Ernest Hemingway Typed Letter Signed "Papa." One page, 8.5" x 11", on Finca Vigia, San Francisco de Paula letterhead, Cuba, November 24, 1954. Just one month after the announcement that he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in part because of his 1952 novel, The Old Man and the Sea, he was interviewed for Time magazine by Robert "Bob" Manning, first in person and then through a series of correspondence.

Here the author writes to Manning and begins by discussing injuries he has suffered in two plane crashes (on two consecutive days) earlier in the year: "I think it would be truthful enough and less blood-curdling to reduce it to 'He has been wounded in the head, the feet . . . both knees both arms, both hands and the scrotum.' . . . leave the scrotum out unless that constitutes indecent exposure." He then turns his attention to his novel, The Old Man and the Sea, "I thought Santiago was never alone because he had his friend and enemy the sea, and the things that lived in the sea, some of whom he loved and others he hated. The feeling he had about the fish is clearly indicated in the book I think. I believe he loved the sea. But she is a great whore you know, and I got that in the book too I hope. This, for your information, not to quote, is what I tried to do; make a real old man, a real boy, real sea, and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things. . . . What you write about Old Man's comment on sin I believe. I would not change what I said in Death in the Afternoon . . . I am a more complex guy, perhaps than the man Santiago, and not such a good man." 

At the conclusion of the letter, he talks of his good friend, the poet Ezra Pound: "This covers the three issues you raised. Will make a couple of corrections in the Pound business and enclose you copy [sic]. The Pound thing will make plenty trouble probably but I would feel a coward if I did not use this chance to put it [sic] my two bits worth for Ezra the Poet."

With the original transmittal envelope. Written on onion-skin paper with smoothed folds and light toning around the edges. From the Collection of a Minnesota Gentleman.