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Hemingway Adventure
Havana, Cuba (tenth day)
This seems typical of Hemingway's life here. The bold, if eccentric, gesture of a man who knew that in Cuba, bold eccentric gestures were much appreciated in a man, along with any show of confident flamboyance. Hemingway hated limitation and constriction of any kind, especially social and cultural. If he had lived and worked in America, he would have been required to conform in some way to the expectations of a literary establishment. In Cuba he didn't have to pay this price.However, he had done himself lasting damage in the crashes in Africa, and, throughout the late fifties, his health, and the health of the island, declined rapidly. Castro's revolution in 1959 was seen by most Cubans as a cure. For Hemingway, it was equivalent to a terminal diagnosis.
As Castro and the USA began to square off, he was forced into an agony of divided loyalties between home and homeland. On 25 July 1960, he took the ferry to Key West and sailed away from Cuba for the last time.
Thirty-eight years on, there is no ferry to Key West or anywhere else on the US coast. The country of Hemingway's birth and the country he adopted are still squaring up, which is why I'm leaving Cuba on a Jamaican plane, heading south to the USA.
Choose another day from Hemingway Adventure
PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Hemingway Adventure
- Chapter: Havana, Cuba (tenth day)
- Country/sea: Cuba
- Place: Havana
- Book page no: 228
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