Odds

Ernest Hemingway’s two posthumous books, Islands in the Stream and A Moveable Feast, after The Sun Also Rises, are my favorites of his canon. When I read that Scribners had allowed Hemingway’s grandson to rework A Moveable Feast because it portrayed his grandmother unfavorably, I was appalled. So was Hemingway friend and biographer A.E. Hotchner. In an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times entitled “Don’t Touch ‘A Moveable Feast’” he makes the case that the book should not be changed, that Scribners and all publishers “are guardians of the books that authors entrust to them.”

In an ideal world such a notion would be de rigueur, a matter of course; but in a world where success has everything to do with profit and nothing to do with integrity, Scribners is sucking every bit of marrow it can drain from the corpse of Hemingway. I hope dismal sales will remind them of their trust, but my cynicism believes curiosity seekers and train wreck followers will make the publication profitable. More’s the pity. Scribners should be punished, not fiscally rewarded, for their desecrating Hemingway’s work.

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• Grandson re-edits Hemingway’s Moveable Feast (guardian.co.uk)
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• ‘Moveable Feast’ Is Recast by Hemingway Grandson (nytimes.com)

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