After return­ing from World War I, Ernest Hem­ing­way moved to Toron­to and began writ­ing for the Toron­to Star. He worked there from 1920 to 1924 and some 70 of his arti­cles have been archived online in an attrac­tive new web­site, the Hem­ing­way Papers. At first Hem­ing­way was a stringer and lat­er he wrote as a staff writer, under the byline Ernest M. Hem­ing­way. His first arti­cle bore the head­line, “Tak­ing a Chance for a Free Shave” and chron­i­cled the young author’s vis­it to a bar­ber col­lege where straight-edge razors were wield­ed for free by stu­dents. He went on to write for the Star about box­ing and trout fish­ing and orga­nized crime in Chica­go. By 1922 Hem­ing­way had moved to Paris with his wife and sent dis­patch­es that antic­i­pat­ed the themes of the nov­els that would make him famous. He wrote about the effects of war, bull­fight­ing and the life of an impov­er­ished artist in Paris. His asso­ci­a­tion with the Star gave him access to post-war Europe that he wouldn’t have had oth­er­wise and work­ing as a reporter taught him how to get up close and per­son­al with his sub­ject mat­ter.

The archive gives vis­i­tors plen­ty to explore, includ­ing com­men­tary about the novelist’s ear­ly assign­ments and embed­ded anno­ta­tions to help put the work in con­text.  Hem­ing­way devel­oped his famous­ly terse, hard-boiled style at the Star and reworked much of his reportage into his fic­tion. Read­ers of his short sto­ries and nov­els will see seeds of Hemingway’s fic­tion in arti­cles like “Tan­cre­do is Dead,” about the death of a man whose job was to tease the bull by stand­ing as still as a stat­ue in the ring:

“No. He was nei­ther an opera singer nor a five-cent cig­ar. He was once known as the bravest man in the world. And he died in a dingy, sor­did room in Madrid, the city where he had enjoyed his great­est tri­umphs.”

Read­ing through Hem­ing­way’s jour­nal­ism is to wit­ness a fic­tion writer in the mak­ing.

Kate Rix writes about k‑12 instruc­tion and high­er ed. 

Ear­li­er this week we brought you rare record­ings of Sig­mund Freud and Jorge Luis Borges speak­ing in Eng­lish. Today we present a remark­able series of record­ings of the great Russ­ian nov­el­ist Leo Tol­stoy read­ing a pas­sage from his book, Wise Thoughts for Every Day, in four lan­guages: Eng­lish, Ger­man, French and Russ­ian.

Wise Thoughts For Every Day (find a copy in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks) was Tol­stoy’s last major work. It first appeared in 1903 as The Thoughts of Wise Men, and was revised and renamed sev­er­al times before the author’s death in 1910. It was banned by the Sovi­et regime, only to reap­pear in 1995 as a best­seller in Rus­sia. In 1997 it was trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish by Peter Sekirin and pub­lished as A Cal­en­dar of Wis­dom. The book is a col­lec­tion of pas­sages from a diverse group of thinkers, rang­ing from Lao-Tzu to Ralph Wal­do Emer­son. “I felt that I have been ele­vat­ed to great spir­i­tu­al and moral heights by com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the best and wis­est peo­ple whose books I read and whose thoughts I select­ed for my Cir­cle of Read­ing,” wrote Tol­stoy in his diary.

As an old man (watch video of him short­ly before he died) Tol­stoy reject­ed his great works of fic­tion, believ­ing that it was more impor­tant to give moral and spir­i­tu­al guid­ance to the com­mon peo­ple. “To cre­ate a book for the mass­es, for mil­lions of peo­ple,” wrote Tol­stoy, “is incom­pa­ra­bly more impor­tant and fruit­ful than to com­pose a nov­el of the kind which diverts some mem­bers of the wealthy class­es for a short time, and then is for­ev­er for­got­ten.”

Tol­stoy arranged his book for the mass­es as a cal­en­dar, with a series of read­ings for each day of the year. For exam­ple under today’s date, May 9, Tol­stoy selects brief pas­sages from Immanuel Kant, Solon, and the Koran. Under­neath he writes, “We can­not stop on the way to self-per­fec­tion. As soon as you notice that you have a big­ger inter­est in the out­er world than in your­self, then you should know that the world moves behind you.”

