It is just possible that Ernest Hemingway knew the name H. P. Lovecraft. Though they moved in very different literary circles and Hemingway was not known to have ever picked up a copy of Weird Tales. Yet they both earned three-star ratings in Edward J. O’Brien’s The Best Short Stories of 1928, Hemingway for “Hills Like White Elephants,” Lovecraft for “The Color Out of Space.” They both made The Best Short Stories of 1929, too. For Hemingway, that was the likely the beginning and end of their association; there are no mentions of the master of the weird tale in Hemingway’s letters. It was easy, in the 1920s and 30s, to know nothing about Lovecraft.
For H. P. Lovecraft, missing Hemingway would have been much more difficult—nor did he. Though they were very different in their fictional focus, output, and success, Lovecraft and Hemingway were still contemporaries, and there are a number of references to Hemingway and his works in Lovecraft’s letters. These mentions of Ernest Hemingway, who had not yet become “Papa” of later years, reflect more on Lovecraft than on Hemingway himself, but show Lovecraft both coming to grips with a Modern writer of very different style and interests and how Hemingway’s influence spread.
Trends come from deeper sources than what is written on the surface of literature, and the average domestic adjustments of 1980 or 2030 will not depend on the question of whether Ernest Hemingway is suppressed or encouraged in 1930.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, June 1930?, LMM 267
The date on this letter is approximate, but the reference appears to be to the ban of the June 1929 issue of Scribner’s Magazine in Boston, which contained the second installment of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Lovecraft did not normally read Scribner’s, but his aunt did (ES1.141), and he sometimes read it at the library (ES2.670). This was likely where Lovecraft first encountered Hemingway’s prose. Hemingway came up again in Lovecraft’s ongoing correspondence with Moe circa 1931:
It does not take a microscope to perceive that Ernest Hemingway and John V. A. Weaver have a much greater intellectual command of their material than would the kind of people they depict! But they are right in stripping down to vulgate essentials when they wish to say what they have to say. Life could not possibly be interpreted without this intelligent adaptation of medium to subject matter ….. Indeed, the blank record of the nineteenth century in saying anything of real significance or reality is sufficient proof of the validity of the assumption. […] To suppose a man with the aesthetick and philosophic vision of Hemingway could say anything in the French pastry jargon of Thornton Wilder, or that a sensitive perceiver like Marcel Proust (the one real novelist of the last decade or two) could get anything at all over in the stereotyped phrases and attitudes of the “great tradition”, is to miss the whole point of the purpose and mode of functioning of language. What any guy has to say, is what’s in him–and every fresh combination of a guy and wot he’s got on his chest calls for a distinctly individual use of language. […] Honest depiction of life must be based on realism, no matter how much that realism may be suffused with imaginative overtones derived from subjective attitudes toward reality and dream.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, March 1931?, LMM 285-286
John Van Alstyne Weaver, like Hemingway, worked with American vernacular English; Thornton Wilder was the author of the acclaimed novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), which is set in the 18th century and whose language is full of decorative frills—very different from Hemingway’s usual laconic approach. Hemingway himself would call the book “a well hung together collection of short stories” (LEH 4.152) and elsewhere wrote:
Writing whether you want it or not is competitive—Most of the time you compete against time and dead men—sometimes you get something from a living (contemporary competitor) that is so good it jars you—as the story of Esteban in Thornton’s last book. But as you read them dead or living you unconsciously compete—I would give 6 mos. of life to have written it.
—Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, Sep 1928, LEH 3.434
Was Lovecraft in unconscious competition with Hemingway? If so, it never showed in his work. Yet Hemingway was not wrong. Both writers focused on realism as a key aspect of their writing. Hemingway wanted to write about real things; Lovecraft used realism as the basis for his weird tales, and wrote about one of his dead competitors:
Poe’s spectres thus acquired a convincing malignity possessed by none of their predecessors, and established a new standard of realism in the annals of literary horror. The impersonal and artistic intent, moreover, was aided by a scientific attitude not often found before; whereby Poe studied the human mind rather than the usages of Gothic fiction, and worked with an analytical knowledge of terror’s true sources which doubled the force of his narratives and emancipated him from all the absurdities inherent in merely conventional shudder-coining. This example having been set, later authors were naturally forced to conform to it in order to compete at all; so that in this way a definite change began to affect the main stream of macabre writing.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature”
A couple of months after his letter to Moe, Lovecraft would be unknowingly stepping onto Hemingway’s own turf—his southern travels in 1931 carrying him down to Florida, to Miami, and then by motor coach and ferry to Key West itself.
