It turns out that we’re all the victims of a Hemingway Hoax. Apparently Papa wasn’t actually responsible for that famous six-word short story, “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.” The Quote Interrogator has a great break down of the super short story’s story, which first showed up in 1906 as a classified ad in a Michigan paper. The ad apparently read: “For sale, baby carriage; never been used. Apply at this office.”
While the original “story” lacks some of the pathos and brevity of the one we attribute to that famously spartan modernist, it nonetheless has a beginning, middle, and end. It even has a epilogue: apparently the carriage had never been used because it was made for one baby, and the family that placed the classified was actually blessed with twins. A happy ending then, tidily bound up with commerce.
And perhaps it’s this aspect of the story that sub-collective-consciously keeps Hemingway tied to that story he never wrote; the man was—and continues to be—one of the hottest literary commodities going. Papa’s public stature is such that there are annual Hemingway look-a-like festivals, tours (in Spain, Michigan, Florida, and Cuba) tied to his name, alongside museums, and of course books—both one’s he’s written, ones about him, at least one novelization about one of his wives. He is arguably the most oversold American writer, including Norman Mailer. And we’re still buying him, again and again. Even if that six word story wasn’t his, we can still find him in the classifieds—his image was always already for sale.
