The fury within the lines of the letter would have left Jonathan Cape in no doubt of Hemingway’s feelings about editorial changes to his 1932 nonfiction book about bull-fighting, Death in the Afternoon. Hemingway sent the letter to Cape on 19 November 1932: “All pleasure I had about the book coming out in England was effectively and completely removed by your letter of November 3rd. Professor Sandra Spanier, general editor of the Hemingway Letters Project and co-editor of each volume, told the Observer: “It’s a wonderful letter… Hemingway was responding to Cape’s letter of 3 November. Where the American edition of Death in the Afternoon reads ‘go f—k yourselves’, Cape’s English edition reads, ‘go hang yourselves’. It means that you’re doing well if they can’t understand it.”In that letter, Hemingway continued: “I’d like to sometime write something so goddamned good that I’d know I could never write anything better.”

Source: The Guardian March 29, 2020 06:56 UTC