Hemingway loved to write letters. And he wrote thousands of them. A fair deal of the letters had a business objectives, getting his stories published, getting his money and more of that sort of things. But he also wrote a lot of private letters to family and friends. here’s a short one to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas:
[May 1925]
Dear Friends,
Fitzgerald was around yesterday afternoon with his wife and she is worth seeing so I ‘ll bring them around Friday afternoon unless you want me not to. Bill Smith ‘s going to put McAlmon’s publishing on a business basis, accounts kept, sales followed up and collections made so Bob will know how he stands and he is a good business man and careful and cautious so that is all to the good. They are going to get a good list from Tennessee (Anderson) and all of us and try and sell out all the books direct by mail to the states so there won’t be all this loss on dealers…
So far this very short fragment from one of his letters. If you would like to read more of Hemingway’s letters I would recommend the Cambridge University Press edition edited by Spanner, Defazio and Trogdon. I myself have the second volume that spans the period from 1923 to 1925, the period Hemingway lived in Paris.
