Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald [Paperback]

Scott Donaldson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2001

Paris in the 20s: The era of literary expatriates Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald continues to burn in the imagination as a time of unparalleled glamour and romance. Here, in Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald, prize-winning biographer Scott Donaldson goes beyond the mythologyzing to create a true, multi-faceted narrative of a great friendship fueled by admiration, jealousy, and liquor-a heady mixture of literary scholarship, history, and gossip.

The friendship started in Paris and the French Riviera where the more famous Fitzgerald introduced novice writer Hemingway to Gertrude Stein and socialites Gerald and Sara Murphy. As the years progressed, the friendship became as mercurial and complex as the writers themselves. With a dazzling cast of characters that includes legendary Scribner's editor Maxwell Perkins, Zelda Fitzgerald and Hadley Hemingway, and writers Morley Callaghan and Edmund Wilson, Scott Donaldson recounts the glory and pain the great literary friendship of our time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Perhaps a respite from the flood of work on these two writers is in order. Not that there's anything particularly wrong or especially bad about this effort; it merely demonstrates that for the moment there's little to add on the subject. For here are all the old familiar places (Paris, the French Riviera, Key West, Hollywood, peopled with all the old familiar faces) Gerald and Sara Murphy, Maxwell Perkins, John Dos Passos, Archibald MacLeish, Brett Ashley, Zelda, Hadley, Pauline, all coming and going in what have become virtually set pieces in the long-running drama of the lost generation. The oft-told anecdotes include, for instance, Fitzgerald's blunder in allowing a Hemingway boxing match to run too long, Fitzgerald's anxieties about the size of his penis, Fitzgerald's editing of The Sun Also Rises. And then there's Hemingway's bullying, his resentment of Zelda, the drinking, the letters of praise and recriminations, the jealousies, the insecurities. Only the most passionate devotee of Fitzgerald, the greatest fan of Hemingway, the true aficionado of the expatriates can possibly be interested in reading it all over again. As for the interested but uninitiated, many other sources (the Hemingway/Fitzgerald letters, their own memoirs and autobiographical ruminations, the countless critical studies and biographies)Aincluding Donaldson's own far superior work on Hemingway (By Force of Will) and Fitzgerald (Fool for Love)Awould provide a better starting place. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This anemic and unnecessary volume chronicles the often tempestuous relationship between the two writers. Donaldson, who has written well on both subjects in the past, unfortunately offers no new insight here; the book is a catalog of well-known facts about the duo's lives and work presented in a style as flat as last week's beer. Fitzgerald, one of American letters' most gifted sons, emerges as little more than a groveling toady who tirelessly promotes Hemingway's work while casually allowing his own career to founder. All this has appeared before in numerous top-shelf biographies, especially Matthew J. Bruccoli's superior Fitzgerald and Hemingway: A Dangerous Friendship (LJ 9/1/94). Though Donaldson chronicles Hemingway's many slights to Fitzgerald in his stories, he fails to include the most recent slam, which appears in Hemingway's True at First Light (LJ 5/1/99), even though he notes the book's release. The lack of an index further detracts from this volume's usefulness. Not recommended.AMichael Rogers, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Overlook TP (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585671266
• ISBN-13: 978-1585671267
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #567,017 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Beginning, Dissapointing Ending, June 24, 2000

By 

Scott Eckert - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship (Hardcover)

I feel as if I should write two reviews: one for the first 2/3 of this book, one for the final 1/3. The first part is an interesting account of the Hemingway-Fitzgerald friendship. From being expatriot friends to bitter enemies, the story is a facinating one, especially if you've read multiple works from the two Greats. Direct quotations from their letters to each other, Maxwell Perkins and other literary giants of the time make the book even more interesting.

Then they both die... and the book continues for another 100+ pages. It's as if the author realized his book was only 250 pages long and had to fill out the binding with unnecessary rehash. Obviously drinking played an important part in both writers' lives, and it was chronicled in their relationship. There's no need to devote 40 more pages to discussing their drinking further (actually, repeating the discussion would be more appropriate here)!

Ultimately, the first part is good if not amazing. It certainly isn't good enough to make up for the terribly dull ending. To be honest, I wish I'd have read a biography of each instead. Perhaps you should do the same. Even better, read their actual works!

P.S. I'm not exactly dissuading you from this book. It is well written and interesting. Just be prepared for some boring parts and an empty stomach at the end.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Still engrossing after all these years, January 3, 2001

By 

James T. King (Chagrin Falls, OH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship (Hardcover)

Throughout "Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald - The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship," Scott Donaldson has both contributed to and distinguished himself from "the outpouring of biographical material that has kept them both in the public eye." This is a well-researched and fully documented discourse on the eventual reversal of mentor/novice roles and the concluding "exercise in sadomasochism" between these two giants of twentieth century American literature. Although my own studies (and the many, many research papers I've graded) on these men and their works made me hesitate to revisit it all again, I was pleasantly surprised by this fresh and very readable treatise.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An intelligent, scholarly, and moving book., June 17, 2000

By 

Miles D. Moore (Alexandria, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship (Hardcover)

While any study of a private friendship--even one of two such public men as Hemingway and Fitzgerald--must necessarily contain a good deal of speculation, Scott Donaldson's speculations always sound just and reasonable. He relies on the considerable documentary evidence left by both men and their numerous friends, and the dual portrait he paints is convincing. Much of what he presented was quite new to me--such as the considerable editorial assistance Fitzgerald gave Hemingway on "The Sun Also Rises," or the quasi-Lesbian relationship between Hemingway's mother and a much younger woman. This book is a must for anyone who cares about Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and who believes that, in the end, the work was more important than the men. It isn't the only Fitzgerald or Hemingway biography you'll ever need, but it stands as an important supplement to the other books, and as a valuable key to understanding both men and why they wrote what they wrote.