This is very strange. In 1992 James R. Mellow's biography Hemingway, A Life Without Consequences, was published. On page 447, Mellow quotes Hemingway's comments on fear in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." Mellow then writes:

"During this dark night of the soul, around three in the morning, Macomber, reawakening, realizes that his wife has left her cot and gone to Wilson's tent"

Those are Mellow's words.

The "African manuscript" that Hemingway worked on for fifteen years until his death, was edited by Patrick Hemingway and published as True at First Light in 1999, seven years after Mellow's Consequences. On page 172 of First Light, Hemingway, writing in the first person, remembers F. Scott Fitzgerald writing on fear:

"In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning."

Mellow, 1992: "During this dark night of the soul, around three in the morning..."

Hemingway, 1999, quoting Fitzgerald: "In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning."

Those are almost identical quotes yet Mellow does not cite to First Light as the Hemingway source because First Light would not be published for seven years after Mellow's biography. First Light does not appear in Mellow's index anywhere. Yet Mellow had read parts of the manuscript which he calls "African Journal," 50,000 words of which were published in Sports Illustrated magazine in 1971-1972. I do not know if Hemingway's quote of Fitzgerald's "three o'clock in the morning" writing
appeared in SI. 

The point is Mellow's own words are too close to Hemingway's use of the Fitzgerald quote in First Light and of the same quote, if it was used in the SI article, too close to be coincidental use by Mellow. To make Mellow's own words more suggestive of deliberate appropriation without attribution, Mellow also authored a biography of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, where he again could have known of the Fitzgerald "three o'clock in the morning" writing.

Eliminating the unreasonable possibility that Mellow chose wording entirely of his own that just happened to mirror near-exactly the wording used by one of his biographical subjects and then quoted by another of his biographical subjects and perhaps published in Sports Illustrated twenty years earlier, I am left inescapably with the conclusion that Mellow's words were appropriated without attribution to Fitzgerald, to Hemingway's use of them, to Sports Illustrated. That is very strange and it is disturbing. And it's also 3 o'clock in the morning.

There is a pro-democracy movement coming to a head in Hong Kong, a special autonomous part of the People's Republic of China. "Occupy Central" is calling for 10,000 people to blockade the financial district to put pressure on the HK government. Pretty garden-variety action, no? Good cause: democracy. What's not to like?

"Accounting Giants Oppose Democracy Push."-The Australian.
"Big Four Accountants Warn Over Hong Kong Democracy."-CNBC.

?

"The big four global accounting companies have taken out press advertisements in Hong Kong stating they are "opposed" to the territory's democracy movement, warning that their multinational clients may quit the city if activists carry out threats to disrupt business with street protests."-CNBC.

It has been standard pap forever that capitalism and democracy go together. It's pap.

Publocc Top Ten.

Recently we hit 200,000 pageviews since July, 2009. Below are the most-read posts since that time, link, number of times read, followed by the top ten countries of pageviewers, with numbers.

1. Seeking the Soul: The Devil and LeBron James. http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2010/07/seeking-soul-devil-and-lebron-james.html, 17,006.

2. The Joy of America: Citizenship. http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2010/07/blog-post.html, 7521.

3. "No Evidence of Mermaids, Says U.S. Government." http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2012/07/no-evidence-of-mermaids-says-us_05.html, 7422.

4. "The Chinese Cultural Revolution," by Zhang Mu. Chapter 3.2. http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2011/06/blog-post.html, 5154.

5. China's Great Wall of Silence: The Anthropology of the Cultural Revolution.http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2009/09/chinas-great-wall-of-silence.html, 4441.

6. Seeking the Soul of China: "Women Hold Up Half the Sky." http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2010/11/seeking-soul-of-china-women-hold-up.html, 3804.

7. China's Great Wall of Silence: The Anthropology of the Cultural Revolution, Liu Shaoqi.
http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2009/09/chinas-great-wall-of-silence-liu-shaoqi.html, 3507.

8. Kiribati. http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2011/10/kiribati_26.html, 3000.

9. Seeking the Soul. Miami Heat, LeBron James World Champions.http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2012/06/seeking-soul-miami-heat-lebron-james.html, 2353.

