Hunter S Thompson and Hemmingway's antlers
Thompson visited the Hemingway house and admired the fine set of antlers hanging over the front door
LAST month a widow took a road trip from Owl Farm, Colorado, to Ketchum, Idaho. On the back seat were a pair of elk antlers, wrapped in brown paper. She was going to meet the Hemingways, and she was nervous about what they‘d say.In 1959 Ernest Hemingway left his Cuban home and moved back to the US, to Ketchum. It was a sudden departure. He left all his papers and artwork and furniture, a book open across the arm of his reading chair, an empty glass on the table. Those things are still there in the house outside Havana, just as he left them.Ketchum is a small town with clean air in the shadow of Bald Mountain; it‘s good for skiing in winter and fishing and shooting in summer. It should also be good for writing, but Hemingway didn‘t find it so. He was in the grips of a largely undiagnosed mental condition, paranoid and anxious and unable to write. Writing made everything okay, and without it nothing was okay. At 7 one morning he tiptoed from his bedroom so as not to disturb his sleepi...
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