#219： The Real Life Story of Hemingway and The Sun Also Rises
Episode Stats
Summary
Well-ernest Hemingway is a literary legend, but unlike many literary legends, he gained that status while he was still alive. In fact, many already had pegged him as one of the world s next great writers right at the very beginning of his career, when he introduced his first novel, The Sun Also Rises. My guest today has published a detailed account of how hemingway created his debut novel, and in the process created the now iconic Heming Way persona, a virile, adventurous, laconic wordsmith. Her name is Leslie Bloom, and her book is Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's masterpiece, The SUN ALSO Rises (1926). Today, on the show, Leslie and I discuss Hemingways' drive to revolutionize literature, the authenticity of his manly persona, and the real life party in Spain that inspired his classic debut novel.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well ernest
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hemingway is a literary legend but unlike many literary legends he gained that status while he
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was still alive in fact many already had pegged him as one of the world's next great writers
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right at the very beginning of his career when he introduced his first novel the sun also rises
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my guest today has published a detailed account of how hemingway created his first novel and in
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the process created the now iconic hemingway persona a virile adventurous laconic wordsmith
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her name is leslie bloom and her book is everybody behaves badly the true story behind hemingway's
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masterpiece the sun also rises today on the show leslie and i discuss hemingway's drive to
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revolutionized literature the authenticity of his manly persona and the real life party in spain
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that inspired his classic debut novel after you're done listening to the show make sure to check out
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the show notes at aom.is slash bloom that's b-l-u-m-e leslie bloom welcome to the show thank you very much
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happy to be here uh so your latest book is uh everybody behaves badly the true story behind
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hemingway's masterpiece the sun also rises uh you're a journalist for vanity fair fair i'm curious
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what piqued your interest in finding the backstory about hemingway's first book uh the sun also rises
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well i had um actually been researching another story and i came across a picture of hemingway
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sitting around a cafe table in pamplona in 1925 with a really like just wonderfully naughty
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looking group of people and uh one person in the picture besides hemingway intrigued me in particular
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and it was this sort of light glamorous coquettish woman sitting next to him and i didn't know who
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she was and i wanted to know more um and i uh so i looked into it and it turned out her name was
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lady duff twisted and she was the real life inspiration behind hemingway's character lady
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brett ashley um who for me you know growing up and reading that book was was you know the epitome
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of glamour uh you know dissipated glamour and anguish of course but still like just totally
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enthralling and i hadn't realized that um the sun also rises was largely drawn from from real life
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and there's been a lot of scholarship on you know on that period but nobody has ever really written
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the standalone a really compelling stylish standalone story detailing the real life events that inspired
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the book and how it came about and how it launched hemingway's hemingway so originally it
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started out as an idea for a vanity fair article and then um i quickly realized that it was it was
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way too substantial a topic um to cover and you know 5 000 words and so i turned it into a book and
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and i wrote the book that i had been looking for and hadn't been written before that's fantastic so
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uh the story is not only about the creation of the sun also rises but it's also about the creation of
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hemingway himself um yeah he gained the status he's gained the status of literary legend but
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unlike a lot of other literary giants he was able to do that while he was still living um how was he
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able to do that and did he did he have that like that was like a goal he probably had written down
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somewhere in like a commonplace book like i want to be the greatest novelist ever well actually the
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person who said that was fitzgerald these guys were yeah you know they they were pretty bald about
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their their ambitions and you know i i mean i use or or sort of reference a lot of language in my book
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you know that hemingway never would have used in in his day or nobody would have in terms of you
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know launching a hemingway brand along with um you know along with launching you know his the book
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itself the sun also rises but in in a way that's really what he was doing at this time and i don't
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think hemingway ever really had in his mind you know that he wanted to become a lifestyle icon but
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did he want to become you know the foremost writer of his generation with a revolutionary new style
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yes absolutely um and he just but he as an author just proved incredibly fascinating to to his his to
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his readers and um the the pr and the marketing teams who who rolled out the sun also rises in 1926
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you know realized that hemingway was a huge asset um you know as a as a persona behind the writing and
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they they um you know put out a lot of stories about him also so for instance in some of the advertising
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for the book the sun also rises there wasn't a picture of the book cover it was a picture of
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hemingway uh you know and he he was very different from you know the idea that most people then had
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you know about in about what a writer should be i mean writers were bespectacled they were dusty they
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were proustian i mean here's hemingway he comes from the outdoors he's you know fascinated with bull
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fighting he's a boxer um you know so he was he was you know brainy but brawny and it was it just
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proved then to be a fascinating um persona and you know remains to this day a fascinating
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and very lucrative persona yeah and um what i thought was curious too was that even before
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he published his novel it took him a long time you talk about how writing his first novel like took a
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couple years but somehow hemingway was able to get some respect in the sort of that avant-garde
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literary circle he's hanging out with in paris and even some with the publishers like how was he
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able to do that without even producing a novel yeah well i mean he's not even he's not just getting
