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The comic manuscript, together with a signed letter, were written in 1924 when the future Nobel Laureate was 25, shortly before publication of his first important work, the short story collection In Our Time. My Life in the Bull Ring with Donald Ogden Stewart was penned after a rowdy sojourn in Pamplona, Spain, with the novelist John Dos Passos and the Stewart of the title — a well known satirist and playwright in the 1920s. "It’s by no means a literary masterpiece, but I think it’s more than juvenilia," said Patrick McGrath, an expert in books and manuscripts at Christie’s. "It’s a deliberate attempt at writing a comic story, and is interesting in that way, because it’s a form Hemingway didn’t try very often," said McGrath. The manuscript and letter have been estimated between $ 12,000 and 18,000. The five-page sketch parodies Stewart’s attempts to take on a bull during an amateur session at a Pamplona ring during the famous running of the bulls festival. Hemingway sent the story to Stewart, asking him to submit the manuscript to the magazine Vanity Fair for publication. But Stewart felt it was not good enough to pass on, explaining in his autobiography that "humour was not (Hemingway’s) dish." — AFP |
A
newly discovered story by the 20th-century literary
giant Ernest Hemingway will be auctioned at Christie’s in New York in
December, with the proviso that it not be published — at least for
now.
