Ray Bradbury
"The Parrot Who Met Papa"
from Long After Midnight
"The Parrot Who Met Papa" is the second story I have read by Ray Bradbury that centers on Ernest Hemingway, sometimes familiarly known as Papa. The first I read was "The Kilimanjaro Device," a time-traveling tale. My post on that story is at http://tinyurl.com/y7xt9t4h. I wonder if there's any more about Hemingway and why he chose to write about him. I also wonder if he has any other stories about real people. I guess I will just have to read more stories by Bradbury.
I suppose most people back then knew that Hemingway spent considerable time in Cuba. That was the problem, for so many people knew this that Hemingway became a tourist attraction when he was there. When the staring got to be too much, Hemingway would absent himself from his usual watering holes and hide out in a small local bar, the Cuba Libre. At one end of the bar was a parrot in a cage, an ancient parrot to be sure. Hemingway grew to like the parrot and would spend much time talking to it. In fact, the question was whether Hemingway ended up talking like the parrot or the parrot sounded like him. Rumor had it that Hemingway had taught the parrot a word-for-word record of his last unpublished novel.
This parrot became famous, almost as famous as Hemingway himself. So, although it was a shock to many, the reasons why El Cordoba, that was the parrot's name, was birdnapped? should have been obvious. But, the real reason wasn't known, until much later.
Ray (the name of the teller of the tale, a coincidence, no doubt) decids to investigate and flies down to Cuba. Upon interrogating the bar owner, he decides he knows the identity of the birdnapper. He had asked the bar owner if someone strange or peculiar or eccentric had recently been there. The bar owner then described such a person who had been there the day before the parrot had disappeared:
"What a creature!. . . He was very small. And he spoke like this: very high-eeee. Like a muchacha in a school play, eh? Like a canary swallowed by a witch! And he wore a blue-velvet suit with a big yellow tie. . .And he had a small very round face. . . and his hair was yellow. . .he was like a Kewpie doll."
Ray recognizes him and blurts out, "Shelley Capon!" (a capon is a castrated domestic rooster fattened for eating). Ray knew that Shelley Capon hated Hemingway and now was very concerned about the fate of El Cordoba.
Perhaps I'm wrong here, but that description and the name reminds me of Truman Capote. Unfortunately I don't know anything about the relationship between Hemingway and Capote, so I can't offer that as evidence.
Ray then decides to confront Shelley Capon and rescue El Cordoba. Shelly Capon is the most interesting character in the story. If you have read the story or read it sometime in the future, let me know if you agree or disagree with my speculation regarding the identity of Shelly.
It took a while for me to realize this, but this is a detective story! El Cordoba is a victim of a kidnapping, and Ray comes to his rescue. Shelly Capon is the unique and fascinating bad guy with his henchmen about him in the hotel room when Ray confronts him. Their meeting gives us a clue:
Shelly greets him: "'Raimundo, sit down! No . . . fling yourself into an interesting position.'
Ray responds: "'Sorry,' I said in my best Dashiell Hammett manner, sharpening my chin and steeling my eyes. 'No time.'"
The tone is almost noir. Ray senses a threat from those gathered in the hotel room. Will he be allowed to leave, on his own two feet? He responds with a threat of his own, clearly a hard-boiled detective tale. Bradbury later introduces a very familiar element from a Hammett story, just to remind us of this story's antecedents.
Overall, it's a light-hearted work, not to be taken seriously. But, on the other hand, it is written by Ray Bradbury . . .
Showing posts with label HEMINGWAY Ernest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HEMINGWAY Ernest. Show all posts
Sunday, July 9, 2017
Friday, October 24, 2014
Ray Bradbury: The Kilimanjaro Device
Ray Bradbury's "The Kilimanjaro Device"
a short story found in the collection I Sing the Body Electric
Did the title jog your memory a bit? Perhaps remind you of another story by an American writer? Who does the following quotation from the story suggest?
"Oh, he had readers all right, all kinds of readers. Even me. I don't touch books from one autumn to the next. But I touched his. I think I liked the Michigan stories best. About the fishing. I think the stories about the fishing are good. I don't think anybody ever wrote about fishing that way and maybe won't ever again. Of course, the bullfight stuff is good, too. But that's a little far off. Some of the cowpokes like them; they been around the animals all their life. A bull here or a bull there, I guess it's the same. I know one cowpoke has read just the bull stuff in the Spanish stories of the old man's forty times. He could go over there and fight, I swear."
One last clue: The narrator refers to "the old man" as "Papa." Of course, the style Bradbury adopts in this story is also a clue: short declarative sentences, usually the straightforward subject-verb-object form. Everything is concrete and definite.
But the point of the story is rather unusual, which isn't surprising since it's a tale by Ray Bradbury. The narrator is on a mission, which is why he has come to this small town where the "old man" is buried. He reveals his mission to a local hunter, the one who was quoted above.
