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    Are We Going To Hemingway's Feast?

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    Are we going to Hemingway's feast?

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    Are We Going to Hemingway’s Feast? Gerry Brenner American Literature, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Dec., 1982), 528-544, Stable URL: hup/Minks,jtor.or/sicisci=0002-9831 428 1982129%2054%3A4%3C52803AAWGTHFS3E2.0. COR 3B2.N American Literature is currently published by Duke University Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at ups! www jstor-org/aboutterms humnl. JSTOR’s Tems and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you hhave obtained prior permission, you may not download an entie issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and ‘you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at |hup:/www jstor-ory/journals/duke. fl Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of Scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @ jstor.org. hupiliwww jstor orgy ‘Sat Aug 20 20:40:19 2005 Are We Going to Hemingway's Feast? GERRY BRENNER University of Montane “Nobody, including me, would be permitted to put his cotton-picking typewriter to work on Ernest's prose ‘improve’ it. Except for punctuation and the obviously overlooked ‘ands’ and ‘buts’ we [Charles Scribner's Sons and I] would present his prose and poetry to readers as he wrote it, letting the gaps lie where they were. Where repetitions and redundancies occurred, we would cut. We would not add anything.” —Mary Hemingway, on the second “principle of pro- cedure” that would guide her as executor of her husband's literary estate Gir be: il several shelves along the sorheast wall of the fourth-floor Hemingway Room in the recently opened John F. Kennedy Library on Columbia Point. Two of those many boxes of hholographs, typescripts, letters, notes, photographs, and miscellany contain Items 121-189, the drafts, revisions, fragments and miscel- laneous notes of A Moveable Feast. Any careful study of the materials in those Items must call into question the 1964 edition that Charles Scribner's Sons issued under Mary Hemingway's authority as execu- tor. The materials show that contrary to her “Note” in the book, Hemingway had not “finished” it “in the spring of 1960 in Cubs.”* ‘They also show that she altered, cut and added significant material. Those changes affect emphases Hemingway had sought and modify 1 How It Wat (New York: Koopt, 1976), p. 320. 1 arsh ere to thank the University ‘of Montana for 3 travel and rerareh grant that coabled me to do the prepartary work fot ‘his amide, For snotance at the Joho E. Kennedy Library 1 aio thank she sll and epe- ally Jo August Hills, model curator of the Hemingway Collection. Becrse Twas refused Permission to gootediecy from the unpublished manuscips, 1am fored to paraphrase several ey pases, Fin my text I parenthesize snbsequent qvotstions from this eition (New York: Seibaer'). American Liratare, Volume 54, Number 4, December 1982. Copysght @ 1982 by Dake University Pes Hemingway's Feast 539 his discernible intentions in shaping the book and in trying to guide an understanding of them. As might be expected, the drafts not only disclose problems Hemingway had in writing and revising various sections, but also allow glimpses into personal concerns simmering deep in the work, Mary Hemingway's substantial changes in the materials that went into Feast raise at least two ethical questions Short of adding a disclaimer to the “Note,” alleging that Hemingway had finished the novel, should Scribner's consider issuing a revised edition, one that might represent more accurately the book that Ernest Hemingway, not his widow, had prepared for publication? ‘And can Hemingway scholars continue teaching a bastard text? Before discussing the Feast materials, I should make it clear that I do not wish to impugn Mary Hemingway's editorial skills.’ Like all Hemingway scholars, critics, students, and general readers, am deeply grateful for her midwifery in bringing Feast to print. The book may not give us the “real gen on the old days in Paris,” as Hemingway thought it would.' Indeed, it may only have let loose a salvo to redress old grudges, one that rallied literary historians to the trenches. Or it may only contribute, as memcirs, to his image as a “compleat” man of letters, Still, any study of Items 121-189 will find vexing problems that Mary Hemingway had to solve when she and Charles Scribner Jr. agreed to publish the book embedded in those items,” I Mary Hemingway's declaration that her husband “finished the book in the spring of r960 in Cuba” misrepresents the facts. Although the 1960 dating of Hemingway's “Preface” seems to confirm her Tein eroneous to single out Mary Hemingway a the person response for every change imate in Feat, for she and L. H. Bragae at Scribner's “worked together" on the book, 28 he records in How it War, p. 520. When I remark, then, her decions or her aditions, aleradons or cas, T may well bein error: they may hive been Harry Brague’s, But a1 {recur she had to approve any changes, making her ultimately sesountale for them “Carlos Baker, Hemingway the Writer er art, «th ed, (Princeton: Princeton Us Pass, 1972), 8 30. For a preliminary assesment sce Jacqueline Tavernier Coubin, “The Manuscripts of A Moeeable Fea," Hemingway noes, 6 (1981), 9-15. 