Ernest Hemingway and his second wife Pauline had first come to Key West in 1928. They left and returned again sporadically for the next few years, with an eye toward permanent settlement, and on 29 April 1931 they purchased (with the aid of Pauline’s uncle Augustus Pfeiffer) the large but dilapidated French Colonial-style house on 907 Whitehead Street. They did not, however, move in right away; by May the Hemingway family was on their way to Europe, so that when Lovecraft arrived in Key West on June 10th, the chance of even an accidental meeting was nonexistent. Lovecraft had hoped to make the crossing to Cuba, but he was traveling on a tight budget and could not afford it. What he could afford were expansive letters, describing Key West as he—and perhaps Hemingway—might have seen it:
As utterly isolated from the populous part of the world as Block Island or Nantucket, Key West has retained an unique provincial character differing vastly from that of any other place. It is simple & village-like, & extremely frugal & primitive in all things. Spanish influence is everywhere observable—Cubans being about as thick as French-Canadians in Fall River or Jews in New York. One of the two cinema theatres (both owned by a Spaniard) has its films in the Spanish language. There is, however, no Spanish newspaper. Vegetation is thick, splendid, & tropical—including great trees & surpassing that of any of the other keys. There is, however, no Spanish moss so far as I can see. Under cultivation, the greenery assumes an unbelievable luxuriance in gardens. Coconut palms are frequent.
Unlike Dunedin & Miami, this is an old town with a natural growth; & it is certainly refreshing to be back in such a place. The town was founded under the Spanish regime—though not, I think, till the early 1800’s. The original name is Caya Huesco, (Bone Key) which American usage soon corrupted into the present title of Key West. Early in the American regime it became an army post, & it has always since remained a military & naval station of importance; because of its strategic control of the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico. In the Civil War it pursued the anomalous course of supporting the Federal side despite the secession of Florida as a state. In the Spanish war it was a great naval base & hospital centre. The harbour is of exceptional depth & convenience, & many steamship lines—to Tampa, New Orleans, Havana, &c—converge here. The principal industry—employing most of the Spanish population—is the manufacture of cigars. Next come fishing, sponge-fishing, ship supplies, & fruit growing—the latter accomplished largely on the adjacent keys.
Houses are largely small wooden cottages set in fenced-in gardens, recalling the old America of the 1840’s. Tropic balconies are frequent on both residences & shops, & the latest buildings (though not many new ones are built) have them as well as the old ones. Some shops have folding doors of many sections, which can be so opened as to throw the entire front open to the street—forming a sort of open-air bazaar, as it were. This is especially true of drug stores & soda fountains. In the residences, most front doors have auxiliary doors with shutters like those of blinds—a fashion which also existed in New England during the late Georgian period, & which is well exemplified by fine hillside colonial house at the corner of Angell & Congdon. Some of the houses have window blinds hinged at the top, which open outward like awnings & are propped with sticks. A distinct Latin touch pervades everything. Chimneys are very rare, & roofs tend to come to a central point or ridge like those of most far-southern towns. It is a relief to be in a really old & naturally developed town once again. Miami & all it represents seems in another world—for Key West is one with Charleston & Providence & Salem as a representation of pre-machine-age America. The city has a population (1930) of 12,613; being therefore about the size of Bristol, & somewhat larger than Athol or N. Attleboro. Its size is almost identical with that of my favourite village of Hempstead, Long Island. It is the seat of Monroe County, which includes all the keys. Up to 1911 or 1912 its isolation from the world was even more profound than at present; but at that time the Florida East Coast Railway completed its causeways & opened service from the mainland. Lack of highway access continued to keep it semi-isolated, but in 1928 the present motor route (interrupted by two 2-hour ferry trips) was opened. But for the business depression, these ferries would have been eliminated by this time—but lacking money, the state has not been able to construct the desired causeways. This delay is probably all that saves Key West from tourist invasion, standardisation, & self-conscious showmanship. As things are, the town is absolutely natural & unspoiled; a perfect bit of old-time simplicity which is truly quaint because it does not know that it is quaint. There is only one luxurious winter hotel, & one first-class city hostelry like our Biltmore. I am stopping at the latter—because the poor business season has caused them to quote fine single rooms with hot & cold water at only $1.50. It is the Key West Colonial—owned by the same chain which owns Charleston’s palatial Ft. Sumter Hotel on the Battery. There is a widely advertised roof garden with a magnificent view of the whole city & surrounding keys & ocean, which I intend to investigate tomorrow morning. But my own room has a fine enough view.
