Everybody Behaves Badly

by Lesley M. M. Blume

  119 “liable to have”: Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 15.

  119 name-dropped: F. Scott Fitzgerald is mentioned in passing as Hem/Jake discusses the war wound that has rendered him impotent; he states that he has been advised by Fitzgerald that the issue of impotence should be treated only “as a humorous subject.” Ernest Hemingway, first draft of The Sun Also Rises, Notebook I, item 194, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  120 “Duff’s gone off”: Ernest Hemingway, first draft of The Sun Also Rises, Notebook IV, item 194, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  120 “How long is”: Ernest Hemingway to Barklie McKee Henry, August 12, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:371.

  120 “Don’t for Chrise”: Ernest Hemingway to Ezra Pound, ca. August 19–20, 1925, reprinted ibid., 378.

  120 “going like wild fire”: Ernest Hemingway to William Smith, August 5, 1925, reprinted ibid., 369.

  120 “ought to be”: Ernest Hemingway to Morley Callaghan, August 13, 1925, reprinted ibid., 373.

  121 “suppressed the day”: Ernest Hemingway to Ernest Walsh, August 17, 1925, reprinted ibid., 377.

  121 Perhaps the most: Ernest Hemingway to Jane Heap, ca. August 23, 1925, reprinted ibid., 383–84.

  121 $1,000 advance: In 1925 dollars, $1,000 equals roughly $13,500 today.

  121 “Of course [I]”: Ernest Hemingway to Grace Hemingway, September 11, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:388.

  122 “I want to”: Ernest Hemingway to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, August 20, 1925, reprinted ibid., 381.

  122 unpolluted, idyllic counterpoint: The portrait clearly revealed Hemingway’s own preferences on urban versus country living. Here was the world that “he really loved,” says his son Patrick Hemingway: “The mountains and getting away and fishing. And there’s no question about which he preferred” (interview with the author, July 30, 2014).

  122 “We walked on”: Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 94.

  123 “Bill gestured with”: Ibid., 98.

  123 “I remember it”: St. John, “Interview with Hemingway’s ‘Bill Gorton,’” 183.

  123 “that kike”: Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 131; “superior and Jewish”: Ibid., 77. Bill Gorton is not the only character to indulge in anti-Semitic remarks: Mike Campbell instructs Cohn to “take that sad Jewish face away” (ibid., 142); Jake Barnes comments on Cohn’s “hard, Jewish, stubborn streak” (ibid., 9).

  123 “I have no”: St. John, “Interview with Donald Ogden Stewart,” 201.

  123 “The fiesta was”: Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 124.

  123 “They wanted her”: Ibid.

  124 “haute monde from”: Ernest Hemingway, early handwritten draft of The Sun Also Rises, item 193, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  124 “People would wreck”: Ibid.

  124 sallow, hemorrhoidal sellout: Ibid.

  124 modern-day Circe: Circe is a mythological sorceress with the power to turn men into swine.

  124 “He claims she”: Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 115.

  125 beats the hell: Juanito Quintana later contended that a fight between Harold Loeb and Cayetano Ordóñez had indeed broken out in real life, though it was not as bad as the pummeling Cohn gives to Ordóñez in the book. Such an incident was reported by no one else in the entourage. Leah Rice Koontz, “‘Montoya’ Remembers The Sun Also Rises,” reprinted in Sarason, Hemingway and the Sun Set, 210.

  125 “like a wonderful”: Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 177.

  9. Breach Season

  127 “tired as hell”: Ernest Hemingway to Ernest Walsh, ca. September 21, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:390–91.

  127 “let [his] head”: Ibid.

  127 “He wanted me”: Ernest Hemingway, first draft of The Sun Also Rises, Notebook VI, item 194, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  127 “Oh, Jake”: Ernest Hemingway, first draft of The Sun Also Rises, Notebook VII, item 194, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Hemingway was clearly tinkering with alternate final lines; farther down the page he wrote a variation: “Isn’t it nice to think so.”

  128 “I want 3000”: Duff Twysden to Ernest Hemingway, undated, series 3, Incoming Correspondence, “Twsyden, Lady Duff,” Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  128 “I knew that”: Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! 145–46. Stewart’s excitement abated, however, when he reported for duty at the MGM studios in Los Angeles and no one there, he reported, “seemed to have the faintest idea who I was.” Ibid., 146.

  129 club hostesses: In his memoir Loeb dubbed the ladies—hostesses at a club run by White Russians—“Comtesse Vera and the Princess Cléopatre”; it was the beginning of a two-week caviar-and-vodka-fueled “grand party.” Loeb, The Way It Was, 299. Just as San Fermín would give Hemingway the idea for The Sun Also Rises, Loeb would later transcribe the happenings of this fortnight into another novel of his own, The Professors Like Vodka—released in 1927 by Boni & Liveright.

  129 “It was now”: Ibid., 300.

  129 “The things one”: Loeb, “Hemingway’s Bitterness,” 125.

  130 “I’d rather he”: Ernest Hemingway to Howell Jenkins, August 15, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:374.

