Today we’re setting off for Florida, and the idea has come to me to visit Key West and the Hemingway museum. Despite the fear of going over the Oversea Highway.
When my daughter heard about the idea of driving to Key West she paused. “It’s a little bit of a tough drive,” she said.
“Why?”
“Well … (slowly putting her words in order) you know, it’s a two lane highway over 100 miles of water. You can take a bus, actually, it’s probably easier.”
I do have a certain aversion for roadways over water. The Oversea Highway, I reflect, is probably a sight and a topic in itself. I ask if I could take a ferry instead.
She pauses again. “No … it’s not really efficient, I guess, there’s no ferry. Bus or car, that’s pretty much it. Unless you want to fly, there is a small airport.”
I almost never fly, especially not to small airports. Despite my doubt about the drive, I feel a tremendous draw to see Key West and most specifically the home of one of the iconic writers of the 20th century.
The mystery of Hemingway is the mystery of the Greek uber-hero Achilles, whose melancholy about his own greatness was captured brilliantly by Brad Pitt in the 2000 movie Helen of Troy. The everyday among us cannot help but wonder what is it like, to be a superstar, to have everything, so to speak, and then still be unhappy. There’s no point in debating that Hem was unhappy much of the time. It’s clear in all his fiction. It’s clear in his rejection of sentimentality. No happy person rejects emotion so decisively.
Poor old Hem, wandering the earth reaching for validation in conquest, saying to the multitude always in a thousand different ways, “I am the best,” through his writing, through his big game hunting, through his fishing, through his four marriages, each designed to somehow prove his ultimate masculine hegemony to man and woman alike. Even with his six-toed cats that roam the Hemingway Museum at his old home in Key West, he is saying “I am more than other men.”
I have to know more about this master of writing theory and practice. So, we are going, if , as I say, I’ve got breath in my body. Overseas highway or not, I have to try to see Key West.
