Plan : Introduction Ernest Hemingway's biography What is Lost Generation Ernest Hemingway's career Hemingway's works Conclusion List of used literature Introduction

Ernest Hemingway's career
The Hemingways arrived in Paris on December 22, 1921 and a few weeks later moved into their first apartment at 74 rue Cardinal Lemoine. It was a miserable apartment with no running water and a bathroom that was basically a closet with a slop bucket inside. Hemingway tried to minimize the primitiveness of the living quarters for his wife Hadley who had grown up in relative splendor, but despite the conditions she endured, carried away by her husbands enthusiasm for living the bohemian lifestyle. Ironically, they could have afforded much better; with Hemingway's job and Hadley's trust fund their annual income was $3,000, a decent sum in the inflated economies of Europe at the time.
Hemingway rented a room at 39 rue Descartes where he could do his writing in peace.With a letter of introduction from Sherwood Anderson, Hemingway met some of Paris' prominent writers and artists and forged quick friendships with them during his first few years. Counted among those friends were Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, Max Eastman, Lincoln Steffens and Wyndahm Lewis, and he was acquainted with the painters Miro and Picasso.
These friendships would be instrumental in Hemingway's development as a writer and artist.Hemingway's reporting during his first two years in Paris was extensive, covering the Geneva Conference in April of 1922, The Greco-Turkish War in October, the Luasanne Conference in November and the post war convention in the Ruhr Valley in early 1923.

Along with the political pieces he wrote lifestyle pieces as well, covering fishing, bullfighting, social life in Europe, skiing, bobsledding and more.Just as Hemingway was beginning to make a name for himself as a reporter and a fledgling fiction writer, and just as he and his wife were hitting their stride socially in Europe, the couple found out that Hadley was pregnant with their first child. Wanting the baby born in North America where the doctors and hospitals were better, the Hemingways left Paris in 1923 and moved to Toronto, where he wrote for the Toronto Daily Star and waited for their child to arrive.John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway was born on October 10, 1923 and by January of 1924 the young family boarded a ship and headed back to Paris where Hemingway would finish making a name for himself.

With a recommendation from Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Ford let Hemingway edit his fledgling literary magazine the Transatlantic Review. In recommending Hemingway to Ford, Pound said "...He's an experienced journalist. He writes very good verse and he's the finest prose stylist in the world."Ford published some of Hemingway's early stories, including "Indian Camp" and "Cross Country Snow" and generally praised the younger writer. The magazine lasted only a year and a half (until 1925), but allowed Hemingway to work out his own artistic theories and to see them in print in a respectable journal.
An unparalleled creative flurry...
From 1925 to 1929 Hemingway produced some of the most important works of 20th century fiction, including the landmark short story collection In Our Time (1925) which contained "The Big Two-Hearted River." In 1926 he came out with his first true novel, The Sun Also Rises (after publishing Torrents of Spring, a comic novel parodying Sherwood Anderson in 1925). He followed that book with Men Without Women in 1927; it was another book of stories which collected "The Killers," and "In Another Country." In 1929 he published A Farewell to Arms, arguably the finest novel to emerge from World War I. In four short years he went from being an unknown writer to being the most important writer of his generation, and perhaps the 20th century.
The first version of in our time (characterized by the lowercase letters in the title) was published by William Bird's Three Mountain Press in 1924 and illustrated Hemingway's new theories on literature. It contained only the vignettes that would later appear as interchapters in the American version published by Boni & Liveright in 1925. This small 32 page book, of which only 170 copies were printed, contained the essence of Hemingway's aesthetic theory which stated that omitting the right thing from a story could actually strengthen it. Hemingway equated this theory with the structure of an iceberg where only 1/8 of the iceberg could be seen above water while the remaining 7/8 under the surface provided the iceberg's dignity of motion and contributed to its momentum.
Hemingway felt a story could be constructed the same way and this theory shows up even in these early vignettes. A year after the small printing of in our time came out, Boni & Liveright published the American version, which contains ten short stories along with the vignettes.

The collection of stories is amazing, including the much anthologized "Soldier's Home," as well as "Indian Camp," "A Very Short Story," "My Old Man" and the classic "Big Two-Hearted River" parts one and two. "Big Two Hearted River" was a eureka story for Hemingway, who realized that his theory of omission really could work in the story form.

