Hemingway Between Two Wars

Ernest Hemingway on crutches while recovering in Milan, Italy, September 1918. 

The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

“None are to be found more clever than Ernie,” declared an Oak Park and River Forest High School classmate of young Ernest Hemingway who apparently agreed; he used it as his senior yearbook quote. Bright and competitive, Hemingway always knew he wanted to be a writer and at 16 published his first short story, The Judgment of Manitou, in his school’s magazine, The Tabula.

“Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars,” an exhibit at the Morgan Library in collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (which houses Hemingway’s papers), looks at the two most productive decades in the writer's life during which he published five novels, two works of non-fiction, and five short-story collections, honing his craft along the way and becoming one of the most important voices in American literature. (Full disclosure, I did my grad work on Hemingway and am a big fan.)

Broken into six sections, the exhibit contains almost 100 items including drafts, notebooks, manuscripts, first editions, photographs, and letters from friends and fellow writers like John Dos Passos, Sylvia Beach, and John Steinbeck. There are also bull fight ticket stubs, dog tags from when Hemingway was a war correspondent for Colliers during World War II, and a painting of Hemingway by Waldo Pierce modelled after a well-know photo of Balzac.

Hemingway’s 1923 passport (detail), 1923. The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

The most interesting section of the exhibit was the beginning where you see Hemingway emerging as a writer. There’s the first appearance of Nick Adams in a story written on Red Cross stationary; the passport from his early Paris days with that ridiculously handsome photo; his first book, Three Stories & Ten Poems, published by Robert McAlmon’s Contact Press; and a letter dated 20 March 1925 in which Hemingway explains his artistic credo to a displeased father: "You see I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive."

My favourite of his novels, The Sun Also Rises, which he wrote in just nine weeks in 1926, is represented with numerous items like three of the seven French school notebooks in which he wrote the first draft. As with all of Hemingway’s drafts, you see him crossing out words and sometimes full paragraphs, always paring down. On the back cover of the third notebook, there’s a running list of how many words he had written each day before he had his first whiskey and soda.

Also fascinating are the items related to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hemingway, who had met Fitzgerald at the Dingo Bar, showed his manuscript of The Sun Also Rises to the already successful author. Fitzgerald turned out to be a good critic, suggesting that Hemingway cut the first two chapters, thus beginning the novel with the story of Robert Cohn. The first two pages of those excised chapters are on display and show that Fitzgerald was right.

First page of autograph manuscript of A Farewell to Arms, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929. 

Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Copyright © 1929 by Charles Scribner's Sons. 

Copyright renewed ©1957 by Ernest Hemingway. All rights reserved.

By 1929, Hemingway had become surer of himself as a writer and when he received nine pages of notes from Fitzgerald on A Farewell to Arms (three of which are on display), he was less open to advice. Even though on one of the pages of the typescript Fitzgerald had written “This is one of the most beautiful pages in all English literature,” at the bottom of Fitzgerald’s notes is a comment by Hemingway, “Kiss my ass—EH.” He also was not a happy with the book’s copy editor, writing in the margin of one of the galley proofs, “who buggered this up like this. EH.”

Hemingway was famously thin-skinned and quick to lash out at anyone. Furious at Irwin Shaw for including a character based on Hemingway's younger brother, Leicester, in Shaw's novel The Young Lions, Hemingway's personal copy of the book shows an annotation on one page that reads, “This is the part I will break his jaw for.”

Yet Hemingway could also be kind. When a young man, Arnold Samuelson, showed up at Hemingway's home in Key West, Florida to ask him for advice on becoming a writer, Hemingway offered him a job looking after his boat and wrote up a reading list of 16 works for Samuelson to read including classics such as War and Peace, Madame Bovary, and Wuthering Heights as well as some "modern" titles, Dubliners and The Enormous Room. “Here’s a list of books any writer should have read as a part of his education,” Hemingway told Samuelson, “. . . if you haven’t read these, you just aren’t educated.”

Ernest Hemingway revising the typescript of For Whom The Bell Tolls, Sun Valley, Idaho, November 1940.

 Robert Capa © International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos.

Regardless of his actions, Hemingway was thought highly of by many other writers like Dorothy Parker who remained a staunch supporter of Hemingway's even after he mocked her behind her back. On 30 November 1929, the New Yorker published a profile of Hemingway written by Parker titled “The Artist’s Reward.” Nervous about its reception, she sent him a draft to read, commenting in her cover letter, “part of the Artist’s Reward is having shit like this written about you.” And in this case, a very fine exhibit.

“Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars” is at the Morgan until January 31, 2016. For more information, visit here.