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respect i mean he's getting insane amounts of like highly devoted support from some of the most
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established figures in the avant-garde movement in paris and you know he well he he had he was a
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renowned journalist at the time and you know he was in short stories and vignettes and that sort of
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thing really really showing off what he wanted to do stylistically so you could you could see what he
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was up to and a lot of people were just you know wishing his first novel into place especially
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publishers because people knew you know short stories they were you know a decent business but
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you know the holy the holy grail was still you know the highly lucrative novel and people couldn't
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wait for him to write one um and he he did have a couple of false starts and you know one one of his
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his starter novel was lost in a careless accident by the hands of his wife um he started to well he
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thought of one and then never really pursued it and then another one didn't really make it past you
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know the 30th page or whatever um so everybody is just sitting there tapping their fingers and
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waiting you know for him to to put this this wonderful and beguiling style into something that
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you know a mass readership would actually read um you know and i also you know i talked i talked to a
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lot of people about you know why he would you know a lot of people were trying to make breakthroughs
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stylistically at that time why did hemingway get so much attention and um one person who knew him well
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said look you know it was it wasn't just the writing itself they took him in combination with
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the writing so again the persona proved um compelling to um to to publishers and editors as well it was
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almost like you know he he never would have used this phrase or they never would have but a modern
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phrase would be that you know they i think they detected that he had a platform and he had a particular
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charisma that would really help push out the work and for our listeners who aren't familiar i mean
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what did hemingway do like well how did he change literature and who were some of the folks who
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were influencing his style well i mean hemingway was not um generous when it came to admitting
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influences on his style although sometimes he would say you know the bible or sometimes you know he
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would admit that um you know his journalistic background had helped him uh you know it really
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shaped the style um what he was doing after after world war one um there was a pretty decent sized
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school of writers who were especially concentrated in paris at the time american writers um who were
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trying to simplify the english language i mean whartonian and jamesian english was very long-winded
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long sentences lavish adjectives um i mean this is certainly not what what they felt looked like we
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know what modern language looked like and so hemingway arrives in paris in 1921 and he already
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knows that he wants you know to simplify everything and there are other people on the scene already who
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are trying to do what he's doing and they're really studying language like gertrude stein had been doing
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it since you know before world war one ezra pound who the poet um and they really they take they take
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hemingway under their their respective wings and they each teach him very important things about their own
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writing you know with gertrude stein it's about you know creating a certain rhythm with with uh ezra
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pound it's about um musicality for the most part um you know creating uh imagery in one's work without
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using adjectives or being showy um but the thing is is these guys they're they're not selling a lot of
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their works everybody knows who they are but they're not commercially successful writers i mean gertrude
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stein reportedly sold 73 copies of one of her books in the first 18 months i mean that's that's like not
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even friends and family you know so but hemingway on the other hand he sees what they're doing with
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their style and he knows that he can make it commercially viable as well as you know revolutionary
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in the in the critical sense he he you know famously told one of his american publishers an early
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publisher he said look there's nothing in my writing that somebody who doesn't have a high school
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education can't relate to so he gets to everyone but he said that you know highbrow critics are going to
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see what he's doing in terms of really simplifying and the repetition that sort of thing so they're
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going to see the artistry in it and then he says you know for for people who are not responding to
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either of those things he said quote there's always you know in my book the sun also rises there's a lot
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of dope about high society and that's always interesting end quote so he's he's really he's he's
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alighted upon a formula that there's something for everybody and for that to actually work
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i mean you know what they say they say you know if you try to prove everybody you'll you'll please
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nobody but he was the exception to the rule he pleased everyone so let's talk about uh the trip
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to spain the fateful trip to spain that inspired the sun also rises um who was there and what roles
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did they eventually play in the novel so hemingway um had been going to spain to the bullfighting
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festival in pamplona which happens every july um he'd been going for a couple of years before he took
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a trip in 1925 with um a handful of his of his comrades from from expatriate paris including lady
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duff twiston who was a um a british uh sort of a low british aristocrat who was in paris waiting out
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a divorce um donald ogden stewart who was a famous humor writer and part of the algonquin round circle
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from new york uh later oscar nominated for for uh the philadelphia story um pat guthrie who was lady
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duff twiston's lover and sort of a very drunken scottish remittance man and harold lobe who was
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um an heir to two of the most prominent jewish fortunes in new york city and hemingway's wife
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hadley hadley ends up being the only one who doesn't make it into the sun also rises as a
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character all these other characters um you know all of these other people are immediately translated
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um under in you know in many cases under their own names in hemingway's first draft and what he does
