Ernest Hemingway Reads

“Hemingway’s voice [is] a clear, vibrant, low tenor, unexpectedly youthful, almost boyish. It reminds one of a recurring theme in the fiction, that of age reaching back toward youth. . . [Ernest Hemingway Reads] provides his readers the opportunity to listen for and appreciate the Hemingway wit.”     – The Nation

One of Ernest Hemingway’s deadliest enemies was The Microphone…but over the years, under special circumstances, Ernest did record a few things for me on an old Webster wire recorder that he kept in his finca in Cuba, and on a transistorized pocket recorder called a Midgetape which we took on our travels. These wires and tapes, imperfect though they are, are virtually the only record we have of his voice. (The one exception is his acceptance of the Nobel Prize which was recorded by a Havana radio station.) – A.E. Hotchner

This audio includes: The Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Second Poem to Mary, In Harry’s Bar in Venice, The Fifth Column, Work in Progress, Saturday Night at the Whorehouse in Billings, Montana.

This audio reproduces the full sound spectrum of the historic recordings; it has been re-mastered using contemporary digital equipment.