Contemplation

Almost a month has gone by since I've posted anything here. Without going into details, the past few weeks have been both busy and stressful with a lot of uncertainty thrown into the mix. I’ve been spending a good portion of my time contemplating my next move (running away to Paris to live in a garret and write is at the top of the list). As a result plans for posts that I wanted to write went out the proverbial window. There were the exhibits and gallery shows: Cubism and Madame Cezanne at the Met; Lincoln at the Morgan Library; Don Quixote tapestries at the Frick;  Marc Riboud’s photos of Asia at the Rubin Museum; and the gigantic Armory Show where I saw a lovely portrait by Moïse Kisling and a Robert Capa image from the Spanish Civil War. There was also a big Broadway show, On the Town, and Parallel Exit's delightful performance of Everyone Gets Cake. And, of course, movies.

Writing long posts take time so moving forward there may be fewer posts and sometimes shorter ones (a quick snippet and a photo or two) but there will be posts. I love sharing my thoughts about history and the arts with you and hope you enjoy reading them. In the meantime, be sure to follow me on instagram and twitter, and pinterest too (where I pin way too many photos of Frenchies and striped shirts). And if I wind up in that garret, I'll be sure to let you know.

PS: If anyone has any information about the photo above, please share. All I know is sitting around in ones lingerie, reading a book with a dog (even a stuffed one) seems ideal.

Summer Art

"USA. New York City. Little Italy" Leonard Freed (1956)

While my busy schedule this summer caused me to miss some art exhibits (Kara Walker at the Domino Sugar Factory), I did manage to sneak in some gallery and museum visits. Here are some of the things I saw.

The late Magnum photographer Leonard Freed had a lifelong love affair with Italy and its people and an exhibit at the Leica Gallery New York showcases some of the many images he took over a period of 50 years in Milan, Naples, Rome, Sicily, and New York's Little Italy. His photos wonderfully depict everyday people going about their daily lives—working, playing, celebrating weddings and religious holidays—perfectly capturing the essence of a place and culture. At the Leica Gallery through August 9, 2014.

"Actress Sophia Loren in Italy" David "Chim" Seymour (1955)

Contact sheets give viewers insight into a photographer’s creative process and the recent “Magnum Contact Sheets” exhibit at the Milk Gallery was a photography fan’s dream with examples from some of Magnum's greatest photographers on display including Rene Burri’s iconic images of Che Guevara, David “Chim” Seymour’s shots of a sultry Sophia Loren, Eve Arnold’s behind the scenes images of the doomed cast of The Misfits, and one of Elliott Erwitt’s famed dog shoots. The exhibit is sadly over but if you have the money to spare, you can purchase the book, Magnum Contact Sheets.

"Real Gabinete Português de Leitura (Royal Portuguese Reading Room)" Caio Reisewitz (2004)

One of the current exhibits at the International Center of Photography is devoted to the work of Brazilian artist Caio Reisewitz who creates large-scale colour photographs of locations in his country that are stunningly beautiful. One of my favourites is of the interior of the Real Gabinete Português de Leitura; it's so big you feel like you could step right inside. Also included in the show are small photo collages where urban scenes are found within the wilds of the Brazilian forest. At the ICP through September 7, 2014.

"A Certain Slant of Light" by Spencer Finch on a Sunday afternoon. Photo by Michele.

“A Certain Slant of Light” by Spencer Finch is just simply beautiful. With 365 films of colour placed onto the glass walls of the Morgan Library and Museum’s Gilbert Court and with additional ones hanging on glass panels, the result is a daily change in light patterns. Inspired by the library’s collection of medieval Books of Hours, the films have been arranged strategically to correspond with the changing seasons and the red panels symbolize important birthdays of such people as Emily Dickinson. This is an exhibit I plan on seeing again on multiple visits. At the Morgan through January 11, 2015.

"Balloon Dog (Yellow)" Jeff Koons (1994-2000)

The large Jeff Koons Retrospective at the Whitney Museum is the museum’s last major exhibit before they move to their new space in the Meatpacking District next year. While I’ve never been a big Koons fan there is much here to like: his oversized balloon dogs and giant hanging heart are delightful and there’s his sculpture of Buster Keaton and of course Michael Jackson and his monkey, Bubbles, in full porcelain glory. But then there’s “Sponge Shelf,” which is literally a stack of kitchen sponges, and pieces from the “Made in Heaven” series featuring Koons and his then wife, the former Italian porn star La Cicciolina, that just leave me shaking my head. At the Whitney through October 19, 2014.

Terror of the Soul

The “Ultima Thule” daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe, 1848.

