Writers-in-Residence at the Hemingway House, Greer Rising and Eileen Martin will discuss private letters from U.S. Army General Buck Lanham to Greer’s family, and what they tell us about Ernest Hemingway and his art.

Lanham and Hemingway sealed their friendship on World War II battlefields and remained friends until Hemingway’s death in 1961. The personal collection illuminates Lanham’s life and helps decipher coded references that he and Hemingway shared. The Lanhams and the Risings corresponded for much of the 20th century, and Hemingway and Lanham wrote each other at least twice a month for 17 years – hundreds of letters. The presentation will focus on Hemingway and Lanham as intellectual equals, with themes of love, war and literature underpinning their friendship. Lanham’s influence on Hemingway’s writing is stronger than previously known: the writer modeled the protagonist in his novel Across the River and Into the Trees after Lanham’s life, and borrowed from Lanham’s volatile marriage for his novel The Garden of Eden, published in 1986. Two of Hemingway’s posthumously-published short stories mention Buck Lanham and relate battlefield anecdotes from time with Lanham’s unit.

Greer and Eileen also discovered an unpublished Hemingway war poem, written when the two men were together, and they will share the poem and what it reveals about Hemingway’s craft. Accidental Hemingway scholars, Eileen and Greer will talk about how they took on this daunting project and the swell friends they’ve met along the way.

Photo: Ernest Hemingway, General Buck Lanham and Cuban friends during Lanham’s 1945 visit to the island. Courtesy of Princeton University Library.