199 “lean, hard, athletic”: “Marital Tragedy”; “terse, precise”: C. B. Chase, review of The Sun Also Rises, Saturday Review of Literature, December 11, 1926.
200 “knockout”: Edmund Wilson to Ernest Hemingway, January 7, 1927, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
200 “beautiful and searching”: Review of The Sun Also Rises, Boston Evening Transcript, November 6, 1926.
200 “you could go”: Parker, “Reading and Writing,” 92.
200 “BABY YOUR BOOK”: Telegram from Dorothy Parker to Ernest Hemingway, November 23, 1926, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
200 a Hemingway “cult”: “Latin Quarter Notes,” Paris Tribune, December 9 and December 28, 1926.
200 “hated [Sun]”: Parker, “Reading and Writing,” 93.
201 “extreme moral sordidness”: Review of The Sun Also Rises, Springfield Republican, November 28, 1926.
201 accused Hemingway of sentimentality: Allen Tate, “Hard-Boiled,” The Nation, December 15, 1926.
201 “spiritual bankrupts”: Review of The Sun Also Rises, Boston Evening Transcript, November 6, 1926; “utterly degraded”: Review of The Sun Also Rises, Chicago Daily Tribune, quoted in James R. Mellow, Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1993), 335.
201 “a cock-and-bull story”: John Dos Passos, “A Lost Generation,” The New Masses, December 1926.
201 “coarse and uncouth”: M. J. Levey to Charles Scribner’s Sons, April 28, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
201 “worse than worthless”: Edward M. Smith to Charles Scribner’s Sons, undated, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
201 “perfect”: Pauline Pfeiffer to Ernest Hemingway, December 18, 1926, Incoming Correspondence, Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
201 “his own severest”: Beach, Shakespeare and Company, 83.
201 “horse shit”: Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, April 16, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:56. Charles Scribner’s Sons kept an eye on Hemingway’s general attitude toward criticism. In autumn 1927, Wallace Meyer—one of the admen who lauched The Sun Also Rises—lunched with Hemingway in Paris and reported back to Perkins that “literary criticism has very little value for him, and adverse criticism I think does nothing but unsettle him a little bit . . . [T]hey put all reviews, he says, on a hook in the bathroom—as reading matter they run to just about the right length and they’re not too much honored by the occasion.” Regarding an unflattering October 9, 1927, review that Virginia Woolf had written about The Sun Also Rises and Hemingway’s subsequent book, Men Without Women, Meyer added: “[It] really threw him off his stride a bit. He seemed to me really perturbed about her remarks about his overuse of dialogue—which the good woman can’t use at all herself and probably knows it. After all, Hemingway is an original and must go his own way. And it’s equally true that he’s a limited person, more limited, let’s say, than Scott Fitzg., but he must work freely and easily within those limits; if he does, I think they’ll broaden out. The extent to which he can develop will depend on the degree to which he can be kept unselfconscious.” Wallace Meyer to Maxwell Perkins, November 27, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library. Perkins shared these impressions with Charles Scribner as they collectively monitored their new author. Maxwell Perkins to Charles Scribner, December 29, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
202 “very funny as”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, December 21, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
202 “smashed”: Ernest Hemingway to Isidor Schneider, ca. January 18–20, 1927, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:189–90.
202 “stumbling through life”: Review of The Sun Also Rises, The New Republic, December 22, 1926.
202 “jazz superficial story”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, November 16, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
202 “bombast”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, November 19, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
202 “Gertrude was a”: Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, 49–50.
203 “We offered to”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, May 24, 1928, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
203 “She might as”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, May 31, 1928, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library. In this note, Hemingway explained that when he was working on proofs of The Sun Also Rises, he had consulted both Burke’s Peerage and Debrett’s Peerage, and in neither “studbook” did the name “Lady Ashley” appear.
203 Beach was stocking copies: Copies of The Sun Also Rises arrived at Shakespeare and Company on November 29, 1926. Sylvia Beach Papers, Inventories, Order Records, Clients, 1926, box 65, Princeton University Library. The book was also available at another Paris-based English-language bookstore, the Sign of the Black Mannikin, from November 7.
203 “Six Characters in”: This jest-title was a takeoff on the 1921 play by Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
204 “the best thing”: Cody, “The Sun Also Rises Revisited,” 269.
204 “it was like”: A. E. Hotchner, interview with the author, December 11, 2013.
204 “four leading characters”: Janet Flanner, “Letter from Paris,” The New Yorker, December 4, 1926, 90. This item—sandwiched between ads for bedding and finger-wave permanents—was ironically tagged onto another item announcing Michael Arlen’s presence in Paris for the winter.
204 “Several well-known habitués”: “Around the Town,” Paris Herald, November 17, 1926.
