148 “dreary”: Kay Boyle, afterword to McAlmon, Being Geniuses Together, 336.
148 “Max was a”: Wheelock, The Last Romantic, 66.
149 “a great [editorial] instinct”: Charles Scribner III, intervew with the author, June 20, 2014.
149 “This Side of”: Cowley, “Unshaken Friend—II,” 30.
149 “could not stomach”: A. Scott Berg, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (New York: Berkley Books, 2008), 12.
149 “serious flaws”: Wheelock, The Last Romantic, 58.
150 “It’s frivolous”: Ibid. Another account of the meeting states that there was an on-the-spot vote about the book’s acceptance, resulting in a tie between the more innovation-oriented editors and the house elders. Berg, Max Perkins, 16.
150 “bad boys of”: Cowley, “Unshaken Friend—II,” 30.
150 a kerfuffle: Ibid.
151 “wonder”: Maxwell Perkins to F. Scott Fitzgerald, January 28, 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald Files, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library. The play adapted from The Great Gatsby, staged by George Cukor, opened at the Ambassador Theater on February 2, 1926; the film adaptation was released by Paramount in August of that year, with Warner Baxter in the title role.
151 an amicable reception: Two Liveright employees, Donald Friede and Edith Stern, later told Liveright biographer Walker Gilmer that they had given Hemingway a “friendly reception,” and that Liveright was “gracious but firm” when rejecting Torrents but still vied for The Sun Also Rises. Gilmer, Horace Liveright, 125.
152 “[I] told him”: Ernest Hemingway to Louis and Mary Bromfield, ca. March 8, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:36.
152 “A poseur to”: Gilmer, Horace Liveright, 236.
152 “It was”: Ibid., 235.
152 the windows of: Maxwell Perkins to F. Scott Fitzgerald, February 6, 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald Files, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
152 “He wrote an”: Ernest Hemingway to Louis Bromfield, March 8, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:36.
152 Not only did: Maxwell Perkins to F. Scott Fitzgerald, March 4, 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald Files, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
153 “He is a”: Ibid.
153 “I’m glad you”: F. Scott Fitzgerald to Maxwell Perkins, February 25, 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald Files, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
153 “crazy”: Ernest Hemingway to William Smith and Harold Loeb, February 28, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:30.
153 “I should have”: Ernest Hemingway to Louis and Mary Bromfield, ca. March 8, 1926, reprinted ibid., 36.
153 “I felt sorry”: Ibid.
154 “All the time”: Ernest Hemingway to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, reprinted in Defazio, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 2:55.
154 more than doubled: According to one source, the number doubled from 15,000 to 32,000 “within a few years.” Pete Hamill, introduction to The Speakeasies of 1932, ed. Gordon Kahn and Al Hirschfeld (Milwaukee: Glenn Young Books/Applause, 2003), 11.
154 Fitzgerald’s was said: John Dos Passos attested that “Scott had good bootleggers” (The Best Times, 145).
154 “Everybody [was] cockeyed”: Ernest Hemingway to Isabel Simmons Godolphin, February 25, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:32.
155 “hells own amount”: Ernest Hemingway to Louis and Mary Bromfield, ca. March 8, 1926, reprinted ibid., 37.
155 “until they dropped”: Nathaniel Benchley, Robert Benchley (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955), 162.
155 “There is something”: Dorothy Parker, “Reading and Writing: A Book of Great Short Stories—Something About Cabell,” The New Yorker, October 29, 1927, 92.
155 “Gertrude Stein . . . said”: Marion Capron, “Dorothy Parker: The Art of Fiction No. 13,” Paris Review 13 (Summer 1956), http://www.theparis review.org/interviews/4933/the-art-of-fiction-no-13-dorothy-parker.
156 “caused about as”: Parker, “Reading and Writing,” 92.
156 kindred spirit: Marion Meade, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 163–64.