My tuxedo cat Poe is named for the master of the macabre so I had to check out the Morgan Library’s exhibit “Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul.” With items from the Morgan’s own collection, the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at The New York Public Library, and the personal collection of Susan Jaffe Tane, the exhibit looks at Poe's work as poet, short story writer, and critic and the influence he had on subsequent artists.

In a gallery fittingly painted blood red there are a variety of Poe’s publications including three copies of his first published work, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), one of the rarest books in American literature (only 12 of the 50 published copies are known to still exist) and the first printing of The Raven in The New York Evening Mirror, which brought Poe fame in 1845. Among the manuscripts is one of only three existing pages of The Lighthouse, which was unfinished at the time of Poe’s death, and The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1844), which was taped together to form one paper roll, bringing to mind Jack Kerouac’s On the Road manuscript. There is also a large collection of Poe’s criticism, which was the main form of income for him throughout his life.

The most interesting items though are his letters. There are practical letters written to editors with requested corrections to a manuscript and ones to friends in which he promises to do better, in particular to stop drinking. Responding to an aspiring poet seeking advice, Poe wrote, “"Be bold—read much—publish little—keep aloof from the little wits and fear nothing." One of the most touching is to a woman with whom he was romantically attached toward the end of his life, Annie L. Richmond. To her he writes, “I must send a few words to let you see and feel that your Eddy, even when silent, keeps you always in his mind and heart.” Letters like these help to make Poe seem more human.

Letter to John Augustus Shea requesting a correction to The Raven, February 3, 1845.

I have to insert here how shocked I was at how beautiful Poe’s handwriting was. Neat and precise, sometimes impossibly small, it was lovely to look at. And it wasn’t just the letters; there are poems and stories that he copied out perfectly without a single mistake or cross out.

The final part of the exhibit is devoted to writers who have acknowledged their debt to or admiration for Poe, from Oscar Wilde to W.H. Auden to Stéphane Mallarmé (the French recognized Poe’s importance early on). Even cantankerous George Bernard Shaw waxed "Poe constantly and inevitably produced magic where his greatest contemporaries produced only beauty."

Images of the author are found throughout the gallery from the famed “Ultima Thule” daguerreotype, taken four days after he attempted suicide by overdosing on laudanum in 1848 to the modern painting done by Michael J. Deas for a US postal stamp in 2009. In all of the depictions there are those familiar haunted dark eyes and broad forehead. Poe may have been difficult to be friends with and certainly a lot of his troubles were of his own making, but it’s hard not to find some sympathy for the artist whose life was filled with tragedy and ended in Baltimore in 1849 at the age of 40.

Yet the exhibit wouldn't be complete without at least one nod to Poe's gory reputation. In a glass case is a piece of Poe’s original coffin (he was dug up and reinterred in 1875). A touch of the lurid lest we forgot who we're talking about.

The exhibit is at the Morgan Library through January 26, 2014. For more information visit here.

Surrealism and a Rabbit

Francis Picabia "Olga" 1930

The Morgan Library consistently has some of the most interesting exhibits in the city on all matter of subjects. This was never more evident than on a recent visit when I saw two exhibits that couldn’t have been more different from each other.

First up was “Drawing Surrealism,” a collection of more than 160 graphic works by the leading artists of the Surrealist movement including examples of all sorts of drawings from sand paintings and automatic writing to collage and the always-entertaining exquisite corpse (sort of like the old game in which each participant adds to what the prior person has written). There were some favourites on view like Joan Miró and Apollinaire, and a fine piece by Roland Penrose. I particularly enjoyed some pieces by Georges Hugnet like his collage “Frileuse.” Being a fan of the Lost Generation, I am familiar with the movement and many of its artists. Yet nearing the end of the exhibition I came to the realization that Surrealism is not exactly my cup of tea. Perhaps it’s because of the misogyny that runs throughout so much of the work (Lee Miller, who I adore, seems to have been one of the rare examples of a woman being allowed to play with the boys). Or maybe it's because of the pieces done intentionally for shock value. Whatever the reason, while I do appreciate the work and like some of it in small doses, I don’t think you’ll find me saying that I love Surrealism.

 "My rabbit Peter is so lazy." Beatrix Potter (February 4, 1895)

Upstairs though was a completely different story. “Beatrix Potter: The Picture Letters” was an exhibit that I fell in love with the minute I walked through the doors. The room was filled with books, drawings, photographs, toys, and most importantly, letters. Potter would often write letters to children of family friends in which she would tell them stories accompanied by drawings (hence “picture letters”). Out of these letters sprang the tales of some of her most beloved characters including one letter to Noel Moore, the son of Potter’s former governess, that began “My dear Noel, I don’t know what to write to you, so I shall tell you a story about four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail and Peter.” The 22 picture letters, composed on brown paper and covered in Potter’s fine writing and detailed illustrations, were fascinating to look at and read. 

