Hundreds of books have also been written about him, many of which are filled with inaccurate info. As a stickler for details I want to share some of the best books written about him and by him this week on the podcast.
Even if you aren’t a Hemingway disciple, as a lover of Paris most likely have read A Moveable Feast. The book was posthumously published in 1964 under the guidance of his fourth wife Mary Hemingway and Harry Brague at Scribner’s publishing house. In 1956 a manager at the Ritz Hotel contacted Ernest and let him know that they still had a trunk of his in the basement. Some say it was a trunk made by Louis Vuitton himself, which adds to the romantic nature of the story. However, there is also a thought that the story isn’t true at all. It was said to be left by him in March 1928, however at that time he was too poor to frequent the bar stools and certainly the rooms of the Ritz. It makes for a great story though.
The next summer he started to work on “The Paris Sketches”, his collection of the tales of those days in Paris when he and Hadley arrived as a young married couple poor and happy to the stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and of course Pauline. Through the pages, Hem is painted as a bully and jerk at times. Many will be surprised to learn that it’s not what he originally wrote.
In the last few months of his life, he was working on the final chapters of the book. As he was locked into the Mayo Clinic he wanted to write a proper ending dedicated to the Paris years and his marriage to Hadley. Returning to Ketchum, Idaho he was still working on it the night before he would kill himself. Pages were still in the typewriter after he was discovered.
After his death as Mary went through his papers, he was rather a pack rat and that is something we are thankful for when she contacted A.E. Hotchner in regards to Hem’s Paris Sketches book. Once she reached out to Harry Brague at Scribner’s the butchering began. Mary and Harry would alter the final words of Hem, removing sections that he wrote and changing some of his words. His relationship with Fitzgerald was edited to look much worse than his original pages. As his fourth wife, she also changed the text to appease her instead of what he originally wrote or wanted.
If you are to read any edition of A Moveable Feast or if it’s been years be sure to read this version and only this version. A Moveable Feast, the Restored Edition, released in 2011 includes the actual text he wrote and notes on changes. It is a fascinating version and if I had to rate his wives from worst to best, Mary is at the top.
In 1925, after seeing the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona for three years, Hemingway took pen to paper and began to write the story based on what he knew, bullfights and his friends in Paris. While Gertrude Stein called them all the Lost Generation, the post-war Americans aimlessly went through life without direction and plenty of alcohol. Hem actually took offense to it and wanted to repaint them as capable and resilient. In fact, it was the second title for the book before it was decided to call it The Sun Also Rises after Hemingway and John Dos Passos sat at the Closerie Des Lilas, which is also featured in the book and found a passage in Ecclesiastes of the Old Testament. “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever. . . The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose.”
The first draft was finished in September 1925, just as the first steps of his marriage to Hadley marched to the finish. Published on October 22, 1926, after they had separated. It was dedicated to Haldey and their son Jack and in the divorce, he gave her all rights to the book and any future royalties that would include the movie. Six months after the printing she was sent her first check for 18,363 copies sold for $5, 577 today which would be more than $80,000. The Sun Also Rises has gone on to be one of the most translated books in history and has never been out of print.
The Sun Also Rises, the Hemingway Library edition was released in 2015 with early drafts of his manuscripts and deleted pages, is a great edition to read again.
At 2 a.m. on March 4, 1928, after a night out drinking with friend Archibald Macleash, Ernest Hemingway returned home and with the turn of a few events came up with his idea that would become A Farewell to Arms. The home was now on Rue Férou between Saint Sulpice and the Musée du Luxembourg. After his divorce from Hadley in April 1927 and his marriage in May to Pauline Pfeiffer, the two would move into the grandest place of his Paris years. On the top floor of the Hotel du Luzy, with the gate guarded by two sphinxes, the newlyweds now lived in the lap of luxury courtesy of her rich uncle Gus.
On that early morning of March 4, Hemingway went into his bathroom and reached up to grab the lavatory chain and gave it a yank, although it was the chain for the skylight, not the lavatory. Within seconds the skylight opened and cut a large gash into his forehead. Blood was everywhere and he wrapped his head with thirty layers of toilet paper. Macleash raced back over and with Pauline, they took a taxi to the American Hospital in Neuilly. The large horseshoe-shaped gash needed 9 stitches.
While sitting in the hospital, between the pain and the blood, the memories of the war in Italy all came back to him. Biographer Michael Reynolds said ‘When the pain dulled ... he knew exactly what he should be writing ... the story was the war, the wound, the woman.’ He began right away writing.
