I had patted my doctor on the shoulder. “Could it be a year?” I asked. Hemingway had once told me that it took him about a year to write a book.
“Not a year, I am afraid, my dear friend,” said my doctor.
“Nine months, then?” I said. My book would not be an act of genius as Hemingway’s books had been, so certainly I could write it in nine months. Nine months sounded like such a fertile period of time.
“Perhaps nine months,” said my doctor.
On the way out into the hills to my home that evening, I had my driver stop by a stationery store so I could buy more paper for my laser printer.
IN 1961, the week I heard of Hemingway’s death, I resolved to write about those few months with him in the summer of 1942. Last week, almost thirty-seven years after making that promise, I finished the first draft of this book. I know that there should be many more rewrites, much polishing, but I am afraid that is not possible. In a way, I feel like I am cheating discipline, and it pleases me.
I really did not begin reading fiction until after World War II. I began with Homer and spent a decade just working my way to Charles Dickens and Dostoyevsky. I did not read a Hemingway book until 1974. I started The Sun Also Rises the week that Nixon resigned from office.
I see the weaknesses in Hemingway’s self-conscious prose and in his even more self-conscious philosophical stances. At times, especially in the later books such as Across the River and Into the Trees, the critics are right: Hemingway’s style becomes a parody of Hemingway’s style.
But ahh… when he was good. There indeed was the genius he mentioned that night on the sandy hillside above the beacon at Point Roma.
It is in the short stories that I best hear the voice of Ernest Hemingway. It is there in his short stories that I began to see the hawk in the dab of blue for a sky. It is there that I could catch a glimpse… not even of a periscope… but of the slightest hint of the wake of a periscope in the blue of the Gulf, and immediately see and hear and smell the workings of that submarine, the sweat of its crew, and the terror of the two boys waiting to go ashore and die.
One of my few regrets the past nine months is that it is difficult to read when one is writing ten to twelve hours a day. I wonder how real writers deal with that. I remember Hemingway reading at all times of the day and night—by the pool, over meals, aboard the Pilar. Perhaps his deadline was less demanding.
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS TOTALLY CHANGED. Nothing remains as I remember it.
It is all familiar, of course, because of magazines, newspapers, television, CNN, a thousand movies on videotape and laser disk, and—more recently—the Internet. But it is totally changed.
I called one of my few friends still at the Agency—a young man I helped to train in my last years on the job, now one of the senior members of the firm—and asked for one final favor. He hesitated, but in the end I received the packet via Federal Express: the passport, well-used and frequently stamped, my photograph under someone else’s name; the credit cards, including a gold American Express card; the driver’s license, Social Security card, and other wallet detritus, including a fishing license. My friend had a sense of humor. But then, he knew something about me and could be certain that I would not be up to much mischief during my brief stay. The fishing license was scheduled to expire about the same time I was.
I came into the country through Toronto and perversely chose to drive to Idaho. Driving myself was a nice change—although I personally do not believe that unwell eighty-five-year-olds with one working eye should be allowed to drive at all—but driving on an American interstate highway is truly a new experience. So much more open and empty than an autobahn.
I bought a firearm in Spearfish, South Dakota. There was a mandatory waiting period while they checked to make sure that I was not a felon, but I did not mind waiting. The trip had tired me out, and the medicine I was taking tired me more. It also allowed me to take the trip. The medicine was very powerful, not legalized by the FDA or any other regulatory agency in any nation, but it works quite well. It would kill me if I were to take it for more than a month, but that will not be a problem.
The man at the gun shop called me at the motel a few days later and told me that I could pick up the gun any time. The name under my passport photograph belongs to a solid, upstanding citizen with no felony priors or recorded incidents of violent mental illnesses.
I chose a Sig Sauer .38 because I had never owned one before or used one in the line of duty. It looks small and square and compact compared to the long-barreled weapons of my youth. It has been two decades since I last carried a handgun.
Yesterday I arrived in Ketchum. The town must have grown much since Hemingway bought a home there in the winter of 1959, but it still has the feel of a mining town. I found the site of the Christiana Restaurant, where Hemingway had insisted that FBI men were following him and demanded that his party leave before finishing their meals. Near there, I found a room at a motel and then went to a liquor store. I bought a presentation gift box of Chivas Regal, complete with two Scotch glasses with the Chivas emblem embossed on them.
The house he and his wife had bought in 1959 is still there. It is quite unpreposessing—a two-story chalet with steeply pitched roofs and sides of rough, poured concrete. The gravel road has been paved since Hemingway’s day, and other homes have moved up the hill that must have been covered with nothing but sagebrush when the writer lived there, but the view is the same—rows of high peaks to the north and south, the double bend of the Big Wood River to the east.
Yesterday evening, driving around town before returning to my hotel, I found an empty lane, little more than two ruts through the sagebrush, that seems to cross the high plains forever before disappearing into the haze at the base of the mountains. That is where I will drive this afternoon, after this visit to the cemetery. I have my Toshiba laptop in the rented Taurus and will remember to save this last page or two to floppy disk before turning off the computer and taking a walk into the sagebrush.
