|
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
The Truth Needs No Excuse
HEMINGWAY VS. FITZGERALD
The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship
by Scott Donaldson
The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers
 |
In the late 1950s, as her
husband pecked MOVEABLE FEAST into his portable typewriter, Mary Hemingway
browsed the early drafts. Hemingway had written in the book's preface
that "...while this book may be regarded as fiction, there is also
the chance that a book of fiction may throw some light on what has
been written as fact."
Mary Hemingway declared herself puzzled by the tenor
of the material, which did not strike her as particularly autobiographical.
"It's biography by remate," said Hemingway.
Remate, a jai alai term, refers to a two-wall or
bank shot. Scott Donaldson, author of HEMINGWAY VS FITZGERALD: The
Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship, makes the claim that A MOVEABLE
FEAST was never intended as an autobiography. Hemingway's presentation
of it as `informed fiction' betrays his awareness of the game he played
in writing the book, which was infamous for its assaults upon his
companions and contemporaries of late twentieth century Paris. "There
are truths," asserts Donaldson, "that go beyond mere facts."
But HEMINGWAY VS. FITZGERALD is not a biography,
either. Donaldson states that his intent is to tell their story in
a style similar to Hemingway's FEAST - by way of bank shots and rebounds,
as though the truth of their friendship might better be grasped by
setting the past in retrospective motion and watching the results.
It is an uneasy method of analysis, more akin to
separating a snarl of laundry by tossing it into a dryer. The book
is not as sequential as it might be, which can make it difficult to
follow. And because Donaldson does not present his characters in a
manner consistent with a biography, it is necessary to know something
about them ahead of time, and to have some familiarity with their
material. 
Upon reading HEMINGWAY VS. FITZGERALD, I actually
made myself a list of relevant snack items; to wit, the books you
must have in your belly to make sense of Donaldson's. Is it worth
it? Yes. HEMINGWAY VS. FITZGERALD is well worth the work it takes
to read it. At the very least, the snacks are worth it, whether you
finish the analysis or not.
Of the Hemingway work, one needs to have read THE
SUN ALSO RISES, if one has not yet done so. A FAREWELL TO ARMS, and
certainly the better known of Hemingway's short stories, would also
be of help. (SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO, FIFTY GRAND, and THE SHORT HAPPY
LIFE OF FRANCIS MACOMBER, to begin with). Add Pulitzer Prize-winning
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, if you enjoy fish. And on the side I recommend
as much good red wine as you can hold. (See THE SUN ALSO RISES for
Hemingway's treatise on the virtues of red wine.)
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE is the best introduction to
the period that produced Fitzgerald, although he is best known for
THE GREAT GATSBY. TENDER IS THE NIGHT, long-winded tome though it
is, may well have been his best work. Of all, PARADISE is best worth
a gander. It's Fitzgerald's first book, and it heralds the directions
he would eventually take, in his work and in life.
From Donaldson's analysis one may gather interesting
tidbits about Hemingway. He actually wrote poetry, and there is a
collection available, titled EIGHTY EIGHT POEMS I intend to commence
an immediate search for that one.
Another surprising item: Grace Hemingway held her
first-born, Marcelline, out of school for eighteen months in order
to facilitate an experiment: she twinned Ernest with his older sister.
The two children entered kindergarten dressed and coifed exactly alike,
in ruffled dresses and Dutch doll haircuts. Needless to say, this
did not go over well with young Ernest. "I NOT a Dutch dolly!" he
is reputed to have raged, at two, presumably in response to his mother's
fashion sense. "I Pawnee Bill! BANG...I shoot Fweetee!" (his favorite
name for his mother).
That Hemingway did not get on with his mother is
well documented. What was new to me was that Grace had continued to
work, after getting married, as a vocal instructor, bringing in more
money than her physician husband. One of her students, a special "friend"
named Ruth Arnold, later came to live with the family. Rumors flew.
