At the end of 1921, when Hemingway and his new wife Hadley came to Paris at the end of 1921, he probably did not expect that six years later, he would get his wish, and at the time when he became famous in the literary world for his first novel, "The Sun Also Rises", it was also the time when the marriage was declared to end. (Thereafter, as Fitzgerald put it, every time Hemingway published a masterpiece, he would have a new wife by his side.)
Hemingway left the copyright to had the novel to Hadley and her son Bonnie. This ending painted a touch of sadness on his first great success, although at this time, he already had another confidant Pauline by his side.
However, what Hemingway did not expect was that his travel experience would be recorded in detail by another American writer decades later, becoming a book called "The Whole of Paris Belongs to Me". Listen, the name alone makes one feel the ambition to win, the endless gatherings, the noise of the clothes, the smell of bullfighting blood, the smell of fragrant coffee, spirits and cigars.
Book Author Leslie M. M.M M. Blume, behind the young female journalist, has dozen.M s of friends who have provided important help to her, including the descendants of the characters involved in the book, the elite of the publishing world, and the researchers and genius translators of Hemingway's life. Her husband, Gregory Masque, in particular, dutifully listens to the fragments of Paris's "lost generation" every night. At the end of each round, he prepares two glasses and a bottle of Winkel's bourbon. In fact, during that time they conceived both the book and a daughter.
But if you are not interested in Hemingway's people and their deeds, you can bypass this book. Although the quality of its binding, translation, and design is remarkable, the book is 410 pages long, equivalent to one-third of War and Peace, and the intricate relationships between the names and relationships that appear in the book are dizzying.
The author conducts numerous interviews for the book, and she and her team spend a lot of time in the Rare Books and Special Collections Section of the Princeton University Library, searching for archives, out-of-print books, magazine and newspaper articles, obituaries, and unpublished poems. All this makes people believe that what is said in the book is by no means the subjective imagination of the author, but has its corroboration. If you don't read it, you won't be able to get to know hemingway before Hemingway, who was labeled as a tough guy who fished for deep-sea fish, a big animal hunter, a regular at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, a white-bearded father, etc. The unknown man, who had not published any works, when hungry, received a rejection letter and lived in the cold and damp attic of Paris, surrounded by the noise of the sawmill Hemingway.
Of course, if I hadn't read the book, I wouldn't have known that Hadley had accidentally lost all of Hemingway's early manuscripts on the train, a momentous event that, though years later, had faded into obscurity, and even Hemingway himself laughed bitterly, "Her work is not responsible for taking care of my manuscripts." "But at that time, a new writer in the literary world, who had painstakingly created a large amount of writing, was wasted in this way, or in his most difficult period, the blow he suffered was nothing less than worse. Although contemporaries believe that "Hemingway's loss of his early works is a fortunate thing" for this incident, and some scholars also believe that "the theft of manuscripts is the best encounter in Hemingway's life", I know that if you have subconsciously pressed the Save Document button when writing text on a computer, it is not difficult to understand and imagine that when Hadley walked off the train in tears and told Hemingway who had come to greet him before this "bad news", the despair and frustration in the couple's hearts.
Also, if I hadn't read the book, I wouldn't have known how Ernest Hemingway, the savage of American literature who drank hard, fought hard, loved hard, and everything in the name of art, had longed to be famous, frantically trying to get rid of his identity as a little man, who "in total obscurity had decided to be a very, very great writer." He has a strong desire to achieve what he wants to achieve and executes his goals precisely. He was a popular social darling, a man who loved boxing and bullfighting, but was mean-spirited to his friends, aggressive, parody of his mentors, and he was ambiguous with Mrs. Duff and the Pfeiffer sisters, and a mischievous Hemingway.
When reading this book, the difficult and crazy days of Hemingway's golden age seem to be vividly remembered. Re-reading Hemingway's work will give you a deeper understanding of the characters, find the corresponding archetypes, and find fun in them. For example, I was a little puzzled when I read "Mountains like White Elephants" before, but when I learned about the story of Hemingway and Pauline from this book, I seemed to understand something. The content of this book always seems to have an overlapping and superimposing effect with his works, allowing us to understand Hemingway better and the characters he wrote. Of course, the origin of the title of "The Sun Also Rises", the difficulties and twists and turns of its publication, the discerning editors it encounters, the challenges to traditional publishing institutions, and the competition and game between commercial profits are also extremely interesting points to watch.
Some say Hemingway was a "bad boy," a mixture of the hustle and bustle of Paris, the ruggedness of the Alps, the savagery of the boxing ring, and a different kind of brilliance. But from beginning to end, Hemingway knew best what kind of person he wanted to be and what kind of achievements he had achieved. No one or anything could stop him.
A writer who cannot truly and boldly reveal himself and his life will always be untouched. If he does not write and take the familiar people and things around him, it will be difficult to produce a good work. If he does not have the ambition to be famous and the correct understanding of his own talents, he will lack the motivation to write and have a bad grasp of style and direction. The truly intriguing works are all about human nature, and as for the times, they are just the background of human nature.
Although "The Sun Also Rises" brought great distress to his friends Loeb, Tweesden and others, Hemingway never showed it, even though he had regretted it. Here's Hodgner's recollection as proof —
Hodgner: "If you had to rewrite it, wouldn't it be less heavy?" ”
Hemingway: "Die, you won't." ”
This is the real Hemingway.
In the last days of his life, the Parisian years of his youth came to mind again, and Hemingway wrote down his last memories. If you're lucky enough to live in Paris when you were young, he says, it will follow you wherever you go for the rest of your life. Because Paris is a feast that never breaks.
The book chronicles what happened in life at that time and the people he knew. Regarding the days without the bathroom, many inconveniences, he just shrugged his shoulders slightly. After all, Paris was his happiest place, and he was still full of tenderness for it, and that house was the beginning of everything.
Yes, by this time, I had opened Hemingway's "Paris Sketches" – A Feast of Flow.