The coach drew into Key West at sunset, when the whole tropic scene bore an aspect of ineffable glamour. This approach was along a wide seaside boulevard; & betwixt the observer & the mystical westward gulf there rose a low, picturesque line of old-fashioned roofs & steeples which even the tall skeleton masts of the wireless station could not spoil. On the farther side one could note great ships tied up at the docks—messengers from Caribbean realms of still more enchanting glamour. In reaching the hotel—which is also the bus station—the coach passed through a large part of the town; so that I formed an excellent general impression at the very outset. With the coming of daylight, I shall do further exploration on foot—as well as consulting books in the local library. So far I have studied only the few Chamber of Commerce leaflets procurable at the hotel desk. The local Cubans are very picturesque—& not even nearly as squalid as our Federal Hill Italians. They are addicted to sporty clothes of a flamboyant striped pattern. Most of the younger ones, locally educated, speak fluent English.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 11-12 Jun 1931, LFF 2.909-910
The Key West Colonial was formerly La Concha; and the locals still called it that, as did Hemingway (LEH 3.510). Hemingway’s own description of the town in his letters was much more laconic; two examples highlight some of the differences between the two men:
Tonight is a big night (Saturday) although not so cheerful because another cigar factory has closed down. This is a splendid place. Population formerly 26,000—now around ten thousand[.] There was a pencilled ins[c]ription derogatory to our fair city in the toilet at the station and somebody had written under it—’if you don’t like this town get out and stay out.’ Somebody else had written under that ‘Everybody has.’
—Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, 21 Apr 1928, LEH 3.382-383That was was where I went best when I was writing it—Swim all winter—Everybody talks Spanish—The old Gulf stream just seven miles out and all the uninhabited keys to sail to. Good Spanish wine from Cuba on every boat—Whiskey $5.00 a quart—Bacardi 4.00—Fundador 4.50—We’ll get a house and two niggers—[…] The fishing is as exciting as war only you can go home nights. Grand people.
—Ernest Hemingway to Archibald MacLeish, c.9-13 Sep 1928, LEH 3.436-437
Lovecraft was a teetotal and not a sportsman; but both men found charm in the small town, though only one of them was destined to ever return and stay there. Some months after his return to Providence, Rhode Island, the subject of Hemingway came up again:
I like Cather and Hemingway . . . . Hemingway is the sort of guy I intensely admire without any great impulse to imitate him. His prosaic objectivity is a very high form of art—which I wish I could parallel—but I can’t get used to the rhythm of his short, harsh sentences.
—H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 18 Sep 1931, LJS 56
Willa Cather won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her novel One of Ours (1922); a thematic companion to Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929), which still seems to have been the only prose of Hemingway’s that Lovecraft had read. Hemingway’s prose style would be marked by Lovecraft in further discussions:
Of course, one oughtn’t to strike a cloying sing-song like Thrift’s pale-Hubbardesque iambicks in the Lucky Dog, or like some of my own “and”-balanc’d periods of yesteryear; but just the same, there’s no excuse for barking out an Hemingway machine-gun fire when one could weave prose which can be read aloud without sore throat or hiccoughs. […] The best prose is vigorous, direct, unadorn’d, and closely related (as is the best verse) to the language of actual discourse; but it has its natural rhythms and smoothness just as good oral speech has.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, 26 Mar 1932, LMM 322-323
Tim Thrift was an amateur journalist whose publication was The Lucky Dog; A Magazinelet of
Uniqueness. The reference is likely to the sometimes long, terse dialogues in A Farewell to
Arms, where an entire conversation could be had in a couple dozen words. Dialogue was not
Lovecraft’s forte, as he himself admitted. As for the content:
As for Mr. Hemingway—opinions may well differ on the exact amount of sanguinary virility best fitted for daily life, but these extremist dicta are well worth recording for correlation with the effeminate pacificism & supineness of other extreme schools of thought.
—H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 12 Jan 1933, LJS 309
It’s worth pointing out that Lovecraft had been corresponding with Robert E. Howard for some years at this point, and would make a similar statement on the Texas pulpster who specialized in lusty and bloody adventure:
About the Conan tales—I don’t know that they contain any more sex than is necessary in a delineation of the life of a lusty bygone age. Good old Two-Gun didn’t seem to me to overstress eroticism nearly as much as other cash-seeking pulpists—even if he did now & then feel in duty bound to play up to a Brundage cover-design.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Willis Conover, 14 Aug 1936, LRBO 382-383
While they did not share the same experience of war—Lovecraft’s effort to enlist in the Great War came to naught, and he did not seek to drive an ambulance as Hemingway did—they were neither of them pacifists, and each had their own concerns about masculinity and masculine behavior.
Hemingway’s star was on the rise; A Farewell to Arms was adapted to film and released in 1932. Lovecraft saw it, though he wrote almost nothing about what he thought of it; “about as you say” (LJS 122) would be more helpful if we knew what Lovecraft’s correspondent had said about it. In 1933 Esquire began publishing a series of short essays from Hemingway. One of these, “Monologue to the Maestro” (Esquire Oct 1935), between Hemingway (Y.C.) and a young fan (Mice) appears to have been the subject of discussion:
Mice: Well what books are necessary?