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is he um takes the extreme naughtinesses that went down um in pamplona and he he basically literally
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translates um the the goings-on of that festival which was everything from you know sexual rivalry
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to near fistfights you know to the bullfighting gore um and he puts it on paper and that and that is
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the backbone of his story for the sun also rises and these people become immortalized um by his pen
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yeah and that's one of the things that uh the critics some of the critics levied against hemingway
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that he really wasn't writing fiction he was just being a news reporter well i think you know it was
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less critics than you know people who had actually been used as characters i mean donald ogden stewart
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gets a copy of the book and by this time he's in hollywood when the novel actually gets released
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and he says i can't believe that he's peddling this is fiction i mean this is nothing he says
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quote this is nothing but a report on what happened um i mean albeit by that point everybody was under a
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pseudonym um but i mean it was really well known in you know in the paris colony and in new york and
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definitely in you know editor circles that this was a romana clay um so there were a few critics who
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you know really knew hemingway and they knew that he was a really good reporter and you know they they
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you know slyly pointed out that uh that this this had been drawn you know very literally from real
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life and a few of them did take issue with that in terms of you know could it be considered a work
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of high artistry um but for the most part critics were really not they didn't really care um because
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it was all about the style in which it had been rendered and they knew that they were seeing
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something new they knew they were seeing something revolutionary and they were seeing something
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masterful and so that's what they looked at and can you talk a little bit about uh hemingway's
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relationship with f scott fitzgerald and the role he played in getting this novel published
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well fitzgerald is is a huge figure in this narrative and and when hemingway meets fitzgerald
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when hemingway is first trying to break through fitzgerald is already a superstar um and novelists
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in you know back in these days were successful novelists were you know huge cultural icons um and
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fitzgerald had made his breakthrough in uh 1920 with tender as the night and just went from strength
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to strength after that when hemingway meets him he's just he's uh you know riding on the the
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strength of gatsby which is you know fitzgerald has had films made out of his books and hemingway
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is just the young upstart and he's he's told people that he doesn't really love fitzgerald's
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style but fitzgerald takes an interest in him and you know when a when a huge iconic writer who has
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you know the best connections on the planet takes an interest in you whether you like their writing or not
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you you you usually say yes to their patronage so fitzgerald first um you know told his own editor
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maxwell perkins who is at a very prestigious publishing house scriveners in in new york
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about hemingway and then later helps hemingway maneuver into the publishing house then they're
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both under the same editor and when hemingway gives perkins the the manuscript for the sun also
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rises max perkins barely touches it i mean there's it's a very light editing but fitzgerald on the other
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hand shrewdly goes to town on the manuscript and he gives hemingway advice you know you have to cut
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this you have to do this this seems really juvenile you know and he sees that the book has potential to
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be a huge book a classic book but he is helping hemingway take all the things out of it that keep
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it in sort of that jv class and hemingway takes takes his advice and makes a lot of these changes um he
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doesn't credit fitzgerald with with the changes and fitzgerald kind of you know elegantly keeps quiet on it
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too um until years later um but so fitzgerald really helped hemingway translate um the sun also
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rises from just a bitchy romanoclay into a powerful work of of literature yeah i mean one of the kind of
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the common theme i saw with hemingway and his relations with others it seemed like he was very
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utilitarian with people like he just kind of used them and then didn't really give a lot back
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well he he must have given something back um and that was you know difficult as a biographer to
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figure out you know what would cause what would ignite such devotion in people when hemingway was
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really quite early started to get a reputation for for for um biting the hand um i i still i still don't
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think that i have ever heard it adequately described you know what was at the root of hemingway's
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particular charisma but you know people loved him i mean they really loved him and fitzgerald loved
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him until he died even though um you know hemingway um made you know little jabs at him in the press and
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you know there were you know a lot of there were tensions between them but he fitzgerald had a
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generosity of spirit when it came to hemingway and he really loved what hemingway had done for
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writing and he even felt hemingway he felt himself hemingway's inferior um but other other you know
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mentors whom hemingway had been less generous with you know such as gertrude stein or sherwood
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anderson or these are these are all people who helped hemingway significantly in his early
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years and either were satirized by hemingway or um just treated treated quite badly i mean those
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those friendships never recovered um and and you can you can understand why and i i don't i mean part
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of me just thinks that it was just how hemingway was wired um and then part of me thinks that very
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few people can forgive their patrons i guess in a way i think that there's always uh maybe a certain
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there's there's gratitude but there's also kind of a resentment because you feel beholden to somebody
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who has helped you um and in many ways these people were competitors also i mean gertrude stein
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had been trying to do a version of what hemingway accomplished in a very short time and she'd been
