Was Hemingway a KGB agent or is that bull?

Recent revelations of a former KGB agent seem to suggest that Hemingway had been recruited by KGB. To add insult to the injury, he was apparently dropped because he was no good. They didn't like his prose, I assume.

Most of us know Hemingway from one of the books listed below and know little about his fantastic life. Yet he was a war hero, he fought on the left side most of the time, especially in the Spanish civil war, he enjoyed traveling for long periods of time and he committed suicide only when life had become unbearable in a body worn out by the war and more recent Kenyan (mis)adventures and accidents. The following list of documentaries, interviews and Hemingway-centered video clips attempt to cast some light on the lesser known corners of this ensemble.

It is this proximity to left-wing causes that fuelled the growing acceptance of the claim, made by a former KGB agent, that Hemingway was at one point a KGB agent, but was let go as his information was generally useless. Those who love him for his writings, raised to his defence pointing out that he was highly courageous and always open about both his past as well as his present. It is quite possible that the KGB agent thought he was listening to an informant, while Hemingway thought he is pouring his heart out to a sympathetic stranger during one of his frequent alcoholic fog episodes.

Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports ... all others are games.

"'Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.'"
- Chapter 2, The Sun Also Rises

To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.

When we recently learned about a Spaniard being gored to death in what has been termed one of the wildest Pamplona bull races in years, and that in related news, a horse died in Canada after a race of a heart attack we could not help thinking of the old man and his sea of novels. This is also why we added the scenes of the goring and Pamplona race at the end of the playlist above.

A recent study shows that living abroad enhances creativity. So great is Hemingway’s association with being worldly that the Economist use him as an example, closing their article with claiming that merely traveling without living abroad extensively does not help much:

Packing your beach towel and suntan lotion will not, by itself, make you Hemingway.

In another book, the Spanish war is seen as a precursor to WWII:

“IN SPAIN two vast world forces are testing each other out: if Franco conquers, Europe will be black or Europe will go to war as soon as Hitler and Mussolini are ready.” That was the correct prediction in 1936 of Louis Fischer, an American journalist so convinced of the dangers of Franco’s fascist rebellion that he joined the International Brigades to take up arms on behalf of the Republican government.

As such, Hemingway was on the right side of history – though spying for Stalin would have been definitely wrong, even though at that time Stalin’s and Mao’s crimes and genocides were largely unknown.

Sources / More info: wiki-hemingway, guardian-hem, laht-hem, nyt-pamplona, telegraph-pamplona, reuters-oddly, economist-spain-war, economist-abroad, cbc-horse, yt

Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Hardcover) (.CA, .UK, .FR, .DE, .JP, .cn)	The Sun Also Rises (Paperback) (.CA, .UK, .FR, .DE, .JP, .cn)	The Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition (Paperback) (.CA, .UK, .FR, .DE, .JP, .cn)
A Farewell to Arms (Paperback) (.CA, .UK, .FR, .DE, .JP, .cn)	For Whom the Bell Tolls (Paperback) (.CA, .UK, .FR, .DE, .JP, .cn)	A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition (Hardcover) (.CA, .UK, .FR, .DE, .JP, .cn)