Andrew Farah - Hemingway’s Brain

Hemingways Brain

Hemingways

Brain

Andrew Farah

THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA PRESS

2017 University of South Carolina

Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208

www.sc.edu/uscpress

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/

ISBN 978-1-61117-742-8 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-61117-743-5 (ebook)

Front cover photograph: Ernest Hemingway on the steps of his house, Cuba, 1954, by Tore Johnson/Magnum Photos.

For Priscilla Farah

It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.

Sren Kierkegaard, Journals (1843)

This may be wrong and I would be glad to have anyone disprove the theory as what we want is knowledge, not the pride of proving something to be true.

Ernest Hemingway, Out in the Stream: A Cuban Letter (1934)

Contents

Illustrations

following page 70

Acknowledgments

My thanks go to Cambridge University Press for permission to reprint passages from Rose Marie Burwells Hemingway: The Postwar Years and the Posthumous Novels (Cambridge University Press, 1996); to Simon and Schuster and Penguin Random House UK for permission to reprint passages from A Movable Feast (Scribners, 1964), Across the River and into the Trees (Scribners, 1950), The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (Scribners, 1987), In Our Time (Scribners, 1930), Carlos Bakers Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 19171961 (Scribners 1981), and Carlos Bakers Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (Scribners, 1969); to Dover Publications for permission to reprint from Wassily Kandinskys Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Dover, 1977); to W. W. Norton for permission to reprint from Bernice Kerts The Hemingway Women (W. W. Norton, 1983); to the Hemingway Society for permission to use excerpts from an unpublished letter; to Roxann Livingston for permission to use a photograph by Earl Theisen; to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., for access to information regarding The Farm by Joan Mir that led me to the Artists Rights Society, which granted permission to use the art; and to the dedicated and kind staff of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for access to letters, documents, and images in the Ernest Hemingway Collection.

Introduction

On July 2, 1961, Ernest Miller Hemingway rose quietly so as not to disturb his wife. He put on his bathrobe and slippers, walked down to the basement of his Idaho home, and unlocked his gun case. He climbed the steps to his foyer, placed his favorite shotgun to the roof of his mouth, and blew the top of his head off.

Many of those who have never read a Hemingway novel or biography still know the details of this tragedy. His suicide may even be the most famous in American history, competing with those of Marilyn Monroe and Robin Williams for this tragic distinction. He shot himself only six days after his discharge from the Mayo Clinic, where he had been hospitalized twice. The primary goal of his treatment at Mayo for severe depression and psychosis was to prevent this exact scenario. Yet his death was the result not of medical mismanagement but of medical misunderstanding. Hemingway received state-of-the-art psychiatric treatment in 1960 and 1961, but for the wrong illness.

This book is the first comprehensive and accurate accounting of the psychiatric diagnoses that led to the demise of Ernest Miller Hemingway. Thus, Hemingways Brain is a forensic psychiatric examination of his very brain cellsthe stressors, traumas, chemical insults, and biological changesthat killed a world-famous literary genius. The method of the forensic psychiatrist is to carefully review all medical records, study any other relevant information available (usually in the form of depositions), and, if possible, interview the subject himself. Even though the subject is Americas quintessential writer, the medical chart is still closed and confidential. When his Mayo psychiatrist, Dr. Howard Rome, was approached at professional meetings by colleagues who asked, Werent you Hemingways doctor?, Dr. Rome was known to always lift an index finger to his lips, indicating that they were forever sealed. He was an ethical clinician who maintained patient confidentiality for the rest of his life

Fortunately for this study, there is no shortage of collateral information. We have numerous biographies, Hemingways extensive catalogue of personal letters, the memoirs of friends and family, and even an FBI file on our patient. With all of this data, it is possible to piece together a narrative of neurological and psychiatric illnesses that were progressing for years. This specific analysis has been missing from the scholarship for too long. Indeed, no scholarship can be complete without integrating these insights, as Hemingways illnesses informed his relationships, his day-today life, and the last two decades of his creative output. One theme that will become apparent as the reader progresses through Hemingways Brain is that marvelous literature was still possible despite Hemingways cognitive decline, his anxieties, and even his psychosis. His late-life struggle was made particularly difficult by his acute awareness of his declining mental capacities. His sensitivity and his ability to notice everything, which were key to his creative genius, were by then fueling his torment.

His neurological and psychiatric conditions began years before the iconic sixty-one-year-old stood at his worktable shuffling papers, unable to write just the one sentence asked of him. It was for a volume of wellwishes to be presented to President Kennedy. He had been delighted to receive the telegram inviting him to the inauguration but declined for the very health reasons that left him frustrated and frozen as he stared at the blank pages. The illness began with specific inherited vulnerabilities, genes from both sides of his family, was developing as the young ambulance driver lay unconscious in the mud of the Italian front during World War I, and continued to germinate with the slow poison of thousands of cocktails. His pathology was the result of the coalescing of genetic codes with trauma, untreated hypertension, diabetes, and numerous lifestyle choices. And when his psychiatric illness was fully manifest, it eluded the finest doctors of his day.

Modern scans and testing would leave no doubt regarding the specifics of his diagnosis, and there are numerous treatment options available now that were not even theoretical in 1960. Even if he had received the correct diagnosis, there were few therapies availablebut still, there were a few.