156 harbored serious literary ambitions: For example, despite his success and celebrity, Robert Benchley “brooded over the fact that he was making no substantial contribution to Progress.” Benchley, Robert Benchley, 81.
156 “Write novels”: Dorothy Parker to Robert Benchley, November 7, 1929, reprinted in Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sara Murphy and Friends, ed. Linda Patterson Miller (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 46.
156 decided on the spot: Meade, Dorothy Parker, 164.
157 calling her “Dotty”: Hemingway refers to Parker thus in a ca. March 8, 1926, letter to Louis and Mary Bromfield recounting the goings-on during his New York trip; reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:37.
157 Other powerful critics: Hemingway claimed that he was asked for references to other young talent by Gorman and Wilson. Ernest Hemingway to Morley Callaghan, March 5, 1926, reprinted ibid., 34.
157 the Coffee House: In a ca. March 8, 2015, letter to Louis Bromfield, Hemingway mentions that he had run into an acquaintance at the Coffee House one evening; reprinted ibid., 36.
157 no-introduction policy: “Custom was they never introduced because it was assumed [everyone] knew each other . . . Because everyone was at a high level of fame . . . that was the club conceit. Introductions were frowned on.” Club member and historian Bill Ray, interview with the author, October 2, 2014. Early membership lists provided to the author by Ray and the club.
157 “one of the”: Ernest Hemingway to Louis and Mary Bromfield, ca. March 8, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:37.
157 “great love at”: Ernest Hemingway to Isabel Simmons Godolphin, February 25, 1926, reprinted ibid., 32.
157 “the strikingly good-looking”: Wheelock, The Last Romantic, 94.
157 “cultists”: Thomas Wolfe, quoted in Stanley Olson, Elinor Wylie: A Biography (New York: Dial Press/James Wade, 1979), 246.
158 funded the odyssey: Meade, Dorothy Parker, 165.
158 “[On] the 4th”: Ernest Hemingway to Louis and Mary Bromfield, ca. March 8, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:37.
158 had taken saltpeter: Edmund Wilson, The Twenties: From the Notebooks and Diaries of the Period, ed. Leon Edel (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975), 347. Parker biographer Marion Meade notes that Parker “continue[d] to giggle” about the saltpeter episode to friends for months to come (Dorothy Parker, 166).
11. Kill or Be Killed
159 waited in vain: Ernest Hemingway to Isabel Simmons Godolphin, February 25, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:32.
159 “unbelievable wrenching, kicking”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 217–18.
159 still cultivating Hadley: Ibid., 217.
159 “wished [he] had”: Ibid., 218.
160 “It certainly broke”: Gerald Murphy to Hadley Hemingway, March 3, 1926, reprinted in Miller, Letters from the Lost Generation, 15.
160 “they gave it”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 177–78.
160 ready for fall publication: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, March 10, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:40.
160 “with all of”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, March 24, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
160 “The bulls are”: Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 149.
160 The real Pedro Romero: Allen Josephs, “Toreo: The Moral Axis in The Sun Also Rises,” Hemingway Review 6 (Fall 1986): 88–99; Allen Josephs, intervie
w with the author, April 1, 2014. Allen Josephs, “Toreo: The Moral Axis in The Sun Also Rises,” Hemingway Review 6 (Fall 1986): 88–99; Allen Josephs, interview with the author, April 1, 2014.
161 “That seemed to”: Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 192; Ernest Hemingway, typewritten revision of The Sun Also Rises, item 198, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
161 “Oh Jake”: Ernest Hemingway, draft 1 of The Sun Also Rises, item 194, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
161 “Yes,” I said. “Isn’t”: Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 198.
161 “blown out of”: Gerald Murphy to Hadley Hemingway, March 3, 1926, reprinted in Miller, Letters from the Lost Generation, 16.
162 “If these bastards”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 215.
162 “We were all”: Dos Passos, The Best Times, 177–78.
162 “I finished re-writing”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, April 1, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:46.