10. The Jasmine Revolution.http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2011/02/jasmine-revolution.html, 1870.


1. United States, 106,222.
2. Russia, 14,684.
3. United Kingdom, 7062.
4. Germany, 6740.
5. China, 5466.
*6. France, 4243.
7. Canada, 3799
8. Ukraine, 2521.
9. Australia, 1941.
10. ? Philippines or Netherlands.?


*Google has Malaysia sixth with 4611 pageviews but 90% of those are false, as Google well knows, the product of sites that do nothing else, like read, than send robots to sites and artificially inflate their numbers. I don't know what is in it for the referring sites to do that, but they do.

Googs, it's Ramadan. Any chance you'll be doing a Ramadan doodle? How about one showing Luis Suarez fasting? Heh-heh-heh-heh.

The BBC is doing a cool thing,  they're covering the 100th anniversary of Ferdinand's assassination as if it were a live "Breaking News" story with all of today's capabilities, including correspondents' reports from the scene and live blogging:

11:33   BREAKING NEWS: AUSTRIAN ARCHDUKE AND DUCHESS ARE DEAD

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie have died from gunshot wounds, an official has confirmed.

...

11:01        BREAKING NEWS: ARCHDUKE FERDINAND SHOT

Archduke Ferdinand has been shot say reports. More to follow.

http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-27978407

The Day the Music Died.

This was the day. One hundred years ago today Gavrilo Princip opportunistically seized on a driver's wrong turn and assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife on a street in Sarajevo. The entangling alliances kicked in and a month later all of Europe was at war. The soul of Europe was changed on June 28, 1914.

Right and Might.

For Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, might makes right.

Obama spies because he can; Putin invades because he can. They are concrete thinkers for whom the doggerel "Why does a dog lick his balls? Because he can" is a self-evident truth.

For Petro Poroshenko, right makes might. Ukraine as a sovereign country has the right to integrate with Europe; what good is a right if it is not exercised?

Mao Zedong had the right and the might to: invade and integrate Taiwan; invade and integrate Hong Kong; shoot down the plane of defector Lin Biao. In none of those cases did Mao act.

I wish that Obama and Putin and Poroshenko had that wee bit of Mao Zedong in them. A right need not be exercised to be recognized; might need not be demonstrated to be acknowledged and a dog doesn't have to lick his balls because he can.

Ukraine Goes West.

President Petro Poroshenko signed the same European integration agreement that former president Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign, leading to the Euro Maidan protests and the eventual Russian annexation of Crimea. Poroshenko said he signed the trade accord with the same pen Yanukovych would have used. The Russian people are livid, in addition to official Moscow.

Among the last 80 visitors are those from the following precincts, to whom we say Howdy:

Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh Municipality, Vietnam. Fuck you.

Murrhardt, Baden-Wurrtemberg, Germany.

Burbank, California, USA.

Zagreb, Grad Zagreb, Croatia.

Brookings, South Dakota, USA.

Praha, Hlavani Mesto Praha, Czech Republic. Been there.

Stockholm, Stockholm Lans, Sweden.

St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg City, Russian Federation. Why these redundancies?

Menderes, Izmir, Turkey.

Oldenzaal, Overijssel, Netherlands.

Denver, Colorado, USA. Been there.

Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland. Been THERE.

Gttingen, Niedersachsen, Germany.

Mangilau, Guam.

Central District, Hong Kong.

Nanterre, Ile-de-France, France.

Morangis, Ile-de-France, France. Been ill, never been to either Ile.

Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia. Fuck you.

Manchester, United Kingdom. Never been there :( One of the "Red Legacy in China" posts, no lie.

Oslo, Norway.

New Delhi, Delhi, India. Was ile with Delhi Belly fishing with my son last weekend.

Germany beat N.S.A. 1-0.

Boing. Boing. Boing. Boing.

Google, you are the cause of insanity.

Google, why don't you turn your small "g" into Luis Suarez and have been chomping on your "l"-tree?