Dr. Hemingway was less than pleased; Ernest, whose relations with
his mother worsened with time, eventually forbade his own sons to
visit their grandmother on the grounds that she was "androgynous".
For much of his life, Dr. Hemingway suffered from
severe depression, shooting himself to death with his father's revolver.
Ernest, who inherited the disorder, carried on the tradition, shooting
himself behind the ear.
Let's hear it for subtext.
Fitzgerald's upbringing was, if anything, less encouraging.
Dowdy, outspoken and graceless, Mollie Fitzgerald spoiled the hell
out of her only son, imbuing him with unrealistic social pretensions
and ambitions. Unpopular with other boys, and frequently getting into
fights (which he lost), young Fitzgerald got along better with girls.
"I had them figured out," he wrote, and claimed that he could think
like a girl. "I'm half feminine - at least, my mind is."
Fitzgerald's preoccupation with social strategies
went so far that at eighteen he sent a series of letters to his fourteen-year-old
sister, in an attempt to create a social role for her to play. The
letters read like a series of tactical exercises, instructing Annabel
in dancing, grooming of eyebrows, sizing up of opponents, learning
to look charmingly helpless...and these were just the defensive moves.
Fitzgerald's sister wisely abstained from taking
on this customized "role". It is questionable whether Fitzgerald himself
applied his universal role playing techniques to himself; nevertheless,
in PARADISE but to a greater extent in GATSBY his work explores role-playing
and the strategic and tactical pitfalls of class warfare.
Neither of Fitzgerald's parents approved of his
literary ambitions; they thought writers were "...distinctly peculiar."
Yet they found nothing peculiar in their own treatment of the children.
It is a long-standing practice for the parents of underprivileged
children to nudge their talented offspring into elevated social circumstances.
Slight, self-conscious and shoved into a series
of unappreciative social nests, young Fitzgerald was rejected by schools,
clubs and social circles as argumentative, showy, and "...not one of
us". The father of the first girl he fell in love with, Ginevra King,
is said to have quipped, "Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich
girls." If Mollie had not foisted him upon society in so callous a
manner, would we have gotten THE GREAT GATSBY or TENDER IS THE NIGHT?
Not a chance, says Donaldson. Yet Fitzgerald's sense of having been
born to the wrong class was only partially responsible for this recurrent
theme in his work. Rejection of a more particular type had more significance,
and in this respect, Fitzgerald and Hemingway had something else in
common.
Jiltings, says Donaldson, constitute a rite of passage
common to everyone. Although contemporary parlance speaks of "failed
relationships", Donaldson will have none of it. "If it is the relationships
that fail," he says, "and not the people in them, there need be no
question of assigning blame, or of acknowledging one's own shortcomings
and another's fickleness and cruelty."
And yet fickleness and cruelty have played so great
a part in the work of Hemingway and Fitzgerald that Donaldson follows
the path of their "jiltings" very closely.
Following his break with Ginevra King, Scott fell
in love with Zelda Sayre...who refused to marry him unless he could
support her in a manner consistent with their mutual dreams and desires.
Upon publication of PARADISE, Fitzgerald won her...and spent the rest
of his life battling mutual dreams and desires. Zelda's transient
schizophrenia eventually claimed her; Scott's alcoholism dragged out
the completion of TENDER for almost nine years, and destroyed his
credibility in the writing community for the rest of his life.
Hemingway, whose social skills also came a little
late (though not necessarily due to flowered hats) served as a Red
Cross driver in Italy during 1926, where he pulled a fellow soldier
to safety under fire despite heavy injuries (for which he later received
a medal of honor). Hospitalized in Milan, he made the acquaintance
of his first and second great loves: nurse Agnes Von Korowksy, upon
whom he based his character from A FAREWELL TO ARMS, and alcohol.
The first relationship ended badly, due not to social elevations,
but to age difference, for Agnes was seven years Hemingway's senior.
