Many years ago in our little town a big man of letters was born. Most Oak Parkers know all about it. Ernest Hemingway’s birth in Oak Park, Ill. in 1899 was heralded with sounds of a bugle played from the family porch by his father, Clarence. Ernest spent his formative years here before departing for Europe and the expatriate life in 1921. Except for short visits during the 1920s, Hemingway never returned to Oak Park.

The village never honored Hemingway during his prolific literary career. Oak Park was a somewhat conservative community during much of that time and some of his literature proved too morally controversial for many villagers. Even Hemingway’s parents are known to have reacted negatively to the “filth” of In Our Time and sent their complimentary copies back to the publisher.

It’s a little hard to believe that even after the Nobel and Pulitzer awards there wasn’t much Hemingway’s hometown did to respond. Perhaps it’s because the author so disassociated himself from Oak Park and neglected any direct reference to the town in his work (the most tangible evidence of Hemingway recounting an Oak Park experience is in “Soldier’s Home,” which fictionalized his return home after sustaining severe injuries as a Red Cross volunteer in World War I Italy; he set the story in a town in Oklahoma).

However, by 1984 an intrepid group of locals launched the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park. The foundation forged links with Hemingway scholars around world, sponsored story discussion groups and literary conferences. Some of its greatest triumphs included the securing of a $1 million state grant and the successful turnout for a week-long celebration for the author’s 100th birthday.

First fascination

Hemingway first intrigued me during high school. We both graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School and both wrote for the school paper, The Trapeze. During my second year on the paper in 1978, The Trapeze ran a story about British author Anthony Burgess’ trip to Oak Park to film a documentary on Ernest. “Well,” I thought to myself, “this Hemingway must have been a big shot.” That same year, our American Lit class would read A Farewell to Arms.

During college I read “Hills Like White Elephants,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and The Old Man and the Sea. While wandering Europe in 1983, I digested all 1,000-plus pages of the definitive Hemingway biography by Carlos Baker. I certainly felt the weight of Hemingway’s work and life, but thought his legacy was still a mystery, in part because of the astonishing paucity of information in his hometown.

The local Hemingway Foundation matured and was able to offer a balance of scholarly events and mass-appeal activities like the annual Running of the Bulls (using humans as opposed to actual bulls) on local streets. Despite my interest in the author, I never got caught up in these events until my wife, Kathryn, off-handedly suggested in 1995 that I get involved in the short-story discussion groups which took place in Hemingway’s birthplace at 339 N. Oak Park Ave. Three years later, I was asked to join the Education Committee and later the board of directors of the foundation.

In early 2000, our dedicated Education Committee was feeling a great sense of accomplishment. A year earlier, under the leadership of our committee chair, Mike Seefeldt, we staged a very successful, three-day literary conference in Oak Park in conjunction with the larger centennial celebration of Hemingway’s birth. Seefeldt wanted us to think big as we planned events around the next year’s annual birthday celebration. Who could we entice to be the annual birthday speaker?

Mailer, Morrison and Roth were names bandied about. Chicago-based names such as Scott Turow and Harry Mark Petrakis were also considered. Then I threw out Updike.

I had always been a big fan of John Updike and had read about as much of his work as Hemingway’s. The entire Rabbit series, five other novels and two books of short stories. I was hooked on Updike after reading his story “A&P” for a college freshman English course. Someone from our committee had commented that Updike had fond feelings for Hemingway’s work.

The challenge now was for me to be as resourceful as possible in contacting Mr. Updike. Our committee chairman had suggested trying to go through the author’s publisher as a first step. Thinking that approach would be too slow and likely met with apathy, I turned to using the Internet.

Remembering that Updike resided somewhere in Massachusetts, I put his last name into a white pages search engine. While his name did not pop up, his son David’s did. I recalled his name from a short story he wrote in The New Yorker years earlier. I dialed his number.