The audio record­ings above were made at the writer’s home in Yas­naya Polyana on Octo­ber 31, 1909, when he was 81 years old. He died just over a year lat­er. Tol­stoy appar­ent­ly trans­lat­ed the pas­sage him­self. The Eng­lish ver­sion sounds a bit like the King James Bible. The words are hard to make out in the record­ing, but he says:

That the object of life is self-per­fec­tion, the per­fec­tion of all immor­tal souls, that this is the only object of my life, is seen to be cor­rect by the fact alone that every oth­er object is essen­tial­ly a new object. There­fore, the ques­tion whether thou hast done what thou shoudst have done is of immense impor­tance, for the only mean­ing of thy life is in doing in this short term allowed thee, that which is desired of thee by He or That which has sent thee into life. Art thou doing the right thing?

Tol­stoy is known to have made sev­er­al voice record­ings in his life, dat­ing back to 1895 when he made two wax cylin­der record­ings for Julius Block. Russ­ian lit­er­ary schol­ar Andrew D. Kauf­man has col­lect­ed three more vin­tage record­ings (all in Russ­ian) includ­ing Tol­stoy’s les­son to peas­ant chil­dren on his estate, a read­ing of his fairy tale “The Wolf,” and an excerpt from his essay “I Can­not be Silent.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Last Days of Leo Tol­stoy Cap­tured on Video

Leo Tol­stoy Cre­ates a List of the 50+ Books That Influ­enced Him Most (1891)

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

700 Free Audio Books and 700 Free eBooks  (lists include works by Tol­stoy and oth­er Russ­ian Clas­sics)

As a pho­to­graph­ic doc­u­ment, this footage is only slight­ly less aston­ish­ing than the famed 1967 Pat­ter­son-Gim­lin film of a “Big­foot” traips­ing across a for­est clear­ing in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia.

In this case the elu­sive crea­ture is none oth­er than J.D. Salinger. The footage appears to have been shot quite a few years before the writer’s death, at 91, in Jan­u­ary of 2010. The cap­tion on YouTube sim­ply says, “J.D. Salinger out for a stroll in Cor­nish, New Hamp­shire.” Salinger had lived a qui­et life in Cor­nish since 1953, two years after the pub­li­ca­tion of The Catch­er in the Rye. But as one com­men­ta­tor on YouTube wry­ly points out, the footage was prob­a­bly shot in anoth­er town just across the Con­necti­cut Riv­er from Cor­nish:

If you real­ly want me to tell you about it, this is like­ly Wind­sor, VT, judg­ing by all the pho­ny peo­ple and the park­ing meters and all. JD went there dai­ly for his mail and a bite to eat at the din­er. He was a mad­man that way. I know it’s corny and all, but that’s god­dam Wind­sor, across the riv­er from Cor­nish.

It’s true, Cor­nish has very few peo­ple and no park­ing meters. By all accounts Salinger lived a fair­ly nor­mal life there. If you trav­el up that way you’re like­ly to meet peo­ple who remem­ber see­ing him out and about before his health declined. After he died, a trick­le of anec­dotes start­ed to emerge. Their mun­dane­ness some­how makes them all the more fas­ci­nat­ing. For exam­ple, Yan­kee mag­a­zine pub­lished a sto­ry, “J.D. Salinger’s Last Sup­per,” about the writer’s fondness–right up to the very end–for the Sat­ur­day-night roast beef din­ners at the Con­gre­ga­tion­al Church in Hart­land, Ver­mont. “Typ­i­cal­ly, he’d arrive an hour and a half ahead of the first seating–often to be first in line,” reports Jim Collins. “He’d sit qui­et­ly, writ­ing in a spi­ral-bound note­book. Most peo­ple around him were unaware of who he was; the vol­un­teers work­ing the sup­per treat­ed him like any oth­er guest and pro­tect­ed his pri­va­cy.” Spi­ral-bound note­book, eh? Hmm.

Anoth­er anec­dote is from writer Nicholas Carr, who tells a sto­ry on his blog about a sur­prise encounter he had with Salinger when he was an under­grad­u­ate stu­dent at Dart­mouth Col­lege, which is locat­ed in Hanover, just up the val­ley from Cor­nish. Carr was work­ing behind the cir­cu­la­tion desk at the col­lege library one sum­mer when “a tall, slen­der, slight­ly stooped man” walked in. He remem­bers his boss whis­per­ing, “That’s J.D. Salinger”:

Holy crap, I thought. I just saw J.D. Salinger.

About ten min­utes lat­er Salinger sud­den­ly reap­peared at the desk, hold­ing a dol­lar bill. I went over to him, and he said he need­ed change for the Xerox machine. I took his dol­lar and gave him four quar­ters.

That’s my claim to fame: I gave J.D. Salinger change for a buck.

Pho­to­copies, eh? What was that old guy up to?