In 1950, The New Yorker published Lillian Ross’s controversial profile of Ernest Hemingway, “How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” Based on a weekend spent following the author around New York, Ross’s article is regarded as an essential moment in the creation of the Hemingway legend. Some found Ross’s Hemingway attractive; some agreed with the New Yorker wit who quipped to James Thurber, “She loved him so much she shot him.”
Ross begins her article with praise for “the greatest American novelist and short-story writer of our day,” but for the most part she writes in a documentary style, letting Hemingway’s words and actions speak for themselves. Hemingway gave his approval to the result before publication, despite many passages which seem boasting, aggressive, or just odd — for example, the title of the article, a cryptic question which Hemingway kept asking aloud throughout the two days. Having just finished the final draft of Across the River and into the Trees, he was in a celebratory mood for much of the time — champagne all morning, wine at lunch, a pocket flask for his walkabouts. His sports metaphors and advice are as copious. He tells Marlene Dietrich that she is “hitting them with the bases loaded,” and “the best that ever came into the ring.” His advice to Ross, and for all occasions: “Never lead against a hitter unless you can outhit him. Crowd a boxer, and take everything he has, to get inside. Duck a swing. Block a hook. And counter a jab with everything you own. Papa’s delivery of hard-learned facts of life.” By taking his own advice, “I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant.” At one point, Hemingway forces a belt salesman at Abercrombie and Fitch to poke him in the stomach. He raises an airgun to take a pretend shot at a flock of Fifth Avenue pigeons. He says he got his writer’s fastball from Flaubert, his knuckleball from Baudelaire and Rimbaud; that he learned how to counterpoint in words from Bach, and “how to make a landscape from Mr. Paul Cezanne by walking through the Luxembourg Museum a thousand times with an empty gut.”
From the profile:
I had written to him asking if I might see him when he came to town, and he had sent me a typewritten letter saying that would be fine and suggesting that I meet his plane at the airport. “I don’t want to see anybody I don’t like, nor have publicity, nor be tied up all the time,” he went on. “Want to go to the Bronx Zoo, Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Modern Art, ditto of Natural History, and see a fight. Want to see the good Breughel at the Met, the one, no two, fine Goyas and Mr. El Greco’s Toledo. Don’t want to go to Toots Shor’s. Am going to try to get into town and out without having to shoot my mouth off. I want to give the joints a miss. Not seeing news people is not a pose. It is only to have time to see your friends.” In pencil, he added, “Time is the least thing we have of.”
Time did not seem to be pressing Hemingway the day he flew in from Havana. He was to arrive at Idlewild late in the afternoon, and I went out to meet him. His plane had landed by the time I got there, and I found him standing at a gate waiting for his luggage and for his wife, who had gone to attend to it. He had one arm around a scuffed, dilapidated briefcase pasted up with travel stickers. He had the other around a wiry little man whose forehead was covered with enormous beads of perspiration. Hemingway was wearing a red plaid wool shirt, a figured wool necktie, a tan wool sweater-vest, a brown tweed jacket tight across the back and with sleeves too short for his arms, gray flannel slacks, Argyle socks, and loafers, and he looked bearish, cordial, and constricted. His hair, which was very long in back, was gray, except at the temples, where it was white; his mustache was white, and he had a ragged, half-inch full white beard. There was a bump about the size of a walnut over his left eye. He was wearing steel-rimmed spectacles, with a piece of paper under the nosepiece. He was in no hurry to get into Manhattan. He crooked the arm around the briefcase into a tight hug and said that it contained the unfinished manuscript of his new book, “Across the River and into the Trees.” He crooked the arm around the wiry little man into a tight hug and said he had been his seat companion on the flight. The man’s name, as I got it in a mumbled introduction, was Myers, and he was returning from a business trip to Cuba. Myers made a slight attempt to dislodge himself from the embrace, but Hemingway held on to him affectionately.
“He read book all way up on plane,” Hemingway said. He spoke with a perceptible Midwestern accent, despite the Indian talk. “He like book, I think,” he added, giving Myers a little shake and beaming down at him.
“Whew!” said Myers.
“Book too much for him,” Hemingway said. “Book start slow, then increase in pace till it becomes impossible to stand. I bring emotion up to where you can’t stand it, then we level off, so we won’t have to provide oxygen tents for the readers. Book is like engine. We have to slack her off gradually.”
“Whew!” said Myers.
Hemingway released him. “Not trying for no-hit game in book,” he said. “Going to win maybe twelve to nothing or maybe twelve to eleven.”
Myers looked puzzled.
“She’s better book than ‘Farewell,’ “ Hemingway said. “I think this is best one, but you are always prejudiced, I guess. Especially if you want to be champion.” He shook Myers’ hand. “Much thanks for reading book,” he said.
“Pleasure,” Myers said, and walked off unsteadily.
Hemingway watched him go, and then turned to me. “After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead,” he said moodily. “But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.” He said he felt tired but was in good shape physically; he had brought his weight down to two hundred and eight, and his blood pressure was down too. He had considerable rewriting to do on his book, and he was determined to keep at it until he was absolutely satisfied. “They can’t yank novelist like they can pitcher,” he said. “Novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.”
No comments:
Post a Comment