The summer after my junior year in high school, John Paglione and I took an enrichment American literature course at Neshaminy High School. It was my first exposure to twentieth century American literature. It was there I first read Ernest Hemingway. I was blown away. I’m not sure exactly what I read, probably some short stories, maybe “The Old Man and the Sea.” My English course at Holy Ghost Prep in senior year with Fr. Dave Marshall had a similar focus, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, the muckrakers, and other twentieth century American writers. The two courses were probably responsible for my decision to major in English.
I had conversations with another English teacher, Fr. Francis Meenham. He advised me that to become a writer, I should start writing daily, keep a journal. Now over 50 years later I still write daily in a journal. Just haven’t published my first novel. Meenham also recommended Boston College. He said that had a good growing English department. He was right. BC was expanding and recruiting new teaching talent. My freshman year English course was writing with John McCarthy. Early on he assigned a research paper on an American author. I chose Hemingway. My academic style was to become absorbed in a topic, sometimes ignoring other courses. I read all of Hemingway, the short stories, novels (good and bad), fiction and nonfiction, magazine articles, even poetry. I read all the criticism available in BCs classic Bapst Library, a regular hangout for me. Then I traveled to other campus libraries. I read dissertations as well as published criticism. I recall one dissertation title, “The Insect Symbolism in the Nick Adams Stories of Ernest Hemingway.
I sat down to write, summarizing what I had read (would be curious to reread what I wrote then). But what was my thesis? My main idea. I despaired. Everything had been written about Hemingway. I had nothing new. I went to McCarthy and explained my writer’s block. He sympathized and then suggested, “Have you considered similarities between Nick Adams and Huckleberry Finn?” How easy. What a great thesis for my paper. I recall that my final paper was over 20-25 pages, about 2 or 3 devoted to the Nick Adams, Huckleberry Finn connection.
At some point I found the quote from Hemingway that, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” Even more interesting, the discovered that other critics had written about the Adams-Finn connection. I think it was mentioned in “Papa Hemingway” by A. E. Hotchner published in 1966. Also published in 1966 was Philip Young’s “Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration.” I believe he has a chapter related to the comparison. Oh well, so much for an original thesis.
Karsh wrote about the Hemingway portrait,
“I expected to meet in the author a composite of the heroes of his novels. Instead, in 1957, at his home Finca Vigía, near Havana, I found a man of peculiar gentleness, the shyest man I ever photographed – a man cruelly battered by life, but seemingly invincible. He was still suffering from the effects of a plane accident that occurred during his fourth safari to Africa. I had gone the evening before to La Floridita, Hemingway’s favorite bar, to do my ‘homework’ and sample his favorite concoction, the daiquiri. But one can be overprepared! When, at nine the next morning, Hemingway called from the kitchen, ‘What will you have to drink?’ my reply was, I thought, letter-perfect: ‘Daiquiri, sir.’ ‘Good God, Karsh,’ Hemingway remonstrated, ‘at this hour of the day!’” (1957)
I hadn’t read or thought much about Hemingway for years but then this April Ken Burns and Lynn Novick premiered “Hemingway” on PBS. within days I watched the three part, six hour series. Like one of the author’s Marlin or Tuna catches off the coast of Cuba, I was hooked. Before I had processed the series, I was reading “Everybody Behaves Badly: the true story behind Hemingway’s masterpiece “The Sun Also Rises,” by Lesley M. M. Blume (2016). It was sometimes difficult to separate fiction (Hemingway’s “Sun”) from fact (Blume’s commentary on his life in the 1920s). “The Sun” was probably my favorite Hemingway novel. As a college Literature major, I dreamed of travel, adventure and writing.
Hemingway in the 1920s. Paris. In Gertrude Stein’s words, “part of a lost generation.” Accurate or just clever, “The Sun Also Rises” became the portrait of post-war generation. Sherwood Anderson (the first of many writers who would see promise, yes even greatness in Hemingway) urged him to go to Paris with his new wife Hadley. Sherwood provided intros to Sylvia Beach (Shakespeare and Company bookstore) and Gertrude Stein whose salon hosted the avant-garde — intellectuals, painters and writers. Welcome James Joyce. Welcome Pablo Picasso. There Hemingway took lessons from Ezra Pound, “strip language down.” Hemingway had a style that flowed from his years as a reporter and a belief that a writer’s job was to tell the story straightforward, with clarity, honesty. He knew he was a great writer but his only publication to date was in newspapers and magazines. He had to write a novel.