204 incisive reportage: Cleveland Chase, “Out of Little, Much” Saturday Review of Literature, December 11, 1926, excerpted in Sarason, “Hemingway and the Sun Set,” 5.
204 “Like Cohn”: Cody, “The Sun Also Rises Revisited,” 267.
204 “What a savage”: “Around the Town,” Paris Herald, November 17, 1926.
205 “The book hit”: Loeb, “Hemingway’s Bitterness,” 126.
205 “unnecessary nastiness”: Ibid., 126–27.
205 “travestied”: Ibid., 127.
205 It was said: The Cohn portrait was “absolutely something that colored the rest of his life,” recalled Valerie Hemingway, who knew Loeb in later years. Even decades later, she remembered, Loeb still “literally cried on my shoulder, saying, ‘Why did Ernest do this to me?’” Valerie Hemingway, interview with the author, December 20, 2013. Up through his final years, he wrote essays and gave interviews on the subject, and even devoted much of his memoir to the Hemingway betrayal. He pored over Hemingway’s later works and studied Hemingway’s own family background, searching for clues to his former friend’s “incapacity for either remorse or pity.” He eventually concluded that Hemingway had been, during their time together in Paris, “already too sick for friendship”; he just hadn’t heeded the warnings. Loeb, “Hemingway’s Bitterness,” 126, 133.
205 “I sent word”: Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, March 31, 1927, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:222.
205 “You can see”: Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, 48.
206 “I never threatened”: Loeb, “Hemingway’s Bitterness,” 128.
206 “I distinctly remember”: Ibid.
206 “demented characters out”: Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, March 31, and ca. September 15, 1927, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:222.
206 furious about the book: Charters, This Must Be the Place, 38.
206 “cruel”: Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 43.
207 “would have been”: Ibid., 100.
207 “Mike”: This according to Matthew Josephson, who recounted having witnessed this exchange in 1927. Bertram Sarason, “Lady Brett Ashley and Lady Duff Twysden,” in Hemingway and the Sun Set, 232.
207 rumors about the Twysdens: Sarason states that he heard the plates-buying story from photographer Berenice Abbott, who had been thus apprised by Twysden herself. The denial of the plates story was related to Sarason by Aileen Twysden. See Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 35. Duff Twysden may have believed that Hemingway had jeopardized or complicated her visitation rights with the Twysdens. Sarason, “Lady Brett Ashley and Lady Duff Twysden,” 100. In fall 1927, Hemingway claimed to Fitzgerald that Twysden actually had kidnapped the child and sent him, accompanied by a nurse, down to the south of France, although it is unclear whether this actually happened. Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, ca. September 15, 1927, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:292.
207 “I would have”: Charters, “Pat and Duff: Some Memories,” 245.
208 Yet another rumor: For the boyfriend and bartenders, see Sarason, “Hemingway and the Sun Set,” 24. For Cannell unable to get out of bed, see Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 179.
208 “Hemingway gave Frances”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 150.
208 “awful”: Sarason, “Hemingway and the Sun Set,” 95.
208 “It was so”: St. John, “Interview with Donald Ogden Stewart,” 202.
208 “It didn’t make”: Ibid.
208 “complete copying”: St. John, “Interview with Hemingway’s ‘Bill Gorton,’” 155.
209 “Hemingway was not”: Ibid., 185.
209 “The Sun has”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, January 25, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
209 35,000 copies: Berg, Max Perkins, 41.
209 hit that mark: The Sun Also Rises sold 23,000 copies in its first year. Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 186.
209 became a “craze”: Malcolm Cowley, who studied the social effects of The Sun Also Rises, noted that “it was a good novel and became a craze” in the college age group. Malcolm Cowley, Exiles Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s (New York: Viking, 1965), 3; “suppressed”: On June 8, 1927, Perkins wrote to Hemingway with the news that “the book . . . has been suppressed in Boston.” Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
209 “Young women of”: Cowley, Exiles Return, 3.
210 “Most of those”: Ibid.
210 “young Americans [who]”: Samuel Putnam, Paris Was Our Mistress: Memoirs of a Lost and Found Generation (London: Plantin Publishers, 1987), 69.
210 “Why you’re Kitty”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 150.
211 “The three months”: Hadley Hemingway to Ernest Hemingway, November 16, 1926, Incoming Correspondence, Hadley Richardson Hemingway Mowrer, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. A few days later Hadley wrote to Hemingway again: “Haven’t I yet made it quite plain that I want to start proceedings for a divorce from you—right away? Thus the three months separation between you and Pauline is nil as far as I am concerned—whether you communicate with her about any or all of your and my arrangements makes no difference to me.” She told him that she was willing to start the procedure herself and advised him to get a “good lawyer.” Hadley Hemingway to Ernest Hemingway, November 19, 1926, ibid.