"'You been up to the grave yet?' asked; the hunter, as if he knew I would answer yes.
'No,' I said.
'Why not?'
' Because it's the wrong grave.,' I said.
'All graves are wrong graves when you come down to it,' he said.
'No,' I said. 'There are right graves and wrong ones, just as there are good times to die and bad times.'
He nodded at this. I had come back to something he knew, or at least smelled was right.
'Sure, I knew men.' he said, 'died just perfect. You always felt, yes, that was good. One man I knew, sitting at the table waiting for supper, his wife in the kitchen, when she came in with a big bowl of soup, there he was sitting dead and neat at the table. Bad for her, but, I mean, wasn't that a good way for him? No sickness. No nothing but sitting there waiting for supper to come and never knowing if it came or not.'"
As you can see, the story is going in a strange direction. What does this have to do with the grave on the hill that is the wrong grave? The grave is that of Ernest Hemingway, although it is never stated. However, the clues given above clearly suggest it is Papa Hemingway, who committed suicide in 1961 and was buried in Ketchum, Idaho. There's also a time machine involved, sort of a "psychic time machine" that is.
Time machine stories generally fall into two broad categories. There's type in which the time travelers go solely as observers, fearing to do something, anything which would change history and perhaps eliminate them. Frequently though, they end up doing exactly what they feared. Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" is a variation of that type of story. The travelers go back, intending to hunt dinosaurs, but they kill only those dinosaurs that will die within a few minutes anyway, thereby reducing the risk of changing the future. But. . .
The second type of time traveler is the one who goes back intending to change history. There generally two types of these. One type involves those who go back to kill someone who had a major and deleterious effect (in their minds anyway) on history--I have read several stories in which someone goes back in order to kill Adolf Hitler, thereby reducing the possibility of WWII and the holocaust. A second type depicts the efforts of those who attempt to save someone from being killed--Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy, for example.
But, neither of these is exactly what the narrator has in mind.
SPOILER: The following reveals the story and the narrator's mission.
The focus in the story is on dying at the right time. As I mentioned above, Hemingway committed suicide after living several years in pain and ill health, the result of an hereditary disease that affected several members of his family, some of whom either died from the disease or committed suicide. Another contributing factor was the injuries he suffered in two plane crashes. He and his wife had flown to Africa, but the plane crashed on landing. He and his wife survived, but with some broken bones and tissue damage. They attempted to fly out to get medical treatment on the next day, but that plane's engine exploded at takeoff. Again they survived. Eventually they did get the needed medical help, but Hemingway suffered health problems after that.
The narrator has a time machine, but he doesn't intend to use it to stop Hemingway from killing himself, nor does he intend to prevent the two plane crashes. Instead, he goes back in time and meets "the old man."
The narrator explains that the truck can possibly go back to 1954 (the date of the two plane crashes) and possibly can turn into plane. The old man then asks him if he could land the plane a little bit differently, a little bit harder and that he "be thrown out but the rest of you okay?"
The narrator answers, "I'll see what I can do."
The old man "gazed back down the road at the mountains and the sea that could not be seen beyond the mountains and a continent beyond the sea. 'That's a good day you're talking about.'
'The best.'
' And a good hour and a good second.'
'Really, nothing better.'"
Death is inevitable, but there are good deaths and bad deaths.
a short story found in the collection I Sing the Body Electric
Did the title jog your memory a bit? Perhaps remind you of another story by an American writer? Who does the following quotation from the story suggest?
"Oh, he had readers all right, all kinds of readers. Even me. I don't touch books from one autumn to the next. But I touched his. I think I liked the Michigan stories best. About the fishing. I think the stories about the fishing are good. I don't think anybody ever wrote about fishing that way and maybe won't ever again. Of course, the bullfight stuff is good, too. But that's a little far off. Some of the cowpokes like them; they been around the animals all their life. A bull here or a bull there, I guess it's the same. I know one cowpoke has read just the bull stuff in the Spanish stories of the old man's forty times. He could go over there and fight, I swear."
One last clue: The narrator refers to "the old man" as "Papa." Of course, the style Bradbury adopts in this story is also a clue: short declarative sentences, usually the straightforward subject-verb-object form. Everything is concrete and definite.
But the point of the story is rather unusual, which isn't surprising since it's a tale by Ray Bradbury. The narrator is on a mission, which is why he has come to this small town where the "old man" is buried. He reveals his mission to a local hunter, the one who was quoted above.
"'You been up to the grave yet?' asked; the hunter, as if he knew I would answer yes.
'No,' I said.
'Why not?'
' Because it's the wrong grave.,' I said.
'All graves are wrong graves when you come down to it,' he said.
'No,' I said. 'There are right graves and wrong ones, just as there are good times to die and bad times.'
He nodded at this. I had come back to something he knew, or at least smelled was right.
