Hemingway and Fitzgerald

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Hemingway and Fitzgerald

Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, the parties of one of the most famously infamous relationships in literary history met for the first time in late April 1925 at The Dingo Bar, a Paris hangout for the bohemian set. In his novel A Moveable Feast (published posthumously) Hemingway describes his first impressions of Fitzgerald:

“The first time I ever met Scott Fitzgerald a very strange thing happened. Many strange things happened with Scott, but this one I was never able to forget. He had come into the Dingo bar in the rue Delambre where I was sitting with some completely worthless characters, had introduced himself and introduced a tall, pleasant man who was with him as Dunc Chaplin, the famous pitcher…I much preferred him to Scott…Scott was a man then who looked like a boy with a face between handsome and pretty…The mouth worried you until you knew him, and then it worried you more.”(Hemingway, 149)

The above passage, as several scholars have pointed out, is an excellent example of Hemingway’s “selective memory” as far as his descriptions of Scott are concerned, and in a larger part, is also indicative of the rather mythological quality their relationship took on over the years.(Bruccoli, 1) In his book Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship, famed Fitzgerald academic Matthew J. Bruccoli writes that in fact, “Chaplin was not in Paris in 1925; Chaplin was not in Europe in 1925; Chaplin never met Hemingway.”(1) He goes on to raise the point that has somewhat frustrated scholars and students of the duo for the past half a century: that much of what is “known” about their relationship is through their correspondence and Hemingway’s writing, both of which are ...

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...ngway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship. Woodstock, New York: Overlook, 1999.

Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964.

“Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and The Sun Also Rises”

<http://www.literarytraveler.com /hemingway/ fscottfitzgerald.htm>

This website gives a thorough description of the story behind the publication of SAR as well as links to other helpful Hemingway sites, and a well-written article by scholar Paige Grande.

“Scott and Ernest: A Logical Friendship”

<http://www.ernest.hemingway.com/fitzgerald.htm>

This is a great website that has a lot of detailed information about Hemingway’s literary and personal life. Scholar Kelly Dupuis does an excellent job of sifting through the sometimes dense research done by Bruccoli and others, which makes the site clear and accessible.

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