Hemingway in Love: His Own Story

“I lit into them. ‘You goddamn cowards, afraid to face who you are. Pat, you’re a mooching drunk who screws his own cousin and sponges off everyone. You, Duff, you’re great company, I love you, but let’s face it, you hop beds hoping to find some unidentified something you lost. And you, Harold, you know your trouble? You’re a Guggenheim with no pri

They have remained in the museum of my mind.

wrote about Scott, for example, but I gave him a cover name: Julian [in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”].

When there are two people who love each other, Ernest wrote, the rich are attracted to them but that he and Hadley were naifs who did not know how to protect themselves. Charmed by these rich, Ernest admitted he was as stupid as a bird dog who goes out with anyone with a gun.

“Harold jumped up, overturning his chair, threatening to knock my block off. Duff took over. She told us not to get feisty. Told me I should go and take my books with me. ‘We are who we are,’ she said. ‘We used to be your friends.’

“Another thing I counted on was continuing my Thursday nights with Joyce, but when I showed up at our usual watering hole, he let me know that my present predicament put me off-limits for the time being because I was so inundated by my dilemma that my lachrymose disposition watered down his Bushmills. “It’s true that drinking ratcheted up my anguis

What I felt was the sorrow of loss. I had contrived this moment, but I felt like the victim.

“Pauline had been writing me, sending cables, making sure I kept her in my sights.

“I think things started to fall apart with the Murphys when they flattered me into reading aloud from The Sun Also Rises to a group of their friends. I thoroughly disliked blowing my own horn, and what’s more, I came to realize they were showing me off like a prize horse.”