162 TO MY SON: In a ca. April 20, 1926, letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway wrote that he had been thinking about including that particular dedication; reprinted ibid., 56.
162 reviewers and writers: The list included Robert Woolf, Edmund Wilson, Herman Gorman, Burton Rascoe, and many other important critics. Ezra Pound, Robert Benchley, Donald Ogden Stewart, James Joyce, and Sinclair Lewis were also to get copies. He asked that one be sent to Elinor Wylie, too, with whom he had enjoyed such a flirtation during his New York trip. Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, April 8, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
162 Jonathan Cape: Sylvia Beach stated in her memoirs that she made the first connection between Hemingway and Cape: “I remember Jonathan Cape’s enthusiasm over his first Hemingway [reading.] Mr. Cape, Colonel Lawrence’s and Joyce’s publisher in England, asked me, on one of his visits to Paris, what American he should publish. ‘Here, read Hemingway!’ I said—and that is how Mr. Cape became Hemingway’s English publisher.” Beach, Shakespeare and Company, 82.
163 “I don’t think”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, April 24, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library. Hemingway later became frustrated with Cape’s handling of The Sun Also Rises, released in the U.K. as Fiesta in 1927. After its release, he complained bitterly to Cape about the house’s marketing and editing of the book.
163 right of first refusal: Jonathan Cape would decline to publish Torrents later that year. L. E. Pollinger, manager of the Department of American Books for Curtis Brown, would write to Charles Scribner, “As you rather thought, Cape has decided to let ‘The Torrents of Spring’ by Ernest Hemingway pass him by, and I have written direct to Hemingway telling him this . . . news.” L. E. Pollinger to Charles Scribner, August 31, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
163 “In fact, the”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, April 12, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
163 “the Sun A.R.”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, April 24, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
163 “low as hell”: Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, May 4, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:70.
163 “Ernest M. Shit”: Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, ca. May 15, 1926, reprinted ibid., 76.
163 “Max, you have”: Louise Saunders, quoted by her granddaugher Jenny Phillips, interview with the author, September 9, 2014. Phillips states that her mother and aunt overheard the conversation and recounted it to her.
163 “He always staunchly”: Ibid.
164 “almost unpublishable”: Maxwell Perkins to F. Scott Fitzgerald, May 26, 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald Files, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library. Fitzgerald relayed this assessment to Hemingway, who mentioned it verbatim—and proudly—to a friend in a letter around a month later. Ernest Hemingway to Isidor Schneider, June 29, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:92.
164 “It’s a vulgar”: Wheelock, The Last Romantic, 59.
164 “ultra conservative”: Maxwell Perkins to Charles Scribner Jr., May 27, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
165 “general misery”: Ibid.
165 Rumors circulated: Malcolm Cowley recounted the anecdote in his profile of Perkins in The New Yorker, quoting a letter written by an unnamed former Scribner’s employee to a mutual friend. Cowley, “Unshaken Friend—II,” 33. Charles Scribner III does not believe that the debate over the acquisition of The Sun Also Rises ever escalated to this level, calling a dramatic resignation threat “totally out of character” for Perkins. He says: “Perkins was a patient man; he wasn’t into showdowns. He would have advocated . . . [and] lobbied strong.” Charles Scribner III, interview with the author, June 20, 2014.
165 “I should think”: William Cary Brownell, “Report by Brownell on Hemingway’s 1st book,” undated but filed under 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
165 “[the publisher] is”: Maxwell Perkins to M. J. Levey, May 4, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
166 “‘The Sun Also Rises’ seems”: Maxwell Perkins to Ernest Hemingway, May 18, 1926, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
166 “I am not”: Ibid.
