Write it again, Sam.

When I think Marlene Dietrich all I can think of is her deep seducing voice singing “Falling in Love Again,” about how she never wanted to, but couldn’t help it. It’s so noir, so 1930’s, so in-your-face-femme that it makes me want to cut my hair and iron it into nice, short, un-moveable waves and dye it blonde.

When I think of Ernest Hemingway I think of lots of polydactyl cats hanging around Key West and how much I hated reading A Farewell to Arms in my Major Figure: Hemingway class in college. The book was too dramatic, too ridiculous, too frustrating in how long it took Henry and Catherine to get it together (and by “it” I mean them). I know, I know, love in the time of war can’t be easy, nursing jaundice and fighting Germans and then going AWOL and whatnot. Still, it’s a good thing I kept reading Hemingway long after my annoyance with those two faded away, because he came to be one of my favorite writers of all time (please see The Sun Also Rises and In Our Time).

Anyway, I know Ernest was a bit of a womanizer and never really knew what he wanted - however these letters have aided in brightening my overall already glowing opinion of him. All writers struggle with how to deal with the outside world because they don’t entirely know how to interact with other people. They aren’t good at voicing how they feel because they’re so used to (and are more comfortable with) keeping the world inside their heads. Intrinsically they are better off on their own, so I’m not surprised in a way, that Ernest spent a lot of his time isolated in the woods of Northern Michigan, was married four times and committed suicide at the age of 61. (Ok, so maybe I’m a little surprised - insanity did, after all, run in his family).

In 30 letters to Marlene from 1949 to 1959 (now a complete addition to the 31 she sent to him) Hemingway confesses his admiration for her in what experts have come to conclude as an entirely non-physical relationship: “What do you really want to do for a life work? Break everybody's heart for a dime? You could always break mine for a nickel and I'd bring the nickel.” I guess that’s one of the great things about having a writer fall in love with you – they can express it with more eloquence than most.

However, what I love most about this finding is that they were victims of un-synchronized passion. That even the irritating Henry and Catherine found the right timing, but Hemingway himself could not. Those times when he was out of love, she was deep in some romantic tribulation, and “on those occasions when Dietrich was on the surface and swimming about with those marvelously seeking eyes, I was submerged.”

What is it about timing that left these two sending ridiculously romantic letters to each other for at least ten years? Dietrich began a 1951 letter, “I think it is high time to tell you that I think of you constantly. I read your letters over and over and speak of you with a few chosen men. I have moved your photograph to my bedroom and mostly look at it rather helplessly.”

This whole finding has made me hate the fact the letter writing is a long lost art form. There’s something about email that doesn’t quite capture the personal quality that comes through with letters. Granted, some people (like myself) have horrible handwriting. For a long time I’d always longed to have those nice, bubbly, perfectly round letters that are directly associate with “girl” handwriting (though I found it highly offensive when they would dot their “I’s” with hearts), however I’ve come to accept my doctor-like scratch. And regardless, handwriting is a part of who you are, barely legible or not, and there’s something so open and raw about that. Writing by hand takes time, takes more thought and means more to the reader knowing that someone took the time to find a pen and paper and didn’t just push keys on a keyboard.

While I’ve never received a love letter, and don’t know that anyone in my generation ever actually has, I have to admit that I was reading their correspondence with one hand over my mouth in rapt-near-silence unlike I ever did while turning the pages of Farewell. Maybe that’s because sometimes just plain life is somehow always more interesting than what you’ll ever find in a book, no matter who writes it.