530 American Literature declaration, as does a statement by her eventual daugher-in-law,* yet as early as 1972 the scrupulous Carlos Baker commented, “I have not seen the original of this prefatory note.” His scruples give reason to suspect the composition and the date of the “Preface.” Indeed, no such “Preface” in Hemingway's handwriting exists among the Feast items. There are, of course, various drafts with expressions that could be collated into a “Preface.” For instance, several times in Item 122, the source of some materials for an “introduction,” almost the exact, phrasing of the last sentence of the “Preface” turns up: “But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.” Yet nowhere in the holographs or typescript does the first sentence of that two-sentence, last paragraph exist: “If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction,” Rather on several sheets in Item 122 Hemingway writes more as- sertively, “This book is fiction.”* And over one-half of the second paragraph, considerably edited, comes from a section catalogued under Item 124 2s “Endings.” Hemingway varyingly refers to this set of drafts as both a last chapter and an introduction. On several sheets he notes that this material should be inserted into chapter twenty-one, thar it should be put into the last paragraph of the intro- duction, thze as the last chapter it is not yet right, that it is not suc- cessful, that he should try to improve upon it. Only in typescript as Item 125, then, can the published “Preface” be found. And that typescript has “Ernest Hemingway” typed at the bottom, not signed. ‘Most tellingly, that typescript is dated 1959, not, as represented in the published text, x960. To conclude that the holograph for that “Preface” got lost is tempt- ing. But anyone familiar with the Hemingway Collection knows that virtually nothing got lost, that Hemingway kept nearly every scrap of paper he put his hand to. It can be argued that the holograph has tn “Reminiscences of Hemingway” Saturday Review, 9 May x96, Valeie Danby- ‘smith, Hemingways secretary during the summer of 1959, remarks tha the read "sever chapters” of the Pars sketces “one day in Auput” (p. 30). She adds thatthe following pring Hemingway resumed working on the manuscit, preparing it "Yor publication that ES or the following spring” (p. 57) But none ofthe dates om anh of the Feast mansscnts vouch for cote May F060 addons or coretons. The “history” of the compostion of the book ig conradicory, a8 Baker noted lang ago, Writer as ric, p- 353; and Jacqueline ‘Tavecnier Coubia more ecenty, "The Mystery of the Ria-Hat Pipes,” College Literature, 17 G:980), 285-505, "Writer ar Arti, 9.355. ‘Tavernier Couhin, The Manuscips.” p13. Hemingway's Feast 531 been misplaced or withheld,” but I think it is more likely—as the rest cof my essay should show—that Mary Hemingway collated and, in places, created the “Preface.” Other evidence proves that she, not her husband, finished the book. Foremost is the “finished” typescript of the 19 chapters that Hem- ingway had composed, completed, and corrected, Item 188." This “finished” typescript has one less chapter than the published version. To his x9 chapters Mary Hemingway added, as the tenth chapter, “Birth of a New School,” in which the young Hemingway sarcas- tically urges a pestering young writer to become a critic. Hemingway had worked on the chapter enough to bring it from holograph to typescript. But he had not included it in his “Finished” typescript. 1 ‘A more significant change that Mary Hemingway made in the Feast manuscripts was in the ordering of the chapters. How to se- quence his 19 chapters understandably troubled Hemingway. The various drafts show many strike-overs and renumberings of the sequence, But by the time of his “finished” typescript, he had re- solved the problem, a resolution that Mary Hemingway, for “con- tinuity’s sake,” as she acknowledges,"* altered in two places. One alteration concerned placing the chapter “Une Génération Perdue.” In Hemingway's “finished” typescript it stands as “Chapter Seven.” In the published version it became chapter three. By moving it forward, Mary Hemingway obscured two fine patterns that Hem- ingway weaves—carefully, I think—into his text. One is the pattern of despotic women, a pattern that Gertrude Stein's recurring image strengthens. That is, had Mary Hemingway deferred to the “fin- ished” typescript and left out “Birth of a New School,” it would be clear that the book loops back to Gertrude Stein twice, highlighted as she is in Hemingway's “Chapter Two,” “Chapter Seven,” and An argument for is being misplaced or withheld cauld