The Art of Manliness - #219： The Real Life Story of Hemingway and The Sun Also Rises

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well ernest

00:00:19.200 hemingway is a literary legend but unlike many literary legends he gained that status while he

00:00:24.140 was still alive in fact many already had pegged him as one of the world's next great writers

00:00:29.120 right at the very beginning of his career when he introduced his first novel the sun also rises

00:00:33.500 my guest today has published a detailed account of how hemingway created his first novel and in

00:00:39.000 the process created the now iconic hemingway persona a virile adventurous laconic wordsmith

00:00:44.600 her name is leslie bloom and her book is everybody behaves badly the true story behind hemingway's

00:00:49.600 masterpiece the sun also rises today on the show leslie and i discuss hemingway's drive to

00:00:54.720 revolutionized literature the authenticity of his manly persona and the real life party in spain

00:01:00.460 that inspired his classic debut novel after you're done listening to the show make sure to check out

00:01:05.520 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

00:01:18.840 happy to be here uh so your latest book is uh everybody behaves badly the true story behind

00:01:24.220 hemingway's masterpiece the sun also rises uh you're a journalist for vanity fair fair i'm curious

00:01:29.800 what piqued your interest in finding the backstory about hemingway's first book uh the sun also rises

00:01:36.580 well i had um actually been researching another story and i came across a picture of hemingway

00:01:42.760 sitting around a cafe table in pamplona in 1925 with a really like just wonderfully naughty

00:01:47.820 looking group of people and uh one person in the picture besides hemingway intrigued me in particular

00:01:52.900 and it was this sort of light glamorous coquettish woman sitting next to him and i didn't know who 0.99

00:01:57.320 she was and i wanted to know more um and i uh so i looked into it and it turned out her name was

00:02:03.300 lady duff twisted and she was the real life inspiration behind hemingway's character lady 0.66

00:02:08.600 brett ashley um who for me you know growing up and reading that book was was you know the epitome

00:02:14.020 of glamour uh you know dissipated glamour and anguish of course but still like just totally

00:02:18.620 enthralling and i hadn't realized that um the sun also rises was largely drawn from from real life

00:02:25.580 and there's been a lot of scholarship on you know on that period but nobody has ever really written

00:02:30.400 the standalone a really compelling stylish standalone story detailing the real life events that inspired

00:02:36.780 the book and how it came about and how it launched hemingway's hemingway so originally it

00:02:41.200 started out as an idea for a vanity fair article and then um i quickly realized that it was it was

00:02:47.060 way too substantial a topic um to cover and you know 5 000 words and so i turned it into a book and

00:02:53.380 and i wrote the book that i had been looking for and hadn't been written before that's fantastic so

00:02:57.420 uh the story is not only about the creation of the sun also rises but it's also about the creation of

00:03:03.380 hemingway himself um yeah he gained the status he's gained the status of literary legend but

00:03:08.480 unlike a lot of other literary giants he was able to do that while he was still living um how was he

00:03:16.040 able to do that and did he did he have that like that was like a goal he probably had written down

00:03:19.940 somewhere in like a commonplace book like i want to be the greatest novelist ever well actually the

00:03:25.140 person who said that was fitzgerald these guys were yeah you know they they were pretty bald about

00:03:30.280 their their ambitions and you know i i mean i use or or sort of reference a lot of language in my book

00:03:36.020 you know that hemingway never would have used in in his day or nobody would have in terms of you

00:03:40.100 know launching a hemingway brand along with um you know along with launching you know his the book

00:03:46.360 itself the sun also rises but in in a way that's really what he was doing at this time and i don't

00:03:50.480 think hemingway ever really had in his mind you know that he wanted to become a lifestyle icon but

00:03:55.080 did he want to become you know the foremost writer of his generation with a revolutionary new style

00:03:59.480 yes absolutely um and he just but he as an author just proved incredibly fascinating to to his his to

00:04:08.660 his readers and um the the pr and the marketing teams who who rolled out the sun also rises in 1926

00:04:15.260 you know realized that hemingway was a huge asset um you know as a as a persona behind the writing and

00:04:21.620 they they um you know put out a lot of stories about him also so for instance in some of the advertising

00:04:27.940 for the book the sun also rises there wasn't a picture of the book cover it was a picture of

00:04:31.800 hemingway uh you know and he he was very different from you know the idea that most people then had

00:04:37.120 you know about in about what a writer should be i mean writers were bespectacled they were dusty they

