When Hemingway Hated Paris: Divorce Proceedings, Contemplations of Suicide, and the Deleted Chapters of <i>The Sun Also Rises</i>
I do not know what I thought would be like but it was not way. --The Collection, JFK Library item 186 Literary had an important role in the development of twentieth-century modernist writing, particularly for Americans in during the interwar years. The critics who study this group tend to focus on similar themes--rejection of conservative mores in America, sexual liberation and alcohol consumption, creative cross-fertilization, and so on--such the cultural migration to France itself is generally treated as positive experience. Susan Beegel, editor of The Review, notes Hemingway criticism has tended to celebrate expatriation (Report 1), and due to this inclination, literary scholarship (and work from popular spheres, certainly) has constructed an idealistic image of Ernest in Upon close review of the journalism, letters, and fiction he wrote during his residence in France, however, we find an scene is sometimes wrought with strain, irritability, even contempt. [I've] been in hell now since Christmas (Selected Letters 217), he wrote to F. Scott Fitzgerald in September 1926 before enduring several months of despondency, during which he contemplated suicide and drafted last will. The critical locus of this essay interprets the outcomes of long-term cultural immersion, the consequences of cultural shocks and readjustments, and the implications of social distance--to analyze an important but often neglected dimension of Hemingway's life in Paris. Expatriate Criticism: A Celebratory Register The critical inclinations concerning in likely derive from the tendency to use A Moveable Feast as definitive resource on the period. The memoir is unreliable on many levels, however, because it was written in Cuba and Idaho thirty years after left the city. The nostalgic tones therein imply was enduringly captivated by and happy in the city, but portrayal is contradicted by many nonfiction texts and letters he wrote while in (which I will soon discuss). These negative aspects of foreign life, nonetheless, tend to be overlooked by critics, nearly all of whom read as positive experience: Robert Gajdusek asserted always remained his favorite city (10); David Donnell proclaimed without qualification Hemingway loved Paris (56); and Richard Bennet Hovey's opinion is We know preferred being an expatriate and that he loved Paris (69). Hemingway's relationship with was succession of high and also very low points, but this is clouded by the glowing nature of much of the critical work on the topic. The demographic of the scholars who study this theme is also an important factor in the discussion. Very few American critics who have written about in live and work in France (Katy Masuga and Adam Gopnik are notable exceptions). Many visit Paris--possibly for up to year of two as student of visiting lecturer--before commencing their work, but the realities of scholarship in non-US cultural studies command circumstances local to those subjects. The studies of (carried out from the US) tend to overlook many critical circumstances about long-term cultural displacement--many of which are negative. Brooke Lindy Blower, for example, spent year in and returned to the US to write Becoming Americans in Paris: Transatlantic Politics and Culture between the Wars. While she noted It is hard to resist such romanticizing (1) about life in (see also Benstock 4, Kennedy xi, and Pizer 20, 26), her critical perspectives are dominated by somewhat unreal positivity of the temporary visitor: Through American eyes, she commented, glimmered, shimmied (19). She believes the place has a seductive atmosphere and 87,775 trees for lovers to embrace under (4). …