e-Book That Summer in Paris: Memories of Tangled Friendships with Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Some Others download

Morley Callaghan's excellent memoir of the expatriate scene on Paris's left bank in 1929, THAT SUMMER IN PARIS, was first published in 1963. Callaghan wrote the book because he found he was deeply affected by the tragic suicide of his one-time friend, Ernest Hemingway, and memories of Paris from that long-ago summer began to float to the surface of his mind until he decided to write of it.

I 'discovered' Callaghan's memoir when I read of it in the recent scholarly and excellent book, Stein and Hemingway: The Story of a Turbulent Friendship, by Professor Lyle Larsen. THAT SUMMER IN PARIS was recently faithfully and stylishly reprinted by Exile Editions, which is the version I now own.

Callaghan, who was apparently well-known in Canada (he died in 1990), was a new writer to me, but now I may have to seek out some of his other work. I enjoyed this book that much. His style of writing is deceptively simple and straightforward and he doesn't appear to take himself overly seriously. He tells his readers right up front that writing should be about the thing itself, and not hidden in metaphors or symbolism, or something to that effect. This approach is certainly followed in THAT SUMMER, which offers a clear-eyed and moving portrait of his separate friendships with Hemingway and Fitzgerald. "Separate" because Callaghan makes clear that there was something between the two men which precluded a real and close friendship, something Callaghan himself is unclear on. As a young aspiring writer with just one book to his credit, Callaghan makes no secret of his enormous admiration for both men, but as he gets to know both of them better, he comes to feel sorry for Fitzgerald, a tortured soul, alcoholic and saddled with a wife who is mentally ill. There are also vague intimations that Fitzgerald may have been a repressed homosexual, which may have been the 'something' between him and Hemingway which precluded any lasting or close friendship. Moreover early in the narrative Callaghan muses that he was "half convinced that writers couldn't go on being friends. Something would always happen that would make them shy away from each other."

Perhaps there is indeed some jealousy or mean spiritedness in this difficulty between writers, as evidenced in an observation once by Oscar Wilde: "It isn't enough that I succeed. My friend has got to fail a little." (I feel compelled to confess that I got this Wilde quote from another writer acquaintance, Ward Just.) In any case, although Fitzgerald appeared to be hungry for Hemingway's friendship to an almost embarrasing extent, Ernest generally kept himself apart from Scott.

As a practical and extremely perceptive young man, Callaghan recognized these difficulties between the two men, and yet managed to remain friends with both of them. With Hemingway he donned boxing gloves and became a regular sparring partner, a macho kind of friendship initiated by Hemingway. His friendship with Fitzgerald was more cerebral and literary in nature, and he also acted, if unwillingly, as a liaison between the two men.

Callaghan was a man with strong opinions on writing and other writers and had no compunction about giving them. He admired Fitzgerald's work without reserve, but seemed to feel that Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms was his best work (an opinion I share), while he dismissed the fine Nick Adams tales as "his little Michigan stories" - an opinion I do not share. (But then I am from Michigan.) He is equally dismissive of the French writers of the time, Mallarme and Gide, for example. And of Henry James he writes -

"That style of his in those later books! I began to hate it. Not layers of extra subtleness - just evasion from the task of knowing exactly what to say. Always the fancied fastidiousness of sensibility. Bright and sharp as he had been in the earlier books, the fact was that James had got vulgar - like a woman who was always calling attention to her fastidiousness."

Of Gertrude Stein, Callaghan was equally scornful -

"I no longer had any curiosity about the grand lady ... Abstract prose was nonsense. The shrewd lady had found a trick, just as the naughty Dadaists had once found a trick. The plain truth was, as I saw it, Gertrude Stein now had nothing whatever to say."

