Hemingway, a Lost Suitcase, and the Recipe for Stupidity

Built around the December 1922 story of Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, who packed a valise containing virtually everything Hemingway had written and lost it on a train to Lausanne — likely the single greatest literary loss of the 20th century. Parrish uses the episode to argue that good intentions are not enough: the recipe for stupidity is normal people in normal moods, in environments that quietly stack the odds against careful thought. Recognising those environments — fatigue, time pressure, novelty, defaulting to autopilot — is the first defence.