the 80th of a successful free black man in the capital, a slave holding capital of washington, infuriated white people. the riot was about him and his success and also arthurs violence. so people called the riots the snowstorm. . .

>> good morning, thank you. yeah i moved up my flight and i am going to -- to the airport literally after i spend 10 minutes here reading and i'm going to read something quite short on the theory that lexus moore -- less is moore which i tell my writing students at u. penn and speaking of them one of the reasons i am hurtling back to cold philadelphia's because i have to hold office hours tomorrow with the little i.v. brats. i best to get home and sleep

well or try to sleep well although my wife and i say we haven't slept well since the jimmy carter administration. [laughter] thank you so much. you are holding us up. i think that's the key. and i bet i won't even have time to formally say thank you and good by two miles so i will just say two miles how eloquent his little segue introductions have been and tell him goodbye and are low and all the rest of you for coming. i am supposed to read something. i was fretting about what that would be because i wanted to make it very short. i am going to read from the end of the prologue.

one of the things that i was trying to stress in the talk that i gave yesterday and indeed the panel that i had appeared on the day before is that for all of the undeniable, appalling, dark side of ernest hemingway there was also the light. there was this bone of generosity and sometimes it came out best when a child was involved and not his own child necessarily, and especially an ill child. who would not respond to that? but he seems to respond in a special way. and so i was thinking of reading something of a key west passage and i said no, that would be like a piece of coal. i will bring something to newcastle so i'm not going to read that. i'm just going to read this little moment from the end of the prologue and indeed it is

the end of ernest hemingway's life. when everything is lost but there is still something there. loop backwards 17 days from his death to june 15, 1961 in rochester minnesota. a man in the psychiatric ward at saint mary's st. mary's hospital at mayo clinic is writing a letter to a 9-year-old toy. the man writes it on two small sheets of no paper and his big round legible hand with his trademark downhill slant and irreversibly damaged ernest hemingway of paranoids nightmare has found within himself that the end of his life that kindness and courage and momentary lucidity not to say

literary grace to write 210 beautiful words to a kid he likes very much. whenever i begin to feel repulsion at hemingway's ego and boorish behavior toward other human beings ,-com,-com ma i like to take out a copy of this letter. 210 words with so much emotion tucked below the surface of the pros, of the sentences pile driven by contained feeling and acute observation of the natural world would have been a half decent output for a work day even in a masters prime. the boy, his name is frederick g. sager's although everyone including hemingway calls him for its, has a congenital heart condition. he is the son of george saviors,

hemingway's small-town doctor can catch him who was also one of hemingway's favorite duck hunting companions. in these last weeks hemingway has been brought once more from idaho for treatment to mail. not long after this note to fritz, hemingway will fool his famous doctors at the world-famous clinic into believing he is well enough to go home to idaho. and almost immediately the shotgun will go waft and the quiet of the house that sits a couple hundred yards up on the steep slope from the west bank west bank of the big wood river. the patient on the locked ward at st. mary's on june 15, 1961 has just learned that dot or save your's son in a denver hospital in idaho. hemingway and frist and fritz's

father legs talking about the yankees and rainbow trout. but none of that will ever be the same again. st. mary's hospital in rochester minnesota, june 151961. dear fritz, i was terribly sorry to hear this morning in a note from your father that you were laid up in denver for a few days more and speed office know to tell you how much i hope you will be feeling better. it's been very hot and muggy here in rochester but the last two days it has turned cool and lovely and the nights are wonderful for sleeping. the country is beautiful around here and i have had a chance to see some wonderful country along the mississippi where they used to drive the logs in the old lumbering days and the trails

where the pioneers came north. i saw some good bass jumping in the river. i never knew anything about the upper mississippi before and it is really a very beautiful country and there are plenty of feathers and docs in the fall but not as many as in idaho and i hope we will bet -- both be back or shortly and we can joke about our hospital experiences together. best always to you old timer, from your good friend who misses you very much, a mr. papa. ps best to all the family and i am feeling fine and very cheerful about things in general and hope to see you all soon. pop up. no one knows for sure that these seem to be the last real

sentences burn is hemingway set down on paper. amid so much ruin stoldt the beauty. thank you very much. [applause] >> robert richardson is next in the 30th annual key west seminar in florida. he has written on henry david thoreau and ralph waldo emerson. he delivered his speech titled "in search of lost time" biography and fiction. >> good morning. stacy schiff who is a wonderful biographer among others cleopatra recently observed that biographers all have to lives. okay in the back?

can you hear? in one round she says to biographers, you are moving forward in ignorance. in the other you are moving backward with something resembling omniscience. but what she doesn't say is that along with the illusion of something like omniscience a biographer usually has a lot of attitude to display. one can be worshipful, page of graphic celia pius or one can be a muckraker. one can defend or defame, expose sensationalize sentimentalize. one can be a myth buster or a myth maker. and not many generalizations can come to the whole spectrum. but marcel pruest could do it and did when he wrote in the

early work before the big book. it's a little book in there he says what intellect restores to us under the name of the past is not the past. in reality, cut in reality as soon as each hour of one's life has died it embodies itself in some material object and remains captive forever unless we should have been on the object recognizing what lies within. call it by its name and so set it free. at as soon as each hour of your life has died, it is embodied in or under some material object which explains why it's so hard to clean out the attic. it's not stuff. it's your life piece by piece. it also suggests the power and

the central role of the senses in connecting things. you have to see it and know it's there to get it out. the idea that writing can restore something to us, biographies and active recovery as wineapple so wonderfully argues. it's applicable both to biography and fiction. and here's another thing that the two forms have in common that has been splendidly put by phyllis rose who wrote in parallel lines, we are desperate. that is the word. desperate for information about how other people live because we want to know how to live ourselves. now for me that is certainly true of biography but it's also true of fiction. i want to give just a single example. it's from dostoyevsky and it is from a chapter called rebellion which comes right before the grand inquisitor.

ivan, the oldest brother, is giving his views on the christian idea that there is an all-powerful all-knowing and evelyn god and that things will all ultimately work out for the best. ivan makes his argument through stories and this is one of them. there was in those days a general of aristocratic connections, the owner of great mistakes. our general settled on his property in 2000 souls lives in -- and dominators over his poor neighbors as though they were dependents and buffoons. he has candles of hundreds of hounds in nearly 100 dog -- -- mounted in a uniform. i am sorry to put us all through this on a sunday morning on a beautiful day in key west. i really am. [laughter]

one day a surfboard at a little child of aids through a stone in play and hurt the part of the general's favorite hound. why is my favorite dog lame? he is told that the boy threw a stone and hurt the boys pop. so you did it. the general look the child up and down. take him. he was taken from his mother and kept shut up all night. early the next morning the general comes out on horseback with the hounds, his dependents and dog poisoned huntsman around him in full hunting for it. in front of them all stands the mother of the child. the child is brought in the lineup. it's a gloomy foggy autumn day. a j4 hunting. the general orders the child to the address. the child is stripped naked. he shivers