Uruguay and Liverpool F.C.'s Luis Suarez, the Cannibal of Ajax, has been banned from football for four months and for nine Uruguay matches, FIFA announced today. That finishes Suarez for the World Cup and he will also miss EPL matches. Suarez' latest biting victim was Italy's Georgio Chiellini.

Continuing our wall-to-wall coverage of the World Cup, Uruguay played today which means that Luis Suarez, the Cannibal of Ajax, played today. And bit another person, Italy's Giorgio Chiellini.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot9Vh2XDNZU

I did it. See? Iron will. Heh-heh-heh-heh. 

For one day starting now...How many hours in a day? Shit. I'm nervous.

"We need, on occasion, to be able to go to a quieter place..."-Alain de Botton.

Mr. de Botton was referring to Twitter, of which I am not a Twit, but I am a Blog and I think Mr. de Botton's advice applies to all this stuff. I am the most unconnected person I know but even I feel I am too connected sometimes. I like to completely disconnect sometimes, even by just putting my cell phone in the other room or leaving it in the car. If I can just get it more than an arm's length away I feel more relaxed. I would like an official Disconnected Day. Add that to the list of proposed new holidays. 

"Who Gagged the Search for MH370."-The Daily Beast

This weekend, there were reports from London that the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah “was the most likely perpetrator if deliberate human action is to blame.” But the same report quoted a Malaysian spokesman saying “The police investigation is still ongoing. To date no conclusion can be made as to the contributor to the incident and it would be sub judice to say so. Nevertheless the police are still looking into all possible angles.”

This is just the latest example of contradictory and unsubstantiated information from unnamed sources leaking from Kuala Lumpur.
... 

All the problems of covering the story began with its origin, Malaysia. Malaysian authorities had no experience with or aptitude for public accountability, and in this instance thet were suddenly accountable to the whole world rather than their own population. Indeed, fifty years of one-party rule left the country with a political class so used to supine domestic media that they though they could get away with anything. For weeks the information coming out of Kuala Lumpur was, at best, inconsistent and contradictory and, at worst, tainted.

...
Ironically, as the reporting ran dry of new material and interest in the fate of the Malaysian Boeing 777 began to wane, nobody seemed aware that the real story had become not what we knew butwhat we did not know—and why we did not know it. Or, to put it in a less Rumsfeldian way: who was really controlling the information and what was their agenda?

The most serious absence at the heart of the story is any sign that the normal protocols of an air accident investigation have been followed.
...
...serial obfuscation in Kuala Lumpur.
...
In addition to keeping the public hanging, the protocols of the Malaysia investigation have also served to silence the commercial parties directly involved: Boeing, Rolls Royce, who manufactured the engines, and Malaysia Airlines. ...

Nobody wants to know the answer to this more than the airlines that operate fleets of Boeing 777s. For example, the largest operator of 777s is Emirates, based in Dubai. Its president, Tim Clark, is not happy with the conduct of the investigation. He told Aviation Week: “There have been many questions unanswered or dealt with in a manner that is unacceptable to the forensic nature of the inquiry.
“Something is not right here, and we need to get to the bottom of it. I need to know how anybody could interdict our systems. This aircraft was disabled in three primary systems. To be able to disable those requires a knowledge of the equipment which even our pilots in Emirates don’t have. Somebody got on board and knew exactly what they were up to.”
...
However, the Malaysians themselves remain mute on other crucial details that have a bearing on the investigation. If a criminal investigation is under
...
As things stand, the mystery of Flight MH370 remains a lot more mysterious than it needs to be as a result of the lack of communication and transparency in Kuala Lumpur that so alarms airline chiefs like Tim Clark and the many other operators of the Boeing 777.

Seeking the Soul: Ernest Hemingway.

No man is ever really alone and the supposed dark hours of the soul when it is always three o'clock in the morning are a man's best hours if he is not an alcoholic nor afraid of the night and what the day will bring.

Seeking the Soul: Ernest Hemingway.

