Hemingway died without completing A Moveable Feast.
He didn't have a beginning, an ending, all the chapter titles,
or a title for the book. Mary Hemingway named it, with the help of
A. E. Hotchner. What a quinella. Two magazine writers who fancied themselves
man and woman enough to fill Hemingway's shoes. Or toady and widow enough.
He made several passes at a beginning. Most of them begin, "This book is fiction."
He wrote what the editor of the Restored Edition considers an ending,
"Nada y Pues Nada." He says his memory has been tampered with and his heart
does not exist. He's feeling sorry for himself. But at least he's honest.
Some time later he blew his head off with a shotgun.
Mary said it was an accident. To me, it was cause and effect.
He was depressed, he thought the FBI was after him,
he couldn't remember shit, owing to electric shock treatments,
and he was failing by degrees, physically: his blood pressure,
his kidneys, incipient diabetes. Hepatitis.
He was not supposed to drink.
He drank. He was a drinking alcoholic,
running out of options. Why didn't somebody
intervene? Who? Mary? The doctors?
At the time, doctors said things like,
"Drinking doesn't cause high blood pressure,"
or, "Drinking doesn't cause depression."
Mary was as big a drunk as he was.
They enabled each other.
They were both in denial.
I did not examine the patient.
I have an opinion. Opinions are like assholes.
Everybody has one. And they all stink.