Hemingway wrote a second ending to For Whom the Bell Tolls. As it stands, the novel has a beautifully, maddeningly ambiguous “ending.” Does this new version answer any of the questions we’ve been left with for 69 years? It looks like we’ll find out in late spring, when the JFK Library makes available copies of 3,000+ previously unseen documents from Papa’s Cuban estate. The Associated Press reports:

Now, thanks to an agreement between U.S. Rep James McGovern, D-Mass., and the Cuban government, copies of those writings are at the John F. Kennedy Library.

The archival replicas include corrected proofs of “The Old Man and the Sea,” a movie script based on the novel, an alternate ending to “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and thousands of letters, with correspondence from authors Sinclair Lewis and John Dos Passos and actress Ingrid Bergman. The documents were previewed Thursday and will likely be available to researchers in late spring.

That mention of a screenplay for The Old Man and the Sea is also intriguing. Hemingway wasn’t known to have written screenplays for his works. (The screenplay for the 1959 movie, starring Spencer Tracy, was written by Peter Viertel.) Is this a reference to something he wrote, or is it just a copy of Viertel’s screenplay?

When the documents are opened to the public, I’d be glad to hear from anybody who gives them a look.