The Making of Under Kilimanjaro

When the Hemingway Society's board of directors each received a copy of the 850-page typescript-manuscript of what Ernest Hemingway had informally referred to as "the African book" (he never gave it a title), we had responsibilities for its copyrighting and possible future publication. Hemingway's 1932 Death in the Afternoon was copyrighted by his long-time publisher Charles Scribner's Sons, but the 1937 To Have and Have Not and subsequent books were copyrighted to Hemingway himself. After his death, A Moveable Feast (1964) was copyrighted by Ernest Hemingway Ltd. (as he had indeed become very limited). Other books such as Larry W. Phillips's edited collection Ernest Hemingway on Writing (1984) had ad hoc copyrights; this book was copyrighted by Larry W. Phillips and Mary Welsh Hemingway. Later a much abbreviated manuscript of a novel was published as The Garden of Eden (1986) and copyrighted by Hemingway's widow Mary and his three sons John, Patrick, and Gregory.

Upon Mary's death in November 1986, the Hemingway Foundation that she had established to promote her late husband's life and works perceived that the Hemingway Society could assume its functions as well as continue its similar mandates and undertake one specific duty, the awarding of an annual Hemingway prize to the year's best first work of fiction published in the United States. Patrick Hemingway acted on behalf of the three Hemingway sons and heirs, and he and Jack Hemingway legally represented Gregory Hemingway. At a 1987 meeting in Manhattan of Patrick and Jack and Hemingway Society immediate past-president James Nagel and me as then or current president, we discussed the transfer or melding of the Hemingway Foundation to the Hemingway Society under New York State law as a tax-exempt entity. Before the meeting was over, Jack left, saying that whatever Patrick said was fine with him too. Lawyers subsequently legalized the transfer.

The Hemingway Foundation that Mary had conceived was thus eventually accepted by the Hemingway Society, which then became the Hemingway Foundation, d.b.a. (doing business as) the Hemingway Society. We had a dual role and a dual identity and (as at least two of us on the board independently perceived at the time of this transference in 1987) we had a tiger by the tail. A low-key group of academics and other Hemingway aficionados now inherited a considerable endowment of $200,000 and specific financial responsibilities.

One of the issues that had to be addressed was the possible publication of the 850-page African book (or, rather, a more inclusive publication than the three episodes that had already been published in Sports Illustrated in 1971–72 as "The African Journal"). Both Charles Scribner's Sons and the Hemingway Foundation wished to publish a more complete version. But copyright law (I discovered with rue) is replete with difficulties and disagreements, and one concerns the question of partial publication, as in the case of the Sports Illustrated version using55,000 words of the 200,000 word manuscript and copyrighted by Mary Hemingway. One claim advanced by George Bobrinskoy, attorney for the Hemingway Estate, was that copyright of a portion of a work extends thereafter to the total work.

Knowing of my interest in the African book and perhaps also of my editorial experience Patrick Hemingway invited me to consider editing the trade version for Scribner's. I knew at least one fellow member of the board of directors, Linda Miller, had read the entire manuscript and agreed with me that it should be published in its entirety: "I thought it read straight through all-of-a-piece. Slow moving, nuanced, wonderful," Linda had written. No other board members expressed specific opinions to me, but I was similarly convinced of the quality of the manuscript. No doubt it could be boiled down to several themes and subjects, as Sports Illustrated had done by emphasizing the hunting of a marauding lion and a leopard—appropriate episodes for such a magazine. But I could only see my responsibility, as an agent of the Society/Foundation, to convey and...