"It was right after the revolution," George continued. One afternoon, Hemingway told him, "There's something you should see." The nature of the expedition was a mystery; Hemingway made a shaker of drinks, daiquiris or whatever. They got in the car with a few others and drove some way out of town. They got out, set up chairs and took out the drinks, as if they were going to watch the sunset. Soon, a truck arrived. This, explained George, was what they'd been waiting for. It came, as Hemingway knew, the same time each day. It stopped and some men with guns got out of it. In the back were a couple of dozen others who were tied up. Prisoners.I knew that Che was a cold blooded psychopath, but had only suspected that of Papa. Blech.
The men with guns hustled the others out of the back of the truck, and lined them up. Then they shot them. They put the bodies back into the truck. I said to George something to the effect of "Oh my God."
Thursday, May 24, 2018
The time Ernest Hemingway took George Plimpton to watch Che execute a bunch of prisoners
Gee, I wonder why I had never heard this story before?
Hemingway was a die-hard socialist.
ReplyDeleteDie-hard socialists don't mind a few (or a lot of) broken eggs, as long as they're not the eggs being broken.
Never liked Hemingway. His self-righteousness grates too much on my own self-awareness.
I suspect a little invention was involved: driving them to one place to shoot them, and carting the bodies off to somewhere else, instead of dumping them in situ, and allowing an audience to see it, seem a bit implausible. But the underlying story is probably true. Remember that Hemingway would have thought of this as merely repeating some of Spanish Civil War.
ReplyDeleteHis self-righteousness grates too much on my own self-awareness.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, that's a particularly interesting way to put it.
Yeah, well, having an English Lit teacher who was totally in love with him didn't help my opinion. The teacher loved that EH was a die-hard Lincoln Brigader fan-boy, and totally adored Castro.
ReplyDeleteAlmost failed that class because I kept pointing out that 'Papa' was a bed-wetting Socialist jerk-face. Did get sent to the principal's office a couple times for 'disrupting the class' which caused my conservative retired AF Lt Col father come down like the wrath of, well, a conservative retired AF officer. And this was in the late 70's.
Don't even get me started on that leftist mooch Thoreau...
The Cuban commies liked to make people just disappear. The executions were almost never public, because people would then see that the victims were their neighbors - people just like them. Take them from one town, kill them in the countryside, then bury them in another town, claiming they were counter revolutionaries who fought against the State.
ReplyDelete