Y.C.: He should have read WAR AND PEACE and ANNA KARENINA, by Tolstoi, MIDSHIPMAN EASY, FRANK MILDAMAY AND PETER SIMPLE by Captain Marryat, MADAME BOVARY and LʼEDUCATION SENTIMENTALE by Flaubert, BUDDENBROOKS by Thomas Mann, Joyceʼs DUBLINERS, PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST and ULYSSES, TOM JONES and JOSEPH ANDREWS by Fielding, LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR and LA CHARTREUSE DE PARME by Stendhal, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV and any two other Dostoevskis, HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain, THE OPEN BOAT and THE BLUE HOTEL by Stephen Crane, HAIL AND FAREWELL by George Moore, Yeats AUTOBIOGRAPHIES, all the good De Maupassant, all the good Kipling, all of Turgenev, FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO by W.H. Hudson, Henry Jamesʼ short stories, especially MADAME DE MAUVES and THE TURN OF THE SCREW, THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, THE AMERICAN—
Mice: I canʼt write them down that fast. How many more are there?
Y.C.: Iʼll give you the rest another day. There are about three times that many.
—Ernest Hemingway, “Monologue to the Maestro”
Hemingway’s list of classics is a curious one—but perhaps typical of a disjointed transitional age.
—H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 5 Dec 1935, LJS 275
As it happened, Lovecraft himself was creating a list of suggested books for readers as part of the revisions for a textbook titled Well-Bred Speech. They had several titles in common, including Madame Bovary, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina, and Joyce’s Ulysses. But Lovecraft felt it necessary to add: “Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)” (CE 2.190).
While vastly different in style, that both men shared an appreciation for some of the same authors and works, or at least recognized their importance, should not be surprising. They were only nine years apart in age, both white men raised in America, voracious readers who loved literature. One notable fantasy writer that they both appreciated was Lord Dunsany, who was a major influence on Lovecraft:
Often a wonderful moon and the guy’s would have me read Lord Dunsany’s Wonder Tales out loud. He’s great.
—Ernest Hemingway to Grace Quinlan, 8 Aug 1920, LEH 1.237
Fantasy would be the subject of the final comment from Lovecraft on Hemingway, written only a month before HPL’s death:
I am, incidentally, amused by the definition of fantasy which you quote from Hemingway. The trouble with our literary toreador is, of course, that he tries to draw a parallel betwixt two utterly different and irreconcilable types of aesthetic emotion, each with an antipodal set of goals and origins. Fantaisistes and realists resemble each other only in the accidental circumstance that both usually employ paper and ink. Aside from that, they have no aims or wishes in common.
—H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 5 Feb 1937, LJS 294
The phrase “literary toreador” shows that Lovecraft was at least aware of Death in the Afternoon (1932), Hemingway’s treatise on bull-fighting. It is not exactly clear which statement of Hemingway’s Lovecraft is discussing here, although there is another passage in “Monologue to the Maestro” which may fit:
Your correspondent: Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be. If he doesnʼt know how many people work in their minds and actions his luck may save him for a while, or he may write fantasy. But if he continues to write about what he does not know about he will find himself faking. After he fakes a few times he cannot write honestly any more.
Mice: Then what about imagination?
Y.C.: Nobody knows a damned thing about it except that it is what we get for nothing. It may be a racial experience. I think that is quite possible. It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more truly he can imagine. If he gets so he can imagine truly enough people will think that the things he relates all really happened and that he is just reporting.
—Ernest Hemingway, “Monologue to the Maestro”
There is at once a convergence and divergence here between Hemingway and Lovecraft. Both emphasize the necessity of realism in writing; both differ as to the approach. Hemingway’s laconic “just reporting” works for his style of fiction, but as for Lovecraft:
One cannot, except in immature pulp charlatan-fiction, present an account of impossible, improbable, or inconceivable phenomena as a commonplace narrative of objective acts and conventional emotions. Inconceivable events and conditions have a special handicap to overcome, and this can be accomplished only through the maintenance of a careful realism in every phase of the story except that touching on the one given marvel. The marvel must be treated very impressively and deliberately—with a careful emotional “build-up”—else it will seem flat and unconvincing. Being the principal thing in the story, its mere existence should overshadow the characters and events. But the characters and events must be consistent and natural except where they touch the single marvel. In relation to the central wonder, the characters should shew the same overwhelming emotion which similar characters would shew toward such a wonder in real life. Never have a wonder taken for granted. Even when the characters are supposed to be accustomed to the wonder I try to weave an air of aw and impressiveness corresponding to what the reader should feel. A casual style ruins any serious fantasy.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” (CE 2.177)
Hemingway and Lovecraft, though they never met in person or by letter, were both products of the same era, read some of the same books, wrestled with some of the same issues both in their life and their writing. Both might be seen as modernists; both at least acknowledged the necessity for realism in their fiction, though their approaches to achieving that differed markedly. Each had their harsh sentences in life, and served it ‘til the end.
Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.
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