Also on display were items Potter created that were meant for gifts like doilies hand-painted with scenes from Jeremy Fisher's Dinner Party that appropriately resembled lily pads. There was also merchandise based on her characters, much of which Potter countered with her own versions that she helped design like a Jemima Puddle-Duck doll (she had many a fight with copyright infringement, most particularly with a toy manufacturer in Germany). But perhaps my favourite thing of all was a series of miniature letters written by the likes of Peter Rabbit and other characters that were delivered to fans via equally small mailboxes. Adorable.

“Drawing Surrealism” is at the Morgan through April 21, 2013. For more information, visit here. Sadly, Beatrix Potter has closed but there is a nice online exhibit where you can read her picture letters here.

The Power of Words

Mr. Morgan's Library. Photo: Michele.

A few weeks ago I spent an afternoon at a favourite place in the city—The Morgan Library & Museum. First opened to the public in 1924, the Morgan began as the personal library of financier J.P. Morgan who hired the renowned firm of McKim, Mead & White to build the beautiful Italian Renaissance-style building next to his Madison Avenue home in 1902. Among the thousands of items in the Morgan collection today are not one but three Gutenberg Bibles, The Hours of Anne of Cleves prayer book (gorgeous), Beethoven and Mozart manuscripts with handwritten notes, Jane Austen’s letters, concept drawings for Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince, and first drafts of Bob Dylan lyrics.

I think my favourite section of the museum is Mr. Morgan’s Library, a wonderful large room with an enormous fireplace and tapestry and shelf after shelf of leather-bound books that rise up to a vividly painting ceiling. Wouldn't it be great to have that place to yourself and just sit and read?

 Winston Churchill. Photo: Estate of Yousuf Karsh.

The purpose of this visit was to see a special exhibit, “Churchill: The Power of Words,” which explored the famed prime minister’s masterly use of the English language. Apparently JP Morgan was a friend of Churchill’s mother, the Brooklyn-born Jennie Jerome Churchill, so it only seems fitting that an exhibit of Churchill items rarely seen outside the UK would be at the Morgan. I went the day before it closed and am so happy I didn't miss it.

While most people think of Churchill as a politician, many forget that he was a prolific writer; one of his first jobs was as a journalist, and he wrote numerous books. The exhibit included examples of Churchill’s writings from early letters written as a child to his mother from boarding school to an unpublished manuscript on the art of rhetoric to speeches he gave to the House of Commons to his stirring radio addresses that helped Britain stay the course.

A special focus of the exhibit was on Churchill’s relationship with America, particularly his strong friendship with Franklin D. Roosevelt. The two men liked each other tremendously and appeared to have enjoyed each other’s company, evidenced by their warm banter. Roosevelt once told him “it’s fun being in the same decade as you.”

There were also personal items of note to see—Churchill’s Nobel Prize for Literature, his US passport (he was made an honorary American citizen), a painting he did of Cap d’Antibes, and a noiseless typewriter that Churchill insisted his secretaries use so he would not be distracted by the clacking of keys while giving dictation.

Not all of the words in the exhibit came from Churchill. A very personal letter from King George VI (“My dear Winston,” it begins) after the death of Roosevelt was included as was a hilarious note from his doctor who prescribed alcohol for Churchill after he was hit by a car during a visit to Prohibition New York in 1931. Perhaps my favourite non-Churchill lines were the shortest. When war was declared on September 3, 1939, Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and a signal was sent to the fleet that simply said “Winston is back.”

An annotated draft of Churchill's September 11, 1940 speech. Photo: Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.

Yet with all of the material to read and look at, it was the drafts and final copies of his speeches that remained a highlight of the exhibit. Those stirring words that we have all heard recordings of were there in black and white, some with handwritten notes correcting a word or fact, some appearing like a poem on the page. Final, clean copies showed long spacing between certain words—a reminder to Churchill to pause when speaking.

Recordings of some of his most noted wartime addresses were played in a small portable theatre while images and the words were shown on video screens. The audio may have been scratchy but that unmistakable voice was there, speaking words that still manage to stir up emotions and proving why Churchill was one of the great wordsmiths of his time. Here is just one example:

“Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'”

To find out more about the Morgan Library & Museum, visit their site here. For more on Churchill, visit the Churchill Centre and Museum’s site here.