David was polite and kind as I explained the reason for my call. Would your father be interested in talking about Hemingway? How can I reach him? David assured me he would get a message to his father about our interest in having him as a lecturer. I was confident that David passed my message on to his father after I received the following text typed on a US Postal Service postcard received several weeks later:

Feb. 17 00
Dear Mr. Gargulo [sic]:

My address is on the other side of this card, if you want to communicate with me about something. Don’t be afraid to use the postal service; it’s worked for over 200 years. Bothering my son at his Cambridge home is surely a poor substitute. If it’s a speech you want from me, I give very few of them, fewer and fewer.

Best wishes,
John Updike

Talk about a dagger to the heart! Never mind the fact that he was not interested in giving a lecture on Hemingway or anyone else. I clearly had offended him, the last thing I wanted to do to someone I had personally admired for many years, someone who helped foster for me an ongoing interest in fiction.

Here was a rare occurrence in American life. A famous and accomplished human being, in this case a celebrated icon of American letters, personally calling on the carpet a fan that he did not even know. How common is it for admirers of any famous person”sports figure, actor, writer”to nurse their admiration in private for years, blissfully unaware of the very real barrier that exists between them and their idols? And how uncommon is it for that barrier to be punctured from above, even when the admirer acts out of appreciation?

I felt intimidated, then bitter and hurt. As any reader of Updike knows, it takes a certain mental investment”a combination of dedication, acuity, and concentration”to finish an Updike book. Over the years, I’ve found those investments in Updike quite rewarding.

Of course, the postcard got varying reactions from my fellow committee members. Some were in a state of disbelief. Some laughed it off. Some told me to preserve it. Anyway, we eventually found our birthday speaker that year in the person of Scott Turow, the best-selling author and prominent Chicago attorney.

I waited a few weeks, and then I wrote an apologetic note to Updike. I think I tried to leave the door open for the future. I admit to being a tad bitter about the whole episode and even launched my own personal Updike boycott. While Oak Park is much less conservative these days and has developed a reputation as a hotbed of activism, I kept my protest private, staying off the streets and out of the parks, sans cardboard signs and petition sheets. My boycott lasted until December, 2004, when I read Updike’s personal essay from 1997, “Christmas Cards.”

From time to time I would dig up that postcard from February 2000, and think to myself, well, at least he signed it “Best wishes.”

I made some ironic discoveries after I began writing this story in early 2005. While I have been a loyal New Yorker reader since 1984, I do admit to being almost always behind in reading it. After scanning the contents when the magazine arrives, it usually falls into one of three categories. One, it gets “Immediately Read,” usually because of some current event of importance (the Sept. 12, 2005 issue on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is an example). Two, it gets placed in a significant spot “To Be Read Sometime in the Future” because of a number of interesting articles. And three, it gets mixed in with other periodicals and, sadly, remains “Mostly Unread” until it’s time for forced household recycling.

The Dec. 1, 2003, New Yorker fell into the third category. Just before it would have been torpedoed into the recycling bin early this year, I noticed a mention in the contents about Updike. I upgraded the issue into my second category, figuring there might be something that could give me perspective as I wrote. That issue contained a review by Louis Menand of Updike’s “The Early Stories.” Midway through the review, Menand comments on Updike’s revelation in the book’s foreword that of all the short story writers he counts as influences, he owes his main debt to Hemingway. As examples, Menand mentions “the importance of suppressing information and the use of dialogue to convey significance.”

I was stunned. Apparently, what we thought was simple admiration for Hemingway’s work was actually much more than that. But on a personal level, I could only ponder one thing. Could it be that if not for my intrusive contact a few years earlier Updike would have indeed been interested in talking about Hemingway? I will probably never know.

To gain additional perspective for this story, I perused a few of Updike’s tomes that rest on my bookshelves. As I opened Rabbit is Rich, a postcard fell out. It was from David Updike, addressed to me and dated March 18, 1984, written in response to my note to him about the story he’d written in the New Yorker.

