An Agent of Evil Summary and Analysis

Ezra Pound is about to leave Paris, and he asks Hemingway to do a favor. He wants him to keep a jar of opium and give it to a poet named Dunning only if he needs it. The opium is in a large ceramic jar.

Dunning is Ralph Cheever Dunning, a poet who lives in the same building where Pound has his studio. Dunning is addicted to opium and forgets to eat, to the point of near starvation. One night Pound had called Hemingway to his studio with the news that Dunning was dying. Hemingway goes to the studio and finds Dunning malnourished, skeleton-like. He is taken to an asylum to be "disintoxicated."

Dunning returns to his apartment, and when Pound leaves Paris, he charges Hemingway with providing Dunning with opium in case of an...