THURSDAY

Patrick Hemingway is one of Ernest Hemingway’s (pictured) three sons. Lorian Hemingway is one of Papa’s many grandchildren. But while the two share the blood of the legendary literary lion, it doesn’t mean squat when it comes to familial relations: Patrick and Lorian can’t stand each other. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Ernest’s birth—July 21, 1899—Patrick has cleaned and condensed yet another of his father’s previously abandoned manuscripts: True at First Light, a fictional take on Ernest’s final African safari, complete with a proud, flawed hunter, a sexually confused female, and a thoroughly abused lion. Like The Garden of Eden, another of Ernest’s posthumous publications, True at First Light is loaded with plenty of terse, tough-guy prose but lacks the true spirit of the man himself. In the introduction, Patrick acknowledges the book’s obvious flaws, writing, “Only Hemingway himself could have licked his unfinished draft into the Ursus horribilis it might have been. What I offer…is a child’s teddy bear.” In a recent GQ article, Lorian, sickened by what she sees as the shameless exploitation of her grandfather—who she believes would be enraged by the dusting off of his less-than-perfect prose—laments, “[I]t is no shock that Hemingway’s sons…roll out a magic carpet of a manuscript every decade or so just to remain on the high end of solvency. That they would ever put themselves at the mercy of good taste is another question entirely.” Make Patrick feel like a rotten son when he discusses True at First Light at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, July 8, at the National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, free, for reservations call (202) 662-7523; and 8:30 p.m. Thursday, July 8, at the National Archives, 7th & Pennsylvania Ave. NW, free, (202) 208-7345. (Sean Daly)