166 limited advertising campaign: The advertising campaign for The Torrents of Spring began in March 1926 and concluded the following October. Scribner’s ran ads in major publications, such as the Saturday Review of Literature, the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, and The Atlantic Monthly—and, of course, the house’s own publication, Scribner’s Magazine—yet did not expand its campaign beyond New York and Boston. Advertising Records, “Hemingway, E: The Torrents of Spring,” Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
167 “Hemingway as a writer”: “Charles Scribner’s Sons Supplement to List of Spring Publications—1926,” reprinted in Robert W. Trogdon, The Lousy Racket: Hemingway, Scribners, and the Business of Literature (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2007), 33–34.
167 seemed confused: On June 13, 1926, the New York Times Book Review ran an unsigned piece calling Torrents “not precisely what might have been expected of the author of In Our Time.”
167 “Parody is a gift”: Harry Hansen, review of The Torrents of Spring, New York World, May 30, 1926.
167 “audacious little volume”: Review of The Torrents of Spring, Kansas City Star, excerpted in Leonard J. Leff, Hemingway and His Conspirators (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 40.
167 “Mr. Hemingway’s name”: Margery Latimer, review of The Torrents of Spring, New York Herald Tribune Books, July 18, 1926.
168 “cockeyed lazy”: Ernest Hemingway, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Hemingway,” unpublished manuscript, folder 265.a, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
168 “Mommy”: Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, 49.
168 “attacked someone that”: Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, 60.
168 “What did he”: Maxwell Perkins to F. Scott Fitzgerald, June 18, 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald Files, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
168 “the most self-conscious”: Anderson, Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs, 475.
168 “slopping”: Ernest Hemingway to Sherwood Anderson, May 21, 1926, reprinted in Sanderson, Spanier, and Trogdon, Letters of Ernest Hemingway, 3:81–83.
168 “There was something”: Anderson, Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs, 475.
169 “You . . . speak to”: Sherwood Anderson to Ernest Hemingway, ca. June 1926, Incoming Correspondence, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and
Museum.
169 “How about”: Anderson, Sherwood Anderson’s Memoirs, 476.
169 “We had two”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, January 20, 1927, Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Princeton University Library.
169 “Hemingway had been”: Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 216.
170 “In the case”: Sherwood Anderson to Laura Lou Copenhaver, November 9, 1937, reprinted in Jones, Letters of Sherwood Anderson, 392.
170 “It was a beautiful”: Sherwood Anderson to Gertrude Stein, April 25, 1926, box 16, Carlos Baker Collection of Ernest Hemingway, Princeton University Library.
170 “Do you think”: Sokoloff, Hadley, 86. The quote is a slight elaboration on the one in Sokoloff’s book: “One night [Hadley] asked Jinny, whom she knew was very close to her sister, whether she thought that ‘Pauline and Ernest got along awfully well,’ or some such.”
170 soon-to-be-terminated pregnancy: Biographer Ruth Hawkins contends that Pauline may have discovered that she was pregnant while on the trip, which would have accounted for her uncharacteristic lack of restraint and moodiness. Hawkins, Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow, 66. Also, the following autumn, when Pauline and Hemingway were undertaking a three-month separation from each other, per Hadley’s mandate, Pauline wrote to Hemingway, “I’ve thought very hard and what I think is four months is a . . . lot tighter than nine,” indicating that the pair may at some point have been contemplating a separation of nine months, perhaps while Pauline left Paris for the duration of a pregnancy. Pauline Pfeiffer to Ernest Hemingway, October 2, 1926, series 3, Incoming Correspondence, box IC15, Hemingway, Pauline Pfeiffer, Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
170 “innocent”: Hadley told Alice Sokoloff that up until this point she was still ignorant of the affair, adding that she had been either “‘terribly innocent’ about it all or ‘just plain dumb.’” Sokoloff, Hadley, 86.
171 “There are two”: Patrick Hemingway interview with the author, September 26, 2014.
171 Hadley’s interpretation: Hadley Hemingway to Carlos Baker, August 1962, paraphrased in Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story, 168; Sokoloff, Hadley, 86.
Everybody Behaves Badly Page 39