  130 “full of Madrid”: Loeb, The Way It Was, 300.

  130 “If only you’d”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 149.

  130 “And that kike”: Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 154.

  130 “But not you”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 149–50.

  131 The Lost Generation: Ernest Hemingway, foreword to The Sun Also Rises, “The Lost Generation: A Novel,” item 202c, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  131 “I thought you”: Ibid.

  131 “That’s what you”: Hemingway: A Moveable Feast, 61.

  132 This anecdote: Hemingway claimed in the Chartres foreword that Stein did not tell him the lost generation garage story until after he had completed the first draft of Sun on September 21, 1925, and it is difficult to know whether he conceived of his material through this sort of prism beforehand. Ernest Hemingway, foreword to The Sun Also Rises, “The Lost Generation: A Novel,” item 202c, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  132 unsuccessfully sought solace: “Communism” had originally been included in this roster of rejected ideologies, but he changed his mind and crossed it out. Ibid.

  132 “This is not”: Ibid.

  132 “I thought of”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 62.

  133 the concept would resonate: Decades later, in A Moveable Feast, Hemingway returned to the theme again, writing of the passage of seasons and regeneration. A portion of the Ecclesiastes passage would even be read aloud at Hemingway’s funeral. Gregory H. Hemingway, M.D., Papa: A Personal Memoir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976), 119.

  133 “just disgust with”: Ernest Hemingway to Ezra Pound, ca. late September 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:396.

  133 “[I] am calling”: Ernest Hemingway to Harold Loeb, ca. early November 1925, reprinted ibid., 407.

  133 “Reading it over”: Ernest Hemingway to Horace Liveright, May 22, 1925, reprinted ibid., 339.

  134 published in New York: Biographers tend to identify the release date of In Our Time as October 5, 1925, but an early official Hemingway bibliography, issued in book form by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1951, gives the publication date as September 15, 1925. Samuels, A Hemingway Check List, 9. Hemingway told Ezra Pound and his father in separate late September 1925 missives that the publication date was October 1;
he later advised his father that the release date had been October 10.

  134 “obvious”: Reviews noting the “obvious” link between Hemingway and Gertrude Stein include those published in The New Republic and the Saturday Review of Literature. Reynolds, Hemingway: The Paris Years, 328; “fine bare effects”: The New Republic, quoted ibid.

  134 “Ernest Hemingway is”: Robert Wolf, review of In Our Time, New York Herald Tribune, February 14, 1926.

  134 “stupid but well meaning”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, April 8, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  135 “Hemingway is his”: Alfred Harcourt to Louis Bromfield, late fall 1925, quoted in Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, December 31, 1925–January 1, 1926, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:459. Bromfield apparently transcribed the contents of Harcourt’s letter in a missive to Hemingway, who relayed the information to Fitzgerald.

  135 “I didn’t get”: Harold Loeb to Ernest Hemingway, undated, series 3, Incoming Correspondence, “Loeb, Harold,” Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

  135 “Being a simple”: Ernest Hemingway to Horace Liveright, June 21, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:352. For Liveright’s request that Hemingway act as a scout, see Gilmer, Horace Liveright, 122.

  136 “up to them”: Ernest Hemingway to Harold Loeb, ca. early November 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:407–8.

  136 22,000 copies: Dark Laughter was released on September 15, 1925. For the release date and sales figures, see Gilmer, Horace Liveright, 114–15.

  136 “The sales climbed”: Anderson, Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs, 363.

  136 “This whole novel”: Sherwood Anderson to Horace Liveright, April 18, 1925, reprinted in Jones, Letters of Sherwood Anderson, 141–42.

  136 “I dare say”: Anderson, Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs, 474–75.

  137 “Anderson’s last two”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, December 30, 1925, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library. Hemingway’s and Fitzgerald’s feelings about Anderson’s latest works may have been symptomatic of a larger Sherwood Anderson backlash. Although Kay Boyle claimed that Anderson had been something of a literary hero and inspiration to the expat creatives, Sylvia Beach later recalled that “Sherwood Anderson [was] judged harshly by the young writers; and suffered considerably from the falling-off of his followers.” That said, “he was a forerunner, and, whether they acknowledge it or not, the generation of the twenties owes him a considerable debt.” Beach, Shakespeare and Company, 32.

  137 “so terribly bad”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 60.

  137 only about a week: In the text of Torrents, Hemingway informs the reader that he wrote the book in ten days. Yet in a letter to a friend, he claimed that he had actually written the book in six days. Ernest Hemingway to Isidor Schneider, June 29, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:91.

  137 It enraged him: Hemingway explained his thinking on Anderson in a March 30, 1926, letter to Edwin L. Peterson, reprinted ibid., 44–45.

  137 “the last refuge”: Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, 70.

  137 “Hemingway, you have”: Ernest Hemingway, The Torrents of Spring: A Romantic Novel in Honor of the Passing of a Great Race (New York: Scribner, 2004), 68.

  137 “And you’re not”: Ibid., 76–77.

