Cosmopolitan Was Once a Literary Magazine

Apparently! And suddenly, I have a new appreciation for the popularity of Hemingway.

It was on the morning of January 25, 1954, that word flashed around the world that Ernest and Mary had been killed in a plane crash in dense jungle near Murchison Falls in Uganda, setting off universal mourning and obituaries. But news of the tragedy was soon superseded by a report that Ernest had suddenly, miraculously, emerged from the jungle at Butiaba carrying a bunch of bananas and a bottle of Gordon’s gin.

All right, that makes sense to me. I've read a lot of his work over the years, most recently The Old Man and the Sea, and I've always liked it as far as it goes. What I hadn't understood before was his rock star image. But that -- and what follows -- makes sense of it.

The real story is about the dangers to a man of loving two women at the same time. It is, and perhaps it really must be, a tragic story. F. Scott Fitzgerald proves to be the wise man of the tale. He understood what was going on right at once, and tried to guide his friend in the right way. He was up against an at-least equal and opposite power, though, in one of the women who loved Hemingway.