A Rotting, Decrepit Place

The U.S. Treasury Department will not allow U.S. conservationists to contribute funds to the restoration of Ernest Hemingway's Cuban villa. The place has been deemed a tourist attraction rather than an educational institution, and so donations are apparently the moral equivalent of handing Fidel a fistful of cash:

"We should be focusing on rebuilding the shattered lives of poor Cubans, rather than fixing buildings for one of the world's richest dictators, Fidel Castro," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, a steadfast supporter of the embargo, in a recent press statement.

Comments

The Wine Commonsewer | September 28, 2005, 12:30pm | #

I really detest Castro. I really sympathize with the Cubans who hate him. But (duh) if this is private money so what? If it's government money.......

thoreau | September 28, 2005, 12:34pm | #

Hopefully, withholding these donations will be the straw that breaks the back of the Castro regime. I mean, those sanctions have been in place for so long, it can't be that much longer before Castro falls.

Right?

Recent College Graduate | September 28, 2005, 12:34pm | #

Ernest who?

Uncle Sam | September 28, 2005, 12:43pm | #

Further evidence of the stupidity of political government.

drf | September 28, 2005, 12:50pm | #

this earth. this realm. this england...

thoreau:

why do you hate literature?

strat | September 28, 2005, 12:54pm | #

I have often mourned the lack of characters with the combination of insight and humorous gravitas that Hemingway had.

I think the world would be a better place if some individual had gone to Iraq and "liberated" a hotel bar, perhaps at the Al Rashid?

Robert Young Pelton might do the trick. Lord knows Sean Penn doesn't count.

Austinite | September 28, 2005, 1:37pm | #

It's interesting that Ileana Ros-Lehtinen wants to rebuild the lives of poor Cubans yet blocks the renovation. Does she think wealthy Cubans are out looking for renovation work?

Taylor Buley | September 28, 2005, 2:51pm | #

When good parties go bad: ladies and gentlemen I present to you the Republican free-market embargo.

Shem | September 28, 2005, 3:08pm | #

Am I the only person on Earth who can't stand Hemingway? I'd bet good money that 150 years from now the only people who'll read any of his writing will be literary scholars trying to figure out what the hell brought on the great bovine revolt of 2032.

Shem | September 28, 2005, 3:10pm | #

Am I the only person on Earth who can't stand Hemingway? I'd bet good money that 150 years from now the only people who'll read any of his writing will be literary scholars trying to figure out what the hell brought on the great bovine revolt of 2032.

The Anti-Puritan | September 28, 2005, 6:03pm | #

Ernest who?

You know, the guy who said, “Hey, Vern, know whut I mean?”

The Cuban embargo is like the war on drugs. It’s been failing for decades, but it’s always just about to achieve its goal.

Stevo Darkly | September 28, 2005, 6:40pm | #

The great thing about Ernest Hemingway is that he wrote The Old Man and the Sea, and your teacher will accept it as the subject of a book report -- and it's only like 20 pages long.

So you can write your book report in maybe two days tops, while your classmates are still struggling through the first 10-page paragraph of fucking Turn of the Screw by fucking Henry James.

-- Stevo, who once had to do a book report on Turn of the Screw because someone else got to the school library's copy of The Old Man and the Sea before I did.

The Anti-Puritan | September 28, 2005, 7:25pm | #

Stevo,
TURNs out you were SCREWed.

Stevo Darkly | September 28, 2005, 9:23pm | #

But the evil Screwers shall be brought to justice.

whocares | September 28, 2005, 9:23pm | #

"It’s been failing for decades, but it’s always just about to achieve its goal."

= Every govt program for around 150-200 years. Or since before the[/any] govt had enough money to fund a project.

War.

I quit.

Stevo Darkly | September 28, 2005, 9:27pm | #

"It’s been failing for decades, but it’s always just about to achieve its goal."

Are we talking about the server again?

The Anti-Puritan | September 28, 2005, 10:01pm | #

But the evil Screwers shall be brought to justice.

That’s Rick Santorum’s motto. Catharine MacKinnon’s, too.

Douglas Fletcher | September 28, 2005, 11:49pm | #

Poor Stevo, you didn't understand that nobody who's ever read it can figure out what the fuck Turn of the Screw was about. You should have just lit up a joint and spewed words onto the page, but no, you were one of those good students, weren't you?

Stevo Darkly | September 29, 2005, 1:43am | #

Yeah, Douglas, I was one of those good students, and I never lit up a joint. Believe it or not.

I have to admit, though, in college some of my smoothest-flowing writing seemed to occur when I'd been up all night working on a long-postponed paper that was due that morning, and I wasn't quite in my right mind. That's how I wrote a paper on Herman Melville's Typee. It just flowed. The only drawback was that I wrote the entire paper in Herman Melville's "voice" -- I couldn't help it.

You should have just lit up a joint and spewed words onto the page,

You know, I read that's pretty much how Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road, although he may have been on something stronger than pot. He wrote it all at one sitting, I think, and all one paragraph. He went back and broke it up into paragraphs later.

Come to think of it, I bet Henry James wrote Turn of the Screw the same way.

Douglas Fletcher | September 29, 2005, 1:51am | #

Kerouac supposedly wrote On the Road in the one shot, but my understanding is that it was more like the fifth draft of the thing, that he had been attempting that type of writing for some time and had done four or five "dress rehearsals", if you will.