  138 “Gertrude Stein . . . Ah”: Ibid., 75.

  138 “detestable”: Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 159.

  138 “wasn’t quite good”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 176–77.

  138 “both for its”: Stewart, By a Stroke of Luck! 157.

  138 He descended: The Murphys were apparently regularly targeted for readings by members of the Crowd. Fitzgerald was said to crave Sara’s approval in particular; Donald Stewart would also arrive on their doorstep with material. While he was writing The Haddocks, he often presented them with drafts. “Every evening I would take the day’s pages over to the Murphys’ apartment and after dinner would read to them,” he wrote later. “I can still hear Sara’s marvelously raucous laughter.” Ibid., 130.

  139 “in questionable taste”: Tomkins, Living Well Is the Best Revenge, 25.

  139 seeing a good deal: Ernest Hemingway to Harold Loeb, ca. early November 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:408.

  139 had begun stopping off: Hawkins, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow, 44.

  139 “one of the”: Ibid.

  139 Pauline’s persuasion: Sokoloff, Hadley, 83.

  140 “Maybe when you”: Ernest Hemingway to Horace Liveright, December 7, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:434.

  140 “a cold-blooded contract-breaker”: Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 160.

  140 “I have known”: Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, December 31, 1925–January 1, 1926, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:459.

  141 drinking champagne: Ernest Hemingway to Harold Loeb, ca. early November 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:407; “very thick”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, ca. December 30, 1925, reprinted in Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, 133.

  141 “working like a”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 176.

  141 “To one rather”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Horace Liveright and T. R. Smith, December 1925, reprinted in Bruccoli, Scott and Ernest: The Authority of Failure and the Authority of Success, 29–30.

  141 “the most difficult”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 118.

  141 “over and over”: Ernest Hemingway to Isabelle Simmons Godolphin, December 3, 1925, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:426.

  142 “I had not”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 146.

  142 “murder”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 215–16.

  142 “One is new”: Ibid., 216.

  142 an heiress: Around this time, Pauline’s trust fund had just been fattened up to $60,000 by her uncle Gus, a figure that amounts to approximately $815,000 today. Ruth A. Hawkins reports that Pauline’s monthly yield from that fund was around $250, or about $3,400 today (Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow, 47).

  142 not suited for life: As Valerie Hemingway put it, “Hadley didn’t like the limelight. She didn’t want to be out every night. She had nurtured [Hemingway], but then he grew beyond it. When Pauline came along, she said, ‘I’ll go out with Ernest.’ She was the person with the money. There would be nannies, that sort of thing” (interview with the author, December 20, 2013).

  142 editorial feedback: Hawkins, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow, 46. Although the content of Pauline’s feedback is unclear, Hawkins says that “the book probably benefited not only from Pauline’s editorial skills, but from the fact that she had not yet become a part of the Pamplona bullfight crowd, so she would have been able to read it from somewhat of an outsider’s perspective” (email to the author, March 7, 2015).

  143 “innocently”: Cannell, “Scenes with a Hero,” 146.

  143 rejecting torrents: Cable from Horace Liveright to Ernest Hemingway, December 30, 1925, reprinted in Gilmer, Horace Liveright, 123.

  144 “entirely unprejudiced”: Horace Liveright to Ernest Hemingway, December 30, 1925, reprinted ibid., 123–25.

  144 “I’m loose”: Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, December 31, 1925–January 1, 1926, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:459–61.

  144 “He’s dead set”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, ca. December 30, 1925, reprinted in Bruccoli, F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, 134.

  144 YOU CAN GET: Cable from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, January 8, 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald Files, A
rchives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  145 PUBLISH NOVEL AT: Cable from Maxwell Perkins to F. Scott Fitzgerald, January 8, 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald Files, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  145 “it is not”: Maxwell Perkins to F. Scott Fitzgerald, January 13, 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald Files, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  145 “If only”: Maxwell Perkins to F. Scott Fitzgerald, February 3, 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald Files, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  145 “astonishingly fine”: Ibid.

  145 “People are beginning”: Maxwell Perkins to F. Scott Fitzgerald, February 3, 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald Files, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  146 “Your office was”: Ernest Hemingway to Horace Liveright, January 19, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:22.

  146 “crazy”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, ca. January 19, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  146 “tempermental in business”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, ca. March 1, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.

  146 “You won’t be”: Ibid.

  10. Dorothy Parker’s Scotch

  147 “It was the”: Malcolm Cowley, “Unshaken Friend—II,” The New Yorker, April 8, 1944, 30.

  147 fashionable preachers: As noted by former Scribner’s editor John Hall Wheelock: “Scribners had made its great success, originally, when it was founded in 1846, in the field of theology. It published books of sermons. A book of sermons had the popularity in those days that perhaps a mystery would have today.” He adds that his own grandfather’s sermons were published by Scribner’s, and added: “The fashionable preachers of the day always had books of their sermons published.” John Hall Wheelock, The Last Romantic: A Poet Among Publishers (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 77.