"Nobody knows the night. Not me. Not you. Nobody."
...
What Keiti had said was very true; no one knew the night. But I was going to learn it if I could alone and on foot. But I was going to learn it and I did not want to share it with anyone...I could not go to sleep and I would not take a sleeping pill because I wanted to hear the night and I had not decided whether I would go out at moonrise...[A]fter the moon rose we all paid for whatever happiness or sorrow we had bought.

I thought how nice it was that there was no African word for I'm sorry.
                               -Ernest Hemingway, True at First Light.

The Soul of America.

Americans will be giving half a billion dollars in aid to Egypt, Secretary of State John Kerry announced this weekend in Cairo. It is in the "interests" of the United States to do this, it restores some of the withheld American "influence" in Egypt. It is the "pragmatic" thing to do. It enables Americans to pursue their happiness more. And more and more and more.

The American birth "right:" conceived in paranoia, born to parents Ignorance and Lies, the pursuit of happiness at the soul of America has produced predictably a creature who has matured into Cynical Arrogance.

Three years after President Barack Obama...paused...and then demanded Hosni Mubarak's ouster, one year after General Virginity Check ousted democratically-elected President Muhammad Morsi, a year that saw 1,000 or more members of the Muslim Brotherhood killed, the organization outlawed, its remaining live leaders, including Morsi, on or awaiting trial, two weeks after the inaugural "celebrations" in Tahir Square resulted in the gang rape of several Egyptian women, and in a week in which the death sentences of hundreds of 2013 protesters were affirmed, the American people are back to supporting another Egyptian "strong man," President Virginity Check.

Cynical business those "self-evident truths." Cynical, cynical business.

The Soul of America.

"One thing must always be clear. I am not a European. We are Americans."
...
"We are the last free individuals in a country slightly larger than Connecticut and we believe in a very abused slogan."

[The Interpreter]: "May I hear the slogan?"

"Slogans are a bore Mission boy...Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

-Ernest Hemingway, True at First Light.

The Old Man and the Sea.

Continuing our popular series "Uncle Ben's Tips for Better Living," when one exercises--Uncle Ben advises against all forms of exercise--in a seated position for a prolonged period of time, for example in bicycling or in kayaking, one will notice that upon completion when one stands up one doesn't have one's legs at first. The position one has been in for so long has deadened the nerves from the waist down, there is a lack of muscular control and one is a bit wobbly. Uncle Ben recommends a slow rise and a slow walk-about for a minute or two.

One may also experience upon standing up after a prolonged period of exercise in a seated position on a hard surface a sudden lack of control over other muscles located beneath one's waist. This can be quite startling. In this event "shaking a leg" for a minute or so does not alleviate the difficulty. Immediate, decisive action must be taken and Uncle Ben recommends recourse to any secluded area such as a body of water or the woods. Uncle Ben recommends that one not have a photograph-taking son with one on these occasions.

Seeking the Soul: Ernest Hemingway.

No," I said. "And I won't. But you can't blame the liars because all a writer of fiction is really is a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men. I am a writer of fiction and so I am a liar too and invent from what I know and that I've heard. I'm a liar."
...
"My excuse is that I make the truth as I invent it truer than it would be."

Seeking the Soul: Ernest Hemingway.

"What were you thinking about darling?"

"A trooper in the Garde Republicaine"

"You see?" G.C. said. "I always said he had a delicate side. It comes out completely unexpectedly. It's his Proustian side. Tell me, was he very attractive? I try to be broad-minded."

"Papa and Proust used to live in the same hotel," Mary said. "But Papa always claimed it was at different times."
...
"What was the trooper's name," G.C. asked. "Albertine?"

"No. Monsieur."

"He's baffling us, Miss Mary," G.C. said.

It's summer.

Seeking the Soul: Ernest Hemingway.

I told G.C. about Scott Fitzgerald and the quotation and asked him what he thought of it.

"Any hour can be a bad hour when you wake," he said. "I don't see why he picked three especially. It sounds quite good though."

"I think it is just fear and worry and remorse."

"We've both had enough of those haven't we?"

"Sure; to peddle. But I think what he meant was his conscience and despair."

"You don't ever despair do you, Ernie?"

"Not yet."