be made on the grounds that ie met with the same fate ar another holograph that seems imended a pare of the Fest materia. refer t Hemingway's page "word-porest of his son Bumby,” to which Baker Teles ia Writer as Arist, pp. 953, 358 My inquiries bate yielded no clve to that can serps whereabouts "© There ar, in ft two "Snished” typescript of she book that Hemingway had sted fon. But Tem 189 isan uncarected earbom of the type i Kem 188, How tt Was, 520 5H American Literature “Chapter Twelve” of Item 188, Her recurring image at those five chapter intervals lessens the impression of the book as a randomly arranged gallery of portraits. Even more, it better emphasizes, through delayed repetition, her role as adversary, as the “bad mother” of Hemingway's Paris years. Five chapters after the last Gertrude Stein material he brings his thematic momentum against destructive women to its crescendo, for the last three chapters of his “finished” typescript focus indirectly, then directly, upon Zelda Fitzgerald, in his eyes a predatory hawk. ‘The second pattern that Mary Hemingway's rearranged sequence obscured was the contrast that Hemingway achieves by juxtaposing. chapters on Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach. In his “finished” type- script “Shakespeare and Company” (his “Chapter Three”) follows “Miss Stein Instructs,” and “Hunger Was a Good Discipline” (his “Chapter Eight”) follows “Une Génération Perdue.” This alterna tion silently contrasts two mother images, the dogmatic, highhanded and imperious Gertrude Stein against the tolerant, nurturing and modest Sylvia Beach. The rearranged chapters simply blur this pattern, Mary Hemingway shuffled the chapter sequence a second time by putting the chapter on Schruns and the breakup of Esnest and Hadley’s marriage at the end. In contrast, Hemingway's “finished” typescript has this as “Chapter Sixteen,” set between the chapter on Dunning and the three chapters on Fitzgerald. Part of Hemingway's plan, I think, was to conclude with the last of these three chapters, “Chapter Nineteen,” now titled “A Matter of Measurements.” That chapter would have ended the book adroitly by providing a double rationale for writing it. It would have informed Georges, bar chief at the Ritz Hotel, about “this Monsieur Fitzgerald that everyone asks about” (p. 191). It would also have made good Hemingway's promise to himself to write “about che early days in Paris” (p. 193). Certainly the last chapter of the published edition provides a satis- fying climax, ending the book as it does with the sense of what Hemingway lost because of the seductions of the “pilot fish,” John Dos Passos, and of the rich, Pauline Pfeiffer and the Murphys, Gerald and Sara, There is good reason to admire Mary Hemingway's ending to her husband’s “Chapter Nineteen.” But that change alters consid- Hemingway's Feast 533 erably the emphases that Hemingway gave his materials, as I will discuss presently at some length. But first, one of Mary Hemingway's more curious alterations needs comment: she changed the epigraph to the F. Scott Fitzgerald chap- ters. Except for one deleted sentence, the published version on p. 147 copies verbatim the text of what seems to be the earliest hologeaph of that foreword, Item 170." The deleted sentence follows sentence two about how Fitzgerald's talent “was brushed or marred,” It reads, “He ‘even needed some one as a conscience and he needed professionals or normally educated people to make his writing legible and not il- literate.”" Item 17r, the typescript of his holograph, allows this sen- tence to stand. But in Item 172, a heavily corrected typescript, Hem- ingway revises his headnote, lining through the just-quoted sentence. However, he also lines through the last two clauses that Mary Hemingway kept in the published headnote: “and could not Ay any ‘more because the love of fight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.” Then he adds a sentence about The Great Gatsby, commenting that Fitzgerald was “thinking well” and was “fully conscious of its worth” when he had written it. A second sentence commends Tender Is the Night as a “better book written in heroic and desperate confession.” He begins a third sentence, “It was the failure of these.” But then he strikes through all three sen- tences and drafts instead, a single sentence: “He was fying again and I was lucky to meet him just after a good time in his writing if ‘not a good one in his life.” On the last, an unnumbered, page of Item 172 Hemingway drafts the following revision, one that appears also in his “finished” typescript: “Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he lestned to think. He was flying again and I was lucky to meet him just after a good time in his writing if not in his life.” Hemingway, then, had second, if not third, thoughts about the concluding clauses of the published headnote, judgmental and con- descending as they are. And while the published version reads more 221k is lifculew fix the date of the compotion of this