Amanda-Leigh Releases The Big Fish

I was introduced to Ernest Hemingway in high school. At the time, biographies of famous writers and their stories did not make sense to me. When my class and I were assigned to read short biographies and their stories, there would be a small groan inside of me. What was the point in having to read this stuff? This question should seem immature to those of us who now take writers biographies and their famous pieces of literature seriously.

When I began keeping an active journal after suffering from blood clots and a hysterectomy, I was led to read biographies. Before I entered the hospital, I was prescribed the combination of Celexa and Risperdal by a nurse practitioner that was referred to me by my husband’s psychiatrist at the time. I stayed up reading a book by Maya Angelou. I also read a book about a cheating husband whose ex-wives formed a bond of sisterhood. My husband heard me laugh at the women’s unconventional friendships. We sure did have great fun with that adventure.

The biography that has my mind spinning is over Ernest Hemingway. I read up to page eighty in Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved and Lost, 1934-1961 by Paul Hendrickson and Hemingway: The Final Years by Michael Reynolds. The following findings are my perspective of each biography:

·         In the beginning of Hemingway’s Boat, Hendrickson provides readers with the relationship Ernest Hemingway had with two of his three sons. Patrick (“Mouse”) and Gregory (“Gigi”) were interviewed by former Washington Post writer Paul Hendrickson. What happened to the eldest son, Jack (“Mr. Bumby”)? Were there not letters Jack sent to his father twice a month while growing up? The lack of this relationship left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

The strained relationship Ernest Hemingway had with his son Gregory, sometimes called Gloria, was out in the open in the beginning. Hendrickson addressed a letter Ernest Hemingway wrote about his disgraced son. I found this to be a distasteful approach to the youngest son. Airing dirty laundry is not something I find to be a good read.

·         The history of the Wheeler family’s boat business, where Ernest Hemingway purchased his boat, Pilar, was featured in-depth. Everything anybody ever wants to know about the boat business is written down within the first eighty pages of the book. My literary taste buds became bored.

·         Ernest Hemingway shared a close and personal friendship with F. Scott Fitzgerald. This relationship turned me off of the book completely. From research and reading biographies over the Fitzgeralds, I learned that Fitzgerald was not an honest writer. He did not exhibit moral character. He had affairs that his beautiful wife, Zelda, had to suffer with. Fitzgerald was like Edgar Allen Poe who tortured his mistresses.

·         Michael Reynolds’ Hemingway: The Final Years provides an in-depth perspective on the man Ernest Hemingway was. The man Hemingway turned out to be reminds me of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem called “The Fish.” In her poem, the fish is one every fisherman has tried to catch but to no avail. The fishermen wound up looking beyond the fish’s exterior and throwing it back in the sea. The fishermen move on and do not warn other fellow fishermen of this physically strong fish. The fishermen are to fend for themselves and lean that this fish can be caught by their hooks but never brought to surface and commit to being one fisherman’s prize. So, the fish is always thrown back into the stream of water waiting on some other fisherman to play his game.

·         Reynolds’ image of Hemingway as a family man is non-existent. The three sons are mentioned throughout the book but not necessarily above the surface. The sons did not take center stage in Hemingway’s life the way his women did. Reynold’s description of the sons is a bit vague. In the beginning, the sons are mentioned more frequently. In the end, we learn that the boys grow up and are married. There are important pieces of information missing from the book. I am left with the missing question of whether or not Hemingway attended his sons’ weddings, births of his grandchildren, and how he felt about his sons. Was Hemingway proud of his sons – those who still spoke to him?

·         Ernest Hemingway followed the steps of his Father, Dr. Clarence Hemingway, during the last year of his life. Both men were admitted to St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, New York. Ernest Hemingway underwent a series of electroshock treatments (ECT) under the care of a doctor named Dr. Rome. Hemingway’s fourth wife, Mary Walsh Hemingway, found an institution that had recreational activities as a part of therapy. In the end, Dr. Rome wound up not taking Mary’s loving care for her husband seriously and released his recovered patient. Hemingway manipulated his doctor into believing he was well. After being released, Ernest Hemingway shot himself with his favorite gun.

This is a lot of information to absorb for one woman. I did not know what I was getting myself into when I picked out Ernest Hemingway’s biographies. I thought Hemingway would have been a loving, caring husband and father figure. I was completely wrong. Being friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald, I should have realized his ways would rub off on Hemingway. Both men wound up disrespecting the marital bed and humiliating their wives in public. Both men suffered from the debilitating diseases of alcoholism and depression.

I am surprised Hemingway’s four wives did not wind up shooting him. Some modern women would have. When a heart is tossed around, stretched to the limit, and shattered into pieces, there is really no predicting how a woman will react. I do give three of the Hemingway wives credit for being strong enough to walk away from the big fish in the water. Hemingway’s biographies can be taken as a warning for strong women of our world. There is absolutely nothing wrong with walking away from a fish nobody wants to catch. I am releasing this fish back into the water where he belongs. My hook has no time for his jaws to latch onto, nor do I have any patience for his games. 

The Fish

By Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown rose
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.