Drinking While Writing: Ernest Hemingway & F. Scott Fitzgerald
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Photos by, Library of Congress/Tore Johnson/Getty
The two famous authors and great friends had two very different perspectives when it came to writing and having a drink.
“Write drunk. Edit sober.”
This popular quote is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway since, you know, he was happy to have a drink or two.
I’ve never believed A) that he said or wrote it, or B) that he practiced it. In fact, through the bulk of his career, Hemingway categorically stated that he never drank while writing. In an interview in 1958 with Milt Machlin for the magazine Argosy, when asked if it were true that he took a pitcher of Martinis with him every morning on his way to work, Hemingway replied, “Jeezus Christ!…Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes–and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one. Besides, who in hell would mix more than one Martini at a time?”
