Whoever thinks literature is boring probably has never tried exploring the life of a renowned literary author with the help of a cocktail. That might shake things up a bit.
Cocktails with Hemingway, a Hemingway Foundation benefit tasting and auction on Sunday, Sept. 29 at Emilio’s Tapas in Hillside, will bring Ernest Hemingway alive by sampling some of his favorite spirits.
“The whole auction is essentially things he would have enjoyed,” said the Foundation’s Executive Director Allison Sansone. “Things that fit in with his sort of spirit of adventure.”
One of the auction pieces is a signed cocktail receipt from a trip Hemingway took with his second wife Pauline and his son Jack aboard the Reina Del Pacifico from Cuba to Spain in 1933. The receipt, the third one of the day, was for two lagers and two “WS”, which Sansone said could stand for either whisky soda or white soda.
The foundation received some of the auction items from independent donors. The receipt, for example, was given by someone who obtained it from Hemingway himself. Other items were donated by businesses that produce Hemingway-themed items.
At the auction you’ll also find two bottles of Papa’s Pilar Hemingway rum, one bottled signed by Hemingway’s last surviving son Patrick, six pairs of sunglasses modeled after the kind Hemingway often wore, and an entire library of Hemingway’s work in paper and hardback.
The paperback library and two pairs of sunglasses will be sold in an online auction for seven days immediately following the event.
The auction, hosted by To Have and Have Another author Philip Greene, will help support the Foundation’s educational and cultural programming for 2014.
“I’m really thrilled to be bringing people together for a Hemingway event that is a wonderful introduction to Hemingway,” said Sansone. “You don’t need to be a Hemingway expert to understand the type of life he enjoyed—the adventure, the camaraderie—we all kind of connect with that.”