It seems that the entrepreneurial minions who manage Ernest Hemingway’s estate have entered into an agreement with developers to build a chain of Hemingway -themed hotels across the world.The notion is that the “Hemingway’s lifestyle” is a lifestyle worth emulating, or at least visiting, while on vacation.

According to the Hemingway Hotels & Resorts Web site:

“Ernest Hemingway’s greatest pleasure in life was the crafting of the “one perfect sentence.” He would then “refill the well” by spending the rest of the day as a “man of action.” Hemingway was the ultimate sportsman. He loved deep-sea fishing, hunting, nature and the active physical life. But he was also just as at home at day’s end with friends, enjoying the perfect martini in Paris, daiquiri in Havana or a Bellini in Venice, along with fine cuisine. Hemingway was always seeking the essence and fullness of each of life’s experiences, about which he would then write so beautifully. It is these experiences and lifestyle that Hemingway Hotels will deliver to our guests”.

While the Hemingway family has every legal right to commercially exploit the Hemingway legacy, this reeks of the Disneyfication of our culture. I wonder if the rooms will all be equipped with hunting rifles and taxidermy animals.

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