Crappy Hemingway story discovered

A lost Hemingway story about bullfighting has been discovered in the papers of the late American screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart. Hemingway wrote the story when he was just 25, before he had fully mastered the craft. The five-page story has been appraised as “not great literature” by Hemingway expert J. Gerald Kennedy. Kudos to the Hemingway family, who have refused permission for the story to be published. If you want to buy (and read) it, you’ll need a fat wallet: the carbon-copy manuscript and accompanying handwritten letter signed by Hemingway will be auctioned in December by Christie's, which expects the bidding to top $22,500 Cdn. Fortunately, most of my early, crappy work is trapped on the hard-drive of a non-Y2K-compliant computer, where it poses no threat to humanity.

• BBC item on the discovered Hemingway story
• Guardian story on the discovered Hemingway

KFC shareholder alert

Inspired by Alice Walker’s anti-KFC poem “Mother’s Day,” PETA is waging a poetry contest on its “Kentucky Fried Cruelty” website. Submitted poems will be sent to KFC honcho David Novak “as a literary message to KFC that animal welfare must be taken seriously.” The best entries will receive an autographed copy of Walker’s “Mother’s Day” and “all serious entries” will receive an anti-KFC poster “featuring quotes from celebrities ranging from actor [emphasis added] Pamela Anderson to scholar Dr. Cornel West.” Certain media blatherers think PETA goes over the top with many of its stunts, but I appreciate their passion and creativity (even though I’m an unrepentant carnivore and longtime circus aficionado). They certainly know how to push the envelope on behalf of their various causes, and in this instance who could object to their desire that KFC “treat the more than 750 million chickens raised and killed each year for [its] restaurants less cruelly.” But I do object to PETA referring to professional jiggler Pamela Anderson as an “actor.” I mean, please. And in the interests of equal time on the whole vegetarian-carnivore debate, I’ll close with a counterpoint from that other world-famous, socially-conscious poet, Homer Simpson:

“If God didn’t want us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat.”