TO ALMOST HAVE AND HAVE NOT : Losing an Imitation Hemingway Contest in a Manly Fashion

Now I know how Steven Spielberg feels. It’s one thing to be a finalist in the International Imitation Hemingway Competition--and lose (I’ve done that before)--but to submit two entries and not even get nominated!

The last time I lost was during the third Hemingway contest, 1980. I was a runner-up in a judge’s battle that became legendary for the amount of time and alcohol consumed. Also because I got the last word in a Book Review piece. Fuming in print helped ease the pain caused by the headline in my local paper: “Area Man Turns in Second Worst Hemingway.” Besides, acting arrogant and hurt seemed very Hemingway-esque.

You can imagine how I felt this year when neither of my entries made the final 27 (selected from 2,624 submissions). Some ad man from New York named Mark Silber won for something called “The Snooze of Kilimanjaro.” I’m sick having to give the guy more publicity.

I had vowed after my humiliating defeat six years ago never to enter again. But there were reports of grumbling among some judges last year about the low quality of the submissions. So I sat down and knocked out an opening line: He got the hernia from the marlin when the wind was up. I went on to tell of a manly but aging fisherman years later trying to retrieve his prized stuffed marlin from a gay bar in Key West. Alas, lifting the marlin from the wall, he suffers a double hernia.

I was pleased with the symbolism, but the crudeness worried me. So I wrote an alternate entry. It was about a manly but aging novelist who had written his masterpiece one summer aboard the gunboat Palomita. Suffering writer’s block, he goes reluctantly to Harry’s to meet a movie producer about filming the novel (you have to mention Harry’s, since the prize is a round-trip ticket and dinner for two at Harry’s in Florence, Italy).

The story went like this:

The producer wanted to make the novel into a movie, but he was not so sure. Making movies was like flyfishing with a barbed hook, he thought. It was something men did who were not really men. The producer was half his age and reminded him of a small dog he had eaten in the war.

“Love the concept, babe,” the producer said. “But it needs work.”

“Work?”

“I see it as a teen sex comedy.”

He knew then that he would not be a screenwriter. He punched the producer and felt better . . . .

And so on. Maybe it doesn’t sing. But I’ll tell you this: It’s as good as most of this year’s 27 finalists, which were made available to the press at Harry’s celebration party. To be blunt, most of them stunk.

I could be called a sore loser, if my opinion was singular. But listen to some official judges:

Jack Hemingway, son of you-know-who: “Some years are a lot funnier than other years.” And this year? “Mezzo, mezzo.”

The Times’ Jack Smith: “I can tell you this, it’s not getting any better. It’s really very broad imitation. You want to see some humor and style. At least the winner this year was literate. He was clearly the best. I was disappointed (with the rest). There was so much repetition and so much vulgarity. Some of the entries just made you cringe.”

Digby Diehl, book editor at the Herald Examiner: “It was a weak field this year, no doubt about it. One of our problems is we have college professors doing the culling (the judges see only the final 27). We ought to have comedians do the culling. We should have a sense of humor about this thing. Seriously, we should throw some professional laugh guys (into the pre-selection process). That seems to me a reasonable idea.”

Author Barnaby Conrad: “We got some really atrocious ones this year. What about the 2,500 entries we don’t see? There may be some gems. English professors are fine people, but are they fun?” About the winning entry, he noted solemnly, “You’ll notice not one of us laughed out loud. The winner is well-written, though. It could have been funnier, better parody. But he was a serious writer. Perhaps too serious. If we all picked it, it must have been the best of a bad lot.

“Frankly, I’d like to screen the screeners.”

This was exactly what I wanted to hear. I was starting to feel much better about the whole thing. I tried to make my way to other judges like Bernice Kert and Ray Bradbury for more validation, but my drinks got in the way. No matter. I was starting to feel good about not being nominated. My Spielberg Complex had taken on a kind of glow.

I was beginning to feel . . . well, like I had actually won .

By next year, they may have the system fixed. I’m already thinking about an entry. I even have a first line.

He loved Juan Carlos because when he talked of the rhythm of a good sentence and the rhythm of a good woman, Juan Carlos did not fall asleep like the others.

I don’t see how I can lose.