Dear Anthony Gargiulo Jr.,

Thank your for your nice, encouraging note about my stories. I am very glad you like them, and hope there will be more that you will like. Although I’m not sure I will follow in his footsteps too closely, I know I enjoy writing and will keep at it as long as possible”which I hope will be a while! I hope all is well with you out in River Forest, and thank you again for taking the time to write!

Sincerely yours,
David Updike

Discovering this card put me in high spirits and made me think how special it was to possess such tokens, from father and son. Together with the passage of time, both items now seem to counterbalance my earlier shamed feelings. I am humble enough to laugh a bit at what happened and I am even certain that both Updike and Hemingway will remain in the “To Be Read Sometime in the Future” category.

Celebrating Ernie’s birthday … and Hadley’s friendship

July is Hemingway month in Oak Park. The 107th birthday of the Oak Park-born author will be celebrated by the village’s Ernest Hemingway Foundation on Friday, July 21, with a major lecture and two international exhibits at the Hemingway Museum, 200 N. Oak Park Ave.

The annual birthday lecture will be an intriguing exploration of the correspondence between the author and his wife Hadley during their courtship year. The talk will be delivered by Professor Linda Wagner-Martin of the University of North Carolina.

Wagner-Martin will also present her evidence of Hadley’s influence on Ernest during the six years of their marriage, drawing on correspondence between them and with their friends. Hemingway referred to Hadley, the first of his four wives, as “the best friend a person ever had.” He was on good terms with her the remainder of his life.

Before and after this program, guests are invited to visit two adjacent exhibits, which offer fresh perspectives on the famous author and his writings. Commissioned by the Government of Navarre, Spain, the displays focus on the foundation’s theme for 2006-07: Hemingway’s international life and art, which Vice Chair Virginia Cassin refers to as “his footprints on the world.”

Both exhibits feature magnificent photos of Hemingway and his life abroad. Ten brightly colored banners, 5 x 8 feet, emblazoned with rich photographs and apt words”many of them Hemingway’s”highlight the author’s years in one of his favorite places on earth, Navarre, Spain. Pamplona, a major city in Navarre, is an important feature in both exhibits and the site of the famed “running of the bulls.” This event described by Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises, occurs between July 6 and 14. The long rows of banners form a spectacular new gallery in the museum.

The second new exhibit was developed by Charles Bednar, Virginia Cassin, and Mary Jo Griffin with text by Redd Griffin. “Hemingway: From Oak Park to the Global Village: His Footprints on the World” traces Hemingway’s adventures on four continents from his Oak Park birthplace to his writing tower in Cuba. The exhibit focuses on what Ernest began absorbing in Oak Park that prepared him to live and write on four continents.

Sharing food, drink and words with others began at the family’s dining room table and continued throughout most of his life. Strangers were invited to eat with Ernest’s family. His relatives’ empathy for others and their enthusiasm for recounting their international adventures foreshadowed Hemingway’s life as a writer.

As a boy, Ernest was learning skills of observation and expression from his parents and teachers that he later drew on to convey his experiences to his readers in a global village. As a man, Hemingway continued inviting strangers to his table. He had empathy for them and other strangers in the 20th century”the powerless, vulnerable and displaced.

He made their lives real for his readers. But he also wrote about heroes in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, who highlighted nature, love, determination and awe in the face of trying, often perilous circumstances.

Hemingway’s novella, The Old Man and the Sea, shows how the author captured both the sense of a specific place and what is universal in human experience. This gave this book, like many of his writings, an appeal to people nearly everywhere. It was translated into many languages, evident in the colorful book jackets at the end of the exhibit. Compelling period photos used in the exhibit, often accompanied by Hemingway’s own words, show the trajectory of his life”from the turret windows of his Oak Park birthplace looking out on the world he would explore to the windows of his Cuban writing tower looking out on the world impacted by his writing.

The annual birthday celebration, which will feature birthday cake and sparkling beverages, starts Friday at 7:30 p.m. Members, students and seniors are $8; all others, $10. Tickets may be reserved in advance by calling the foundation at 848-2222. For more information, visit www.EHFOP.org.

“Jeanette Fields

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