It’s amazing to see the small world. During these years Hemingway meets and has relationships with Ford Maddox Ford, F Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Lincoln Steffens, others previously mentioned and many names we do not recognize today. While in Paris, he wrote, he drank, and fraternized. I’ve never been to Paris but recognize the names of cafes he and other expatriates patronized — Les Deux Magots, Dingo, Rotonde, La Dome.
It is during the Paris years that Hemingway becomes a lover of Spanish culture and bullfighting aficionado. For several years he gathered a band of “friends” to participate in the annual Pamplona fiesta, including the running of the bulls. His companions on these trips are the characters (names changed) in “The Sun.” If you’ve read it you haven’t forgotten Lady Brett Ashley (the real Lady Duff Twysden), Robert Cohen is the fictional, sometimes annoying Jew based on Harold Loeb. Donald Ogden Stewart becomes Bill Gordon; Patrick Guthrie is the real Mike Campbell. Hemingway is the character Jake Barnes. Hadley makes the trip but not the book (Hemingway would soon have a second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer).
Prior to Pamplona, some of the group go fishing. So typical Hemingway. Tensions takes seed, and will grow and blossom in the mud and blood fueled by alcohol at the fiesta. In my view there are no good guys and bad guys; no heroes or villains. All are in for the ride. Lady Duff acts as a spark. One wonders how this group stays together. The face of the lost generation.
I’ve only been to one bullfight during our Peace Corps years training in Mexico. I can honestly say for me It didn’t become part of a glorious tradition, a ballet, an intriguing dance with death. Words like dreary, dismal come to mind. Diane left after the first bull and sat outside the arena under a tree talking to young Mexican kids. I remember thinking, she had such a better experience. But my infatuation with Hemingway had lead me to read about bull fighting and watch video.
I highly recommend, “Everybody Behaves Badly.” It’s well researched, well written, and filled with insights about Hemingway. Life in the Parish years. He is always concerned about writing. Hadley will lose much of his writing on a train trip. Including short stories and the beginning of a novel. Years of work. He will eventual put together several short stories and poems, “In Our Times.” He finds an American publisher, Liveright. But when “The Sun” is ready Fitzgerald has introduced him to Maxwell Perkins at Scribners. Hemingway wants the new publisher. He writes a parody “The Torrents of Spring” sticking a knife in Sherwood Anderson (published by Liveright). He is immediately freed from the Liveright contract and “The Sun Also Rises” is published by Scribners. There was controversy. Hemingway’s content, the drinking, sex, and disillusionment in “The Sun” was disturbing to the more Puritan Scribner house. But it was also his style. Gone was the flourish of the Victorians; intro twentieth century minimalism. Short, hard clear, declaratory sentences. No adjectives allowed. Hemingway was transforming literature.
I got a copy of “The Sun Also Rises” from the library. I’m not sure when I’ve read it last. Probably in the 1970s when I taught Literature at Holy Ghost Prep. I think I may have even catalogued my Hemingway book collection in the Library. As I read the characters and text were so familiar. The content far from shocking by today’s standards. But the language, a reporter, declarative, straightforward, crisp, clean. The vocabulary basic. When I thought about writing in college, I wanted to write like Hemingway (not alone there). I also dreamed about the bohemian, expat, living in Paris. Freedom, love, good food and drink, cafes, the Seine, artists . . . And I still have never been to Paris. I liked the detached, independent nature of Jake Barnes. He may have wanted Brett but accepted that there was competition. Fishing, bullfighting, writing, drinking, would get him through. I identified with Hemingway and somehow I put aside his many negatives.
I also just read “The Short Stories.” I had strong memories of many. I enjoyed re-reading about Nick Adams. Collectively there is a lot of violence, boxing, killers, war, bullfighting, big game hunting, and death. And there is controversy including abortion. Many of the stories are snapshots. We meet some characters in a situation. Events unfold. Ends. No real conclusions. I liked “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” Both about life changing, endings. Both written later in Hemingway’s life. Who could forget “The Big Two Hearted River,” escape fishing in Northern Michigan, healing after the war or the shock of “Indian Camp.” I almost want to read many of them again. Maybe.
This renewed interest in Hemingway was initiated by the Burns and Novick three part documentary, “Hemingway.” I’ve actually watched it twice. The Burns style of historic photographs and film footage, with contemporary interviews, and ongoing commentary has always captivated me. The first episode is “The Writer (1899-1929). Growing up middle class in Michigan, Hemingway yearned for adventure? He volunteers in the Red Cross during World War 1. In June 1918 he was wounded. He falls in love with a slightly older nurse, Agnes but she eventually breaks away from him. In 1920 he met Elizabeth Hadley Richardson. They married in a year. Much of the episode focuses on Hadley, their first child and their life in Paris. Hemingway tries to write completing some poetry and short stories but a novel evades him until “The Sun.” Hadley is slowly replaces by Pauline. This episode follows closely the story in “Everybody Behaves Badly.”
