Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship [Hardcover]

Matthew Joseph Bruccoli (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1994

Fifteen years' worth of startling new research material is presented by special permission of the Hemingway estate in this revised edition of the correspondence between 1925 and 1940, including a group of Hemingway's letters about Fitzgerald.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Removal of publication restrictions on Hemingway's correspondence inspired Bruccoli to provide this update on the friendship between the two literary figures depicted in his 1978 book Scott and Ernest. Hemingway and Fitzgerald first met in Paris in 1925, and Fitzgerald, who had already published The Great Gatsby, recommended Hemingway to his editor, Maxwell Perkins. Despite Fitzgerald's literary success, their relationship was based on his admiration for Hemingway, who was appalled by Fitzgerald's rocky marriage to Zelda and his lack of writing discipline. Bruccoli offers excerpts from Hemingway's letters to Fitzgerald and Perkins as evidence that Hemingway's unflattering portrait of Fitzgerald in A Moveable Feast was distorted. Although Fitzgerald's alcoholism strained their friendship, Bruccoli argues that Hemingway's intense dislike of Zelda, whom he blamed for her husband's heavy drinking, and his harsh criticism of Fitzgerald's writing also weakened the tie between them. Of interest primarily to dedicated devotees. Illustrations.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Drawing heavily from his subjects' letters to each other and their joint editor, Max Perkins, Bruccoli, the grand master of Fitzgeraldism, endeavors to separate fact from fiction in this analysis of the legendary Hemingway/Fitzgerald relationship. The letters show an interesting development in the writers, both in terms of each other and in overall personality, with Hemingway ballooning into megalomania while Fitzgerald spirals toward melancholy. The early correspondences are jovial and chummy, the latter critical and distant. Bruccoli's style, while scholarly, is quite readable, making for a pleasant sojourn through the chaotic lives of the celebrated duo. Though many full biographies cover the same material in brief, Bruccoli's is the most thorough examination currently available of this greatest literary love-hate relationship of modern American literature. Recommended for public libraries.
Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 236 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub (August 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786700777
• ISBN-13: 978-0786700776
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,370,142 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Dangerous but Fascinating Friendship, August 11, 2000

By 

Alan Ross (Paris, Kentucky United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship (Paperback)

This book is a gem and should be on the reading list of any fan of Fitzgerald or Hemingway. Much of the contents are anecdotal recollections of Hemingway regarding Fitzgerald who he regarded as immensely talented but weak and dominated (by Zelda and the bottle). A variety of letters between the two help to bring to life the closeness that was in evidence in the early friendship before Fitzgerald's decline and Hemingway's enormous success (followed by his growing intolerance of the waning and less successful like FSF). This book also does not attempt to hide the sometimes incomprehensible mean -spiritedness of Hemingway when despite all his success (largely aided by the early support of others he later cast aside) still felt enough threatened to throw his drowning friends an anchor.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fantastic, April 10, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship (CARROLL & GRAF) (Paperback)

This has new stuff that wasn't in Brucolli's previous book on the two authors SCOTT AND ERNEST. I read that one, and when starting FITZGERALD AND HEMINGWAY, thought I'd read the same book, but with a few added facts. Well, there are tons of new facts in F & H that are EXTREMELY interesting to the Fitzgerald and Hemingway fan. I recommend this book highly. I've read much of it more than once.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Book shows great writers behaving badly, November 26, 2003

By 

Michael Meanwell (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship (Paperback)

It's fair to say more books have been written about F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway than either man wrote, and arguably the most fascinating topic concerns their rocky friendship.

Matthew J. Bruccoli is considered the expert on Fitzgerald, having written and edited more than two dozen books on the writer. His classic, 'Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship' is the result of 15 years' research which includes a fascinating and careful analysis of a newly-released batch of Hemingway's letters to and about Fitzgerald.

The book covers the length and breadth of the writers' friendship, from when they met in 1925 in Paris following publication of Fitzgerald's third and best-known novel, 'The Great Gatsby', and a year before Hemingway published his first, 'The Sun Also Rises' (thanks partly to Fitzgerald for introducing Hemingway to his publisher, Scribner's).

Bruccoli covers enormous ground and in great detail, exploding many myths regarding the writers' stormy friendship up until Fitzgerald's death in 1940. He shows that while Fitzgerald was the older and more successful of the two authors at the time they met, from the beginning to the end, he assumed a subordinate role to the gregarious Hemingway.

Bruccoli sums up the writers' relationship this way:

"On the evidence of their correspondence, Hemingway emerges as a better friend than his self-portrait in 'A Movable Feast' shows ~ until 1936. Both men were savers and preserved most of their letters to each other. Fifty-seven letters or telegrams have been located; 28 from Fitzgerald, and 29 from Hemingway.

"Fitzgerald and Hemingway functioned differently as letter writers. Fiztgerald's letters are carefully written and have his characteristic warmth of expression; they have no direct connection with his literary work. Hemingway's letters are informal and discursive. In addition to imparting information, his letters document the Hemingway image. They had a literary function: Hemingway was an almost compulsive letter writer and used correspondence as warm-up or cooling-off exercises for his literary work."

When it comes to relationships, writers generally have a poor score card, as Bruccoli concedes:

"The mortality rate of literary friendships is high. Writers tend to be bad risks as friends ~ probably for much the same reasons that they are bad matrimonial risks. They expend the best parts of themselves in their work. Moreover, literary ambition has a way of turning into literary competition; if fame is the spur, envy may be a concomitant."

In addition to analyzing anecdotes and the writers' correspondence, the book also includes a number of photos, a timeline of events covering both of their lives as well as an appendix of Fitzgerald's 'Notebooks' references to Hemingway which were printed in 'The Crack Up'.

'Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship' is a detailed and exhaustive examination of the friendship of two great American writers. It offers a fresh insight into their working lives and creative rivalries.

-- Michael Meanwell, author of the critically-acclaimed 'The Enterprising Writer' and 'Writers on Writing'. For more book reviews and prescriptive articles for writers, visit www.enterprisingwriter.com