What Ernest Hemingway would have put on his July wishlist
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899, he died on July 2, 1961, and every July Key West throws its Hemingway Days festival. The festival consists of a look-alike contest full of bearded men parked at Hemingway's barstool at Sloppy Joe's.
Same rule as always: every item has to connect to something he actually did, owned, or obsessed over. Here's the wishlist I think Hemingway would have have put together:
Restored Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriterProfessionally refurbished, working condition
The Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriter was Hemingway's machine. The American Writers Museum notes that he used his typewriters until they were completely worn out, collecting a few along the way, so a freshly restored one would never go to waste. He also did his best work early, and NPR describes him standing in front of his typewriter each morning in his Havana hotel room.
Hemingway bought his beloved 38-foot fishing boat Pilar in 1934, and the Hemingway Rum Company in Key West now produces Papa's Pilar Rum in her honor. The blonde expression is the one built for his drink of choice: the daiquiri. His preferred version, less sugar and double the rum, was invented at Havana's El Floridita bar and christened the Papa Doble, and he once boasted of downing seventeen of them in a single afternoon in 1942. Don't try that at home.
The coupe glasses go hand in hand with the rum, because a Papa Doble deserves better than a red plastic cup. El Floridita's bartender Constantino Ribalaigua, the man who created the drink, was famous for throwing the frozen mixture from shaker to shaker in one motion and filling the glasses to the brim without a drop left over. Hemingway once compared a well-made frozen daiquiri to the wake curling off the bow of a fast-moving ship, which is the kind of compliment that demands proper stemware.
The pencils might seem too humble for a Nobel laureate, but they were half his process. Hemingway drafted longhand before touching the typewriter, and Sporting Classics recounts how he stood at a small table in Havana's Hotel Ambos Mundos and used a lead pencil to write For Whom the Bell Tolls. Thirty pencils would have lasted him about a month.
The big-game reel is for the afternoons. Once the morning's writing was done, Hemingway chased blue marlin, tuna, and swordfish in the Gulf Stream aboard Pilar with his captain Gregorio Fuentes, even riding out three hurricanes! Those waters and that obsession eventually produced The Old Man and the Sea, which won him the Pulitzer. Havana still hosts a marlin tournament bearing his name, and the Penn Senator is the classic star-drag reel of that era of offshore fishing, still built in America today.
Hemingway's Key West home still keeps cats descended from Snow White, a six-toed cat given to him by a ship's captain, and the museum names every new arrival after a famous person. A twenty-dollar window hammock is a small price to keep the place's most opinionated residents off your manuscript.
In conclusion
I could have kept going, as Hemingway also enjoyed Safari gear, boxing gloves, a café table in Paris. If there's a historical figure you'd like to see get the wishlist treatment next, send them my way.
Ready to make your own wishlist?