"You'd probably have it by now if you were going to have it."

"I've seen it close enough to touch it but I always turned it down."

Seeking the Soul: Ernest Hemingway.

Once I had thought my own soul had been blown out of me when I was a boy and then that it had come back in again. But in those days I was very egotistical and I had heard so much talk about the soul and read so much about it that I had assumed that I had one.

Seeking the Soul: Ernest Hemingway.

I tried to think what it must be in the terms that I believed. Probably a spring of clear fresh water that never diminished in the drought and never froze in the winter was closest to what we had instead of the soul they all talked about.

Seeking the Soul: Ernest Hemingway.

And I thought sitting up awake in the African night that I knew nothing about the soul at all.

Seeking the Soul: Ernest Hemingway.

"In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning."

Seeking the Soul: Ernest Hemingway.

I remembered how Scott Fitzgerald had written that in the something something of the soul something something it is always three o'clock in the morning.

Hey, 200,000 pageviews, July, '09-now. And it's Friday.

He lay there and felt something and then her hand holding him and searching lower and he helped with his hands and then lay back in the dark and did not think at all and only felt the weight and the strangeness inside and she said, “Now you can’t tell who is who can you?

No.

-The Garden of Eden.

Ernest, far left; Marcelline, far right. (Dr. Hemingway looking right at the cam there like a normal person!)

"You can't tell who is who, can you?"  No.

Ernest.

Ernest.

Whenever this photo of Ernest appears it is always with the caution, But it was very common for mothers to dress boys and girls the same in those days! Yes, not as common, I bet, for the mother to caption the photograph "summer girl." 

Time for a drink.

Sexual identity, androgyny, sexual transference: those are the themes of The Garden of Eden. 

Gregory Hancock Hemingway, Ernest's third son, became a physician like his grandfather (Gregory lost his license due to alcoholism.). He also tried to become a woman. He had partial gender reassignment surgery and went by the names Gloria Hemingway and Vanessa Hemingway. He was arrested on charges of indecent exposure and died in custody at the Women's Detention Center in Miami, FL in 2001. And I did not know that. 

The Hemingway affliction, suicide, began with Ernest's father, Dr. Clarence Edmonds Hemingway. Dr. Hemingway came home for lunch one day, told his wife he was having pain in his leg and was worried that it would lead to amputation. He had diabetes. Mrs. Hemingway counseled him to see another doctor. Leicester was home sick from school and Dr. Hemingway was worried about him and he was worried about finances. He had bought some property in Florida and the real estate bubble had popped. Dr. Hemingway was a worrier. He excused himself from the lunch table to rest. He went down to the basement and retrieved an old Civil War sidearm his father had willed him. He then went upstairs to his bedroom. Leicester was in his own bedroom down the hall. Dr. Hemingway drew the blinds, sat on the edge of the bed and shot himself in the left temple. Leicester heard the gunshot and went to his father's room to investigate. The room was darkened but he could see his father laying on the bed making some noises. Leicester put his hand under his father's head and withdrew it wet with blood. Leicester wrote about this years later and the act of writing, and remembering, haunted him and he too committed suicide, shooting himself as his father and brother had. Sister Ursula took pills, also fearing a leg amputation from diabetes. Niece Margeaux Hemingway, also pills. Martha Gellhorn, pills.


The first photograph below has been reprinted here previously. It was taken six months or so before Dr. Hemingway's suicide in 1928. He's not there. He's not with his family, he stands at a remove from them.

In this one too, at Ernest's wedding to Hadley in 1921, Dr. Hemingway stands apart.

The two photographs below are from 1917. He aged rapidly. His hair in 1917 is still black.

In none of the four photographs so far does Dr. Hemingway look at the camera. In the first three he's looking at Ernest. Do you see the way that he has his head tilted in the photo immediately below? It is as if he is contemplating Ernest. Or in the middle of scolding him: "What do you mean, you're going to Europe!" In Professor Lynn's biography of Ernest there is a photograph taken at the same time as the one at top in 1928. In that photograph, Dr. Hemingway tilts his head in the identical manner, as if in contemplation.

