STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
If you think Hotel Florida is a luxury high-rise in Miami, think again.
It was a 10-story shell-shocked marble headquarters in Madrid for two intrepid young reporters--Ernest Hemingway and Margaret Gellhorn—when they became infatuated with covering the 1836 Spanish Civil War.
Hemingway came, his arms full of ham tins, writes Amanda Vaill in her book “Hotel Florida: Truth, Love and Death in the Spanish Civil War,” And his “Mookie,” then a plucky 28-year-old blond, made her mark blowing the hotel’s fuses with her electric heaters.
They had come in search of the truth but, as Hemingway told the League of American Writers, “It’s very dangerous to write the truth in war, and the truth is very dangerous to come by.”
They watched, horrified as Madrid was transformed by bombed-out cars, slain children, weeping mothers and buildings blasted open “like oversize dollhouses.” They dove for cover as bombs whistled over the city.
Loyalists’ Soviet advisers preyed on Hemingway’s love of being on the inside track by letting him shoot targets with a sniper’s rifle. He responded by sending dispatches that extolled the Loyalist cause. And he even took a swing at a Russian correspondent who asked him in French if he sent his nouvelles (news) by cable because he thought the man was deriding his news reports as fictional novels.
Gellhorn, who spent her downtime shopping for a silver fox cape, was pandered to like “the belle of the ball at an Ivy League college.”
Vaill constructed her portrait of Hotel Florida from letters, diaries, biographies and films. She filled it with anecdotes of a gunner’s nest made from stacked textbooks and goats encamped in the Madrid’s palaces. And she won the praise of critics like Sec. of State John Kerry, who called it one of his five top favorite books of 2014.
She will discuss what she learned tonight as the keynote speaker at the 2015 Ernest Hemingway Festival at The Community Library. She will be joined at the conference by Nancy Sindelar, author of “Influencing Hemingway: The People and Places that Shaped His Life and Work.”
Amanda Vaill gives talks all over the world so having her here is a real treat,” said the library’s Scott Burton. “And Nancy Sindelar is a heavyweight when it comes to Hemingway, as well.”
The 2015 Hemingway Festival, themed “Hemingway at the Edges,” explores the ways Hemingway pushed boundaries in the places he visited, his writing and the war zones he wrote about.
The conference kicks off at 5 p.m. tonight—Thursday, Sept. 10—and runs through Saturday, Sept.12. In addition to lectures and panel discussions, the conference includes a bus tour of Hemingway Haunts, a historic walking tour of Ketchum and a Festival Gala Dinner at the Sawtooth Club
The dinner at the Sawtooth Club is always a “raucous affair” with diners taking the opportunity to serve up their favorite Hemingway quotes, said Burton.
Burton, Anna Svidgal, Jim and Wendy Jacquet and Don and Marcia Liebich attended the International Ernest Hemingway Colloquium at Finca Vigia in Havana, Cuba, last summer.
Jim Jacquet told attendees about what life was like for Hemingway in Ketchum and Idaho. Burton talked about what The Community Library is doing to preserve Hemingway via its Regional History Department and the festival.
The Colloquium attracted 200 people, including Hemingway scholars from Japan and Israel. Sometimes the simultaneous translation set-up didn’t work too well, Burton said. And there was no air conditioning to make the muggy conditions more tolerable.
“But it put the library and Ketchum on the map as far as Hemingway goes,” he added.
Burton confesses he had not read many of Hemingway’s writings before moving to Ketchum. But has found he likes how Hemingway’s writings transport him back to Europe where he lived in London.
Hemingway does that for people,” he said. “He transports people to another place, another time.”
Admission to the festival is $60, available at comlib.org/hemingwayfestival. Call 208-726-3493 extension 123 for more information.