Everybody Behaves Badly

Starred review from February 8, 2016
In this revealing new study, Blume shows that a series of competing internal and external pressures helped birth Hemingway’s now-legendary debut roman à clef, The Sun Also Rises. Blume begins by tracing Hemingway’s dogged path to becoming a published writer. By the time Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, arrived in Paris in 1921, he was considered one of the most promising young American authors, though he had published only a few short stories. The particulars of the Hemingways’ epic trip to Pamplona, Spain, with five friends in the summer of 1925—and the romantic entanglements that followed—shed light not only on Hemingway’s early career but also on other stories of the lost generation. After Hemingway refashioned their trip into a novel, he focused on a publishing contract for what he firmly believed would be a blockbuster sensation. In the subsequent negotiations and editing process, Blume reveals, F. Scott Fitzgerald played a surprisingly large role. Blume has carved a mountain of original research into a riveting tale of Hemingway’s literary, romantic, and publishing travails. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency.

March 1, 2016

Journalist and author Blume (Let's Bring Back) focuses on the events in Ernest Hemingway's life from his 1921 arrival in Paris to the publication of The Sun Also Rises in 1926. Drawing on a rich cache of "Lost Generation" memoirs, as well as Hemingway's and his contemporaries' correspondence, the author portrays Hemingway as a ruthless egotist bent on achieving his literary ambitions, often at the expense of early supporters, including Sherwood Anderson, Gertrude Stein, and Robert McAlmon. Researching the actual trips that form the basis for the roman a clef's account of the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain, Blume reveals how Hemingway transformed the lives of his expatriate friends by turning them into memorable characters in what was soon to become a masterwork of American literature. An epilog follows the lives of those depicted in the wake of the novel's publication. There is also valuable information on the story's editing, marketing, sales, and reception. VERDICT Bloom brings together in one place a wealth of information on Hemingway's first novel that will appeal to students and general readers alike. It may also lead those looking to delve deeper to peruse some of the author's sources, including Hemingway's own A Moveable Feast, Harold Loeb's The Way It Was, and Bertram D. Sarason's Hemingway and the Sun Set. [See Prepub Alert, 1/4/16.]--William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY

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