Ernest Hemingway

Papa elicited very strong reactions from people. Writers, however, admired his work too much not to like him. James Joyce, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Henry Miller—they were all good buddies, although I never could find out if Hemingway and Céline ever met. The latter’s anti-Semitism was real; Papa’s was phony. He based Robert Cohn in The Sun Also Rises on Harold Loeb, a rich American playboy who lived in Paris during the twenties. He liked Loeb, took him along on trips, played tennis with him and Ezra, and was known to punch people who said anti-Semitic things in his presence. Go figure, as he never said. (I tried to contact Loeb a few years ago, as I knew members of the Loeb banking family, but he would not discuss the Paris years. Again, go figure.)

Loeb fell for an English lady, Duff Twysden, one that Papa turned into Lady Brett Ashley, making a fool of himself in the process. Although from Illinois, Papa knew the real thing when he saw it. I sometimes dream about what he would have done with people such as the Tchenguiz brothers or others of their kind. As a very green Toronto Star correspondent he had called Mussolini the “biggest bluff in Europe” when the rest of the world saw Il Duce as the second coming. I never understood his sucking up to Gertrude Stein, but then I’ve sucked up to far worse. To Have and Have Not’s title alone proclaimed Papa’s consciousness of the world’s injustice and inequality. Class-ridden Europe was his main hunting ground. And despite the cruel barbs toward F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fascination with the rich, he, too, was impressed by those who “held forth in a manner that did not brook the impertinence of an interruption.”

And now we come to war. He witnessed it three times, from up front. He said that A Farewell To Arms is a Romeo and Juliet story. His account of the retreat from Caporetto is his best sustained piece of narrative ever. Fifty years later to the day I miss him and thank my lucky stars I never met him. The dream goes on.