It was a picture perfect Sun Valley weekend. The Aspen trees were peaking and 75-degree temperatures had many people enjoying the outdoors. However, not everyone was out and about.
Many patrons of Sun Valley this weekend were here for other reasons, such as finding solutions at the Sustainability Conference. Some watched the curtain go up for Off Center Stage's "Laughing Wild," and others came for the second annual Ernest Hemingway Festival.
Making a pilgrimage to Sun Valley for the Hemingway Festival were a mix of intellectuals, scribes and readers to discuss the man and his life's work at one of his favorite homes.
This year's festival theme of Hemingway and Hollywood brought out movie buffs, a slew of award-winning writers and noted Hemingway scholars whose knack for discussion interpreted and deconstructed much of Hemingway's discourse.
The festival began Thursday evening at the Sun Valley Opera House with a near-capacity audience anxious for the world premiere of "Cooper & Hemingway: The True Gen." In conjunction with family members of both Hemingway and Cooper, the in-depth documentary chronicled the lifelong friendship of the actor and writer including both their public and private lives.
Found footage, old photographs and interviews of many living relatives, along with friends and lovers of the infamous pair, told the story of the unlikely friendship that began in Sun Valley.
Panel discussions, readings and an antiquarian book fair provided plenty of fodder for festival goers, as did several film versions of Hemingway's more well-known works. Tours in the footsteps of Hemingway and presentations offered even more interesting insights into the physical life of Hemingway especially in the way of a benefit dinner at his Warm Springs home.
On Sunday at The Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Hailey, husband and wife Kim Barnes and Robert Wrigley presented a lively discussion on "Living the Code: Hemingway & The Writing Life."
"Hemingway reinvented American literature as we know it," said Wrigley as he compared the weight on American writers to venerate Hemingway as the English do Shakespeare.
Barnes and Wrigley presented a hefty challenge to the full room of Hemingway enthusiasts who did not rebuke. In fact, accomplished writer Elmore Leonard revealed in "Cooper & Hemingway: The True Gen" his own practice of this challenge when he began writing.
The outcome of discussions and events this year will hopefully spawn new interests and angles to explore for next year's Hemingway festival.
Kim Barnes and Robert Wrigley presenting ?Living the Code: Hemingway & The Writing Life? at the Sun Valley Center in Hailey.