Above is the photograph in Lynn's book which I had difficulty finding until now. Below is a photograph of Dr. Hemingway contemplating his wife, Grace. We all have mannerisms. I guess it's just the way the guy held his head.

Everyone is looking at the camera except Dr. Hemingway and little Leicester. This is so odd it looks like Dr. Hemingway has been photoshopped into the picture:

Much, much earlier. The only one not looking at the camera.

Maybe a year later? The kids look a little older. He's not there.

On their wedding day or something? I don't really know.

I think it was Professor Lynn who remarked "On the few occasions when Dr. Hemingway was photographed looking at the camera..."

"On the few occasions when Dr. Hemingway was photographed looking at the camera," he looked...worried? Spooked? Sad? Haunted?:

I went through my Hemingway phase years ago, in the 1990's maybe. Read just about everything he wrote and the two biographies. The whole shebang left me with a feeling. When I thought about Hemingway, when, for instance, I saw one of the books on my shelves, I had this feeling of being unsettled; I felt unsettled, troubled, the whole thing is a little disturbing.

Friends and enemies, a tip on "Better Living" today from Uncle Ben: Put that goddamned cell phone in the other room when you lay your head down to sleep at nighty-night time.

Folks, I could not sleep through the night to save myself, and it was, not killing me but ruining me, ruining every sleep-disturbed day, night by night, day by day, week, month, drip, drip, friggin drip. I wrote here one time, "I don't dream anymore"; wasn't asleep long enough. Often four times a night, I'd just get awake, for no reason. Sleeping pills put me to sleep but didn't keep me asleep.

Then a week ago. June 12 will be added to the new list of holidays that I have been suggesting for years should replace the out-dated set we observe currently. Last Thursday night, as is my practice, I had done took my sleeping pill and turned off the lights and was recumbent and making a last check of the news to let said sleeping pill take effect--I know, I know, you're not supposed to do that. I read an article on CNN by a sleep doctor. Said slink said "Don't do that," that which I was just doing, but also said something else, that you should turn off all electronic devices or put them in another room other than your bedroom on account of they give off electronic signals, gamma rays or something, even when you're not using them. The slink said slinks don't fully understand yet the effects of these gadgets but they are correlated with waking up once asleep--and if you use your cell phone as an alarm clock (Here!) get an old-fashioned wind-it-up one. Do not, he said, sleep with the electronic gadgets close to your head. Which I did do also. So that first night, not having a Baby Ben, I put my phone (alarm clock) as far away from me as possible but still in the same room (alarm). Maybe one day in one hundred I awake refreshed and alert. I did that first day. I did the second day. "Maybe it's psychosomatic" my son said on Father's Day, "but who cares!" It's now been a week and what was plausibly psychosomatic has become undeniably physical: chemical, biological, electrical, whatever-ical. Every single morning since Victory over Insomnia Day has been a good morning. And I bought a Baby Ben. 

Lately I had read with distaste various books written about myself by people who knew all about my inner life, aims and motives...All these people who wrote of my life both inner and outer wrote with an absolute assurance that I had never felt.
                                      -Ernest Hemingway in "the Africa book," unfinished manuscript written in mid-1950's, edited by Patrick Hemingway and published as True at First Light in 1999.

Continuing on the "Bosie" pose theme at the bottom of the last post:

That's not too effeminate, nah. Only one posing.

Languid. Legs crossed. Flirty, no? No other person in this family photograph poses like that. Leicester, to Hemingway's left, that's a boy pose, not a languid, legs-crossed, Bosie-pose. Dr. Hemingway with hands behind back. Phyllis Diller with hands, I think, behind back. Mrs. Hemingway, I don't know where her hands are, lookin' hot though! The little kid. The lady in long white, hands similar to Hemingway's. The girl at far left, hands down to side. Everybody else: normal pose; Hemingway, not a normal pose.

Hemingway was a barrel-chested guy yet in several photos he stands with his chest sunken. Effeminately. Weight on right foot again. Slight head-cock.

Manly-man on the left with Hemingway. Head-cock.

