Recently Simon and Shuster published a new version of Hemingway’s classic A Moveable Feast, which recounts the author’s life as a young family man and expatriot writer in Paris in the early 1920s. The publishers refer to this version as The Restored Edition, claiming that it “presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it to be published.” While the book contains a forward by Hemingway’s only surviving son, Patrick, it is most notable for the contributions of editor and grandson, Seán Hemingway.
The editor’s heavy hand is apparent. He chose to reorder 19 of the original 20 chapters in the main body of the book, saying that they now represent Ernest’s original sequence, while relegating the final chapter from the 1964 edition to an appendix. He included 10 new “sketches” of Paris as well. Finally, using new content from the Hemingway archives that were made public only in 1979, he added previously unpublished material to the original text that softens the role of his grandmother, Pauline Pfeiffer, in the breakup of Hemingway’s first marriage, while placing more of the blame on the author himself.
In an interview with The New York Times, Seán Hemingway said his changes were intended to present “his grandmother’s relationship with Hemingway in a more nuanced and truthful way.” In doing so, he felt he was returning the text closer to the way his grandfather had always intended.
One of the few living people involved in the genesis of the original manuscript, A. E. Hotchner, has taken great exception to this literary tampering. In an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Hotchner refers contemptuously to the new book as “bowdlerized” and suggests that such editorial practices are nothing short of unethical. “Surely,” he concludes, Ernest Hemingway has the right to have his words “protected against frivolous incursion.”
Strong words. Ones that scholars must (and will) mull over and argue about for decades to come. But they also raise the larger issue of disregarding an author’s wishes after his or her death. While we may be unsure of Hemingway’s intentions with A Moveable Feast, recently we saw a blatant example of such personal and professional disrespect in the decision of Vladimir Nabokov’s son Dimitri to sell the publication rights to his father’s unfinished novel, “The Original of Laura.” In this case, the author’s intention was clear: before his death Nabokov specifically instructed Dimitri to burn the incomplete manuscript.
Regardless of the rationale for such revisionism, be it a quest for textual authenticity or simply for money, such incidents tend to reflect poorly on the judgment and characters of the perpetrators. That publishers will likely sell many copies of these books points, even more disturbingly, to the unfortunate consequences of our society’s limitless obsession with celebrity voyeurism.
Interior Monologues 