video linked above, accompanying PowerPoint found here) focuses on a particular book found in the collection: a short run, artisanal copy of Archibald MacLeish’s Streets in the Moon with an inscription from MacLeish to Hemingway written in the front. In addition to some intriguingly opaque sentiments, the inscription includes an early draft of a later published poem (appearing as “Voyage” in Collected Poems 1917 to 1982). In this public presentation, I explore how the presence of this book in the Hemingway collection in Idaho speaks not only to the relationship between these two literary giants, but also each man individually.
DEAR ERNEST:
:
I DON’T WANT TO MAKE IT
AWKWARD + ANYTHING ELSE
WOULD BE INADEQUATE
THERE FORE THE REST IS
SILENCE