00:04:41.960 were proustian i mean here's hemingway he comes from the outdoors he's you know fascinated with bull

00:04:46.600 fighting he's a boxer um you know so he was he was you know brainy but brawny and it was it just

00:04:51.820 proved then to be a fascinating um persona and you know remains to this day a fascinating

00:04:57.920 and very lucrative persona yeah and um what i thought was curious too was that even before

00:05:03.100 he published his novel it took him a long time you talk about how writing his first novel like took a

00:05:07.580 couple years but somehow hemingway was able to get some respect in the sort of that avant-garde

00:05:13.640 literary circle he's hanging out with in paris and even some with the publishers like how was he

00:05:18.700 able to do that without even producing a novel yeah well i mean he's not even he's not just getting

00:05:23.920 respect i mean he's getting insane amounts of like highly devoted support from some of the most

00:05:31.180 established figures in the avant-garde movement in paris and you know he well he he had he was a

00:05:38.220 renowned journalist at the time and you know he was in short stories and vignettes and that sort of

00:05:42.800 thing really really showing off what he wanted to do stylistically so you could you could see what he

00:05:48.400 was up to and a lot of people were just you know wishing his first novel into place especially

00:05:52.760 publishers because people knew you know short stories they were you know a decent business but

00:05:58.960 you know the holy the holy grail was still you know the highly lucrative novel and people couldn't

00:06:03.280 wait for him to write one um and he he did have a couple of false starts and you know one one of his

00:06:09.020 his starter novel was lost in a careless accident by the hands of his wife um he started to well he

00:06:14.440 thought of one and then never really pursued it and then another one didn't really make it past you

00:06:18.780 know the 30th page or whatever um so everybody is just sitting there tapping their fingers and

00:06:23.300 waiting you know for him to to put this this wonderful and beguiling style into something that

00:06:30.860 you know a mass readership would actually read um you know and i also you know i talked i talked to a

00:06:36.020 lot of people about you know why he would you know a lot of people were trying to make breakthroughs

00:06:40.440 stylistically at that time why did hemingway get so much attention and um one person who knew him well

00:06:45.120 said look you know it was it wasn't just the writing itself they took him in combination with

00:06:50.460 the writing so again the persona proved um compelling to um to to publishers and editors as well it was

00:07:00.380 almost like you know he he never would have used this phrase or they never would have but a modern

00:07:04.220 phrase would be that you know they i think they detected that he had a platform and he had a particular

00:07:08.280 charisma that would really help push out the work and for our listeners who aren't familiar i mean

00:07:12.740 what did hemingway do like well how did he change literature and who were some of the folks who

00:07:18.860 were influencing his style well i mean hemingway was not um generous when it came to admitting

00:07:26.640 influences on his style although sometimes he would say you know the bible or sometimes you know he

00:07:30.860 would admit that um you know his journalistic background had helped him uh you know it really

00:07:36.280 shaped the style um what he was doing after after world war one um there was a pretty decent sized

00:07:44.620 school of writers who were especially concentrated in paris at the time american writers um who were

00:07:50.540 trying to simplify the english language i mean whartonian and jamesian english was very long-winded

00:07:56.640 long sentences lavish adjectives um i mean this is certainly not what what they felt looked like we

00:08:03.980 know what modern language looked like and so hemingway arrives in paris in 1921 and he already

00:08:09.120 knows that he wants you know to simplify everything and there are other people on the scene already who

00:08:14.740 are trying to do what he's doing and they're really studying language like gertrude stein had been doing

00:08:18.940 it since you know before world war one ezra pound who the poet um and they really they take they take

00:08:26.060 hemingway under their their respective wings and they each teach him very important things about their own

00:08:32.380 writing you know with gertrude stein it's about you know creating a certain rhythm with with uh ezra

00:08:37.120 pound it's about um musicality for the most part um you know creating uh imagery in one's work without

00:08:45.160 using adjectives or being showy um but the thing is is these guys they're they're not selling a lot of

00:08:51.880 their works everybody knows who they are but they're not commercially successful writers i mean gertrude

00:08:56.180 stein reportedly sold 73 copies of one of her books in the first 18 months i mean that's that's like not

00:09:01.120 even friends and family you know so but hemingway on the other hand he sees what they're doing with

00:09:06.720 their style and he knows that he can make it commercially viable as well as you know revolutionary

00:09:13.260 in the in the critical sense he he you know famously told one of his american publishers an early

00:09:19.460 publisher he said look there's nothing in my writing that somebody who doesn't have a high school