211 “two boxers who”: Ernest Hemingway to Hadley Hemingway, November 18, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:151–53. Hadley accepted Hemingway’s offer. Hemingway duly wrote to Perkins, informing him that he had given her the British and American royalties for the book and added that he hoped “they will be considerable.” The Charles Scribner’s Sons archives contain an untitled document noting the official transfer of proceeds, which was filed along with Hemingway’s contract for The Sun Also Rises (Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library). Hadley began receiving royalty payments in August 1927. In the months that followed, Hemingway advertised this transfer of royalties in correspondence with friends and acquaintances, usually adding that those royalties were substantial and that Hadley was getting along well.
211 The Hemingways’ divorce: The preliminary judgment went through on January 27, 1927, and was finalized on April 14. Michael Reynolds, Hemingway: The Homecoming (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), xi.
211 “I didn’t know”: Sokoloff, Hadley, 92–93.
211 “a very difficult”: Patrick Hemingway, interview with the author, September 26, 2014.
211 “The Sun ect.”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ernest Hemingway, December 1926, reprinted in Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, 148.
211 “bullfighting, bullslinging, and”: Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise, 112.
212 “I’m sorry for”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ernest Hemingway, December 1926, reprinted in Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, 148.
212 “I have a”: Callaghan, That Summer in Paris, 161.
13. Sun, Risen
213 “edging away”: Putnam, Paris Was Our Mistress, 69, 128. Putnam’s description of his Deux Magots conversation with Hemingway appears in a passage titled “Hard-Boiled Young Man Going Places (Ernest Hemingway).”
214 “shy youth had”: Arthur Moss, quoted in Carlos Baker’s notes on an unpublished manuscript of Moss’s, “Time of the Expatriates: A Reporter’s Recollections of the Lost Generation,” Carlos Baker Collection of Ernest Hemingway, Princeton University Library.
214 Gone were: Despite the security that his association and eventual marriage with Pauline would give Hemingway, he frequently complained in letters that spring of money problems, and asked for (and received) a $750 advance on his next book from Maxwell Perkins to help make ends meet.
214 “Beginning with the”: Robert McAlmon to Norman Holmes Pearson, quoted in Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 225.
214 “son of a”: Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, December 24, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:455. In this letter Hemingway told Fitzgerald that he planned to “write a Mr. and Mrs. Elliot on him”—referring to the story in which he had portrayed a thinly veiled Chard Powers Smith in a less than flattering light.
215 “It never occurred”: Hemingway: A Moveable Feast, 93.
215 a satirical piece: “The True Story of My Break with Gertrude Stein” came out in The New Yorker on February 12, 1927.
215 “He heard about”: Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 217.
215 “talked endlessly about”: Ibid., 219.
215 he needed help: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, February 19, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
216 “I now have”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, October 1, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
216 “movie people”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, December 3, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
216 “[I] would not”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, December 6, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library; “For the movie”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, December 15, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
216 “No movie in”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ernest Hemingway, December 1926, reprinted in Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, 148.
216 more than thirty years: A film adaptation of The Sun Also Rises was released in 1957 by Twentieth Century–Fox, starring Tyrone Power as Jake Barnes and Ava Gardner as Brett Ashley.
216 “Got a sheet”: Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, ca. September 15, 1927, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:292.
216 undignified domestic accident: Bak
er, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 189–90.
217 “His argument was”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, May 27, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
217 “Don’t you think”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, December 6, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
217 “softening feminine influence”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, February 14, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library; “punk title”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, February 19, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
217 “splendid”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, February 28, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library. Perkins may have liked the title, but Fitzgerald had a wonderful time poking fun at it in letters to Hemingway, alternately calling it All the Sad Young Men Without Women (combining its name with the title of his own latest short story collection, All the Sad Young Men) and All the Sad Young Men Without Women in Love (rolling in the title of D. H. Lawrence’s 1920 novel for good measure). F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ernest Hemingway, October 1927 and December 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
218 “self-consciously virile”: Virginia Woolf, “An Essay in Criticism,” New York Herald Tribune, October 9, 1927.
218 “truly magnificent”: Parker, “Reading and Writing,” 93–94.
218 “Once he’d finished”: Patrick Hemingway, interview with the author, July 30, 2014.
218 The World’s Fair: Hemingway wrote to F. Scott Fitzgerald weeks before The Sun Also Rises was released and informed him that he had “a swell hunch for a new novel” and told him about the possible title. The World’s Fair had also been an early possible title for Fitzgerald’s novel Tender Is the Night. Hemingway did not offer any additional details about his possible new project. Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, ca. September 8, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:117.
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