According to lore, Ernest Hemingway re-wrote the final sentence of his classic novel A Farewell To Arms 25 times. After Frederic’s struggles to survive the war, and to be with his beloved Catherine, she dies suddenly. And in typical Hemingway terseness, Frederic finally leaves her body at the hospital and Hemingway concludes: “After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.”
Some of the rejected endings:
1. “After a while I left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain, and I didn’t have an umbrella, and I was like, ‘Could this day get any worse?’ and then a car went by and splattered me with mud, and I fell in a pile of garbage and that made me swallow my gum.”
2. “After a little while I left the hospital because those places totally give me the creeps. It’s smell, I guess? I don’t know. Yuckers.”
3. “After a while I left the hospital and, needing an appropriately manly way to express my grief, killed a bull with a live swordfish. Then I saluted their pure, noble strength with a quart of bourbon.”
4. “After a while I went out and left the hospital, and found a telephone. It rang. ‘Hello, Veronica? Guess who’s single?!’”
5. “After a while I left the hospital and was walking back to the hotel in the rain, when I heard Catherine quietly calling my name. I suddenly roused, and realized I was in bed, with Catherine beside me. It had all been a dream!”
6. “I looked at her body and noticed a tiny pin-prick behind Catherine’s ear. This was murder. She had known too much and someone had shut her down. And someone was going to pay. FREDERIC HENRY WILL RETURN IN: THE SCORPIO CONFIGURATION.”
8. “After a while I went out and was walking back to the hotel, and I was all, ‘This is total bullshit. Like, seriously. This just fucking sucks. It sucks big time. This sucks donkey dong.’”
9. “After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain. Light rain, but still. The next day I packed, which took longer than I expected, because my clothes wouldn’t fit in the suitcase, even though it was the same clothes that fit when I first packed – how does that always happen? Ha ha! – and left and wound up moving to Chicago. Chicago’s nice, but the winters are brutal. Eventually found a job as an ambulance driver, which took a while; who knew there were so many qualified ambulance drivers? I faked one of my references, and when they called I had to disguise my voice. Oh, I also got in to jigsaw puzzles, which is weird, because I always thought puzzles were dumb and for old people. Anyway, I guess I’m rambling, so I’ll wrap this up. Thanks for reading! I hope you liked my book!”
10. “Catherine believed in that orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther, and one fine morning… and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly in to the… ah, this ending would never work. You like it F. Scott? It’s yours. Take it.”
11. “After a while I went out and left the hospital. IF YOU THINK FREDERIC SHOULD WALK BACK TO THE HOTEL, TURN TO PAGE 82. IF YOU THINK FREDERIC SHOULD GO TO A BAR, TURN TO PAGE 14. IF YOU THINK FREDERIC SHOULD ENTER THE CAVE OF SPELLS, TURN TO PAGE 44.”
The Byronic Man 
July 29, 2013 at 3:17 am
He really should have gone with that last one. Everything’s better with “pick-a-path”!
July 29, 2013 at 2:07 pm
It is the trademark of great literature. Hamlet’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure, except if you ever choose to do anything, you turn to that page and Hamlet changes his mind and frets some more.
July 29, 2013 at 3:22 am
I never would have guessed Hemingway tried all of these approaches.
July 29, 2013 at 2:08 pm
He was very versatile. Also moody. Possibly multiple-personality.
July 29, 2013 at 2:17 pm
Good liver, too.
July 29, 2013 at 4:29 am
Reblogged this on Em Speaks and commented:
These made me laugh. 9 and 10 are probably my favorites.
July 29, 2013 at 2:09 pm
I do like the image of tough guy Papa saying “I hope you liked my book!”
July 29, 2013 at 4:34 am
Thank you, Hemingway, for providing me with my morning guffaw. And goddammit, I just swallowed my gum. This is turning out to be a real donkey dong of a day.
July 29, 2013 at 2:09 pm
I forgot I left “donkey dong” in there. I thought that would be too juvenile… apparently my sub-conscious liked it too much.
July 30, 2013 at 5:45 am
Well, your subconscious is freaking funny as hell.
July 29, 2013 at 4:53 am
Number 3 is probably as close to spot on as you can get!
