Ernest Hemingway was a well travelled author, having served and reported overseas, and having travelled throughout much of his native United States. For all his travels, however, Hemingway rarely went to New York, and on the rare occasions he did it was merely to pass through. It was on one such occasion while on his way to Europe that Lillian Ross of The New Yorker requested an interview with the great American author. Hemingway granted the reporter an interview, but his initial reply to the request gives us a unique insight into not just how the man spent his limited time in New York, but into the man himself. As Ross writes:
“I don’t want to see anybody I don’t like, nor have publicity, nor be tied up all the time,” he went on. “Want to go to the Bronx Zoo, Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Modern Art, ditto of Natural History, and see a fight. Want to see the good Breughel at the Met, the one, no two, fine Goyas and Mr. El Greco’s Toledo. Don’t want to go to Toots Shor’s. Am going to try to get into town and out without having to shoot my mouth off. I want to give the joints a miss. Not seeing news people is not a pose. It is only to have time to see your friends.” In pencil, he added, “Time is the least thing we have of.”
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