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trying for decades to do it so there were complicated relationships to say the least and i think hemingway
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doesn't necessarily act admirably in in all of them but he's he's treated you know magnanimously by by
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by the people who he did um show up right and it as i was reading the book this i feel like
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authenticity like it was an important ideal for hemingway and these other lost generation artists
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you know hemingway was always calling out people for being phonies you know um but did hemingway walk
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the walk when it came to authenticity or was or did he sort of kind of backslide or i mean it wasn't
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yeah was he was he actually walking the walk i mean i i think it's a complicated question i think that
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he did have you know smaller hypocrisies uh well no i think i think that he did have you know
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hypocrisies across the board but i think hemingway you know on the whole in terms of the hemingway
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persona for instance of you know manliness outdoorsyness i mean i don't think that was
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affected i think it just genuinely was who he was and you know obviously i had to go you know look
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further back at his his early influences i mean this is somebody who really was raised you know outdoors
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um you know somebody who would sleep you know for days you know in a tent or you know he was always
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doing physical work i mean he really was a very physical manly brawny person and like um you know
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many men of his generation i mean he had signed up to be a witness to world war one he had defective
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eyesight so he couldn't participate as a soldier but he went and he he drove ambulances which is what
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you know a few people did when they when they couldn't actually you know get drafted um so i think that
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he he he did not respect i mean his his persona was completely authentic i think that you know
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where there are certain hypocrisies you know for instance like he when he first gets to paris he
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is writing up the cafe scene and the cafes were like the nerve centers expat cafes were nerve centers for
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for the colony there and of course there were there was a lot of posturing and a lot of pretension
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there and he calls it like he sees it and he um he has you know not charitable words about the people who
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who who frequent these places but at the same time he too frequents these places um you know so
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that there's that and then i think you know also you know much is made um you know over you know
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the romanticness of his first relationship with his wife you know or his relationship with his first
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wife hadley who was supporting the couple um with a modest trust fund that she had inherited um
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and he you know made quite a big deal later in life about you know the simple pleasures of that
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time yes it had been a really difficult time and especially hard on hadley because they were
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really poor he wasn't making money from his his writing yet um and everybody was you know they were
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making significant sacrifices but then you know he in turn marries an heiress who you know is a vogue
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editor you know so he he does embrace some of the things that he heavily criticizes but um i would
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say i mean how few people are entirely without hypocrisy i mean i think that on the whole i found
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him to be quite an authentic figure so you know last question leslie you know hemingway is a lightning
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rod of a figure either you love him or you find him utterly repugnant um after researching and writing
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about the genesis of hemingway's first novel on his career and his persona how do you feel about
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i mean i i actually i mean there are things that bother me about him obviously i think that if i
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had known him in person i would have been really scared of him um because he was just so such a huge
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presence um and and a volatile presence and i think that people who are you know very patently
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charismatic are kind of scary to me but you know i miss spending time in his world and i miss certain
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things about him and i think that a lot of people when i was writing the book assumed that i was going to
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be writing this from sort of like a proto-feminist type where i would be it would be like a takedown
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of hemingway and and actually i mean there are a lot of things about him that that really inspired
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me i'm a journalist like he was a journalist and um you know his appetite for life and his um
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refusal uh to be self-sacrificial i mean these are all things they're values that are not really
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offered up to women or expected women are not really expected to embrace them and i really do
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and and i i loved his example in certain respects you know and at the end of the day i mean there
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there was a lot of bad behavior as my title indicates um and but hemingway was he it's not
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like he was like you know working for the forces of evil for god's sake he's not you know doing
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subprime mortgages or whatever i mean he's trying to reinvent literature um and he is showing very
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candid and beautiful um beautiful studies of human nature and i mean i just i i love that that's what
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he devoted his life to i mean there's a you know i'm sure that there's a lot you know about him that
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repels other people but i'm i'm really not among them i really now now that the writing of this is
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done i miss i miss being in his presence well leslie this has been a great conversation where
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where can people go to learn more about your book um you can go to my website which is leslie
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l-e-s-l-e-y m as in mary m as in mary bloom b-l-u-m-e dot com or you can just go to amazon
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and look up my book everybody behaves badly all right leslie bloom thanks so much for your time
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it's been a pleasure thank you so much my guest today was leslie bloom she's the author of the
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book everybody behaves badly it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere also check
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out our website lesliebloom.com to follow her other works and also make sure to check out the
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well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
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make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy
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the show i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher help spread the word about the
00:22:57.200
show as always i appreciate your continue to support and until next time this is brett mckay