ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1961) Typescript Letter Signed "Papa" addressed to Peter VIERTEL (Pete)
Lot 939
8 00010 000
Autograph inscription of four words at the bottom of the page ""Best to Luis Miguel [Dominguín]", the bullfighter.
Cuba, May 1st, [19]58.
1 page in-4 on headed paper "Finca Vigia, San Francisco de Paula, Cuba". In english.
Hemingway expressed his loathing of the film of The Sun Also Rises based on his novel and his wish that Viertel leave Hollywood and return to writing.
"...I was a little pissed off at everybody but me making money from Sun Also and a shitty picture to boot..."
"...Go ahead and write your damned book. But don't think you can keep jerking yourself off for pictures and then command any fee at stud. Finish this book no matter how hard it is to do..."
Peter Viertel (1920-2007), American screenwriter and author, met Hemingway in Ketchum, Idaho, in 1948. And later wrote the screenplays for two of Hemingway’s novels “The Sun Also Rises” (1957) and “The Old Man and the Sea” (1958). The two men had a warm relationship, despite Hemingway's low opinion of Hollywood, and Hemingway repeatedly advised Viertel to concentrate on his novels, the best known of which is ”White Hunter Black Heart“.
Critics considered Viertel’s novels “Love Lies Bleeding” (1964) and “American Skin” (1984) to be Hemingwayesque in tone. Writing in the journal “America,” Richard C. Crowley compared “Love Lies Bleeding,” which detailed the rise and fall of a Spanish bullfighter, to Hemingway’s “Death in the Afternoon.” But although Crowley called Viertel “a fine writer” he also said that “he was not a master,” in clear reference to Hemingway.
Provenance :
Sotheby’s Londres, 10/07/2012