Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald are two of the brightest stars in the American literary firmament. Along with William Faulkner, they are the three best-known - some might say the three best - American writers of fiction from the twentieth century. For about eighteen months, in 1925 and 1926, they were close friends. Then, while maintaining a façade of friendship, they became literary rivals, with one of them (can you guess which one?) constantly disparaging the other, sometimes to his face and even after he was dead.
In HEMINGWAY VS. FITZGERALD, Scott Donaldson gives a detailed and fascinating account of this literary friendship/rivalry. At the same time, the book serves as a first-rate portrayal, if not quite full-scale biography, of both Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Thus, it is also a book to be considered by anyone particularly interested in one or the other.
Donaldson brings to the book an impressive background, having written biographies of both Hemingway and Fitzgerald and serving as President of the Hemingway Society. He draws on a wealth of material, including the letters and papers of each of his subjects. Inevitably, in the course of tracing the Hemingway/Fitzgerald relationship, the book deals with some of the other literary luminaries of the times, including Edmund Wilson, Gertrude Stein, and Maxwell Perkins (mutual editor of Ernest and Scott at Scribner's and frequent go-between). Incidentally, Zelda Fitzgerald does not come off particularly well.
The chapter on Fitzgerald and Hemingway as "alcoholic cases" was particularly interesting. In it, Donaldson notes the dozens of other American writers of the early and middle twentieth century who were alcoholics and considers whether alcoholism is "a writer's disease", and if so, why so. The chapter concludes with this observation: "Whoever won the battle between Scott and Ernest for writer of his generation, they both lost the war to alcoholism."
Donaldson covers dozens of anecdotes, some obscure and some commonplaces of American literary lore. In several cases, Donaldson corrects the well-known version. For example, in one oft-told tale, Fitzgerald supposedly said, "The rich are different from us," and Hemingway riposted, "Yes, they have more money." In actuality, Fitzgerald had come out with a story containing the lines, "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me." Later, at a luncheon with Irish writer Mary Colum (at which Fitzgerald was not present), Hemingway got to talking, somewhat expansively and admiringly, about the wealthy folk in Bimini with whom he had fished and partied. To put him in his place, Colum said, "The only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money." Hemingway appropriated Colum's put-down and turned it against Fitzgerald in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro". (The story gains some poignancy from Fitzgerald's life-long ambivalence about the rich - on the one hand envious of their glamour and high society; on the other, cognizant of a hollowness and amorality that often marked that existence. And, as Donaldson points out, "Hemingway in his private life was if anything more involved with the wealthy than was Fitzgerald.")
Some might find the book too long and too detailed, but Donaldson has such good material to cover that I don't. There are a few false notes and a few organizational glitches, but they are minor. HEMINGWAY VS. FITZGERALD is among the better books about the literary world that I have read.
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