Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald

by Scott Donaldson

Book Overview

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. This legendary friendship... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879517115
• ISBN13: 9780879517113
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.0" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald is a look at the tumultous relationship of two great American authors

Ernest Miller Hemingway(1899-1961) was born in the upper middle class suburb Oak Park while Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul in 1896 dying in Hollywood in 1940. They were both great novelists having much in common: 1. Both were middle class Midwesterners who had strong mothers and weak fathers. 2. Both were jilted in love: Hemingway ditched by nurse Agnes Kurowsky in Italy and Fitzgerald failing to win the hand of rich and socially connected Ginevra King. 3. Hemingway and Fitzgerald were both alcoholics who could become abusive and ugly when inebriated. 4. Both were star thoroughbreds in the Charles Scribner's stable of novelists. Fitzgerald produced such masterpieces as The Beatiful and the Damned; This Side of Paradise; The Great Gatsby; Tender is the Night; The Last Tycoon and great short stories of the caliber of "Babylon Revisited"; The Rich Boy and "The Diamond Big as the Rich. Hemingway produced "In Our Time": "The Sun Also Rises"; "A Farwell to Arms" "For Whom the Bell Tolls" among several other novels. He too was a great short story writer. 5. Both men spent long periods of time in Europe especially Paris where they first met. 6. Neither man was a college graduate. Hemingway did not attend college while Scott flunked out of Princeton in his junior year. Donaldson makes clear that their differences far outweighed their similarities. 1. Hemingway was a macho man who was cruel to Fitzgerald. In "The Snows of Kilimanjoro" Hemingway poked fun at Scott for his failure to utilize his literary gift to best effect. 2. Hemingway was an outdoorsman while Fitzgerald was an indoor chap. 3. Hemingway was wed four times and had countless affairs. Fitzgerald traveled to the altar one time. His wife was Zelda Sayre who became mad. Fitzgerald did have mistresses including gossip columnist Sheila Graham. Hem was macho and Scott was not! 4. Hemingway became rich and a literary celebrity during his lifetime while Scott became unpopular and almost forgotten following his early success in the Jazz Age. 5. Fitzgerald allowed Hemingway to dominate their friendship which ended in 1936. 6. Hemingway committed suicide in 1961 and Fitzgerald committed slow suicide by his reckless drinking. 7. Hemingway had been wounded driving at ambulance in Italy during World War I. Scott Fitzgerald never left the United States during his army time in World War I. Scott Donaldson has studied both men throughout his long scholarly career. He has written full biographies of both authors. This book is filled with literary gossip, rivalries and fights over book contracts. Neither Hemingway or Fitzgerald had a happy life; both were great writers and much less than great men. The book is well written but some parts may become dull to those not familiar with the books by Hemingway and Fitzgerald. It is a fine literary dual biography which adds to our understanding of the authors and their times.

LOVED THIS BOOK

Hemingway and Fitzgerald were and still are my two favorite authors. It's a shame that their friendship at times wasn't as beautiful as some of their works were, but if you're a literary nut who loves either or both of these brilliant men, please read. Even if you don't like the end, it's worth reading just to see what their relationship entailed.

Still engrossing after all these years

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.

An intelligent, scholarly, and moving book.

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.