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Ernest Hemingway A Moveable Feast
"But this is preposterous? A character is either ‘real' or ‘imaginary'? If you think that, hypocrite lecteur, I can only smile. You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it . . . fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf--your book, your romanced autobiography. We are all in flight from the real reality. That is a basic definition of homo sapiens.“ John Fowles (The French Lt’s Woman)
Ernest Hemingway • Born near Chicago (1899) • Service in WWI • Journalist in Paris after war
Hemingway • 1920s: Europe (Paris) • 1930s: Africa, Spain & Key West • 1940s: Cuba & WWII • 1950s: Cuba & Idaho
Hemingway • Dies 1961 in Idaho • Married 4 times • 1921-Hadley Richardson • 1927-Pauline Pfeiffer • 1940-Martha Gellhorn • 1946-Mary Welsh
Works • In Our Time (1925) – Nick Adams stories • The Sun Also Rises (1926) • A Farewell to Arms (1929) • For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) • The Old Man and the Sea (1952) • Nobel Prize - 1954
In Our Time • Nick Adams stories • Grows up in Michigan • Fights in WWI • Wounded • Returns home • Finds peace in nature • “Big Two-Hearted River”
The Sun Also Rises • Young American journalist in Paris in 1920s • Wounded in war • Unfulfilled relationship • Travels to Spain (fishing, Pamplona) • Itinerant, ex-patriate lifestyle • Roman à clef
The Sun Also Rises • Lost Generation • Cheap lifestyle in Paris • Disillusioned by war • American & Brit artists
A Farewell to Arms • Young man wounded in war • Goes to Switzerland for treatment • Meets nurse • Love affair • Outside world intervenes (duty) • Affair ends
A Farewell to Arms • Agnes von Kurowsky • American • Leaves for US • Wife gives birth while he writes novel • Catherine Barkley • British • Becomes pregnant • Dies in childbirth
Other works • Death in the Afternoon (1932) • Green Hills of Africa (1935) • To Have And Have Not (1937) • The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938) • For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940) • The Old Man And The Sea (1952, Pulitzer Prize) • Paris: A Moveable Feast (1964)
A Moveable Feast • Short vignettes • Gossip about famous people • F. Scott Fitzgerald • Gertrude Stein • Initiation into life as writer • Young and growing, but w/ stable personality
A Moveable Feast Novel “Reality” Better standards than Fr. Enjoyed access to money Having affair at time Midnight in Paris (2011) • Bohemian lifestyle • Living poor, eating poor • In love with wife
Hemingway • Hemingway Hero = Masculine characteristics • Shy and unassuming – bragged, sought publicity • Controlled in public – fear at night
Gertrude Stein • American emigrates to Paris • Literary salon • Originates “Lost Generation” • Experimental fiction • “Automatic writing”
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas • Own autobiography • Authored from other perspective
Alice B. Toklas “After a while I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will, he said.”
"narrative truth has a special significance in its own right (...) making contact with the actual past may be of far less significance than creating a coherent and consistent account of a particular set of events." "Once a given construction has acquired narrative truth, it becomes just as real as any other kind of truth." (Donald Spence)
Ideas • Limits of fictionalized autobiography • Creating a masculine/gendered personality