headnote. As long ago a5 1969 in The Hemingway Menerripers 4m Inventry, (University Park: Penaslvana State Uni Pres), p19, Phiip Young ané Charles W. Mans had described it as "considerably older tan the rest ofthe manuscript.” See abo Tavernier Coutbin, “The Mistery.” p30. oTavemner Courbia, "The Manuserits” p, 12. The other quotations { ce on the ‘pigzaph re soo aaa in thie ale, 534 American Literature smoothly and eloquently than the “finished” typescript version, the latter expresses a note of genuine gratitude, a note that warmly contravenes the scorn in Hemingway's three-chapter portrait of Fitzgerald. Ww While Mary Hemingway's alterations change Feast in ways not intended by her husband, her cuts more significantly affect it. Some of her cuts show good judgment, even though they go beyond her principle of cutting only “where repetitions and redundancies oc- curred.” For example, she cut several explicit references to Pauline Pfeiffer where mention of her would have required information that Hemingway had not provided. Items 175 and 188, the penultimate and the “finished” typescripts of the Chapter “Hawks Do Not Share,” include such references. The closing paragraph begins by noting that no one besides Pauline gave any thought to Zelda Fitzgerald's “great secret” that “Al Jolson is greater than Jesus.” Because Feast elsewhere omits reference to Pauline, Mary Hemingway wisely kept specific mention of her out of the text. Another cut was equally judicious. Hemingway's draft of the chap- ter on Ralph Cheever Dunning, “An Agent of Evil,” ends in Items 169 and 188 with a sentence about Evan Shipman. Because, Heming- way explains, he has never read anything on Shipman or on his unpublished poetry, including him in the book is very important. Mary Hemingway correctly saw the inconsistency of Hemingway's explaining here—but nowhere else—his reason for writing about any person, And because Hemingway writes of Shipman in the chapter before this one, his concluding sentence is irrelevant. That the sen- tence survived into the “finished” typescript once again indicates the unfinished state of that typescript. Other cuts Mary Hemingway made in the “finished” typescript are, I think, protective. One such cut is in the chapter “Hawks Do Not Share.” How to comment on Fitzgerald's “editorial” or ad- visory role clearly troubled Hemingway. On the question of when he showed Fitagerald the manuscript of The Sun Also Rises (pp. 184- 85), he writes two sentences in the pencil manuscript, Item 173, First he says that not until after he had sent the manuscript to Scribner's Hemingway's Feast 33s did he show it to Fitzgerald. But he then adds that he things he first showed Fitagerald the first proofs, which he had already cut in sev- eral places. In the corrected typescript, Item 175, he strikes through this second sentence, perhaps because its “I think” acknowledges un- certainty. And to the first sentence he adds the details that we now have on p. 184: “Scott did not see it until after the completed re- written and cut manuscript had been sent to Scribner’s at the end of April.” But in that same typescript Hemingway adds four sentences, ones cut from the published version, even though they were in his “finished” typescript. In them he admits that he forgets both when he first let Fitzgerald look at his fair copy and when Fitzgerald first looked at the proofsheets of the shorter, revised version. He goes on to acknowledge that he discussed the proofsheets with Fitzgerald but that any decisions were his own. Then he dismisses the entire episode by remarking thatit didn’t matter anyway. Surely Hemingway's admission of forgetfulness here, more than a repetition or redundancy,” does not warrant excision. Perhaps Mary Hemingway felt that it would be inconsistent for him to confess forgetfulness. After all, Hemingway prides himself on his memory throughout the book, nowhere more clamorously than in that litany of “I remember” that swells ¢o a coda near the end of the Schruns material. But to conceal a gap in his virtually seamless memory by cutting the passage is provective. Mary Hemingway's most significant cut was in the ending of Hemingway's “Chapter Sixteen,” the Schruns material that she used for her twentieth chapter, “There is Never any End to Paris.” With- out question the task of writing about the breakup of his and Hadley’s marriage had to be the most painful section he wrote. Con- firming its painfulness are the pages and pages of drafts and revisions of that material, assembled in Items 121, 123, 126 and 127. They reveal a different thrust to the book. In them Hemingway stops pro- jecting himself as that responsible young artist or as an innocent vic- tim of the rich, Instead he exposes himself, tries to deal honestly with complex emotions and guilt. ‘The earliest draft of the events behind the breakup may be the unnumbered iast page of Item 121. It is worth noting that Heming- way's first try at writing about these events comes as an addendum to writing about the more easily