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are almost identical quotes yet Mellow does not cite to First Light as the Hemingway source because First Light would not be published for seven years after Mellow's biography.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.
"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.