'Sure, I knew men.' he said, 'died just perfect. You always felt, yes, that was good. One man I knew, sitting at the table waiting for supper, his wife in the kitchen, when she came in with a big bowl of soup, there he was sitting dead and neat at the table. Bad for her, but, I mean, wasn't that a good way for him? No sickness. No nothing but sitting there waiting for supper to come and never knowing if it came or not.'"
As you can see, the story is going in a strange direction. What does this have to do with the grave on the hill that is the wrong grave? The grave is that of Ernest Hemingway, although it is never stated. However, the clues given above clearly suggest it is Papa Hemingway, who committed suicide in 1961 and was buried in Ketchum, Idaho. There's also a time machine involved, sort of a "psychic time machine" that is.
Time machine stories generally fall into two broad categories. There's type in which the time travelers go solely as observers, fearing to do something, anything which would change history and perhaps eliminate them. Frequently though, they end up doing exactly what they feared. Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" is a variation of that type of story. The travelers go back, intending to hunt dinosaurs, but they kill only those dinosaurs that will die within a few minutes anyway, thereby reducing the risk of changing the future. But. . .
The second type of time traveler is the one who goes back intending to change history. There generally two types of these. One type involves those who go back to kill someone who had a major and deleterious effect (in their minds anyway) on history--I have read several stories in which someone goes back in order to kill Adolf Hitler, thereby reducing the possibility of WWII and the holocaust. A second type depicts the efforts of those who attempt to save someone from being killed--Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy, for example.
But, neither of these is exactly what the narrator has in mind.
SPOILER: The following reveals the story and the narrator's mission.
The focus in the story is on dying at the right time. As I mentioned above, Hemingway committed suicide after living several years in pain and ill health, the result of an hereditary disease that affected several members of his family, some of whom either died from the disease or committed suicide. Another contributing factor was the injuries he suffered in two plane crashes. He and his wife had flown to Africa, but the plane crashed on landing. He and his wife survived, but with some broken bones and tissue damage. They attempted to fly out to get medical treatment on the next day, but that plane's engine exploded at takeoff. Again they survived. Eventually they did get the needed medical help, but Hemingway suffered health problems after that.
The narrator has a time machine, but he doesn't intend to use it to stop Hemingway from killing himself, nor does he intend to prevent the two plane crashes. Instead, he goes back in time and meets "the old man."
The narrator explains that the truck can possibly go back to 1954 (the date of the two plane crashes) and possibly can turn into plane. The old man then asks him if he could land the plane a little bit differently, a little bit harder and that he "be thrown out but the rest of you okay?"
The narrator answers, "I'll see what I can do."
The old man "gazed back down the road at the mountains and the sea that could not be seen beyond the mountains and a continent beyond the sea. 'That's a good day you're talking about.'
'The best.'
' And a good hour and a good second.'
'Really, nothing better.'"
Death is inevitable, but there are good deaths and bad deaths.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea
One of my favorite stories by Hemingway is The Old Man and the Sea. It is one of the leanest and sparest stories I know. Hemingway pared away everything except for Santiago and the sea. Santiago is a Cuban fisherman whose luck has turned bad. He hasn't caught a fish in 84 days. The young boy who had been helping him has been sent by his father to another fishing boat because he hasn't been able to bring anything home for almost three months. The story begins as Santiago goes out alone on Day 85, and it tells of his struggle with the sea and the great fish he hooks.
"Santiago" is a good name for the old man who is in his 70s now and has been a fisherman all his life. "Santiago" is Spanish for Saint James, who was one of the first Apostles chosen by Christ. When Christ called him, James was out fishing with his father and brother John, and Christ called James and his brother John to follow him and be "fishers of men" instead.
Santiago is not a 21st century sportsman who fishes to demonstrate his skill and who feels separate from the web of life. Santiago fishes for survival and understands that he is like the fish he preys on, for they too prey on other fish in order to survive. We see this as he talks to the great fish and to the sea and asks them for their help.
Two films have been made of this story. The first was made in 1958; it was directed by Jud Taylor and starred Spencer Tracy. The second was a "made for TV" film and appeared in 1990, directed by John Sturges. It starred Anthony Quinn.
Both have serious flaws. Ironically, a truly great version could have been made if Jud Taylor, the director of the 1958 version, had been able to cast Anthony Quinn in the role of Santiago. Taylor's version was the closest to the story as Hemingway wrote it. It gave us Santiago and his struggle with the sea just as Hemingway presented it to us. The weakest part, for me anyway, was the casting of Spencer Tracy. I have enjoyed watching Tracy in a number of films, but I just couldn't see him as a poor Cuban fisherman. Every few minutes some part of me would insist that he just wasn't Santiago, but someone playing a role.
