Sons and Fathers

Ernest Hemingway and the struggle to love and be loved.

Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin.

—Mary Shelley

---

I recently came across a short story by Ernest Hemingway called “I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something.” It’s a relatively obscure piece that critics have largely dismissed as too biographical. That is a shame because what makes it so unique is that it deals searingly with personal themes. Namely, family and father-son relations, which feels natural to write about with Christmas around the corner, when love and loss alike throb like fresh wounds.

First Lieutenant Ernest Hemingway with the American Red Cross, in late 1918, in Northern Italy.

I think this piece also relates to Hemingway’s struggles with mental illness, which he seems to have been predisposed to from birth. His father, Dr. Clarence Hemingway, likely had hereditary hemochromatosis, a genetic disorder characterized by an accumulation of abnormal amounts of iron in the body that can cause all kinds of chaos. Psychological symptoms include anxiety, depression, and mood swings, all of which Dr. Hemingway experienced. It’s most frequently found in people of Northern European and especially Celtic descent. Hemingway’s ancestors, on both sides, were from Yorkshire, England, and he was diagnosed with the disease in 1961, the same year he blew his brains out with a 12-gauge side-by-side Scott he purchased from Abercrombie & Fitch. Dr. Hemingway killed himself in 1928 with a .32 Smith & Wesson revolver. Seven of Hemingway’s close relatives would die by suicide, including his younger brother and granddaughter, Margaux Hemingway, the first supermodel to ever receive a million-dollar contract.

Margaux Hemingway on the cover of Vogue Brasil in October 1976.

The Hemingways were seriously cursed. The family suffered from a variety of afflictions across generations that expressed themselves in different ways. In the case of “Papa,” a lifetime of heavy drinking, multiple concussions that left him with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and frequent severe depression all contributed to his deterioration. Near the end, Hemingway had difficulty writing just a few sentences and was incapable of organizing his work. The fact he was productive as long as he was given all that is remarkable.

People who wrestle with their demons will at least try to draw blood, even if they know in their hearts that they are doomed, and it is that sense of doom and attunement to suffering that can become a wellspring of art.

Like many men, Hemingway wrestled with his father and saw the same contours of that conflict manifest in his struggles with his sons. “I Guess Everything Reminds You of Something” was a fruit of that generational toil. It’s one of several short stories he wrote that dealt with being a father and a son, but it stands out for a few reasons.