The second carried on for much longer, though it was Hemingway who
abandoned it; he was sober when he committed suicide.
|
| continued in the next
column |
|
|
|
|
It was not Agnes' rejection
that so crushed young Hemingway. He later claimed that it was the
manner in which she had treated him. Perhaps the suicide of his father,
his mother's parenting experiments, or the flowered hats played a
part; perhaps the red wine was not, in the end, quite so good for
him. Nevertheless, Hemingway proceeded to marry a procession of women,
and then to cast them aside. He did the same with friends who grew
too close, as Fitzgerald was to learn...late, and to his cost.
Neither could stand to feel helpless; each defended
himself in a characteristically different way. Like a man in a standoff
with a mountain lion, Hemingway played himself as largely as was possible,
never letting anyone remain too close to him, and certainly never
putting himself at a disadvantage. Hemingway found himself unable
to relate to a man willing to such extreme liberties with his own
reason and dignity as Fitzgerald, whose antics and unnerving drive
for attention eventually turned their mutual camaraderie to rancor.
Fitzgerald, choosing to overlook the trouble signs,
threw himself into a campaign to promote and advance his friend's
career. He loaned Hemingway money, carried news of "his boy Ernest"
to his literary acquaintances, and assisted Hemingway with editorial
advice on the final draft of THE SUN ALSO RISES
How and why did Hemingway accept all this? Donaldson
claims that Hemingway needed the help, initially. Fitzgerald's star
had risen first. Hemingway nursed a growing intolerance of Fitzgerald's
behavior; in his eyes, the older man was degenerating into an emotional
bankrupt, a wallower in self-created difficulties. He sought means
by which to play down the mutual admiration that had sprung up between
them.
The ability to "wallow"...to evoke emotional extremity
and to derive emotional truth from it that is then translated into
language...is a necessary component of any writer's toolbox. One simply
cannot write believably without getting one's hands and feet wet.
Despite his disdain for overt emotionalism, Hemingway could certainly
handle matters of passion and desire, producing THE OLD MAN AND THE
SEA, A FAREWELL TO ARMS, and THE SUN ALSO RISES novels famous both
for their emotional intensity and for their understated writing style.
Donaldson spends several chapters discussing alcoholism
and depression. That both Hemingway and Fitzgerald suffered from both
illnesses is beyond dispute; they appear to have inherited both from
their fathers. Hemingway could drink massive amounts of alcohol and
remain on his feet - initially. He was immensely proud of this, considering
it to be "..the primary measure of a man." Fitzgerald, on the other
hand, could not handle his liquor at all...which unfortunately didn't
stop him from trying.
The roistering behavior was inevitable, followed
by letters, phone calls and attempts to scrape embarrassments under
the carpet. Donaldson provides innumerable examples, many of them
amusing. ("The deplorable man who entered your apartment Saturday
morning," Fitzgerald once wrote, "was not me but a man named Johnston,
who has often been mistaken for me...")
The diversity of documentation in HEMINGWAY VS.
FITZGERALD is of the highest quality; it is here that we are in the
hands of a master archivist. In his first recorded letter to Fitzgerald,
Hemingway rather archly posited two heavens, one attributed to each
of them. In the first, ascribed to Fitzgerald, he depicted a beautiful
vacuum, filled with wealthy "monogamists and...ladies from the best
families", all drinking themselves to death. In the second, which
he claimed for himself, Hemingway imagined two barrera seats in the
bullring, a trout stream, and two lovely houses...one for his wife
and children, the other for his nine beautiful mistresses. Donaldson
does not detail Fitzgerald's response to these images save to say
that "the banter" between the two grew extraordinarily arch.