July 29, 2013 at 2:11 pm
Old Man & The Sea is like Hemingway decided to write one sequel for all of his novels, isn’t it?
July 29, 2013 at 4:54 am
Oh man. I bet this post was really, really good. Very nice, even. It’s too bad I’m so caught up in this jigsaw puzzle. Holla back when you’ve got the sword-brandishing bear bit sorted. That’s the only part I caught, but it sounded promising.
July 29, 2013 at 2:12 pm
People would like the classics better if there were more sword-wiedling bears in them.
July 29, 2013 at 3:19 pm
That is the truth. That’s exactly what Moby Dick needed. Beyond editing and a major redraft that would make it more than a whaling encyclopedia with a plot. A sword-wielding bear going after the whale, now, that would’ve been epic.
August 3, 2013 at 5:01 pm
You can never have too many sword-wielding bears, is how I figure it. They’re always good for a surprise plot twist. I mean, how many times does one expect to run into sword-wielding bears? It’s ALWAYS a surprise twist! Every! Single! Time!
July 29, 2013 at 5:01 am
Reblogged this on My Mind's Not Right! / Teetering on the Brink of an All-Out Breakthrough and commented:
Abso-fucking-lutely HILARIOUS! Thanks for this!
July 29, 2013 at 3:02 pm
Thanks!
July 29, 2013 at 5:26 am
#1 – definitely. It’s truly in his voice. That other voice of his – the one belonging to a guy who doesn’t endlessly obsess over a damn sentence.
July 29, 2013 at 2:38 pm
Part of me wants to pshaw at that level of obsessive revision. Then the other part of me mocks “Are you a genius who changed modern literature? No? Are you sure?”
July 30, 2013 at 5:26 am
Yeh. I question the classics all the time. I question the giants of literature all the time. I never get answers.
July 29, 2013 at 5:26 am
Hysterical! I like them all, but I really did giggle at #4
July 29, 2013 at 2:39 pm
Oh, good. I was afraid people might think that was too far.
July 29, 2013 at 5:31 am
Why on earth didn’t he choose #3 … it was just so … so … him. And so true to life …
I just had to larf at these, BM … soooo funny.
July 29, 2013 at 2:40 pm
He probably would have written it in fewer words, though. “The bull was there. He killed it with a swordfish. Bourbon.”
July 29, 2013 at 5:34 am
Number five because I’m a closet optimist. In true Catherine form, she could handle her illness with grace and quickly recover. Maybe she could even help Frederick with his detachment issues. He would wake up a new man.
Or, you could combine endings one and five. THAT would really make Frederick lose his gum.
July 29, 2013 at 3:02 pm
Apparently the two most common endings for sci-fi/fantasy manuscripts are “It was all a dream!” and having only two people left alive on a planet and (twist!) we find out their names are Adam and Eve.
July 29, 2013 at 5:37 am
Who wouldn’t want to talk to a bear with a sword?? Like that’s even an option!
July 29, 2013 at 3:06 pm
I bet if you got in a fight with a sword-wielding bear it’d be a really hollow victory if you knocked the sword out of his paws. “Ha HA! Now all you have to defend yourself with is your massive, spiked jaw, and razor-sharp, baseball-mitt sized claws at the end of your herculean arms! Ha HA. Ha. Heh.”
July 29, 2013 at 6:01 am
Yet another idea of yours I wish I’d had, darling. Could I request a small favour of you? Take a sec and check this out: http://wp.me/p3hJV8-5r I think that you and I share a similar sense of humour, and seeing as you’ve given me a chuckle today, I feel it only fair to return the favour.
July 29, 2013 at 6:17 am
I always enjoyed turning the pages in a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I also enjoyed turning pages in my public school text books until I’d finally reach something like a baboon’s ass which would be circled and and arrow would be pointing to it from the words “this is you” or something equally clever.
July 29, 2013 at 3:07 pm
What I hate is when you come across some piece of adolescent graffiti or defaced text and it makes you genuinely guffaw. A reminder that you’re not so sophisticated.
July 29, 2013 at 6:45 am
Lol! Choose your own adventure would have been gold.
July 29, 2013 at 7:34 am
I liked #8 the best. Will it be considered plagiarism if I end my book with the phrase “donkey dong?”
