Hemingway's fiction, and all his work is fiction, except perhaps, his writing on bull-fighting, "Death in the Afternoon", and "The Dangerous Summer", is loosely based on his actual experiences, but should not be taken literally as fact. He states himself that fiction is actually "truer" if it is not bound by the facts of the experiences that serve as its inspiration.
Hemingway's written works sometimes contain conflicting descriptions of the same event. He wrote two rather different accounts, for example, of an encounter with F. Scott Fitzgerald and his French chauffer during a visit to Fitzgerald's home in Maryland in the late 1920's.
"The Green Hills of Africa" is based on his 1930's African experiences. "True at First Light" and the later revised and expanded version, "Under Kilimangaro", are based on his mid 1950's safari. There is an open question as to whether some aspects of the books, his involvement with an African woman during the 1950's safari, for example, are based on reality. No one really knows.
Even Hotchner, who was as close to Hemingway as anyone during the last years of his life, writes that he did not know when details of Hemingway's stories, written or otherwise, were actually true. Hemingway's third wife, Martha Gellhorn, went on at great length about his mythologizing.
The eagles killed in "Old Kite", which may or may not be purely fiction, are golden eagles. In any case, I don't know if it was a Federal crime to kill a golden eagle many years ago when the story is supposed to take place
Last edited by vangulil; 08/14/09 11:30 PM.