Next came The Torrents of Spring, a short comic novel that satired Hemingway's early mentor Sherwood Anderson and allowed him to break his relationship with Boni & Liveright to move to Scribner's. Scribner's published Torrents (which Scott Fitzgerald called the finest comic novel ever written by an American) in 1925, then a year later published Hemingway's second novel The Sun Also Rises, which the publisher had bought sight unseen. The Sun Also Rises introduced the world to the "lost generation" and was a critical and commercial success. Set in Paris and Spain, the book was a story of unrequitable love against a backdrop of bars and bullfighting.
In 1927 came Men Without Women and soon after he began working on A Farewell To Arms.While he could do no wrong with his writing career, his personal life had began to show signs of wear. He divorced his first wife Hadley in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer, an occasional fashion reporter for the likes of Vanity Fair and Vogue, later 1928 Hemingway and Pauline left Paris for Key West, Florida in search of new surroundings to go with their new life together.
They would live there for nearly twelve years, and Hemingway found it a wonderful place to work and to play, discovering the sport of big game fishing which would become a life-long passion and a source for much of his later writing.
That same year Hemingway received word of his father's death by suicide. Clarence Hemingway had begun to suffer from a number of physical ailments that would exacerbate an already fragile mental state. He had developed diabetes, endured painful angina and extreme headaches. On top of these physical problems he also suffered from a dismal financial situation after speculative real estate purchases in Florida never panned out. His problems seemingly insurmountable, Clarence Hemingway shot himself in the head. Ernest immediately traveled to Oak Park to arrange for his funeral.
His most beloved works include The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and The Old Man and the Sea (1953). Hemingway was awarded two Pulitzer prizes, for For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea (which also earned him a Nobel prize).
Quite the resume, but as amazing a writer as he was, Hemingway was equally amazing (if not more so) as a man. His life was so incredibly bizarre, maybe only such an incredible writer could ever have authored it. Okay, here are a few facts about Ernest Hemingway:
His mother, Grace, was the domineering type. She wanted a daughter, not a son. To placate herself after Ernest was born, she would dress him up in pink, flowery dresses and call him "Ernestie"
.He started hunting early. At the age of three, he killed a porcupine, at his father's behest. He finished the job by eating it.
His mother kept him out of school for a year- to study playing the cello. Did it work? According to Hemingway: "That cello- I played it worse than anyone on earth."
He joined the Ambulance Corps in World War I and worked as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, picking up human remains. In July 1918, he was seriously wounded by a mortar shell which left shrapnel in both his legs, causing him much pain and requiring several surgeries. He was awarded the Silver Medal of Valor from the Italians.
Hemingway participated in the Spanish Civil War and took part in the D-Day landings during the invasion of France during World War II. In one instance, he threw three hand grenades into a bunker, killing several SS officers. He was decorated with the Bronze Star for his actions.
It is estimated he left behind over 8,000 personal and business letters. Plans have been announced underway to publish them in a set exceeding ten volumes.
Hemingway was the grandfather to two famous actresses, Mariel Hemingway and Margeux Hemingway. Sadly, Margeux committed suicide in 1996, like her grandfather Ernest and her great-grandfather (Ernest's dad). Also, two of Ernest's siblings, Ursula and Leicester died by their own hand.
He was married four times and dedicated a book to each wife during the time he was married to them.
He loved polydactyl cats (cats having six or more toes on each food, instead of the usual five). His first was named "Snowball." He became so fascinated and enamored by the six-toed felines, he eventually had 50 roaming around his home in Key West. Polydactyl cats are now so identified with him, they are now commonly referred to as "Hemingway cats."
While vacationing in Africa, he survived two plane crashes in the span of two days. In one instance, his plane caught fire on the runway. With the plane door jammed closed, he used his head as a battering ram and butted it open.Because of these two brushes with death, Hemingway had the opportunity to read his own obituary. A few days later, he was also injured in a brush fire.
Hemingway was an expert fisherman. He used to machine gun sharks to keep them from eating his catch. In 1938, he set a world record by catching seven marlins in one day. He was the first person to ever boat a giant tuna in an undamaged state.
Unlike other writers, he preferred to work standing up. He spent hours and hours at a time on his feet. He moved only to shift his weight from one leg to the other.
He'd wear out seven pencils in a good day's work.
Just after finishing For Whom the Bell Tolls, he went out with his third wife and two kids and killed 400 jack rabbits in a day.
He once got into a fist fight with Orson Welles. It happened in a theater, where Welles was narrating a film for Hemingway, but in a snide, sarcastic way. Hemingway got upset, and the two started swinging away (but mostly missing) at each other.
Finally, the two stopped their fight and burst out laughing together. They became lifelong friends after this incident.
He once stole a urinal out of his favorite bar and moved it to his Key West home. He reasoned that, "I pissed away so much of my money in that urinal that I own it."
He was a very sick man, physically. Hemingway, in his lifetime, survived skin cancer, anthrax, malaria, dysentery, hepatitis, anemia, high blood pressure, a rupture kidney, a ruptured spleen, a ruptured liver, pneumonia, a crushed vertebra, a fractured skull and three car crashes.
Unlike many other authors, Hemingway refused to write for movies. He did not, however, object to his works being put on film.
He disliked the screen version of The Old Man and the Sea (1958); after seeing it he was very disappointed. He expressed disdain for Spencer Tracy's performance in the film, saying Tracy looked less like a Cuban fisherman and more like the rich, old actor he was. (Tracy was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance.)
Although never used, his suggested epitaph was "Pardon me for not getting up."
Hemingway suffered from severe depression during his life. He called his attacks of depression his "black dog days."He received electro-convulsive shock treatment as many as 15 times in December 1960, trying to find relief. Sadly, this "treatment" caused him to lose his memory. It was this, he confided to at least one friend, which made him decide to commit suicide.
His favorite meal was a New York strip steak, a baked potato, Caesar salad and a glass of Bordeaux. On July 2, 1961, this was the meal Hemingway consumed before he took his favorite shotgun and ended his life. His father had used this same method to take his life several decades previously.
Hemingway's last words were; "Goodnight my kitten" (said to his wife Mary).