Hemingway’s grave is set between two fine pines facing the Sawtooth Mountains. The view is—especially on a warming spring day like this, with the snow still capping the high peaks—truly breathtaking. There were three other people at his gravesite and I had to wait in the Taurus almost half an hour before they left. I never considered the fact that Hemingway’s grave must be a local tourist attraction.
Finally they are gone and I carry the gift box of Chivas over to the grave. I’ve forgotten my glasses and can’t make out most of the writing on the tombstone, but I can see his name and the dates of his birth and death.
Despite the warm sun, my hands are chilled, and I have trouble tearing the plastic from the gift box. The cap on the bottle also gives me trouble. It’s a pain in the ass being old and sick.
A few minutes ago, I set the two glasses of amber liquid on a level spot next to the headstone. The sun made the whiskey look like liquid gold.
I have always hated scenes in the movie where some asshole character gives a long soliloquy at a grave. It does not ring true. It is cheap. I would not even have come to Ketchum if I could have gone to Cuba… perhaps up to the finca, which is now a museum with the Pilar rotting away in the backyard. But I was certainly not up to that trip. One of the things that most pisses me off about dying now is that Castro will outlive me. I hope it is not by many months or years.
I lifted the first glass. “Confusion to our enemies,” I said softly, and drank the golden whiskey in one gulp.
I lifted the second glass. “Estamos copados,” I said. “Estamos copados, Papa.”
Reading Group Guide
A novel by
DAN SIMMONS
A note from Dan Simmons
on The Crook Factory
The incredible story of Ernest Hemingway’s Cuban spy-catching, submarine-chasing, World War II adventures in my new novel, The Crook Factory, is—I think—all the more incredible for being 95 percent true.
Some years ago I de
cided to write a fictional version of Hemingway’s Cuban spy adventures when I noticed just how cursorily that year, from May 1942 to April 1943, was covered by his many biographers. Usually the explanation went something like this—“In the first year of America’s involvement in the war, Hemingway stayed home in Cuba even while his wife and friends went off to fight or cover the fighting. During that time, Hemingway set up a counterespionage group which he called the Crook Factory and which was composed of old friends from the Spanish Civil War, bartenders, prostitutes, rumrunners, fishermen, priests, and other cronies. He also convinced the U.S. ambassador to arm his boat, the Pilar, in an attempt to lure a German submarine to the surface and sink it with grenades and small arms. He did not succeed in sinking a German submarine, and his spy organization was terminated in April 1943.”
What the biographies did NOT say was that Hemingway’s adventures are still classified in the voluminous dossier which the FBI has kept on him since the 1930s. What we DO know about those months during which the writer ran the Crook Factory and his seaborne Operation Friendless is that the FBI was very upset about what Hemingway was discovering about espionage activity in and around Cuba, and, more precisely, what secrets his agents had discovered about corruption in the Cuban government and national police. What all but the most recent biographies also do NOT explain about this period is that it appears to be the basis for the raging paranoia in the last years of Hemingway’s life—a period when the writer was certain that he was being followed by the FBI. The truth is that Hemingway was being followed by the FBI.
In The Crook Factory there is a fictional extension into the dark core of what we do not know about those months, but what we do know is amazing enough. Here are a few of the details in The Crook Factory that are based on confirmed fact:
J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI had warning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor but failed to follow up on it because of infighting with rival intelligence agencies.
Hemingway’s Crook Factory uncovered a nest of intrigue and corruption in Cuba.
Young Ian Fleming, later the creator of James Bond, was actively involved in espionage in the United States and Canada at that time.
Hemingway’s lifelong friendships with the likes of Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, and Ingrid Bergman all stemmed from this period.
Almost all of the spies and intelligence operations detailed in The Crook Factory were real people and real operations—as melodramatic and absurd as some appear.
All of the FBI memos in The Crook Factory are factual and reprinted verbatim.
The FBI surveillance of the sexual encounters between young naval lieutenant John F. Kennedy and a presumed German spy, Inga Arvad, was as depicted.
The secret transcripts of electronic and telephone surveillance on Kennedy and Arvad are reprinted exactly as the FBI recorded them.
The FBI’s illegal surveillance of the vice president of the United States and the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, were exactly as depicted.
The New York–based Viking Fund—a philanthropic organization investigating Incan ruins—was real, and the FBI investigation into its Nazi connections is true.
The 300-foot yacht, the Southern Cross, outfitted by a German spy and given to the Viking Fund, was real, and it was suspected by the FBI of serving German subs.
The vicious infighting between J. Edgar Hoover and rival organizations such as the OSS and the British BSC—often at the expense of the war effort—was real, including one incident where Hoover arrested OSS agents breaking into the Spanish Embassy in New York.
The plots by Himmler and Heydrich of the Nazi SS intelligence organizations to trap and discredit Admiral Canaris and his Abwehr spy group were real and resulted in Hilter disbanding the respected Abwehr. Canaris was eventually tortured and executed.