July 29, 2013 at 3:10 pm
If it’s good enough for Cervantes, Dumas, and Dostoyesvsky, it should be good enough for any of us.
I don’t know if Dmitri Karamozov or Edmond Dantes said, “This sucks donkey dong” at any point, but they certainly should have.
July 29, 2013 at 7:44 am
Pretty good. Can you work-up a version with wizards, orcs and vampires in it? I’ll bet that’d really move some product. Also, a version with an appearance by Spider-Man.
July 29, 2013 at 3:10 pm
And if they all eat & drink endorsed products, it’ll pay for itself!
July 29, 2013 at 8:34 am
#11 was just a little ahead of its time. It would have been a huge hit 30 years later.
July 29, 2013 at 3:12 pm
Choose Your Own Adventure classics would actually be pretty cool.
July 29, 2013 at 8:55 am
This is what happens when you use a ghost writer. You hire the wrong one and it’s eight years until your next blockbuster.
July 29, 2013 at 8:58 am
Love them all!
But I think you forgot the one where Catherine uses a Delorean to travel back to the moment they met and warn him that she was going to die.
(Of course then she can’t find enough plutonium to fill the flux capactor anyway)
July 29, 2013 at 9:26 am
Hemingway probably considered finishing the book with “After a while I went out and left the hospital”, but then thought that the readers may notice the story is not complete.
July 29, 2013 at 2:14 pm
“And went WHERE? WHERE DID HE GO AFTER THE HOSPITAL?? WHAT WERE THE WEATHER CONDITIONS??”
July 29, 2013 at 2:29 pm
Exactly. Arrrrgh!!!! The mystery, the questions, it’s unbearable!!!
July 29, 2013 at 11:23 am
So many choices. It must have been a really tough decision for him. Perhaps he drew straws?
July 29, 2013 at 2:15 pm
He probably shot things.
July 29, 2013 at 11:54 am
I like 3, 4, and 8.
July 29, 2013 at 1:01 pm
It’s worth noting that Ernie’s zombie ending didn’t even make the cut. You know, the one where the newly dead Catherine comes lurching down the street in her quest for the flesh of the living?
July 29, 2013 at 3:20 pm
I, personally, would love to read The Scorpio Configuration.
July 29, 2013 at 4:53 pm
Speaking of “choose your own adventures” is it time once more for another episode of Maxine Cho, her dog Bonkers the Beagle and Reginald the ghost? If so, please delight us with another great piece of storytelling…
July 29, 2013 at 6:57 pm
Can I stop at the bar on my way to the Cave of Spells?
July 29, 2013 at 8:01 pm
Just walk away. In the rain. Alone.
July 29, 2013 at 9:08 pm
Didn’t Hemingway have a hundred cats? I imagine him walking off to buy milk or whatever cats like and picking up another dozen strays after leaving the hospital and returning to the hotel. May I respectfully submit that as #12?
July 30, 2013 at 9:39 am
Number four was my favorite – clearly this is the best coping mechanism for a grief stricken BF. 🙂
July 30, 2013 at 11:17 pm
You hit it with no. 4. — that’s the reason I loathe Hemingway, but the only part of a woman he could ummm “really understand” was between her legs. What an ass.
But your take on him is brilliant.
July 31, 2013 at 1:33 am
No. 3 is as Hemingway as it gets.
July 31, 2013 at 4:39 am
25 times and thats the one he stuck with?!
July 31, 2013 at 10:11 am
This is why I never thought Hemingway was all that and a bag of chips, no matter HOW much my high school English teacher nattered on and on about what he REALLY meant with his terse sentences. He could have nailed this story with any one of your fine alternatives.
July 31, 2013 at 6:49 pm
On the plus side, terse sentences mean that when authors do a reading from one of their works, the audience won’t glaze over from the flowerly verbiage. Brevity kills.
August 3, 2013 at 5:43 am
Yes, #3 is spot on. And it’s a sad fact to those of us re-write a million times, that sometimes deeply flawed individuals are great writers. Darn it. Where’s the leopard I need to shoot?
August 3, 2013 at 7:05 am
This took a lot of time and imagination. I think you are much better at the choices than Hemingway. He must have been distracted and you are so focused! Great post!