On August 20 he had finished his 1st draft of A Farewell to Arms. Set in WWI during the Italian campaign tells the story of the American Lieutenant Frederick Henry who was in the ambulance corps and who falls in love with a nurse, Catering Barkley. Loosely based on his time in the war and falling in love with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky while he was in an Italian hospital.
A week after the skylight incident he began to write A Farewell to Arms and by August he had his first draft done. Although he had problems with the ending and was said to have written over 39 different endings. In 2012 the Hemingway Library restored edition was released with 47 of them. Fascinating to see the different endings together.
A.E. Hotchner was a close friend of Hemingway in the years after the war. The young Hotchner called himself a bit of a bounty hunter, going after big-name authors to write for Cosmopolitan, most of whom were so flattered they did it. Long ago Cosmo magazine was filled with wonderful articles by some of the most celebrated authors. But one writer was more elusive and he was apprehensive to contact him. In the winter of 1948, Hotchner went to Havana, Cuba to meet Ernest Hemingway and to try to catch the larger-than-life author. “I had been in awe of Hemingway ever since my high school teacher introduced me to Hem’s Nick Adams stories”. With a lot of trepidation, he headed to Cuba to ask Hem to write a story on the “Future of Literature”. Sending him a letter from the hotel, still scared to reach out to the literary giant, Hotchner waited.
The next day his phone rang and the booming voice said “This Hotchner? Dr Hemingway here”, Hem told him he would be happy to help him and to meet for a drink at El Floridita that night.
That drink was the start of a friendship that would last the rest of Hem’s life. Hotchner would follow him on his many adventures from Key West to Cuba, Europe, and finally to Idaho. With a small tape recorder, he would record the conversations and moments of Hem’s life that few have ever been able to do. He would oversee the screenwriting of many of Ernest’s stories that made their way onto stage and screen and even write a few books about him. Papa Hemingway and Hemingway in Love are two of the best and give a glimpse into another side of Hem that few get to see. Hotchner was with him at the Mayo Clinic just a few weeks before he took his life in 1961 where he captured Hem wanting to write the last chapter of what would become A Moveable Feast and his final love letter to Hadley.
Papa Hemingway, by A.E. Hotchner, published it in 1966, five years after Hemingway’s death. Documenting adventures from Cuba to Europe Hem recounts major moments of his past. A close and trusted friendship from 1948 to his death in 1961 allowed Hotchner to document his life like no one else. Struggling with health issues and paranoia he does all he can to recall his life and his many loves. Unlike many biographies, this comes straight from the source.
Hemingway in Love, His Own Story by A. E. Hotchner waited until 2015 to release this book, long after the death of Mary Hemingway, Ernest’s fourth wife. Hotchner counted Mary as a close friend after Hem’s sudden death and wanted to spare her feelings while recounting the words of Hem on his first three wives. (too bad she didn’t have the same thought about what she did to Hadley, but I digress) This short book is filled with the raw thoughts and words that Hemingway recalled about each of the women in his life. As the book ends with Hotchners’s final visit to the master at the Mayo Clinic, A Moveable Feast takes on a whole new meaning and may leave you in tears.
Michael Reynolds wrote five volumes of the life of Hemingway broken up by, The Young Hemingway following his adolescence in Oak Park and Michigan to his days in World War I. Hemingway: The Paris Years, from poor and happy to his second wife Pauline. Hemingway: The Homecoming from 1926 to spring of 1929 the last years in Paris to Key West, Hemingway: The 1930’s, the end of their Europe days, Key West and the meeting of Martha Gellhorn. And the last in the series Hemingway: The Final Years. Reynolds did a fantastic job researching the books with the hundreds and hundreds of dates and moments of his life. If you were to read one complete biography of the man, these are the ones.
For the true Hemingway scholar, you must have the five-part collection of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway. Published by Cambridge, the current five volumes begin in 1907 and end in 1934. The collection will ultimately consist of 17 volumes! The work that has gone into these is amazing. Each and every letter has been painstakingly researched and added notes are listed at the end of each. It is Hem’s own words that are presented completely as they were intended and in their raw form. A pack rat by nature he kept everything including letters he didn’t send. In the letters, many of the famous legends can even be dispelled or validated. Take for instance the story of Hadley losing his manuscripts in the Gare de Lyon. In Moveable Feast every biographer later states he dropped everything to return to Paris. In fact, in his letter dated January 23, 1923, to Ezra Pound, he says he didn’t return to Paris until mid-January over a month after Hadley arrived in Chambry. The first five volumes are so wonderful, I can’t wait to see the next twelve.