What was the background of THE HEMINGWAY HOAX?
The Hemingway Hoax started out as the result of a casual conversation with an ex-student of mine. He¹d driven my wife and me to an airport, and while we were killing time waiting for the flight, I told him the true story about Hemingway¹s lost manuscripts. In 1923, Hemingway¹s wife Hadley had packed up all of his writings — three years¹ worth — and left the bag unattended on a train. They were stolen.I commented to my student that someone with a real gift for literary imitation, an old typewriter, and no morals could make a million bucks faking those lost manuscripts. Almost immediately the safer alternative occurred to me: settle for less than a million and write a book about a guy who attempts the fake.I started the outline for The Hemingway Hoax the next morning, in Tahiti, and finished it on Heron Island in Australia¹s Great Barrier Reef. Then I put it away and resumed work on the book that would become Buying Time.I wrote most of The Hemingway Hoax at home in Gainesville, Florid