Bravo, Morley! What you just said? Me too. However, the one thing that Callaghan and Stein might have agreed upon (from what I read in the Larsen book) was Hemingway's true nature. Both thought he was, in reality, a gentle and sensitive man very unlike the overly macho public persona he had created of himself, always bolstered enthusiastically by the press and rumor-mongers. Callaghan talks repeatedly about a "sweetness" in the man. Stein went even further, suspecting that Hemingway may have been a suppressed homosexual. This was, and continues to be, a cause for speculation, but could indeed explain the tension between Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

The truth is, Callaghan's very intimate and literary account of that memorable summer just before the stock market crash which would decimate the fortunes which allowed such lives of expatriate ease and decadence is an immensely sympathetic and readable portrait of his own development as a writer, as well as the excesses and tormented relationships between other prominent artists and writers of the time. More simply, Morley Callaghan was an extremely likeable guy and a wonderful writer. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir BOOKLOVER

Canadian writer Morley Callaghan was a 20-year-old student who had talked his way onto the reporting staff of the Toronto Star when a star war correspondent named Ernest Hemingway came on board. Hemingway knew another writer by instinct and took the younger man under his wing, continuing to advise and advocate for him after decamping to Paris. Thanks to Hemingway's letters of introduction, Callaghan had begun publishing and lusting after the utopian writers' community he envisioned the Paris of the Lost Generation to be. Finally, in the spring of 1929, he and his bride Loretto took off for France where things were slightly different than expected. Thirty years later, a photographer who had recently met Hemingway in Idaho relayed that Hemingway had recalled Callaghan rather fondly, especially a boxing match they had, with Fitzgerald as timekeeper. The message casually relayed by the photographer unleashed powerful memories of that pivotal summer and the result is this book.

Callaghan looked forward to the camaraderie of Hemingway, Joyce, Fitzgerald and the others. He was eager to talk literature, debate one another's work in a like-minded group and draw creative energy from its air. Instead, Hemingway seemed to value their friendship most when the short, fat Callaghan was expertly challenging him in the boxing ring. Hemingway was avoiding the café culture and especially an old friend, Fitzgerald. Callaghan ended up meeting Fitzgerald, Joyce and Hemingway's first publisher, Robert McAlmon, on his own. He and his wife enjoyed the lifestyle all the same but sensed change in the air. As someone observed, the Lost Generation was no longer lost. It had found an anchor in Paris and grown quickly into so many famous names. American tourists were traveling to Paris to gawk at them. Zelda Fitzgerald was on the psychotic edge; Hemingway had left one marriage for another.

That Summer in Paris reads like a well-constructed novel. The boxing match Hemingway would remember thirty years later becomes the climax, after which everyone begins moving on. Callaghan muses on the irony of how quickly the players would change: the stock market crash took away the world of which Fitzgerald wrote with authority, Hemingway and others who had never been particularly political would become involved in political causes and New York would take over as the intellectual center that Paris had been. This is an interesting account not only of the end of the Lost Generation in Paris but a meditation on the role of community in a writer's life and one man's opinion of his peers and what art is and is not. This does not compete with A Moveable Feast; it is a valuable first-hand account by an insider of the end of the era Hemingway's memoir more fully chronicles.

A note about this edition: There is no critical introduction but someone clobbered together book club discussion questions, some of which are okay and some of which reveal certain biases behind them.

A favorite book of mind I discovered in college over 20 years ago. A Lost Generation Paris memoir with the usual gang. Hemingway really comes alive in this book as do others, too like Fitzgerald. Very funny and sad memories. This guy use box and beat Hemingway regularly. Great memoir I've read and reread over the years. Highly recommended.

Happily married, hard-working, devoted to writing....Morley Callaghan is the perfect antidote to Hemingway. A good college boxer and pitcher (unlike Hemingway), a graduate of both college and law school (unlike Hemingway), and a reporter (like Hemingway) on the Toronto Star, Callaghan provides a graceful and modest contrast to the vitriol and egotism of Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast."

Callaghan's memoir is a well-written, down-to-earth account of that summer t he and his wife spent with the American expatriates who called Paris home in the 1920s. It's an extraordinarily talented cast of characters and Callaghan-- once considered on par with Hemingway and Fitzgerald-- describes it vividly.

Extremely interesting. Especially Callaghan's insight into Hemingway's treatment of Fitzgerald. It wasn't what Hemingway wanted people to believe.

I had never heard of Morley Callghan before reading this book. Which is unfortunate because the book is hard to put down. It is well-written, informative, amusing, thought provoking and gives insight into several notable literary figures from a first hand perspective.