Ernest Hemingway Stories As Told By George Plimpton

From The Awl:

"So that’s how he had fun with his friends—by punching them in the face. Good times. Also, there’s the time he met Tennessee Williams in Cuba in 1960. Plimpton assesses how the nervous, eager to impress playwright did in their first meeting:

I don’t think the meeting went very well for him. Tennessee began by saying that when he lived in Key West he had known Hemingway’s former wife Pauline.

“How did she die?” Tennessee suddenly asked.

Hemingway peered at him in the gloom After a while he offered an explanation that seemed lifted from a freshman Hemingway parody: “She died and then she was dead.”

A silence ensued."

Key West, Cuba, Hemingway, Tennessee Williams. Grist for the dissertation? Who knows? It might make it in. I do love me a good anecdote.