HEMINGWAY
The
ring of that surname alone is enough to conjure up in most people’s minds a
host of unflattering descriptions: “male chauvinist pig” (a favourite amongst his
feminist readers), “vacuous cad with a drinking problem,” “bullfight enthusiast
stricken with machismo,” “Indiana Jones fancying himself a writer.” The man
himself might have been all of these things, but what he was not was an unthinking, unfeeling man.
This becomes apparent if one approaches his classic works A Farewell to Arms and The
Sun Also Rises without the above-mentioned preconceptions; but if one
really wants to know the man behind the brilliance of For Whom the Bell Tolls, one must get to him through his
posthumously published memoir. A Moveable
Feast – the 2009 Restored Edition allows the reader to do just that. Though
it should be regarded as “fiction,” as dictated by Hemingway himself, it does
invite the willing reader into the rambunctious world of the man, and along the
way, he is treated to a few matters of the heart.
The
Restored Edition, I must stress, gives us a more rounded and nuanced picture of
Hemingway the writer, Hemingway the husband and father, and Hemingway the
confidant. The passages that had previously been excised by Mary Hemingway
(fourth and final wife), for deeply personal reasons, have all been reinstated,
returning the memoir to its original state of open-heartedness. These new
revelations will only be discussed in Parts 2 and 3 of this essay.
During
Hemingway’s sojourn in Paris in the 1920s, he had the incredible fortune of
crossing paths with some of the greatest minds of the 20th century:
Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford, Pablo Picasso, Ezra Pound, to name but a few.
Hemingway’s observations of these figures are sometimes cautiously critical (he
did not always agree with Stein’s patronising opinions but kept his mouth shut),
at times crudely unpleasant (he was repulsed by Ford’s “odor of lies” and could
not bear to be in the same room with him), and occasionally slighting (he
thought Zelda Fitzgerald had “hawk’s eyes” and could not be trusted). But these
inconsequential negative remarks are not what make the memoir and the man. The
memoir comes alive when Hemingway writes about those he cared for: fellow
writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, his first wife Hadley, and his son Bumby (Jack
Hemingway).
F. Scott Fitzgerald
An
essay that proposes to present Hemingway as a sensitive man cannot hope to be
convincing without first taking into account the friendship Hemingway had with
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald
and Hemingway had a complicated but mutually gratifying friendship which
started in 1925 and ended several years later when Hemingway publicly denounced
Fitzgerald. They appreciated each other’s company, admired each other’s talent,
travelled together, and confided secrets to each other (Fitzgerald more so than
Hemingway). Yet between them there was always the unstable personage of Zelda,
who was, according to Hemingway, envious of her husband’s talent and tried to
sabotage his writing career by acting irresponsibly. Zelda’s emotional
instability was what rocked the marriage. She demanded all of Scott’s
attention, while all he wanted was some time to write in peace and sobriety;
but when he did give her the attention she wanted, she would flirt with other
men to drive him insanely jealous.
Fitzgerald’s
insecurity (ironic – given that he was already a published author and Hemingway
was not) stemmed from his wife’s crass treatment
of him. In the chapter “A Matter of Measurements,” Fitzgerald confided in
Hemingway that Zelda had complained about his less than impressive endowment,
and said that the way he was built he “could never make any woman happy and
that was what upset her originally” (162). What resulted from this curious
exchange was a trip to le water, where
Fitzgerald showed Hemingway his member and asked for his advice. Hemingway’s
conclusion was he was “perfectly fine,” and Zelda was only trying to “put [him]
out of business” (162). The hilarious episode, regardless of whether it is
genuine or highly fictionalised, shows the camaraderie between the two men
during the few years they spent in Paris.
By
the time the incident above took place, the two had known each other for a
while, and Hemingway had travelled to Lyon with Fitzgerald, where Fitzgerald imagined
he had fallen ill (he was a notorious hypochondriac), and Hemingway had to
spend the entire trip looking after him like a father after a sick child. Fitzgerald
insisted he was running a temperature and wanted a thermometer delivered to his
room. After much ado, Hemingway did get hold of one, commenting dryly, “You’re
lucky it’s not a rectal thermometer” (145).
Biographers
of Fitzgerald have often questioned Hemingway’s portrayal of Fitzgerald as a
fragile, almost effeminate character, claiming that it was his way of cutting
Fitzgerald the great author down to size. (Though we may want to remember that
the memoir was begun in 1957, by which time Fitzgerald had been dead for close
to two decades and any hard feelings between the two men surely must have dissipated.)
Whatever
the truth, there is no denying that Hemingway cared for Fitzgerald. He writes:
“You could not be angry with Scott any more than you could be angry with
someone who was crazy…” (141). This may read like an unkind comment, but it is
common knowledge that Fitzgerald was a bad drunk, and his erratic behaviour
often alienated people. Hemingway was concerned for Fitzgerald (“But it was
hard to accept him as a drunkard,” he writes), and could not bear to see him
waste his talent. Interestingly, the Restored Edition provides us with the
famous unedited introduction to the chapter “Scott Fitzgerald”:
His
talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s
wings. At one time … he did not know it was brushed or marred. Later he became
conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to
think. He was flying again and I was lucky to meet him just after a good time
in his writing if not a good one in his life (125).
These
words show us that Hemingway’s admiration for Fitzgerald, who had completed his
magnum opus The Great Gatsby at the
time, was unequivocal. Fitzgerald was three years Hemingway’s senior, and an
accomplished author at that, so it was logical for Hemingway to appreciate his
talent. What is ironic, however, was that in their friendship Hemingway was the
one who acted like an elder brother (some may call him a patronising one); but
this reversal of roles had more to do with their formative teenage years and
their psychological make-ups than professional rivalry. Hemingway fully
accepted the role of the elder brother, enjoying the prospect of caring for
someone in need, while Fitzgerald relished in being mollycoddled by an
authoritative figure.
After
the end of World War II, when Hemingway revisited Paris and the Ritz Bar and
was asked about Fitzgerald, who had died in Hollywood as a down-and-out
scriptwriter in 1940, he said: “I am going to write about him in a book that I
will write about the early days in Paris. I promised myself that I would write
it … I will put him in exactly as I remember him the first time I met him”
(165).
Prior
to Fitzgerald’s death, Hemingway and Fitzgerald had had their public
disagreements about the nature of the literary profession, which had seriously damaged
their friendship. Hemingway thought Fitzgerald had become a sell-out and a
hack, and the two never mended the breach. The passage above shows that despite
what had passed between the two men, Hemingway still mourned for the loss of a
great literary talent.
For more specific information on Hemingway and Fitzgerald’s friendship, please refer to Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship by Matthew J. Bruccoli, published in 1994 by Manly.
All page numbers refer to the 2011 Arrows Books restored edition.
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