A superb, content-rich autograph letter from Ernest Hemingway to his editor and friend Arnold Gingrich, founder of Esquire magazine, written in the pivotal year of 1935. Hemingway writes just as his nonfiction work Green Hills of Africa is being published in book form, referencing its recent serialization in Scribner's Magazine (“The serial is done in Scribners. Book comes out this month.”).
The letter is steeped in the two dominant themes of Hemingway’s life at the time: literature and marlin fishing. He reports on the Bimini expedition planned in his earlier correspondence, detailing the catch and loss of massive blue marlin, and praising the performance of his beloved boat, the Pilar (“She takes the sea like she was made for it…”).
Further content includes plans for an upcoming trip to Cuba, an invitation for Gingrich to join him, inquiries about Gingrich’s own publishing efforts, and a characteristically brusque postscript offering writing advice to a fellow Esquire contributor, underscoring Hemingway’s insistence on lived experience. Written in his terse, rhythmic, muscular prose, the letter is a perfect capsule of Hemingway’s worldview in the mid-1930s—confident, productive, and immersed in the twin pursuits of great writing and great fishing.