00:09:24.680 education can't relate to so he gets to everyone but he said that you know highbrow critics are going to

00:09:29.860 see what he's doing in terms of really simplifying and the repetition that sort of thing so they're

00:09:34.320 going to see the artistry in it and then he says you know for for people who are not responding to

00:09:39.420 either of those things he said quote there's always you know in my book the sun also rises there's a lot

00:09:43.520 of dope about high society and that's always interesting end quote so he's he's really he's he's

00:09:49.440 alighted upon a formula that there's something for everybody and for that to actually work

00:09:55.240 i mean you know what they say they say you know if you try to prove everybody you'll you'll please

00:09:59.760 nobody but he was the exception to the rule he pleased everyone so let's talk about uh the trip

00:10:05.280 to spain the fateful trip to spain that inspired the sun also rises um who was there and what roles

00:10:12.620 did they eventually play in the novel so hemingway um had been going to spain to the bullfighting

00:10:19.720 festival in pamplona which happens every july um he'd been going for a couple of years before he took

00:10:24.760 a trip in 1925 with um a handful of his of his comrades from from expatriate paris including lady

00:10:31.840 duff twiston who was a um a british uh sort of a low british aristocrat who was in paris waiting out

00:10:38.640 a divorce um donald ogden stewart who was a famous humor writer and part of the algonquin round circle

00:10:44.640 from new york uh later oscar nominated for for uh the philadelphia story um pat guthrie who was lady

00:10:52.960 duff twiston's lover and sort of a very drunken scottish remittance man and harold lobe who was

00:10:59.460 um an heir to two of the most prominent jewish fortunes in new york city and hemingway's wife

00:11:05.400 hadley hadley ends up being the only one who doesn't make it into the sun also rises as a

00:11:10.280 character all these other characters um you know all of these other people are immediately translated

00:11:16.160 um under in you know in many cases under their own names in hemingway's first draft and what he does

00:11:21.440 is he um takes the extreme naughtinesses that went down um in pamplona and he he basically literally

00:11:31.700 translates um the the goings-on of that festival which was everything from you know sexual rivalry

00:11:37.680 to near fistfights you know to the bullfighting gore um and he puts it on paper and that and that is

00:11:44.120 the backbone of his story for the sun also rises and these people become immortalized um by his pen

00:11:50.700 yeah and that's one of the things that uh the critics some of the critics levied against hemingway

00:11:55.160 that he really wasn't writing fiction he was just being a news reporter well i think you know it was

00:12:01.060 less critics than you know people who had actually been used as characters i mean donald ogden stewart

00:12:06.200 gets a copy of the book and by this time he's in hollywood when the novel actually gets released

00:12:10.180 and he says i can't believe that he's peddling this is fiction i mean this is nothing he says

00:12:14.340 quote this is nothing but a report on what happened um i mean albeit by that point everybody was under a

00:12:20.420 pseudonym um but i mean it was really well known in you know in the paris colony and in new york and

00:12:26.460 definitely in you know editor circles that this was a romana clay um so there were a few critics who

00:12:33.140 you know really knew hemingway and they knew that he was a really good reporter and you know they they

00:12:37.720 you know slyly pointed out that uh that this this had been drawn you know very literally from real

00:12:44.460 life and a few of them did take issue with that in terms of you know could it be considered a work

00:12:48.860 of high artistry um but for the most part critics were really not they didn't really care um because

00:12:55.060 it was all about the style in which it had been rendered and they knew that they were seeing

00:12:57.920 something new they knew they were seeing something revolutionary and they were seeing something

00:13:01.000 masterful and so that's what they looked at and can you talk a little bit about uh hemingway's

00:13:04.680 relationship with f scott fitzgerald and the role he played in getting this novel published

00:13:08.600 well fitzgerald is is a huge figure in this narrative and and when hemingway meets fitzgerald

00:13:15.240 when hemingway is first trying to break through fitzgerald is already a superstar um and novelists

00:13:20.100 in you know back in these days were successful novelists were you know huge cultural icons um and

00:13:27.260 fitzgerald had made his breakthrough in uh 1920 with tender as the night and just went from strength

00:13:32.420 to strength after that when hemingway meets him he's just he's uh you know riding on the the

00:13:36.280 strength of gatsby which is you know fitzgerald has had films made out of his books and hemingway

00:13:41.380 is just the young upstart and he's he's told people that he doesn't really love fitzgerald's

