I did enjoy the chapter “The Pilot Fish and the Rich” – it followed closely what I had already read in the Paris Wife. I think the thing that upset me the most in the Paris Wife was how callous Hem seemed in dealing with his leaving Hadley, but in The Pilot Fish and the Rich, I’m glad to see some atonement. I was intrigued with Hem’s stance on androgyny and the duality of the matching haircuts with Hadley. It seems to crop up again in another work of his published after his death – Garden of Eden.

All in all, it’s still hard for me to fully enjoy Hemingway, especially with reading the Paris Wife alongside this. However, it’s a very specific picture he paints of Paris and his writing, and I can appreciate and respect that. Looking forward to Bleak House up next!

On Jacqueline’s comments, honestly I don’t feel Hemingway betrayed his contemporaries. Most of the people he critiqued, mocked or whose weird behaviors he talked about, I still think they are lovely (especially when I don’t have to suffer from their weirdness), and their weaknesses (including Hemingway’s) are partially why they are lovely. I kind of like this sort of ruthless writing.

I can’t agree with her on the jealousy equals length issue as Stein was (and is) not famous for her writing, so he had nothing to be jealous about in that area. It does seem that he ended up not liking her (possibly because of her power over artists — now THAT may be what he was jealous of), but I don’t see him envying her writing as he was far more famous for his than she ever was for hers. And I know I am a lone wolf on this one, but I just don’t think he tore Fitzgerald down that much. Nothing that he said about Fitz made me think any less of him. Hearing that he thwarted his wife’s writing makes me think poorly, but Hemingway didn’t include that. In fact, the message I got from Hemingway about Fitzgerald was that he was almost an abused man – writing beautiful things despite his horrible circumstances with Zelda (who not only tried to keep him from writing, but also manipulated him into being insecure). Perhaps Hemingway was trying to rip Fitzgerald apart and he just didn’t do a very good job at it? Haha… oh jeez… now that would (almost) be sad.

I hold to my opinion that it was not fiction, but rather a recollection that was one-sided. However, I am not surprised to learn that she thought it was based more on memories than his journals — I very much go that idea too, especially after the chapter when Shipman came back to see him and they wandered down memory lane. It almost seems as if he put pen to paper right then (maybe why Shipman is depicted so kindly?)! I seriously wonder. Those of us who read the Restored Edition may possibly have been less influenced by his statement of fiction, as we didn’t read it until the end — though we had all already talked about his stories being very one sided recollections of a life lived 40 years prior. Perhaps it softens the story more in the older editions when it is read first?

I intensely felt that Hemingway was not telling the truth in this book. It bothered me so much that I sought out the book Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast: The Making of Myth by Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin. The author argues that A Moveable Feast is a reconstruction of the past, not a recollection of it. Her research shows that most of it was written in the last years of his life (and not stories taken from a trunk that sat in the Ritz Carlton for decades).

I just got the book on Tuesday night, so I haven’t been able to read the whole thing, but here a few choice quotes:

“The greatest falsehood of all, however, surely is Hemingway’s oft repeated claim of poverty … What makes this game unpalatable is the fact that his so-called poverty was a deliberate fabrication from the beginning, and that he capitalized on the real suffering of others to build his own myth … In fact the Hemingways were far from poor. As Michael Reynolds established recently, Hadley’s income was by itself sufficient to keep them in comfort even in the United States, yet alone France where life was cheaper.” (p. 91)

She goes on to give actual figures on Hadley’s inheritance, and she calculates them to be ten times richer than the average French person of the time simply from Hadley’s money! This figure did not take into consideration any of Hemingway’s money. To make it even worse, Hemingway controlled the money, and was so tightfisted WITH HER MONEY. There is a really terrible episode recounted in letters where Bumby had the whooping cough and Hadley didn’t even have money to pay the doctors or get groceries (she had to borrow it) but Hemingway was accusing her of living grand (he was off in Spain).

I find this really disturbing. The book goes on and on about different falsehoods. If there are any particular passages that you are interested in seeing if Tavernier-Courbin has discussed, I will be happy to look into them over the weekend. Just comment

The other issue I have regarding Hemingway’s utter meanness is addressed in this passage:

“There is, of course, a great deal of hostility in his showing his contemporaries in the worst light. The greater the competition they offered, the more negatively and at a greater length they are portrayed. Ford and Walsh rate only one chapter, while both Stein and Fitzgerald rate three each. However, in page count, Fitzgerald’s chapters are twice as long as Stein’s. Scott was his greatest competitor in the literary field; therefore, he needed to be destroyed more thoroughly than anyone else, and since he could not be attacked credibly on an artistic level, he had to be destroyed as a man and as an undisciplined writer.” (p. 108)

One more passage that I think captures my feelings on the book in a nutshell:

“He does not want to be held liable for the accuracy of what he narrates and therefore claims it’s fiction; but he wants readers to believe it as fact and in order to make that possible, he creates through devious means a context that will influence their judgment.” (p. 106)

Ugly. ugly, ugly. No thank you, Hemingway. It didn’t work on me!

Also must add Gilbert from Anne of Green Gables, Rhett from Gone With the Wind and Major Dobbin from Vanity Fair (recent one).

My Prince Charming since being a grown up would have to be Mr. Darcy and I’m particularly fond of Jamie in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander (even though I still haven’t finished the book).

Great post, Wallace!