Hemingway in Love: His Own Story

“I said, ‘If the birds had such kinship that when one of them died, so did the other one, then what did the second firebird lose? Is there a third thing in this world, at least as powerful as Life and Death?’ ” Smithy sighed and rolled his eyes. “I know where this one’s going.” Mara paid no attention to him. She waved at him to hush. “What was it?”

Berning’s nervous breakdown finally brought Ivar out of hiding. Ivar was no stranger to mental illness. Both his mother and her father had problems. More recently, Ivar himself had been battling his own bouts of mania and depression while locked in his Silence Room. So he probably could relate to the breakdown.

Ernest Hemingway thought the “Crack-Up” pieces were “miserable.” People experienced emptiness many

Ernest already had plans for the royalties from the book. He was going to establish a trust fund for his family with the earnings from the first 70,000 copies; everything beyond that was going toward the purchase of a boat.