archaeologicals:

Hemingway: ultimate asshole + assorted fun facts

•  F. Scott Fitzgerald read an early draft of A Farewell to Arms at Hemingway’s request & suggested that Hemingway end the book with the passage:  “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” Hemingway summed up his thoughts on Fitzgerald’s critique in a three-word response at the bottom of the letter: “Kiss my ass.”
• Max Eastman once joked about Hemingway’s machismo & fascination with firearms and weaponry, and wrote “come out from behind that false hair on your chest, Ernest. We all know you.” Hemingway saw Eastman at their publisher’s office, tore his shirt from his chest (to prove he had chest hair) and punched Eastman. 
• Hemingway felt it “would be very dangerous” for someone to not attend multiple fights a year. “If you quit going for too long a time, then you never go near them,” he said. “That would be very dangerous.” He was interrupted by a brief fit of coughing. “Finally,” he concluded, “you end up in one room and won’t move.”
  
• When James Joyce & Ernest Hemingway go out for drinks, Joyce would pick a fight and hide behind Hemingway and say ‘Deal with him, Hemingway! Deal with him!’
• Hemingway once took a urinal home from his favourite bar and moved it into his home, arguing that he had “pissed away” so much of his money into the urinal that he owned it.