Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises

“Everybody Behaves Badly” was thorough, detailed, and well-written. In terms of its structure and the way it limited itself to the events surrounding the writing of Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” it probably deserves five stars. As the author remarks in her afterward, she had lots of material to whittle down, and she did a nice job of it. “Everybody” begins with Hemingway in his early haunts of Paris, the cafes and bars, meeting and soliciting advice from Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, and it ends with the publication of Hemingway’s first novel. I took away one star from my review only because of how slanted the book seems against Hemingway. I’m not a Hemingway fan or scholar. I’ve read some of his stuff, but this biography of his time in Paris turns me off to further reading of him. The book is an indictment of his personal life and his style. I came away thinking that Hemingway was incredibly selfish and had a self-destructive streak that would end in his suicide. He was awful to Hadley and to all his friends, he was undoubtedly an adulterer, he didn’t seem to care much one way or the other about his child, and he betrayed every single person who attempted to give him advice and support as a struggling young writer, including Sherwood Andersen, Ford Maddox Ford, and the Fitzgeralds. In “Everybody Behaves Badly,” the reader gets a glimpse of others acting drunkenly in Hemingway’s circle, but the title is misleading and seems to excuse Hemingway’s behavior. In the book he behaves more badly than anyone around him and destroys reputations, if not lives, in the process. He credits his writing style to telegraphs and the Old Testament. Everyone else agrees it comes as a result of guidance from Stein and Pound, but Hemingway refuses to give credit where credit is due. Every other writer is a competitor and must be destroyed. Hemingway’s circle in Paris and Spain, who he later fictionalizes in “The Sun Also Rises,” were friends that he used for personal gain. In “Everybody Behaves Badly” the reader doesn’t see many of their contemporaneous accounts in their own words, but we see everything Hemingway wrote at the time, including letters, since they’ve been preserved. The book is meticulously researched, and the author was wise to focus on an important period of Hemingway’s life, but I feel like I should read other Hemingway biographies to get a more balanced account of him. This book simply steers me away from Hemingway’s fiction, which, while seen now as macho, misogynistic, etc., is still important.

Initially I was somewhat skeptical about this book and suspected a kind of “hit job” emphasizing Hemingway’s less than admirable qualities (of which there were many) but the writing is very accomplished, sometimes rather clever and incisive and seems to be well researched; nothing really original--see Sarason, "Hemingway and the Sun Set" and many others for more on this topic--- but it does capture the atmosphere of post war Paris literary expatriate life rather well--better than a number of previous Hemingway biographies and critical studies). My reservations about the book involve the over use of Kitty Cannell's recollections---some of which have been debunked and/or revealed as unreliable by Michael Reynolds in his massive, scrupulously researched, multi volume Hemingway bio (see Reynolds pp. 298-99, 321-22), the suggestion that Hemingway may have slept with Pauline’s sister and with Duff-Twysden for which there is no real evidence at all--in fact Duff denied it saying she would not sleep with a married man and besides was fond of Hadley, Hemingway never gave any indication that their flirtatious friendship included sex which he probably would have gladly accepted should it have been offered (and would most likely have bragged about to someone) and if they did have carnal relations they could not have kept it secret from the small circle of people in which they moved---Harold Loeb's brief affair with Duff became known practically from the moment it started. Also, I think the author places a little too much emphasis on the autobiographical aspects of the novel and on the careerist part of Hemingway’s Paris years. There is little discussion of the relationship between Hemingway’s early stories and vignettes and “Sun” and the painstaking aspect of the novel’s composition once the first draft was complete and his extensive revisions began--- other than Fitzgerald’s certainly very important editorial suggestions. I do commend Blume for including Bill Smith’s comment that “Hemingway was not a diarist. He was an artist” as well as Blume’s own very perceptive, well-expressed observation that in “Sun” Hemingway was “ confronting the masses with a terrifyingly modern world bereft of any comforting stylistic trimmings….There was no shelter in that writing, nary an adjective to shade readers from a harsh sun.” It is rare that any new book about Hemingway--surely the most written about American author of all time---will hold my interest but this one did. Definitely worthwhile despite a few shortcomings.

Brilliant writing! Well researched and entertaining.

A Time of intensity, revolution, and the vivacity of the modern literature; a book that makes us more than witnesses, but vivid participants in one of the most brilliant - and agitated - periods of that newborn modernity.

This covers the old ground written about by many biographers and by Hemingway himself. But it's still a great story with interesting flawed characters.

Knowing very little about the life of Ernest Hemingway and having visited one of his home in Florida recently, I was interested in learning more about the person. This book provided some background to the people whose pictures appeared on the wall in his home and how they connected to him. The author must have spent a great deal of time accumulating so much background information into Hemingway's rise to fame and his character. It was good to have the actual photos and reference materials provided to help bring these people to life.

Lesley Blume's "Everybody Behaves Badly" is an excellent book. The author has written a fascinating narrative about Ernest Hemingway's writing and publishing of his first novel, "The Sun Also Rises." She paints a vivid picture of the events, circumstances and potential motivations that shaped this aspiring author who was willing to do whatever it took to achieve success. Her in-depth research and engaging writing style create a chronicle that leaves you wanting more. What a great read.