In the second episode, “The Avatar (1929-1944) we follow Hemingway’s rise. His fame in the literary world is fed by his own need for celebrity. During the Spanish Civil War he serves as a war correspondent. An experience he would turn into “For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway will settle into Key West with Pauline. Her uncle Gus provides money for the house and financed an extravagant African safari. He would also purchase the Pilar, Hemingway’s fishing boat. In many ways Hemingway is forced to live up to his legend. He travels to Spain with another correspondent, Martha Gelhorn who he marries in 1940. They will end up in Italy together but Hemingway becomes annoyed at her career demands.
Episode 3, is titled “The Blank Slate (1944-1961). In the last years of the war, Hemingway lives in Cuba, begins a relationship with Mary Welsh and she becomes his fourth wife. He deep sea fishes, travels to Europe, African safari, buys a house in Ketchum Idaho. He struggles with writing and with Mary. In 1952 he publishes “The Old Man and the Sea.” In 1954 he is awarded the Nobel prize for literature. I was always fascinated with this period in Hemingway’s life. An accomplished, successful writer, he traveled, hung out with friends. His signature drinking continued, even giving his name to drinks including a unsweetened daiquiri. I might try to make one. But despite success, Hemingway starts a decline. His health and mental condition deteriorated. He was hospitalized. On July 2, 1961 he shot himself in Ketchum. It was suicide.
I decided to read “A Moveable Feast,” published after his death. The edition I got from the library contains material that Hemingway cut. It’s the Paris years but through Hemingway’s lens. “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
I enjoyed his voice. Much of the material was familiar. I was surprised that he did not write about bullfighting or Pamplona. He does describe skiing at Schruns in Austria. There are chapters on Shakespeare and Company where he borrowed books (the Russians, for instance) from Sylvia Beach; on Ford Maddox Ford; Ezra Pound; and Scott Fitzgerald. He quickly tired of Zelda. “A Moveable Feast” is a good memoir.
On the shelf in the library next to “A MoveableFeast” was “Hemingway in Love: his own story” by A. E. Hotchner. I’ll read just one more Hemingway book I thought.
“Aaron Hotchner, who was still writing up to his death earlier this year at the age of 103, was one of the great personal chroniclers of Hemingway’s life, having known the novelist from 1948 until his death in 1961, and the last in a line of memoirists who had played an important part in Hemingway’s life and work after World War II, bringing him back into the limelight by promoting his work to a wider and newer audience through his TV adaptations of some of Hemingway’s short stories, and, by becoming an inner member of Hemingway’s so called cuadrilla, an observer of the great literary stylist. But, unlike some in that group, Hotchner also became something of an agent for Hemingway, but more importantly a caring and supportive friend. There is no doubt in my mind that A. E. Hotchner was, like the literary historian, Van Wyck Brooks, who reminded Americans of their literary past, a genuine saviour of Ernest Hemingway, and his work.” (Steve Newman Writer, 2020)
In an article, “A. E. Hotchner— Papa Hemingway, a memoir,” Steve Newman Writer wrote:
“Hotchner’s book, Papa Hemingway, came into my life in 1967, care of The Readers Union, and was, for me, a life changer. I’d read most of Hemingway by then, including Hemingway’s own posthumous memoir, A Moveable Feast, and although that gave something of a limited view of the writer’s life back in the Paris of the 1920s, it would be Hotchner’s account of the last creative, yet troubled, period of Hemingway’s life, a period much closer to my own, that not only gave a vivid account of the man that was Hemingway, but the man that was Hotchner, and what a damned good writer, and man, he was too. I liked him, and could sympathies with his nervousness at meeting Hemingway, and his self doubt, and his determination to persuade Hemingway to write a piece for Cosmopolitan magazine about the future of literature, which he sort of managed before flying back to the US in an alcoholic fog and smelling of fish.” I read “Papa Hemingway” around the same time and my recollection echoes Steve Newman Writer.
“Hemingway in Love” is a good way to end this Hemingway festival. It is a very personal account of how Hotchner supported and promoted Hemingway. Can you imagine deep sea fishing, hanging out in Cuba, trips to Paris, Spain and Italy. It was quite an adventure. Hotchner was also there at the end. I might need to reread his “Papa Hemingway.” Let the fiesta go on.
Do you like Hemingway’s work? Have you read any recently?
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