A seminary student? Pretty androgynous-looking.

Effeminate. Weight on back right foot. Head cocked.

The mo-fo's in a war there, man. He looks like a model posing in a war zone. He's not sitting on the bike. You can see the seat sticking out. He's standing, he's not standing straight up,--Hey! Soldier, ten-hut!--his chest is sunken. Effeminate.

Really, doesn't he look like a gay model there? A member of the Village People, maybe?

Fascinating. Have I cherry-picked here? Of course, I have cherry-picked. Hemingway was photogenic, he was one of the most photographed people of his time, there are zillions of photographs of Hemingway. Not all of them show him with his hands folded over his crotch. But these are him too! There are themes here. One theme is the Hitler theme, origin of my theory.

I read one time that the reason Hitler held his hands over his crotch was because he was dysfunctional down there. Obviously traumatized me. I went looking for photographs of moi and was relieved to find that I had never been so photographed (Although my brother was, he-he-he.) It was subconscious on Hitler's part. Now, Hitler was a much-photographed dude, right? Right. I have had occasion to Google Hitler many times since this revelation and there is only one other photo I can remember of him in that pose.

Conversely, when I read about The Garden of Eden I did not Google "Hemingway hands over crotch" as I did just now with Hitler, I just Googled "Ernest Hemingway." There are a shit-load more photographs of Papa with his hands folded over his crotch than of Hitler and no evidence I am aware of that Hemingway was dysfunctional. So maybe that theory I read about Hitler's photos was bullshit. Hitler was dysfunctional but the photos may not be evidence of subconscious acknowledgment of the dysfunction. Whatever the merits of the theory there are too many of these photographs of Hemingway for them not to mean something. I remember thinking "Well, how many reasonable ways are there to hold one's hands when posing for a photograph?" Well, straight down at your side is one! Others? Behind your back? In your pockets? Folded over your chest? The reasonable universe of ways to hold one's hands when posing for a photograph is limited. It's the body of this work that should be evaluated and, in my opinion, both the quantity and quality of this photographic evidence is consistent with this theory: The themes in The Garden of Eden, sexual transference, sexual identity, androgyny, sexual role-playing, maybe costume-play, are played out over the course of Hemingway's personal life and can be glimpsed in these photographs.

Compare this photograph to that of Hitler. Hitler grasps his right hand with his left. That is not a grasp there by Hemingway. It's dainty, isn't it?

That is truly a hilarious photograph. Besides the obvious, look at the contrast in the body language of those guys! Hemingway is back on his right foot. Sort of sheepish. The other guy is squared up to the cameraman (woman?), hands on hips. Hemingway with his right hand again on his left, not grasping his left hand. Maybe he's grasping his penis with his left, I don't know what he's doing. Maybe scratching himself.

The guy at far let has...has a thing coming out of his zipper...but in addition he has his hands behind his back. Papa has his down at his crotch again.

Left over right. Doesn't look quite like a grasp he's holding his right hand. There is a theme here also with poor Dr. Hemingway but not now.

Not quite the same thing. Or not quite as obviously the same thing. The military guy doesn't have either hand at his waist.

There are variations on the theme:

Hemingway holding his weapon. As with the swimmer photograph there could hardly be greater contrast between the body language of these two men. The other guy's body is squared up to the camera. Hemingway is leaned back as in the photograph with Dr. Hemingway and has left leg bent inward as in the photo with Martha Gellhorn. The other guy carries his gun in a cocky way. Hemingway, not so much.

Hemingway holding his smaller weapon.

Hemingway holding...I don't know what Hemingway's holding there. A bottle? A shell? Whatever it is, there are other ways of holding it. Why is he holding it like that? It's a "theme."

The man spent a lot of time with his hands near his crotch, that's all I know. Weight on right foot, left foot slightly bent again.

Lot of ways to hold a firearm. Up at eye level, I usually did. 

See, you can have your hands down to your side when posing for a photograph, human beings are capable of that. Your hands don't have to be playing with your penis all the time. 

Bosie? He looks like one of Oscar Wilde's boys there. Or Proust's. 

more.