Ernest Hemingway’s Library
Imagine you are on a vacation in Cuba and an un-scrupulous security guard offers you the chance to sit in Ernest Hemingway’s Chair for $10, or take a look at his library for another $10.
But that’s when the short, sallow-faced secret policeman had come out with his extraordinary offer. I could have any book, any book at all, in Hemingway’s library for two hundred dollars.
An initial covetousness flooded through me. The first editions were what appealed most, especially ones by Graham Greene, Paul Bowles, Saul Bellow, Jack Kerouac, and perhaps if I looked hard enough I’d find that legendary inscribed Catcher in the Rye “Ernest, here’s remembering that time we spent liberating the Ritz bar, your buddy, Jerry.
Adrian McKinty from The Times didn’t succumb to the temptation, but would you?