00:13:45.420 style but fitzgerald takes an interest in him and you know when a when a huge iconic writer who has

00:13:50.980 you know the best connections on the planet takes an interest in you whether you like their writing or not

00:13:55.640 you you you usually say yes to their patronage so fitzgerald first um you know told his own editor

00:14:02.060 maxwell perkins who is at a very prestigious publishing house scriveners in in new york

00:14:07.360 about hemingway and then later helps hemingway maneuver into the publishing house then they're

00:14:14.620 both under the same editor and when hemingway gives perkins the the manuscript for the sun also

00:14:18.760 rises max perkins barely touches it i mean there's it's a very light editing but fitzgerald on the other

00:14:24.360 hand shrewdly goes to town on the manuscript and he gives hemingway advice you know you have to cut

00:14:30.180 this you have to do this this seems really juvenile you know and he sees that the book has potential to

00:14:35.180 be a huge book a classic book but he is helping hemingway take all the things out of it that keep

00:14:40.500 it in sort of that jv class and hemingway takes takes his advice and makes a lot of these changes um he

00:14:47.280 doesn't credit fitzgerald with with the changes and fitzgerald kind of you know elegantly keeps quiet on it

00:14:53.540 too um until years later um but so fitzgerald really helped hemingway translate um the sun also

00:15:00.560 rises from just a bitchy romanoclay into a powerful work of of literature yeah i mean one of the kind of

00:15:06.840 the common theme i saw with hemingway and his relations with others it seemed like he was very

00:15:10.920 utilitarian with people like he just kind of used them and then didn't really give a lot back

00:15:16.700 well he he must have given something back um and that was you know difficult as a biographer to

00:15:22.920 figure out you know what would cause what would ignite such devotion in people when hemingway was

00:15:27.700 really quite early started to get a reputation for for for um biting the hand um i i still i still don't

00:15:36.220 think that i have ever heard it adequately described you know what was at the root of hemingway's

00:15:40.460 particular charisma but you know people loved him i mean they really loved him and fitzgerald loved

00:15:44.940 him until he died even though um you know hemingway um made you know little jabs at him in the press and

00:15:51.460 you know there were you know a lot of there were tensions between them but he fitzgerald had a

00:15:56.940 generosity of spirit when it came to hemingway and he really loved what hemingway had done for

00:16:01.660 writing and he even felt hemingway he felt himself hemingway's inferior um but other other you know

00:16:08.980 mentors whom hemingway had been less generous with you know such as gertrude stein or sherwood

00:16:14.140 anderson or these are these are all people who helped hemingway significantly in his early

00:16:17.840 years and either were satirized by hemingway or um just treated treated quite badly i mean those

00:16:24.980 those friendships never recovered um and and you can you can understand why and i i don't i mean part

00:16:32.540 of me just thinks that it was just how hemingway was wired um and then part of me thinks that very

00:16:37.760 few people can forgive their patrons i guess in a way i think that there's always uh maybe a certain

00:16:43.100 there's there's gratitude but there's also kind of a resentment because you feel beholden to somebody

00:16:47.540 who has helped you um and in many ways these people were competitors also i mean gertrude stein

00:16:52.840 had been trying to do a version of what hemingway accomplished in a very short time and she'd been

00:16:56.380 trying for decades to do it so there were complicated relationships to say the least and i think hemingway

00:17:01.800 doesn't necessarily act admirably in in all of them but he's he's treated you know magnanimously by by

00:17:07.660 by the people who he did um show up right and it as i was reading the book this i feel like

00:17:13.220 authenticity like it was an important ideal for hemingway and these other lost generation artists

00:17:17.900 you know hemingway was always calling out people for being phonies you know um but did hemingway walk

00:17:23.760 the walk when it came to authenticity or was or did he sort of kind of backslide or i mean it wasn't

00:17:29.180 yeah was he was he actually walking the walk i mean i i think it's a complicated question i think that

00:17:35.480 he did have you know smaller hypocrisies uh well no i think i think that he did have you know

00:17:40.140 hypocrisies across the board but i think hemingway you know on the whole in terms of the hemingway

00:17:44.920 persona for instance of you know manliness outdoorsyness i mean i don't think that was

00:17:49.380 affected i think it just genuinely was who he was and you know obviously i had to go you know look

00:17:54.020 further back at his his early influences i mean this is somebody who really was raised you know outdoors

00:17:59.080 um you know somebody who would sleep you know for days you know in a tent or you know he was always