The 1990 version, directed by John Sturges, was far more fortunate in the casting of Anthony Quinn as Santiago. I thought he was completely convincing as Santiago, a poor Cuban fisherman, getting old, and desperately trying to maintain his independence, in spite of his age.
Sturges, unfortunately, just had to "improve" this story, or perhaps he felt that the average American TV viewer just wouldn't be bothered watching the story as Hemingway wrote it. So, Sturges added a few things, one of which was a brief bio by the bartender at the local hotel, and which served no purpose whatsoever to the story.
A second "improvement" was the addition of Santiago's "daughter" who insisted that he was too old to be on his own anymore and wanted him to move in with her and her husband. He could just spend the rest of his life drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. She also feared what the neighbors would say if she left him out there on his own. They would blame her for not taking proper care of her father.
However, the most annoying insertion was that of an "author" and his wife who were staying at the hotel. The author probably was supposed to be Hemingway himself as the author became interested in the old man and his failure to catch fish. Could the author's suggested "writer's block" be analogous to Santiago's inability to catch fish?
The film switched back and forth from Santiago to the author and occasional flashbacks of interactions with his daughter. This seriously interrupted the intensity of the fight between Santiago and the great fish and the subsequent struggle to bring the fish back. We may have been with Santiago half of the time, but those scenes were so weakened by the interruptions that the intensity of Santiago's struggles was severely diminished.
Of course, there were no authors, with or without blocks, or daughters in Hemingway's version, nor was there a bartender who came to Cuba years ago.
I think directors such as John Sturges do a disservice to the author, to the story, and to the audience when they water down the original story as he has done. His additions have attenuated the intensity of the struggle between Santiago and the sea and probably leave many in the audience wondering what it was all about. They certainly didn't get the story as Hemingway envisioned it, and they are the losers.
"Santiago" is a good name for the old man who is in his 70s now and has been a fisherman all his life. "Santiago" is Spanish for Saint James, who was one of the first Apostles chosen by Christ. When Christ called him, James was out fishing with his father and brother John, and Christ called James and his brother John to follow him and be "fishers of men" instead.
Santiago is not a 21st century sportsman who fishes to demonstrate his skill and who feels separate from the web of life. Santiago fishes for survival and understands that he is like the fish he preys on, for they too prey on other fish in order to survive. We see this as he talks to the great fish and to the sea and asks them for their help.
Two films have been made of this story. The first was made in 1958; it was directed by Jud Taylor and starred Spencer Tracy. The second was a "made for TV" film and appeared in 1990, directed by John Sturges. It starred Anthony Quinn.
Both have serious flaws. Ironically, a truly great version could have been made if Jud Taylor, the director of the 1958 version, had been able to cast Anthony Quinn in the role of Santiago. Taylor's version was the closest to the story as Hemingway wrote it. It gave us Santiago and his struggle with the sea just as Hemingway presented it to us. The weakest part, for me anyway, was the casting of Spencer Tracy. I have enjoyed watching Tracy in a number of films, but I just couldn't see him as a poor Cuban fisherman. Every few minutes some part of me would insist that he just wasn't Santiago, but someone playing a role.
The 1990 version, directed by John Sturges, was far more fortunate in the casting of Anthony Quinn as Santiago. I thought he was completely convincing as Santiago, a poor Cuban fisherman, getting old, and desperately trying to maintain his independence, in spite of his age.
Sturges, unfortunately, just had to "improve" this story, or perhaps he felt that the average American TV viewer just wouldn't be bothered watching the story as Hemingway wrote it. So, Sturges added a few things, one of which was a brief bio by the bartender at the local hotel, and which served no purpose whatsoever to the story.
A second "improvement" was the addition of Santiago's "daughter" who insisted that he was too old to be on his own anymore and wanted him to move in with her and her husband. He could just spend the rest of his life drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. She also feared what the neighbors would say if she left him out there on his own. They would blame her for not taking proper care of her father.
However, the most annoying insertion was that of an "author" and his wife who were staying at the hotel. The author probably was supposed to be Hemingway himself as the author became interested in the old man and his failure to catch fish. Could the author's suggested "writer's block" be analogous to Santiago's inability to catch fish?
The film switched back and forth from Santiago to the author and occasional flashbacks of interactions with his daughter. This seriously interrupted the intensity of the fight between Santiago and the great fish and the subsequent struggle to bring the fish back. We may have been with Santiago half of the time, but those scenes were so weakened by the interruptions that the intensity of Santiago's struggles was severely diminished.
Of course, there were no authors, with or without blocks, or daughters in Hemingway's version, nor was there a bartender who came to Cuba years ago.
I think directors such as John Sturges do a disservice to the author, to the story, and to the audience when they water down the original story as he has done. His additions have attenuated the intensity of the struggle between Santiago and the sea and probably leave many in the audience wondering what it was all about. They certainly didn't get the story as Hemingway envisioned it, and they are the losers.
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