I found the photographic sections to be as enlightening
as the documentation. Photographs of Ernest and Marcelline, dressed
in ruffles with their hair wreathed in flowers, and captioned (by
Grace) as "two summer girls with their peonies" is followed, a page
lager, by a photograph of Ernest, at about eight years of age. He
stands by a stream, holding a fishing rod. The quiet sideways look,
elbow resting on hip, the eyes half closed, speculating...this is
an enchanting and disturbing shot; nothing later on in his life, despite
trophies (wives, scars, kudu horns) is MORE Hemingway.
The family portraits of Scott and Zelda are more
depressing. Fitzgerald was fine-featured, somewhat effeminate man
"...a boy, with a face between handsome and pretty", whose most striking
feature was his long-lipped mouth, which "...on a girl would have
been the mouth of a beauty." The mouth worried Hemingway. Zelda, with
her light, soft hair and fine-featured, intense little face didn't
fool him for an instant; despite his relative inexperience with women,
he knew that look. "...you, who of all people need discipline in your
work!" he scolded Fitzgerald later, "...then had to go and marry someone
insanely jealous of your work, who would like to destroy it!"
Donaldson believes that the relationship went through
several stages:
When Hemingway first met Fitzgerald in Paris in
1925 through the end of 1926, they got along very well, saw each other
often, and wrote frequently when apart. From 1927 to 1936, as Hemingway's
star ascended and Fitzgerald's began its decline, Hemingway bridled
at his role as beneficiary of Fitzgerald's advice and guidance, and
grew increasingly abrasive in comments to and about Fitzgerald's self-pity,
his laxity in permitting Zelda to dominate him, and his increasing
weakness with alcohol. The crowning blow fell in August of 1936 with
the publication of KILIMANJARO, with its gratuitous reference to "poor
Scott Fitzgerald" as a writer wrecked by idolization of the very rich.
Fitzgerald was crushed. "Please lay off me in print," he wrote to
Hemingway, adding that "Snows" was a fine story, but that the "poor
Scott" lines had ruined it for him.
After this episode, and until Fitzgerald's death
in 1940, the friendship was effectively over. It was after Fitzgerald's
death, however, that Hemingway commenced his repeated and systematic
attacks, denigrating Fitzgerald at every opportunity through the twenty
years remaining of his life. Donaldson observes that these attacks
grew in direct proportion to Fitzgerald's posthumous revival.
As one who has come to know his subjects extraordinarily
well, Scott Donaldson has managed to document their lives and times
with great style. Yet the book lags, after a time. By the middle chapters
it becomes apparent that events taking place could not have been altered
or prevented. That Hemingway and Fitzgerald had so much in common
only fueled their conflict; Scott eventually refused to visit Hemingway
on his boat, and Hemingway just as roundly refused to visit Scott
at home. One remembers that first letter, with the "two heavens":
the one a meaningless vacuum filled with the beautiful, the mad, and
the dying; and the other a writer's duplex with trout stream and bull
arena. The miracle is that they met and befriended one another at
all.
It is no accident that the crossed stars of real
life have inspired our best literature; with rare exception, this
is simply the way it is done. History inspires its retelling in books,
plays, and poems which, standing apart from their progenitors, speak
not only of difficult times but of difficult individuals, their troubled
interpreters.
In seeking the facts, seeking to understand what
happened between Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Donaldson has pressed his
brilliant scholarship and shrewd appreciation of Ernest Hemingway
and F. Scott Fitzgerald to the task of analysis and synthesis. His
book has drawn their conundrum for us: The true story of two literary
heroes, documented, attested to, and re-iterated until we are ready
to throw HEMINGWAY VS. FITZGERALD across the room.
So what if Fitzgerald became a simpering parody
of class-conscious societies he both worshipped and hated? So what
if Hemingway made himself bigger than a mountain lion only to find
that his oversized shadow had developed an oversized thirst, as well?
So what if the truth is less than pleasant: that our heroes can behave
foolishly, or that their lives can end badly?
In the case of the ill-starred friendship between
Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, the truth needs no excuse.
Their books have said it all
Erica Erdman
|
 |
|
