{"id":3796,"date":"2021-11-10T09:03:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-10T14:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/?p=3796"},"modified":"2022-11-08T14:15:56","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T19:15:56","slug":"under-kilimanjaro-ernest-hemingway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/?p=3796","title":{"rendered":"Under Kilimanjaro"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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By Brian Smith <\/h6>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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This book is an account of Ernest Hemingway\u2019s safari with his fourth wife Mary in late 1953 and early 1954.\u00a0 This trip ended abruptly in January 1954 after they had two near-fatal plane crashes in East Africa.\u00a0 While back in Havana, Hemingway wrote his \u201cAfrican Book\u201d and completed it in 1956. He left this manuscript, along with those for A Moveable Feast, Islands in the Stream, <\/em>and The Garden of Eden, <\/em>in a safe deposit box in Cuba.\u00a0 Under Kilimanjaro <\/em>is the last of Hemingway\u2019s manuscripts to be published in its entirety.\u00a0<\/p>

I enjoyed spending time with Papa while reading his \u201cAfrican Book.\u201d\u00a0 I am about at the end of the Hemingway canon, and I am going to miss not having anything new to read; however, I always enjoy coming back to his novels for a second and third reading.\u00a0 Under Kilimanjaro <\/em>was enjoyable to read.\u00a0 I think Hemingway was very happy while on this Safari, and I wonder if it were not for the serious injuries he had sustained on this trip that maybe he would have lived a little longer.\u00a0 The details of the plane crashes are not described in the book.\u00a0<\/p>

Hemingway seemed to be at ease and enjoying the company of Mary.\u00a0 This book has a light-hearted feel.\u00a0 It is full of classic Hemingway playing out several fantasies. \u00a0As usual, he had assembled a group of misfit characters that were his cronies and partners in crime.\u00a0 Hemingway fantasied about being part of the Wakamba tribe and invented his own religion to which he recruited his gun bearer, Ngui, and others in the Safari Staff.\u00a0 This was a religion where when they die, they go to the \u201cHappy Hunting Grounds,\u201d where there is free beer and no game department, and each member gets five fertile wives. \u00a0They named the religion \u201cThe Holy War Meat Eaters and Beer Drinkers Happy Hunting Ground and Mountain\u201d religion.<\/p>

Hemingway was also serving as an Acting Game Ranger in the absence of his professional hunter that had to leave them for some time on other business.\u00a0 In this position, he acted as though he was the mayor, physician, police chief, or whatever role he wanted to play.\u00a0 It reminds me of his antics in Cuba hunting German U-Boats from Pilar.\u00a0 Along with his role of Acting Game Ranger and founder of a new religion, he befriended a young African girl, Debba, whom he referred to as his fianc\u00e9e.\u00a0 Mary played along with this fantasy as Debba was to be the \u201csecondary wife,\u201d and Mary would still have the position of the main wife.\u00a0<\/p>

In much of the book, Papa and Mary were in the pursuit of a large dark maned lion that Mary had been hunting for months, and he continued to elude her because she was too short to see over the tall grass to get a shot at him.\u00a0 Finally, she does get a shot at the lion, wounding him, and Hemingway gets in the killing shot with a long \u201chail Mary\u201d shot just before it was to enter thick cover.\u00a0<\/p>

The entire book is full of good dialogue in classic Hemingway prose, which includes several ruminations from his past in France, Spain, and Cuba and discussions about Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.<\/p>

Under Kilimanjaro <\/em>has been criticized by some as being full of macho nonsense, silly fantasy, hunting, drinking, and rambling dialogue. \u00a0It is certainly not a work of art as some of his best novels; however, I found it entertaining, fun, and pure Hemingway.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book is an account of Ernest Hemingway’s safari with his fourth wife Mary in late 1953 and early 1954. This trip ended abruptly in January 1954 after they had two near-fatal plane crashes in East Africa. While back in Havana, Hemingway wrote his \u201cAfrican Book\u201d and completed it in 1956. He left this manuscript, along with those for A Moveable Feast, Islands in the Stream, and The Garden of Eden, in a safe deposit box in Cuba. Under Kilimanjaro is the last of Hemingway\u2019s manuscripts to be published in its entirety. I enjoyed spending time with Papa while reading his \u201cAfrican Book.\u201d I am about at the end of\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3804,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,78,45,43],"class_list":["post-3796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-africa","tag-beyond-the-mason-dixon","tag-ernest-hemingway","tag-safari"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/kilimanjaro-scaled.jpg","acf":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3796"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7741,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3796\/revisions\/7741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feathersandwhiskey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}