Ernest Hemingway fans celebrate the author’s 125th birthday

Stephen Hemingway Adams (right) a great-grandson of Ernest Hemingway, speaks with 2023 Hemingway Look-Alike Contest winner Gerrit Marshall at Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West

Ernest Hemingway spent the 1930s in Key West, Florida, and more than six decades after his death, fans, scholars and relatives continue to congregate on the island city to celebrate the author’s award-winning novels and adventure-filled life.

Hemingway Days started in 1981 with a short-story competition and a look-alike contest. This year’s celebration concluded Sunday (yesterday, Macau time] on the 125th anniversary of Hemingway’s birth on July 21, 1899.

As a novelist, short-story writer and journalist, Hemingway’s spot in the pantheon of American literature is undeniable and his legacy permeates the culture and character of Key West.

Hemingway’s great-grandson, Stephen Hemingway Adams, was born nearly three decades after Hemingway died. Adams said working with his grandfather, Patrick Hemingway, who was Ernest Hemingway’s second son, helped him gain a deeper understanding of his famous ancestor.

“I got to work with my granddad, and we put out a book called ‘Dear Papa,’ which was all of the letters between Ernest and my grandfather,” Adams said.

The difference between the public perception and the documented reality of Hemingway can be fuzzy. He loved big-game fishing in the Caribbean and hunting in Africa. He loved bullfighting, baseball, boxing and barhopping. But he also was a serious artist who won Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. He put so much of his life experiences into his writing that it can be tricky to separate the man from the myth.

Adams said he’s fine with some people loving the adventurer more than the writer.

“I think it’s a split, and I think that’s what’s fun,” Adams said of the throngs of look-alikes who visit Key West every year.

The Key West that Hemingway first visited in 1928 was a rustic fishing village, not a bustling tourist destination. Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline, had only planned a brief stop to pick up a car during their move from Paris to Arkansas, where Pauline’s family lived. But the car wasn’t ready and they had to wait several weeks.

Hemingway quickly made friends with local business owners and fishermen.

“He doesn’t come here to act like a recluse and just write,” Convertito said. “He’s out at the bars all the time. He’s out fishing with people. He’s interacting in boxing matches.”

Convertito pointed out that Hemingway was in his 30s for most of the time he lived in Key West, not the white-bearded “Papa Hemingway” most look-alike contestants emulate. “A Farewell to Arms” was finished shortly after he began visiting Key West and that book’s reception, along with his coverage of the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, increased his fame.

Much of Hemingway’s time in Key West was devoted to big-game fishing with friends. Convertito said Hemingway began to pioneer new techniques after getting his own boat, the Pilar, in 1934.

“He was desperate to land a fully intact marlin,” Convertito said.

The slow process of reeling in a trophy fish left them vulnerable to sharks, similar to the giant marlin caught in Hemingway’s 1952 novel, “The Old Man and the Sea.” DAVID FISCHER, Key West, MDT/AP