Story behind ‘The Sun’
The story behind Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, “The Sun Also Rises,’’ published in 1926, is very much the story of a talented bad boy. In “Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece ‘The Sun Also Rises’ ’’ (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), author Lesley M.M. Blume chronicles how the charming and sometimes spiteful Hemingway became Hemingway, the literary icon.
As Dorothy Parker wrote in The New Yorker (under the pen name “Constant Reader’’): “As soon as ‘The Sun Also Rises’ came out, Ernest Hemingway was the white-haired boy. He was praised, adored, analyzed, best-sold, argued about, and banned in Boston; all the trimmings were accorded him.’’
Hemingway’s spare style devoid of sentimentality was a landmark shift in fiction. What was scandalous was the young writer’s daring in creating thinly fictionalized characters based on his friends. It was particularly painful for Harold Loeb, who as Robert Cohn in the novel is a loathsome character.
“The Sun Also Rises’’ trails a raucous band of American and British expatriates who party in Pamplona, Spain, during the running of the bulls. It established Hemingway as the voice of his generation, which came to be known as the Lost Generation.
The writing of “The Sun Also Rises’’ has a prominent place in “Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars,’’ an exhibit on display through Dec. 31 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the principal repository for the writer’s papers. Among the items on display are notebooks with early drafts of the novel and chapters that Hemingway deleted after F. Scott Fitzgerald sent him a 10-page critique of the finished manuscript. Fitzgerald called the novel “damn good,’’ though he anticipated Hemingway’s reaction to his suggestion to make major cuts: “About this time I can hear you say ‘Jesus this guy thinks I’m lousy, & he can stick it up his ass for all I give a Gd Dm for his “criticism.’’ ’ [sic] But remember this is a new departure for you, and that I think your stuff is great. You were the first American I wanted to meet in Europe — and the last.’’
Hemingway listened, cutting 40,000 words out of the novel and achieving the lean, muscular style that is its hallmark.
Be a kid again
Eight Cousins in Falmouth started out as a children’s bookstore in 1986 and over the decades morphed into a full-service shop. In the run-up to the store’s 30th birthday on July 1, co-owner Sara M. Hines is harkening back to its roots with a request: “Re-read your favorite childhood books. I feel confident that you will see something you never noticed before. You will finally get a joke, lesson, or message that will make you wonder how you could have possibly thought that this children’s book was for kids.’’
Coming out
¦ “Hell Week: Seven Days to Be Your Best Self’’by Erik Bertrand Larssen (Gallery)
¦ “The Course of Love’’ by Alain de Botton (Simon & Schuster)
¦ “Tom Clancy Duty and Honor’’ by Grant Blackwood (Putnam)
Pick of the week
Kym Havens of An Unlikely Story in Plainville recommends “The Girls’’ by Emma Cline (Random House): “Cline perfectly captures the pain and rawness of being a teenage girl who will do anything to be part of a group. The novel alternates between the present day when Evie is an adult dealing with the repercussions of her adolescence and the 1960s when, as a 14-year-old, she became friends with a group of girls associated with the ‘Ranch,’ run by a Charles Manson-esque leader.’’
Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com.
