Folk of Genius: The 5 unusual habits of Ernest Hemingway

We are all creative. But what differentiates papier-mâché masks or crocheted undergarments from the Nobel Prize-winning artworks of Ernest Hemingway? Maybe Ernest was just a little stranger than most. New studies show that both creativity and eccentricity may be the result of genetic variations that increase the brain’s ability to filter out useless distractions. Papa certainly got on with it. Just how peculiar was he?

1. Get Up, Stand Up

In his lifetime Hemingway published seven novels, six short story collections and two non-fiction works. Many are considered classics of American literature and all were written the same way. Hemingway had a study in a specially-made square tower but he did most of his writing in his bedroom. Half of that room was given over to his desk. Even that is not where he worked. Hemingway’s trusty typewriter actually sat on top of yet another bookcase which he called his work desk.

He did not pull up a chair to pound the keys. Hemingway preferred to work standing up. He spent hours at a time on his feet moving only to shift his weight from one leg to the other. He would wear down seven pencils in a good day’s work. Writing can be manual labour.

2. Gunning For Fish

To appreciate how much Hemingway loved fishing you just have to read his last major work of fiction, The Old Man and the Sea. One of his most famous novels, it centers upon Santiago, an aging fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. It won him the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to the awarding of his Nobel Prize in Literature a year later.

Hemingway himself was a cavalier angler and nobody was allowed to mess with his catch. During a fishing trip in the Bahamas in 1935 he opened fire on a shoal of sharks with a Thompson submachine-gun to stop them scavenging the humungous tuna he was trying to land. The explosion of blood simply caused them to attack his catch with even greater fury. His other techniques were more successful. In 1938 he established a world record by catching seven marlin in one day. He was also the first person to ever boat a giant tuna in an undamaged state.

3. Eye Spy

Anyone who has read Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls will know where his political sympathies lay. Published in 1940, it tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. Much was written from Hemingway’s own experiences in Spain. When the war ended with Republican defeat sympathies only hardened. He later said he was always on the side of the Republic from the day it was declared.