EVERYBODY BEHAVES BADLY

Mon Dieu, Lesley M. M. Blume has written more than an historical novel revolving around Ernest Hemingway’s writing of The Sun Also Rises (1926). This novel gives the reader the details behind the birth of the modern movement of literature and the death of descriptive writing. Goodbye to Victorian Literature writers like Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Thomas Hardy, Lewis Carroll, et cetera. Say hello to the 1920’s writers, such as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and, of course, Ernest Hemingway. Also say hello to Pablo Picasso and his Surrealism art movement. It’s the 1920's in Paris, France, and America’s talented expatriates flock to it. The leader of the movement in Paris is American poet Ezra Pound. His new rules of writing are: never use superfluous (unnecessary) words, never be descriptive and distrust adjectives. “It was time for a revolution.” “Some expats likened their Paris experiences to an extended, drug-fueled party.” If Ezra Pound was the king of the movement, Gertrude Stein was assuredly the queen. Hemingway was warned before he met Gertrude at her apartment “to maintain a reverential hush as she spoke.” and “don’t frighten her or she won’t talk.” Stein’s preferred term when describing herself was “genius.” Hemingway’s rival in America would be F. Scott Fitzgerald, who published The Great Gatsby in 1925, but “his style remained decidedly old-school.” Publisher Charles Scribner, who published both authors, said, “Fitzgerald was a nineteenth-century soul. He was wrapping up a grand tradition; he was the last of the romantics. He was Strauss. Hemingway, by contrast, was Stravinsky. He was inventing a whole new idiom and tonality.” Is this good stuff, or what?  

Hemingway married his biggest fan and helper, Hadley Richardson, when he was twenty two and she thirty. They planned to go to Italy where Hemingway served in the Red Cross Ambulance Corps during WWI, “...where he was wounded within weeks of arrival.” Hemingway planned to make a living as a freelance reporter for the Toronto Star and supplement their income with Hadley’s $2,000-$3,000 Trust Fund. But before they could go to Italy, they met American novelist Sherwood Anderson who told them about Paris. “During his visits, when he wasn’t reading aloud from his own manuscripts, he extolled the wonder of Paris to the Domicile crowd; the city was now a magnet for creative types from all over America.” Sherwood made a convincing case for Hemingway to ditch plans for Italy and book passage for France. “Paris was, after all, now a laboratory of innovative writing and the supposed creative center of the universe.” Sherwood recommended the Hotel Jacob et d’Angleterre in Paris. Once settled in, the Hemingways headed for the Cafe’ Le Dome, the gossip center for the Left Bank’s expatriate colony. Luckily for the Hemingways, they were able to stretch their monies because the dollar was very strong compared to the franc after the war. “Other writers must also have sensed that Paris was a treasure trove of literary possibility...for the American writer Malcolm Cowley, Paris was like cocaine, and just as debilitating a habit when it came time to pull himself together and work.” Hemingway was not overwhelmed by Paris like many Americans. “In holding back, Hemingway gave himself a distinct advantage as a clearheaded, removed observer. Later, many of his fictional protagonists would share this attribute.” Would you believe that so far all that I have reviewed is the Introduction and the first seventeen pages of the novel?

The Toronto Star is now sending the twenty three year old reporter all over Europe. His interview with Italy’s Benito Mussolini helped get him front page stories. Meanwhile in Paris, the expat literary gods were now known as The Crowd and didn’t meet in bars or cafes, instead they met in private homes and salons. These are the same artists I mentioned in the first paragraph. When Hemingway went to Switzerland, he sent for his wife Hadley. For some reason Hadley decided to bring all of Hemingway’s manuscripts with her. When she momentarily left her compartment on the train, the manuscripts disappeared. A frustrated Hemingway was sent back to Toronto for a prestige weekly salary of $125. Hadley informed him that she was pregnant. After a trip to Spain with the newly met founder of Contact Publishing Company, Robert McAlmon, and Bill Bird, co-founder of The Consolidated Press Wire Service, Hemingway quit his job and went back to Paris with Hadley and the baby. “There would be no more freelancing, no more deadlines, and no accepting faraway assignments. There would be only the writing - real writing.” In Paris, Hemingway starts writing in a rented flat overlooking a sawmill. “However gently administered, the sound of a buzzing saw-combined with the cries of a newborn-continually drove Hemingway out of the apartment to write.” With Hadley’s Trust Fund now being mismanaged by a friend of hers, they entered a period that Hemingway called their “complete poverty period.” Hemingway started to work for a new publication, the Transatlantic Review supervised by British novelist and literary editor, Ford Madox Ford. Although Hemingway didn’t get paid, Ford published everything that he wrote (short stories). “I knew I must write a novel,” Hemingway recalled. “...and here he was, practically over-the-hill at twenty-four, still without a major work to his name.”

Ford became one of the Crowd’s greatest host, throwing tea parties in his little Transatlantic office. At one of the tea parties, “Hemingway made a tea party appearance, at which he first encountered expat editor and writer Harold Loeb. This meeting would alter the course of both men’s lives.” “When they weren’t bludgeoning each other (Hemingway loved to box with all his friends) or whacking balls across a net, Hemingway and Loeb frequented cafes and bars together, drinking and trading stories.” What was important to Hemingway’s career was the fact that Loeb was about to publish his first novel, Doodab, with Boni and Liveright, a major American publisher. Why was that important? Because, so far, every Manuscript that Hemingway sent to America was rejected and Loeb would soon prove an invaluable asset in correcting that problem. Don’t panic! I’m not giving the story away, I’m only on page 56. This is a must read for potential reviewers, if you want to build a good literary foundation while establishing your writing skills. I, for one, have learned a lot from reading this historical novel. I patently advocate this novel and lecon livre.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I think it’s interesting that in 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda came to Paris loaded with cash off the success of The Great Gatsby novel and his other bestsellers. They rented a luxurious apartment near the Arc de Triomphe. Meanwhile, Ernest Hemingway yet lived in his Sawmill apartment and was still repressed in the money category. Would the last great descriptive writer meet the first great modern writer? Yes, indeed.

At the Dingo bar in Paris, Fitzgerald bumped into Hemingway, who was with Lady Duff Twysden (the object of every man’s eyes) and her boyfriend Pat Guthrie. Fitzgerald bought champagne for the group and later passed out. It was an unusual first meeting, but the two writers became staunch friends. By June 1925, “Hemingway and Hadley had been seeing quite a lot of Fitzgerald and the two writers had even taken a road trip together.”

“Zelda is crazy”, Hemingway informed Fitzgerald one afternoon. What did Zelda think of Hemingway? “She called Hemingway a phony he-man and a pansy with hair on his chest.” Yet Fitzgerald highly respected Hemingway. “His literary crush on Hem, the sportsman-stylist, the pugilist-storyteller” as John Dos Passos (American novelist and member of The Crowd) put it, quickly became apparent to everyone in the Paris Crowd.”

One thing for sure was that Hemingway had dealt descriptive writing the coup de grace. Hemingway reduced writing down to it's most simplistic form, "The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare to the bone," he said. "And that takes work." Yet his friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald continued to write bestsellers in his old fashion descriptive way for years to come.

I’m not sure what genre this book is. Some reviewers and I are calling it a historical fiction novel, while others state that it’s an almost obsessively researched biography. Either way, it’s a must read.