remembered pleasures of the 536 American Literature Schruns winters. The addendum, an unnumbered twentieth page that follows the 19-page pencil holograph, suggests that initially he was reluctant to stir up dormant pools of guilt. It also suggests that he realized the falseness of his idlyllic recollections, were he to shy away from the calamitous “nightmare winter.” In his addendum, then, he avoids identifying the destroyers of his and Hiadley's happi- ness. But he says that they were rich infiltrators whose relentless determination yet good intentions overran him and Hadley, whom he characterizes as a carelessly confident young couple. Interestingly, he magnanimously declares that the blame for the breakup belongs only to himself, acknowledges that he lived with that blame all his life, and then asserts that only one person was blameless and came out of the experience well. Of course he refers, albeit indirectly, to Hadley. Hemingway reworked this ending several times. In an unnum- bered page of the penciled drafts that are gathered together in Item 123 he notes that the story of that breakup is complicated and has no place in this book. Even more, rather than disparage the woman who contributed to the breakup as an evil woman, he insists that she helped shape a new happiness that yielded good work, here alluding to Pauline. Again he still blames only himself for what happened and is grateful that the one person who bore no culpability ‘was not permanently harmed. More interesting versions of this ending are the pair of page- numbered, penciled drafts in Item 123, which, regrettably, I can only summarize here. On pages 5 and 6 of one of them, Hemingway de- tails the particulars of his bad luck, of the destructiveness of loving ‘two women simultaneously, and of the trusting wife with whom he has shared many hardships. He continues by remarking on the new woman's incredulousness that he can love her and his wife at the same time. He observes, though, that she says this only after their own relationship has developed, after the “murder” has been done. He finishes with a half-dozen sentences that admit to his lying to everyone, to doing unbelievable things, to breaking promises, t0 Pauline's immediate victory—because of her ruthlessness—and to the eventual victory of the one who apparently had lost—Hadley. Of all the things that ever occurred in his life, he calls Hadley’s victory the luckiest. Hemingway's Feast 537 Displeased, I must assume, with this recapitulation, Hemingway describes the menage 2 irois on pages 6 and 7 of yet a second, more sustained draft, still in Item 123. He says that in che beginning he tries to live each day as it comes, not worrying, but trying to enjoy ‘what he has, Yet he admits that this triangle is destroying him, that he hates it, that each day becomes more dangerous and impossible, and that itis like a war-time existence, living for one day at a time. ‘While the two women are happy, or so he believes, he wakes at night and realizes his deep internal strife. Still he cannot get over the strange fact that he truly loves both women whether he is with one or the other or both, and that he, too, is happy. Then he realizes that the new woman is unhappy because she wants his love all to herself and is unwilling to believe that he can love both her and the other woman at the same time. He writes of the care he takes not to men- tion his wife’s name when he is with the new woman, hoping to help her and himself, even though, as he sees, he is beyond help. Then he senses that by mid-winter the new woman has resolved to stalk him for marriage. But she is ever so careful to keep on friendly terms with his wife, guaranteeing her advantageous position. So she main- tains her image of innocence, goes away at times to protect that appearance, but goes away only long enough to make him miss her and want her strongly. He equates the “winter of the avalanche,” 1924-25, toa “happy day in childhood” when contrasted to the winter of the menage & trois, 1925-26. He finishes by declaring that the new woman made one serious error when she decided to get him to marry her. She failed to appreciate the power of remorse that would haunt hhim and eventually spoil their own relationship. Both of these drafts are in the typescript of the Schruns material, Item 126. Interestingly, the paragraph that had formed the first of the two penciled drafts I have just summarized is very lightly lined through, obedient to Hemingway's instruction on the left margin of p. 5 of that draft that “Val” type the material but strike lightly over it in pencil" To the typescript of the second fenciled draft he 14 Val” ig Valerie Danby-Smith the spit for this mata, for whom Hemingway fle adulterous desires he had for AdeiansUvansich s decade erier This material then, had Jie comemporay relevance for Hemingway, Aer all is dicsron ofthe diiculey of long foar's wife and 2 new woman applied much to Valerie's preeace among the Hemingways

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