00:18:03.720 doing physical work i mean he really was a very physical manly brawny person and like um you know

00:18:11.080 many men of his generation i mean he had signed up to be a witness to world war one he had defective

00:18:18.040 eyesight so he couldn't participate as a soldier but he went and he he drove ambulances which is what

00:18:23.760 you know a few people did when they when they couldn't actually you know get drafted um so i think that

00:18:30.680 he he he did not respect i mean his his persona was completely authentic i think that you know

00:18:38.400 where there are certain hypocrisies you know for instance like he when he first gets to paris he

00:18:43.820 is writing up the cafe scene and the cafes were like the nerve centers expat cafes were nerve centers for 0.97

00:18:49.520 for the colony there and of course there were there was a lot of posturing and a lot of pretension

00:18:53.720 there and he calls it like he sees it and he um he has you know not charitable words about the people who

00:18:59.920 who who frequent these places but at the same time he too frequents these places um you know so

00:19:05.280 that there's that and then i think you know also you know much is made um you know over you know

00:19:11.560 the romanticness of his first relationship with his wife you know or his relationship with his first

00:19:16.020 wife hadley who was supporting the couple um with a modest trust fund that she had inherited um 0.93

00:19:22.800 and he you know made quite a big deal later in life about you know the simple pleasures of that

00:19:29.060 time yes it had been a really difficult time and especially hard on hadley because they were

00:19:32.640 really poor he wasn't making money from his his writing yet um and everybody was you know they were

00:19:38.280 making significant sacrifices but then you know he in turn marries an heiress who you know is a vogue

00:19:45.380 editor you know so he he does embrace some of the things that he heavily criticizes but um i would

00:19:52.840 say i mean how few people are entirely without hypocrisy i mean i think that on the whole i found

00:19:57.760 him to be quite an authentic figure so you know last question leslie you know hemingway is a lightning

00:20:03.400 rod of a figure either you love him or you find him utterly repugnant um after researching and writing

00:20:09.140 about the genesis of hemingway's first novel on his career and his persona how do you feel about

00:20:14.100 hemingway

00:20:15.380 i mean i i actually i mean there are things that bother me about him obviously i think that if i

00:20:20.520 had known him in person i would have been really scared of him um because he was just so such a huge

00:20:27.100 presence um and and a volatile presence and i think that people who are you know very patently

00:20:32.840 charismatic are kind of scary to me but you know i miss spending time in his world and i miss certain

00:20:39.280 things about him and i think that a lot of people when i was writing the book assumed that i was going to

00:20:43.340 be writing this from sort of like a proto-feminist type where i would be it would be like a takedown 1.00

00:20:47.320 of hemingway and and actually i mean there are a lot of things about him that that really inspired

00:20:51.880 me i'm a journalist like he was a journalist and um you know his appetite for life and his um

00:20:57.900 refusal uh to be self-sacrificial i mean these are all things they're values that are not really

00:21:03.820 offered up to women or expected women are not really expected to embrace them and i really do

00:21:09.160 and and i i loved his example in certain respects you know and at the end of the day i mean there

00:21:14.640 there was a lot of bad behavior as my title indicates um and but hemingway was he it's not

00:21:21.480 like he was like you know working for the forces of evil for god's sake he's not you know doing

00:21:27.580 subprime mortgages or whatever i mean he's trying to reinvent literature um and he is showing very

00:21:34.800 candid and beautiful um beautiful studies of human nature and i mean i just i i love that that's what

00:21:42.720 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

00:21:46.880 repels other people but i'm i'm really not among them i really now now that the writing of this is

00:21:51.660 done i miss i miss being in his presence well leslie this has been a great conversation where

00:21:56.900 where can people go to learn more about your book um you can go to my website which is leslie

00:22:01.960 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

00:22:10.540 and look up my book everybody behaves badly all right leslie bloom thanks so much for your time

00:22:14.680 it's been a pleasure thank you so much my guest today was leslie bloom she's the author of the

00:22:20.280 book everybody behaves badly it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere also check

00:22:24.860 out our website lesliebloom.com to follow her other works and also make sure to check out the

00:22:30.700 show notes at aom.is slash bloom

00:22:33.160 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:22:49.780 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy

00:22:53.340 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

00:23:01.480 telling you to stay manly

00:23:03.680 we'll see you next time this is brett mckay

00:23:08.360 moves

00:23:12.940 come on

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The Art of Manliness - July 21, 2016

#219： The Real Life Story of Hemingway and The Sun Also Rises

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