Literature Holiday 2022 - 34 - “The Test Of Whether A Book Is Any Good Is How Much Good Stuff You Can Remove From It”: Extraordinary Long Hemingway Letter, Twice Signed As ‘Papa,’ Discussing The Sun Also Rises, The Play Today Is Friday, The Short Stories “The Killers” And “Ten Indians,” And An Evening Spent With “A Fine New Whore In Town” 29. HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Typed letter twice signed “Papa” to Peter Viertel. Finca Vigia, Cuba, 29 September 1949. Two sheets of Hemingway’s “Finca Vigia, San Francisco de Paula, Cuba” stationery, each leaf measuring 8-1/2 inches by 11 inches; pp. 2. $42,000. Extraordinary typed and heavily annotated letter from Hemingway in Cuba to friend and fellow author and screenwriter Peter Viertel in Malibu, California, a long, lively letter discussing his writing progress, a proposed trip, hunting and shooting pigeons, drinking, baseball and a new sex worker in town, with over 150 words of additional notes written in the margins and on the verso of the second page in blue ink by Hemingway. Twice signed as “Papa.” The letter, on Hemingway’s Finca Vigia stationery, addressed to Peter Viertel in Malibu, CA, reads in small part [with Hemingway’s manuscript annotations in brackets and italics]: [Poor John, the ex-light weight champion, with his bag of feathers. I’ll be god-damned. Papa.] Dear Peter: Am awfully sorry to be answering your letter of 31 August now. I thought I had done it but have been working so very hard that it got mixed in with other stuff that I put away in the “Must Be Answered at Once”. [That is no damn excuse. Have been jamming like in a six day bike race.] It would be wonderful if you and Jige could go across at the same time as we do. We will be leaving on the ILE DE FRANCE from New York on 1 November. Please don’t tell this to anyone as I want to get in and out of town quiet. Will be pooped from working on book and I want to see the town anyway without all that crap. Have done over 15,000 words since I got your letter. Been going like I was possessed
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