The BSC’s plot to kill Heydrich of the SS was real and planned in Canada’s Camp X.
Camp X was real.
The details of Hemingway’s Operation Friendless attempt to catch and sink a German submarine by posing as a Museum of Natural History research ship are real.
The South American German spies in The Crook Factory were actual agents, and their fates were as depicted.
The Marx brothers absurdity of the landing of Nazi agents on Long Island and the FBI’s refusal to believe them even when they were trying to turn themselves in was real and as insane as depicted in The Crook Factory.
Hemingway’s logs from the Pilar’s antisub patrols are given verbatim.
The vast majority of dialogue between Hemingway and other historical characters is based on real descriptions, and all of his comments to the fictional Joe Lucas about writing, the war, fiction versus fact, and so forth are based closely in Ernest Hemingway’s comments and writings.
Hemingway’s chase of the German submarine occurred exactly as depicted in the novel.
The depiction of Hemingway’s Crook Factory spy operation is accurate.
Hemingway’s real fear of the FBI in his last years and the details of his suicide are factual—as is the largely undisclosed actual interest the FBI still had in the aging writer. These newly revealed facts are confirmed through later interviews, new biographical information, and newly declassified FBI documents released through the Freedom of Information Act.
While the thrust of The Crook Factory is fictional, the vast majority of details, characters, incidents, dialogues, and wartime events are true. It was fun melding these almost fictional-sounding facts with the “truer than true” soul of fiction to create this book, and I hope it will be enjoyable for the reader to experience it.
—Dan Simmons
Questions and topics for discussion
1. How would you characterize Simmons’s portrayal of 1940s Cuba—both the expat community there in which Hemingway played a central role, and the local population? How does his portrayal align or differ from what you know or pictured about the region during World War II?
2. When we meet Lucas, the news of Hemingway’s suicide rocks him to his core. But when Lucas first meets Hemingway he knows nothing about him and isn’t quite sure what to make of the author’s larger-than-life persona. How would you characterize Lucas’s relationship with Hemingway as he first gets to know him?
3. Lucas’s at times fractious relationship with Hemingway changes over the course of the events depicted in The Crook Factory. What causes his feelings to evolve? Did your assessment of Hemingway, as depicted by Simmons, align with Lucas’s assessment of the novelist, or were there moments when your opinion of Hemingway differed from Lucas’s?
4. Were you surprised by Simmons’s portrayal of Hemingway? How did the Hemingway in The Crook Factory differ from your image of Hemingway?
5. Hemingway, both as a writer and a person, is frequently linked with depictions of masculinity in American society. How does machismo play a part in the story of The Crook Factory—not only in regards to Hemingway, but war and espionage as well?
6. How would you describe Hemingway’s relationship with his two sons in The Crook Factory—and what might the novel be said to say about the father-and-son relationship through the prism of their interactions? Do you see a similar dynamic in effect anywhere else in the novel?
7. Marriage and romance play key roles in The Crook Factory—not only in the number of attractive women that cross Lucas’s path, but in Hemingway’s relationship with his wife, and with the other women who frequent his estate. What do you think Dan Simmons says about love and intimacy in The Crook Factory?
8. Lucas is frequently caught off guard by the number of high-profile guests that visit Hemingway socially at the finca, and historical figures like J. Edgar Hoover and Ian Fleming make guest appearances in Simmons’s narrative outside of Hemingway’s immediate purview. Which famous person’s visit did you most enjoy reading about? Were they portrayed as you might have expected from reading about them, or your experience with their work?
9. In the report Lucas composes but does not send, Lucas writes: “A man wh
o reportedly glorifies action in his writing in life, Hemingway often confuses action with mere impulse, reality with self-inflicted melodrama.” Do you agree with Lucas’s assessment of Hemingway’s writing? Where do you see this characterization reflected in the events of The Crook Factory—or do you consider Lucas’s description unjust?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Simmons is the award-winning author of several novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Olympos, The Terror, and Drood. He lives in Colorado. For more information about Dan Simmons, visit DanSimmons.com.
ALSO BY DAN SIMMONS
Flashback
Black Hills
Drood
The Terror
Olympos
Hard as Nails
Ilium
Worlds Enough & Time
Hard Freeze
Hardcase
A Winter Haunting
Darwin’s Blade
The Rise of Endymion
Endymion
The Fires of Eden
Lovedeath
Summer Sketches
Children of the Night
The Hollow Man
Summer of Night
Prayers to Broken Stones
The Fall of Hyperion
Hyperion
Carrion Comfort
Phases of Gravity
Song of Kali
Extraordinary acclaim for Dan Simmons’s
THE CROOK FACTORY
“If Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, and Hemingway himself sat down to collaborate on a novel, the result might have been The Crook Factory… a work so strong, so original, that it may have other writers in the genre saying, ‘Wish I’d written that.’… A fast-paced tale of espionage that pays homage to Papa, doles out a quick history lesson, and offers up plenty of action and intrigue, it is a book to be recommended to anyone who loves a superb thriller.”